I moaned, caught up in the heat that bloomed between our mouths and sank roots deep into my belly, down into my sex.
When he finally pulled away, his firm, full mouth was damp with my attentions. Before I could help myself, I raised on my toes and licked across his swollen lower lip before biting the plumpness between my teeth.
His eyes sparkled like frothing champagne as I stepped back, pride and abiding lust bubbling through the silver.
He tipped his chin slightly, and I went, rounding the table with my hips rolling, legs as fluid as honey poured over the floor.
The men watched me, and Ralston even adjusted himself in his trousers. When I reached Ren and gracefully collapsed into a kneel at his feet, I caught the lust in their eyes trained on me like spotlights, lighting me up with his desires.
I knew the dress had been a good idea.
And though Alexander wasn’t usually one for blunt force, his show of ownership was apparently just the show these possessive Italians needed.
Ren looked down at me, the only man without want clouding his vision. Instead, he studied me as a bug under glass, cataloguing my attributes and reading the intent in my face.
“Beautiful,” he said softly, just for me even though everyone else could hear him under the low music. “But then, that’s been somewhat of a curse for you, hasn’t it, Cosima?”
I slanted him a hard look, but I wasn’t surprised. He was a man of information, so of course he had known who I was the entire time. It only made me curious what his end game was. Did he mean only to play havoc with the Davenport brothers by so obviously displaying me at his side?
Or was there something else he wanted from them, from me?
I knelt quietly as the men resumed their play, but I kept a close eye on Ren, watching his hands and learning the way he played poker.
I’d learned you could discern a lot from a man by the way he played a game of strategy.
Alexander was calculating and cold. His beautiful face didn’t twitch out of its repose for even a moment, as if a marble statue sat in his seat instead of a human being. When the game had finally dwindled away to just Ren and himself, I still had difficulty reading his intent. I thought he might have a high face card in his hand, probably a queen as two showed on the river, and his eyes grew even colder with wicked delight.
Dante played as he lived, with a bold passion that you saw a mile away but were still helpless to counter. He often had nothing of significance in his hand, but no one could bluff like a handsome Italian assured from birth of his own magnificence. When he went out, he did so with a gruff Neapolitan curse and an impolite hand gesture.
The man named Ralston played lazily, enjoying his booze and cigar much more than the craft of the game. He was out before the game had even really begun, but he sat there, vaguely amused and growing drunker, to watch the tense game play out.
And Ren?
He played with sly acuity, as if he was a puppetmaster dabbling with his toys.
After over an hour of play, I realized where his smugness stemmed from.
The bastardo was cheating.
I was appalled at his balls in doing so. Cheating in the house of di Carlo was akin to signing his own death warrant in his life’s blood. He did it seamlessly, though. I wouldn’t have noticed if I wasn’t so close, if he didn’t insist on petting my hair condescendingly or leaning over to smell my skin and lick my ear. He did it to inflame Alexander, but in the end, his smugness was his downfall because I learned his trick.
I waited, my easy submission around my shoulders like a shroud, hiding my calculation and keen eye from the misogynistic Italian beside me.
Then the fifth card was flipped on the river, and I saw my opportunity.
Ren had slid a queen into the opening between his wrist and his shirt, and it winked at me as he leaned over to slide a hand through my hair and drag his nose over my face, loudly inhaling the scent of me. Instead of passively allowing him to assault me, I wrapped my hand around that wrist and tugged him farther into me so that his mouth landed on the corner of mine. Before he could right himself, I kissed him.
It was closed mouthed, my lips sealed against his invasion, but still plush enough to entice him to give in to the embrace. He softened from his shock, and his hand tightened in the back of my hair. I moaned softly as I swiped my fingers delicately over the gap in his shift sleeve and carefully pulled the card out from his sleeve.