Page 13 of Tangled Lies

Instead of shying away or doing anything smart, I bellied up to the table. I wanted to live.

“Sure. What are we playing?”

None of them looked alike, but they all moved in unison, as if this was something they did often, and it was a bit unnerving. They all took seats at the table, leaving me to my own chair.

Space to breathe.

“Texas Hold’em, pretty girl?” said blue eyes.

I shrugged.

“Whatever you say, pretty boy. I don’t know how to play poker regardless of what you call it.”

That got me a grin that had my body heating. What I might give him if he kept smiling like that. They were all bad news, and everything I needed.

I sat in the chair, careful enough to keep my dress covering my essentials, but I couldn’t stop it from riding up as I crossed my legs and leaned my elbows onto the edge of the table, letting them have a good view of my breasts. This was what I was willing to offer and my uncle couldn’t stop me.

I didn’t mean to let a high pitch squeal out, but when brown eyes, the one who screamed he was in charge just by the way he held himself, grabbed my chair and pulled me closer to him, I did.

“We can teach you the game, little bird. But what will you offer us? You’ve yet to tell us your bet.”

I looked at each of them, then a pile of chips I knew went with some very real money in a safe at the back of the room. Who was I kidding? There was plenty of money just sitting on the bar to back all those chips, I was sure of that.

I shifted in my seat, facing a man I’d never see again, and found that little dark part of me that was so fucking tired of it all.

I traced the line of his jaw, loving the way everything about him tried to seem unaffected, except I felt the way the muscle in his jaw tightened.

“How much is my virginity worth?”

CHAPTER 4

TALON

Fuck.

The way none of us looked away from the girl? Shit.

She was Rone’s. But fuck me if I wasn’t a man of my word. I’d strip her and fuck her on this table faster than Ronan could pull his gun on me.

Shit.

“Hey there, princess. Start out slow. You win, we strip. We win? You strip. That gives the boss here time to decide just how much that little virgin pussy is worth.”

She didn’t say anything, to busy eye-fucking us I’d guess.

“Knox? Grab drinks. Something tells me we’re going to need them,” I said.

She looked at Knox, and I realized I was apparently doing informal introductions.

Now that everyone was gone, the fun could be had. I relaxed in the chair, letting my legs take up as much space as I damn well wanted, and watched our little caged princess. In all the iterations of our plans, no one saw a little repressed virgin waiting to just bargain that shit away.

Scratch that. We all saw a repressed virgin, but after watching her uncle for so long we’d all assumed she was stupid and shallow.

I studied her, but she seemed to only have eyes for Ronan. Lucky damn bastard. Although that wasn’t really his story at all. Outside the clink of bottles from Knox grabbing some beers, the room was silent. The bartender was gone. The last guard gone. Just us and our prey.

“Little bird, is that really yours to bargain with?” Ronan asked just above a whisper, but the edge in his voice said she was hitting a damn nerve. Which nerve? Who knows. Ronan had been pretty quiet about how he knew Margaux, other than just from watching the corrupt uncle who was causing us, the Barone family, a lot of trouble.

“Last I checked, it’s my vagina, so it’s my cherry. Weren’t you the sweet man who pointed out my fiancée’s blatant promiscuity? Something tells me he doesn’t deserve to be my first. But, maybe one of you do?”