Free One Night to Risk It All by Maisey Yates

not the money earned by other people’s suffering. There, a reminder that he had transcended his blood in some way.
    “So what do you do in New York?” she asked.
    “I gamble with other people’s money.”
    “What?”
    “I deal in investments,” he said. “And I’m very good at it.”
    “Isn’t that a bit unstable?”
    “Sure. Can be. But I’ve made enough of a profit that I’m sitting on stable assets of my own, and I’ve made some wise purchases and investments myself.”
    “Including an island.”
    “I won this,” he said.
    “You won it?”
    “In a card game. It was one of the more interesting gambling experiences of my life. Yes, I was a literal gambler there for a while. At first with other people’s money.”
    “How?”
    “Card counting is a particularly useful skill. I happen to have the gift. I was a kid living on the streets doing card tricks for tourists and a rich guy picked me up, offered to kit me out to play in the casinos with his money, for a cut. I said ‘of course,’ naturally.”
    “Naturally,” she said.
    “I won a lot of money. And I got to keep part of it. Rented myself an apartment, started offering up an underground service. Until I had enough money to go gamble for myself at least once a week.”
    “And?”
    “I ended up in a high rollers’ game. There were things in that pot by the end that you wouldn’t believe, including a night with a man’s wife, which I turned down, by the way. But the island... I took the island.”
    She looked hard at him, blue eyes glittering. “You’re really twenty-six, Alex?”
    “Yes. And I was eighteen when I was doing that. From there, I figured I better decide what to do with the money I’d earned. So I walked away from the casino and started looking into investing. And I proved to have a knack for that so I thought...why not do it for other people? An extension of where I came from.”
    “A self-made man,” she said.
    He laughed. “None of us are really self-made, Rachel. We’re made with the aid or misfortune of other people. In my case, people had to lose money so I could gain it. Now, the people I make money for are aided by me, as I am by them. You are made by your father, by the media, and you were to be finished by Ajax, am I right?”
    “Finished?”
    “It’s how you were going to spend the rest of your life in comfort. You found a man who would close the loop neatly on everything you’ve built.”
    “I don’t think of it that way.”
    “No?”
    “No.” She wobbled in the sand and he reached over and caught her arm, holding her steady. She froze for a moment, her eyes falling to his lips. She swallowed hard. “I don’t think of it...of him...that way. It’s not how it is.”
    “Then how is it?”
    “I don’t know. He’s a friend. And...maybe like a brother, almost, which I can see right at this moment is so ridiculous it’s... I don’t know why I thought I could marry him. I don’t know why at all. I thought caring could be enough. I thought it was enough.”
    “Only because you’d never had passion.” He’d been the one to show that to her.
    “Don’t be so smug—it’s nasty. Truly, I wouldn’t crow about it if I were you. Is there an easier conquest than a woman who’s still a virgin at my age? ‘Hard up’ doesn’t even begin to describe it.”
    “That’s not what it was though. I myself was not particularly hard up, as you call it, and I still felt the electricity between us.”
    She stopped short, arched one eyebrow. “Oh, really?”
    “Yes,” he said. “Don’t deny that you felt it.”
    “No, I mean, ‘oh, really, you weren’t hard up?’ What does that mean? When was the last time you were with someone else?”
    “Jealousy, Rachel? I didn’t think you liked me.”
    “I’m not jealous. I’m curious.”
    “And if I tell you, you won’t be angry?”
    “I’ve been angry at you for a solid month, Alexios. I’m not making you any guarantees on that score. You could