Free Breaking Beauty (Devils Aces MC): Vegas Titans Series by Celia Loren

His
face was sweatier than she'd imagined. He was trembling. Engraged.
    “I want the dealer,” her hero spoke. Then he shot The Dap a
look so hateful that the man looked briefly startled. “Why don't you take
the money, you fat piece of shit? Spend it on some fucking liposuction or a gym
membership for Christ's sake. Better hope I don't see your fat fucking ass out
in public.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

     
     
    Everything happened quickly after that. Zaida, the grin
still strung across her lips, took Romy's sweaty hand and joined it with
Bryson's. His hand was also moist, but his grip was surprisingly strong. She
allowed herself to relax into this.
    Her last vision of The Dap was of him scooping chips into a
leather purse, like someone robbing a bank might. Security still flanking him
on his way out.
     
    Men high-fived Bryson on his way out, just as they had when
the other winners went off with their prizes. Zaida bade them farewell at the
elevator. She leaned in to Romy, and breathed into her ear—“Is easy tonight. He
handsome, this one.” With one hand, she extracted Romy's watch from her clutch
and slid it back onto her wrist. “Next Saturday. You do well, tonight, we
watch. We know.” With a lingering cackle, the doors slid shut in front of her
face. Romy hadn't even had a chance to pan the room for Lefty. She wondered if
he'd snuck his way back downstairs, to his lair.
     
    Once they were alone, Romy collapsed against the elevator
walls, suddenly exhausted. Her body ached with the strain of prolonged tension.
She could feel tears coming on; she didn't have the strength to keep them at
bay.
    “I'm so stupid,” she murmured, letting her body slide down
the elevator wall. They were shooting down rapidly, bound for room 607 again.
It would be like The Needle had never happened. Perhaps she could dream this
nightmare back into fiction.
     
    “Hey. Hey, girlie, get up,” Bryson knelt before her. He
gripped her fingers tight in his. She took him in again from this angle: the
juts of his knobby knees opening, muscular thighs trailing to a central place.
His nails were cropped short, and clean. Up close, the pools of his eyes were
no longer frightening, but connoted his strength. She thought of waking up to
this face.
     
    Close quarters with Bryson Vaughn would have been romantic
in any other situation, but presently Romy only felt shame. She wanted to get
as far away from this man as possible. He'd saved her, yes. She felt deep
things, things it hadn't occurred to her to believe in, while held in his
sight. But all too soon in their “courtship,” he was seeing her at her worst.
She shuddered against him. Began to full-on weep.
    “Romy,” Bryson spoke firmly to her now. “You're not stupid.
Anyone might have been fooled by that proposal. You're a special, intelligent
woman, and your only crime is trusting the wrong people. They took advantage of
you.”
    “I just can't believe I—”
    He put a steady finger to her lips. “You're being watched,
remember.” He pulled Romy slowly to her feet. With a roll of his eyes, he
indicated a spot on the elevator's ceiling somehow eerily similar to that hunk
of wall on the casino's main floor. Without knowing quite why or how, Romy felt
sure this patch of sky reported directly to a security camera. That security
camera, she knew, was probably fluttering its feed high in Lefty DiMartino's
secret lodge.
     
    The elevator landed, finally, at its destination: the silent
abyss that was room 607, now dark and shadowy in the moonlight. Vegas still
glittered below, but closer to the ground Romy felt safer. More at home. After
all, Paulette and the others were presumably puttering just a few floors below
their feet.
    “Why do you think we're 'being watched?'” Romy whispered.
But Bryson was already pulling her along the sixth floor corridor. He moved
fast, making it difficult for Romy to follow in her teetering leather boots.
She was too drained by this point to protest. They stopped