Page 15 of Devil of Vegas

My dream feels so real that it’s hard to distinguish what I’m imagining now in my sleep from what happened earlier today. In my dream, I’m back in the bath again and Vincent is still standing in the doorway watching me. This time, he doesn’t stay still or quiet. This time, he walks toward the tub and reaches his hand down into the water beside me. I can hear his voice in my head as if it’s actually taking place.

“You want me to touch you, Isla,” he says with an insatiably sultry look in his eyes. “Don’t you?”

I nod, unable to speak even though I open my mouth to try.

He slides his hand between my legs, and his fingers open me like parting the petals of a flower. When he strokes me, I can feel it every bit as intensely as if I were awake, as if his touch were actually really happening.

Tilting my head back against the tub’s side, I let him touch me until I feel like I might burst.

“Stop,” I beg, even though I want him to continue. “I shouldn’t…I can’t?—”

“You can do anything you want with me,” he says smoothly as he keeps his hand in place. “You’re my little ballerina, and I can make your body dance for me.”

The sensation rises to the point of no return, and right at the moment when I feel myself cascade over the edge of pleasure, I open my eyes.

I sit up in bed, breathing heavily and urging the ache between my legs to subside. The dream may not have been real, but the fact that I woke up soaked in shame is.

I stare out the window as I try to calm myself down and get my bearings. Outside the door, I can still hear Marco standing guard. Inside my room, I can see the tiny blinking red lights of the surveillance cameras. I wonder if Vincent is still watching me through them now. I wonder if he could see the pleasure coursing through my body before waking from that dream. Most of all, I wonder why he watched me for so long in the bath without making a move to touch me.

Perhaps he’s having trouble sleeping tonight, too, and is watching the cameras right now. As if to tempt fate even further, I step out of bed and slip my wet panties off and toss them onto the nearby chair. Then, without replacing them and wearingnothing underneath the soft shirt that falls just above my knees, I climb back into bed.

If heiswatching me, then he’ll have seen that. And Vincent will know I’m here between these silk sheets with nothing keeping him from coming in here and touching me how he just did in my dream. Am I playing with fire—yes,definitely. Do I feel ashamed by the way I’m feeling? Yes, at least a bit. But when I close my eyes again, I feel something else too. I feel a sort of sweet satisfaction in knowing that maybe,just maybe, I’ve caused the powerful, feared mafia leader who can control men with a single sweep of his hand to lose a little bit of control overhimselfthanks to me. Clearly, he has an iron will. From the looks of the hardening at the front of his pants earlier today, he might have an iron cock too. I can’t help but shake the feeling that there is a pressure point inside that man somewhere. I could open a crack in him, releasing his tightly held control. Maybe that’s how I go from being captive here to becomingqueen.

Madame Durant once told me that beauty is a currency to be spent wisely. I’m beginning to understand what that means.

CHAPTER 8

VINCENT

Twice now, I’ve let myselfwantIsla. It took every last bit of self-restraint I had not to get in that bathtub with her. If I had been in the penthouse instead of watching her through the cameras as she took off her panties in bed, who knows what I might have done, and if I could have controlled myself. I dislike this feeling of being out of control. And yet here I sit, only half-listening to Luc as he tells me about Angelo Baron’s activity in the city. I need to focus, but Ican’t.

“Vincent?” he says for at least the second time. “Did you hear what I said?”

“Yes, continue,” I lie. He doesn’t need to know that I’m distracted, although I’m guessing he can already tell.

I listen to him now, especially since it concerns the man I hate most in the world and my biggest rival mafia boss in Vegas. I wish I could have killed Angelo during the night of the bloody coup that killed my parents instead of the man he sent to do his dirty work. One day,I will.

“He’s increased his activity over the last several days,” Luc continues. “We’ve been tracking him and his men, and even his wife.”

“Good,” I nod. “I want to be advised of every move Angelo makes. I won’t let him get a foothold in my city.”

“He already has a foothold. Just because you have wiped out most of his underground channels and taken out half his men, doesn’t mean the Barones are gone. It took years to take them down a few notches. I get that, but trust me when I say he is very much still a powerful threat to you and the entire Moretti family.”

“You’re an excellent advisor, Luc, and I appreciate you,” I nod. “But I can handle Angelo. I’ve had him on his back heels for years now.”

My cousin doesn’t seem as confident in my handling of Angelo as I am. Luc is a good consigliere, but he’s opposite me. My ruthlessness and impulsive violence contrast with his polished, meticulous, and disciplined approach to negotiation. When we were kids, he used to beat me at chess all the time. Then I’d get mad and flip the board over. Once, I even threw one of the chess pieces at his face. The tip of it stuck in the flesh of his cheek and left him with a scar after he pulled it out. Subsequently, I grew up to become the boss of this family and he used his strategic chess skills to negotiate with our partners. I do value his insight, but sometimes I feel Luciano is secretly envious of me. I got all the power and glamour, and he got a position being told what to do.

I’m eager for a rematch against Barone. The sooner I can get my hands on that bastard, the better. He might still be a mafia boss, but he’s nothing more than a flashy, decadent, mercilesssociopath. And there’s still one thing left I need to take from him—his life.

All of my hits on Angelo thus far have come up short. Despite his arrogant facade, he is a player with deep insecurities who has been hiding behind his men for years. Heknowsthat I’m coming for him, and he blames mepersonallyfor all the losses he’s suffered and all the hits that the Barones have taken.

Good—I want him to know that it’s me at the root of all his past humiliations. I want him to know that killing him isn’t just a matter of “if” I can get to the man, butwhen.

“So, what is it that Angelo is trying to leverage now?” I ask, assuming that it’s a new drug trafficking ring or protection racket he’s setting up in his corners of the city.

“Acasino.”

“Come again?” I ask as my eyes narrow. Casinos aremine. I own that empire. I run the largest, most upscale, and socially elite casinos in all of Vegas, and the money that I funnel through them rivals the GDP of a small country. “Why am I just hearing about this now?”

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