Page 7 of The Biker's Forbidden Craving

Surely, I am.

“We could play.” He opens the closet door and pulls out a deck of cards. “You used to like Rummy.”

Rummy. I haven’t played Rummy in years, probably since the last time we played together.

“Sure, but we need some stakes. What does the winner get?”

He laughs and tosses his massive frame sideways onto the creaking bed as he pulls the deck from the little card box that’s decorated with mountains at sunset. “Okay, stakes. Umm… if I win, you have to tell me the truth about what happened to my leather jacket a few years back.”

I stagger in a deep breath and try to hide the grin that’s sneaking onto my face. “What? What makes you think I know what happened to your jacket?”

He narrows his gaze and lifts his brows as though he knows I know. “What do you want if you win?”

My heart slams against my chest. “Jeez… if I win, you have to tell me the truth about something.”

“Something? What’s something?”

I shrug, unable to say the thing that I want the truth about. Hell, I’ll never have the balls to ask him if he likes me, mostly because I already know the answer. “It’s random.”

“Seems dangerous,” he laughs, “but I get high on danger. Let’s do it.”

Grinning, I sit next to him on the bed and take another swig of the warming beer I’d grabbed from the fridge an hour ago. This stuff is nasty.

Hank scuffs his big, rough hand against each card as he tosses them one by one onto the rumpled blankets between us. I take a second to organize them in my hand by suit, then watch him over the top and smirk as he lifts his own.

“You’re a terrible bluffer,” he laughs. “Always have been.”

“Oh yeah?” I roll my eyes and study the card laid out in front of me. Suddenly the stakes are higher than they’d been a moment ago. Everything is real now. Besides, I don’t want to tell him about what happened to his leather jacket.How does he know I had something to do with that?

Hand after hand go on and on with very little talk. We’re both competitive and extremely focused on the game in front of us. That and I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so much tension in my life.

Maybe I’m imagining it. Maybe it’s my own horny way of thinking. My desire to be loved and valued.My desperation to be fucked hard by this massive, hot, masculine man.

That has to be it because there’s no way a guy like Hank would be thinking about me the same way I’m thinking about him.

I hold the last card I needed in my hand, anxious to go out, frantic to hold my secret in forever, but there it is, like a beacon of reality laid out in front of me, the ace of spades… straight to my heart.

“Well, looks like you owe me an explanation.” His gaze sticks on mine as I take another swig of beer. I’m gonna need it.

“What are you talking about? No, let’s do two out of three.”

“Not the deal we made, Sunny. You owe me an explanation. What happened to my leather jacket?”

Considering it’s hanging in my closet next to my latest black dress, I should have a good explanation for him.

“Two out of three. Come on. It’s how all bets are done. Plus, it’s my birthday!”

“No way.” He gathers all the cards in his giant hand and smiles wide and gorgeous. “I’m certain you know something good now. Plus, you don’t celebrate your birthday. I wouldn’t want to insult you.” He grins playfully and my heart does something that feels like a hard slam and a bunch of skipped beats.

How do I tell him that I took the jacket to wear… so I’d feel close to him? That sounds insane. More than insane, that might blend into stalker territory.

I swallow hard and lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling fan whirring above us. “Okay… so I was twenty, and I wasn’t thinking straight yet.” I’m stammering like I’ve never completed a sentence in my life.

“That was five years ago, so you weren’t that much younger, but go ahead,” he laughs.

I slap his shoulder playfully. “Shut up and listen.”

He laughs again. “I am caught up. You were so much younger and you…”

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