Delilah laughed, a laugh that was way too hard for the moment. But she stood up from the coffee table, taking her blonde espresso with her and following me outside. It only occurred to me then that she had not made any comment about the car when she walked in; that told me either she just assumedit was mine or had been so narrow-minded on coming in here she hadn’t even seen it.
The silver Lambo awaited us near the back, away from where any asshole might ding it or run into it. I opened the passenger-side door, almost feeling like a valet, and let Delilah in. Most of what I did was deliberate, but this just felt polite.
Like I said, I could be a ruthless asshole, but… fuck, it was like Cassius said. There was a difference between being a king and being an asshole.
I got in, turned the car on, and felt the engine powering on beneath me.
“Not bad, huh?” I said with a smirk.
“Not at all,” Delilah said.
“It doesn’t quite get the loins going like a motorcycle, but it can still excite.”
Delilah narrowed her eyes and shot me a warning look, as if to say, “Don’t push your luck.” Fair enough, though I still chuckled. I was still in charge here.
I drove out of the Bean Exchange lot, gunning the engine as soon as we hit the road. I knew how to get to Aces Up without a map, and I watched out of the corner of my eye as Delilah tried not to look impressed with the vehicle. She surely had to have gotten in other high-end cars before, I thought.
Or maybe she hadn’t.
Maybe this had been a boundary that she had set for herself that she’d just broken through.One of many yet to come,I thought.
I had many opportunities in the car to touch her, to hint at her, to gradually move my touches up and forward. But though I hinted at touching her, I never actually did. Two simple reasons.
One, car sex just sucked. Even if we started passionately making out after a gentle brush of the cheek or, even better,the thigh, a Lamborghini Aventador was not the type of car you fucked in.
And two, happily as a result of that, the tension only built further. It was built on my terms, and not touching her while almost touching her allowed her to feel even less in control. I had to remind myself a few times that this was the ultimate goal, to have Delilah under me as I fucked her. Not to date her. Not to give an interview.
No matter how strangely enjoyable it felt or how my mind wandered from time to time.
After about twelve long, tense minutes of driving, I pulled up to the valet of Aces Up. The casino was a relatively simple and, frankly, outdated design; it had a black-and-white color scheme, like that of a playing card. That made it unique to some of the bolder neon colors of the Strip, but it was also cheaper. Off-Strip casinos didn’t require the same glitz and flash that Strip ones did, but still, coming fromRubymade this feel like a drag.
But I hadn’t brought Delilah here to show her the design of the place.
I came around, offered her a hand, and lifted her out of my Lambo as the valet took the car. I walked over to the front desk, announced myself as Adrian Vale, and received a key to the top-floor luxury suite, no questions asked. Call it the perk of owning the entire casino; I didn’t need to go through a bunch of hoops to get the best room in the casino. I just had to say who I was.
“Notice,” I said, placing my hand on the small of her back. “The employees still here. The locals still here. The specials still running. The restaurants found nowhere else. Would this be a mark of a casino baron stripping the place for parts? Or is this something else?”
Delilah said nothing, taking it all in. I almost stepped to the side, letting her take it all in, but then I decided to do something else.
I decided to put some pressure on.
I decided to make Delilah into my diamond.
“Come,” I said, “let me show you the rooms. Let me show you the view the King of Diamonds gets.”
CHAPTER 16
Delilah
The instant Adrian referred to himself as the King of Diamonds, I felt like I snapped out of a trance.
There was no mistaking that the story I had been fed about this local casino was just, frankly, incomplete at best. Adrian had undoubtedly left some sordid details out. There had likely been some swearing on the phone, some lowballing, some tactics he and his brothers had used to take over the casino.
But he had been very wise to bring me here. I could not pretend that the staff did not look as cheerful and as minimally stressed as any casino employees I had seen. They were certainly far less concerned than their brethren on the Strip. If this had been a casino staff stripped bare of their benefits, reduced to employees with minimal salaries, they did not look the part.
Still. The rooms?
“Show me around the rest of the casino first,” I said.
