Pulling out one card, Mr. Phillips laid it on the table and dealt himself a new one. “Normally, we would bet again now,” he said. “But since we’re playing for our own special arrangement, we’ll keep it at one day.”
My tongue felt so thick in my mouth I could barely speak around it. “Okay.”
“All right, let’s see what you’ve got.”
I laid my hand down on the table, face up.
“A pair,” he announced. Then he shook his head. “It’s not impossible to win with only one pair, but it’s not often that it happens.” He laid his cards out. “What I have is a flush. See how they’re all the same suit?” He pointed to the heart beneath the number on one of the cards. “A flush beats a pair.”
My shoulders sagged in defeat, and my eyes burned with tears at the unjustness of it all. His eyes hardened at my reaction, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry.
“I’ll tell you what.” He paused. Probably waiting for me to look at him. But I couldn’t. Not yet. After a few pounding beats of my heart, he continued. “I’ll go ahead and give you a chance to win that day back. I think it’s only fair since you’re so new at this. How does that sound? Luna?”
I blinked away the last of the tears and lifted my chin.
“How does that sound?” he repeated.
“I would appreciate that,” I managed to say. “Thank you.”
I lost seven out of ten games that night. Mr. Phillips decided his bet was for me to sit on his lap and kiss him on the lips. And I did. Because I had agreed to play, win or lose.
Later, instead of doing homework, I got on my cheap laptop and researched how to play poker.
We played at least two or three times a week, but it took me a long time to get good enough to beat Mr. Phillips. As soon as I started to gain the upper hand, he would change the game. I learned how to play five-card draw, Texas hold ‘em, and seven-card stud. The things we bet on started out simple enough. I would bet something Logan needed money for. If I won, Mr. Phillips would strike that particular thing off of his list of things I owed him for. If I lost, I paid him by doing something he wanted.
I stopped asking for anything for myself.
It started out simple. A kiss on the cheek or the mouth. Allowing him to buy me clothes that showed off my body more and wearing them for him. Sitting on his lap while we watched something on television.
I sat very still when on his lap. If I moved at all, he’d get harder and harder beneath my rear end. Sometimes, though, he’d ask me to lean forward and grab his beer off the coffee table where he’d left it on purpose. He’d moan when I did, pushing up with his hips, only to take the bottle from me and set it on the end table beside him without even taking a drink.
Eventually, it progressed into more. He would want to touch my breasts or between my legs. Over my clothes at first, but the more I lost the games, the more intimate our encounters became.
Then, he had me touch him.
A month before I turned sixteen, my foster father took my virginity. He wasn’t gentle, and he left a lot of bruises on my pale skin that I had to cover up with long sleeves, pants, and makeup so Logan wouldn’t see them and do something stupid. My brother might’ve been four years younger, but he was super protective of me, and I wouldn’t have put it past him to try to protect my honor or some such bullshit. Which only would’ve gotten him hurt. Or, at the very least, had us thrown back into the system, and possibly separated from each other.
Mr. Phillips had also put me on birth control and supplied me with condoms to protect me from STDs. So, there was that, at least.
Of course, he was only protecting his new investment. Now that he’d personally popped my cherry, he planned to monetize my body and my newly acquired poker skills.
So, I guess I could say he taught me everything I knew.
CHAPTER 4
Luna
Now
Ifought to turn my head, sucking in a much-needed breath as soon as I was able to get my face free of the comforter. My room reeked of the alcohol seeping from Gino’s pores. A smell that was familiar to me, and almost comforting by now. Men who drank too much were men who did stupid things—like spend all of their money just to watch me get naked.
Opening my eyes, I saw movement in the darkness outside my window…a man standing in the shadows of the large oak tree.
One of Gino’s guards peeping in at us, I was sure. I should’ve been mortified. I should’ve felt ashamed. But I felt absolutely nothing as he turned and walked away. After all, by now all of his men—and most of the people at the wedding today—knew how I’d ended up here.
I’d bet it all and lost to the old Italian capo whose fat stomach was currently pressing me down into the mattress. It was so large I didn’t know how he found his dick to ram it into me. Yet he managed somehow, because he was currently plowing my unprepared vagina from behind, cursing because I wasn’t wet and ready for him.
So no, I didn’t feel any of those things. I only felt angry.
