Hold 'Em: Vegas Top Guns, Book 3 by Katie Porter

lately.
    Apparently Mike would be her reward.
    When she looked back at him, she found his gaze focused on her mouth like a laser beam. His tiny smile still quirked, until he licked his bottom lip.
    They were all mixed up. They hadn’t even kissed yet, and she’d closed a leather cuff around his wrist. But then, he’d already revealed his keystone.
    She only needed to give her permission.
    Delving both hands into his hair, she tugged until his face was tipped up. Another step brought her so near that her breasts brushed his collarbones and his skin-warmed T-shirt.
    “Did you know? Back then?” She didn’t want to ask but she did anyway. If he’d known about all this, about all they’d been missing, and never told her…
    She’d make it very bad for him. In a damn good way, of course.
    His thick throat worked over a swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “No. I didn’t figure it out until three years ago.”
    That still gave him three years on her. Three years of knowing exactly what he wanted and what he was looking for. The fear of failure had never been her friend. And this was too important to screw up.
    She felt suddenly, strangely alone—disconnected from the depths he had probably explored for years. “Touch me.”
    Immediately his hands looped loosely around her hips. Rough thumbs dipped under the waistband of her cargo pants, stroking over her hipbones. That naughty grin of his spread across his mouth.
    “What is it?” She scraped her nails lightly under his hair, across his scalp.
    He shook his head, but she only tugged tighter. She was really coming to like the slightly shaggy length of it. It would be a damn shame when he cut it before Tuesday.
    That realization trickled ice water down her spine. What the hell would she do once they were back at work?
    She pushed away the dose of reality just as fast as it popped up. This time was for them. For experimenting. Any consequences would wait—hopefully until much later.
    “Spill it,” she said. Her voice had taken on a crisp, warning tone she’d only ever used on unruly airmen who thought they could do a half-assed maintenance job on her plane just because she was a chick.
    Mike’s smile only grew wider. “You’re taking to this rather well.”
    “I am, aren’t I?” She traced two fingers down the sharp lines of his cheekbones, then back over his ears. This scenario fit so well, as if she’d cracked open a part of her psyche that had always been there. Waiting. Lurking. “I take it you like orders? Being told what to do?”
    “To an extent,” he hedged. “I’ve got limits. Hard limits. Things I won’t do.”
    “Tell me.” She didn’t want to break this tension before they even got started. The slow burn was threatening to send her up in flames.
    “No marks that show when I’m in uniform.”
    Fuck if that didn’t send another pulse of heat through her bones. The converse of it—what he wasn’t saying. That he’d allow her to mark him in other ways.
    His thumbs kept up small strokes over her hipbones, delving deeper. Her stomach sucked concave on a particularly tempting shiver.
    “No permanent damage, of course. I don’t enjoy blood play, so no breaking the skin.” His gaze dropped from hers. “The rest…we could probably discuss later. Most of them involve third parties.”
    She curved a hand around the underside of his chin and tugged up. “No, keep looking at me. I like the way you watch me.”
    His fingers gripped the top of her ass. “How do I watch you?”
    “Like you’re hungry. For me.”
    “That’s because I am.”
    That did it. She went flying over the edge of the canyon, spun wild on the absolute rush of his faith.
    She wrenched his hair. “Kiss me.” Another order. They spilled out of her mouth more easily each time.
    “All you had to do was tell me,” he growled.
    He stretched up and she leaned down at the same time. Hot. Fast. Immediate. A coming together of more than lips, more than his tongue in her