Casino Afterglow

The room smelled like chlorine and bad decisions.

I liked it. The chlorine kept the cigarette smoke from settling into my hair, and the bad decisions were paying for the suite. Tez had sprung for the top floor of the Gold Spike, which meant the window looked out over the casino floor instead of a parking garage. You could watch the whole machine from up here. The lights, the carpets that swallowed sound, the people moving between tables like they were already dead and just hadn't been told.

"You're doing it again," Tez said.

I turned from the window. He was stretched across the bed, still in his jeans, shirt unbuttoned and hanging open. The lamp on the nightstand caught the scar on his cheek, that pale line that ran from his eye to his jaw. He'd never told me how he got it. I'd never asked. Some things you earn the right to know.

"Doing what?"

"That thing where you look at the city like you're planning to rob it."

I shrugged out of my jacket and let it fall. The leather hit the carpet with a soft thud. "Maybe I am."

"You're always planning something." He sat up, and the movement pulled the shirt off one shoulder. His skin was darker than mine, warm brown against the hotel's white sheets. Lean. Wiry. The kind of body that had learned to move through tight spaces. "Come here."

I went.

Not because he told me to. Because I wanted to. There's a difference, even if it doesn't always look like one from the outside.

The bed dipped when I climbed onto it. Tez caught my waist and pulled me down against him, and for a second I just breathed. His neck smelled like soap and the whiskey he'd been nursing at the bar downstairs. His hands found the hem of my tank top and slid underneath, palms flat against my back.

"You're cold," he said.

"I'm always cold."

"I know." He kissed my shoulder, then my collarbone. Slow. Deliberate. Tez did everything like he was checking for traps. "That's why I keep you around."

I laughed, and it came out rougher than I meant it to. "That's why?"

"One of the reasons."

His mouth moved lower, and I stopped talking.

The thing about Tez is that he pays attention. Not the way most men do, where they're just going through the motions and waiting for their turn. He watches. He notices what makes you twitch, what makes you go still, what makes you grab the sheets. He'd figured out months ago that I don't like being rushed. That I need the first few minutes to just be touched, no destination, no pressure. So that's what he did. His hands moved over my ribs, my stomach, the inside of my thighs. Everywhere except where I wanted them.

"You're stalling," I said.

"I'm savoring."

"Same thing."

He grinned against my hip. "You're impatient."

"I'm practical. There's a difference."

But I let him take his time. The casino hummed below us, a low mechanical pulse that came up through the floor. Somewhere down there, people were losing their rent money, their marriage money, their last-ditch money. Up here, I had my fingers in Tez's hair and his mouth on my skin and nothing else mattered.

He rolled me onto my back and settled between my legs, still wearing too many clothes. I tugged at his shirt until he got the message and shrugged it off. The scar on his cheek caught the light again. I traced it with my thumb.

"Tell me," I said.

"Tell you what?"

"Something true."

He paused. That was our thing. I don't know when it started, but somewhere along the way we'd agreed that this, the space between the sheets, was the only place honesty was allowed. The rest of the time we were scavengers and survivors and liars by necessity. But here, in the dark, we told the truth.

"I'm scared," he said.

"Of what?"

"Of this." He gestured vaguely at the room, the bed, me. "Of what happens when it stops being just this."

I didn't have an answer for that. I didn't want to think about what happened after. After was a luxury. After was for people who had somewhere to be.

So I pulled him down and kissed him until neither of us could think about anything at all.

His weight settled over me, warm and solid. I wrapped my legs around his waist and felt him hard against my thigh. The denim of his jeans was rough, and I arched up into it, chasing friction. He groaned against my mouth and rocked his hips, slow, teasing.

"Tez."

"Yeah?"

"Stop being careful."

He pulled back just enough to look at me. His eyes were dark, pupils blown wide. "You sure?"

"I'm sure."

He wasn't gentle after that. He got his jeans off, and mine, and then there was nothing between us but heat and sweat and the sound of breathing. I dug my nails into his shoulders. He bit my lip. The headboard knocked against the wall, and neither of us cared.

It wasn't pretty. It wasn't soft. It was two people who spent every day holding themselves together finally letting go, and it was exactly what I needed.

Afterward, we lay tangled in the sheets, both of us slick and breathing hard. The casino lights flickered through the window, red and gold and electric blue. I could feel Tez's heartbeat against my cheek, slowing down, coming back to earth.

"Something true," he said.

I closed my eyes. "I don't want to leave."

"Leave the hotel?"

"Leave this. You. Whatever this is."

He was quiet for a long moment. Then his hand came up and stroked my hair, gentle now, the way he never was with anyone else. "I know."

The phone rang.

We both froze. It was Tez's phone, the burner he kept in his jacket pocket. He'd told me once that only three people had that number. His sister, his supplier, and a man named Goldee who I'd never met and never asked about.

Tez reached for the nightstand, but I caught his wrist.

"Don't," I said.

"It's Goldee."

"I know."

"He doesn't call unless it's important."

I looked at him. At the scar on his cheek and the sweat still drying on his chest and the way his hand hovered over the phone like it was a bomb he couldn't decide whether to defuse.

"Stay," I said. "Just for a minute."

He looked at me. At the phone. Back at me.

The ringing stopped.

Tez let out a breath and sank back against the pillows. His arm came around me and pulled me close. "Okay," he said. "Okay."

But I could feel his heart beating faster now. And I knew, the way you know a storm is coming, that whatever Goldee wanted, it wasn't going to wait.