Wow, I thought it was her. I saw hair, auburn hair. My eyes focused on the face, then the body, and then recognition kicked in.
Holy God.
It was her. The Baroness. The memory of our night together hit me like a ton of bricks. It was never that far away from consciousness.
It wasn't every day that you won a men's wife in a card game and then proceeded to have the most passionate night of your life with her. It was five years ago, and I remembered it like it happened five minutes ago. She was just as beautiful as ever, dressed in a teal dress that looked amazing with her skin and hair. She was walking around the table, looking a little lost. What was she doing here? Once the shock of seeing her past, questions came up. She had had a pretty, let's call it rough, experience at a casino the last time that I checked. If I was her, I would be a little gun-shy.
If she was here though, that man with the baron was too. I felt a burn in my chest like the scotch I was just drinking. What kind of man feels chalice of a woman's husband? Married women are the best kind. There was no use of lusting after them. You don't have to bother, spend that energy. There's already somebody taking care of her, so your services aren't needed. Only, he wasn't taking care of her last time I checked. From what she told me, she merely tolerated him. Keeping in mind that he put her up as collateral during that gambling game, my jealousy felt a little more justified.
Where was he? Was he back to do it again? Lose his wife to me, again? I just knew that I treated her better than he ever had. Five years was a long time. She was married then, but marriages ended all the time. She didn't fuck me like she was married.
I never had any intention of making a move, but then she did and who the hell was I to say no to that. She was absolutely gorgeous, both of us were tipsy, and both of us had basically been given the go-ahead from the Baron. She rocked my world that night. I felt my body react remembering it as she approached the table. Suddenly, not only was I hard, I was nervous. She scanned the table, her eyes passing my face, and then she paused looking at me again. She seemed to freeze, her features freezing on her face.
O
h no. She recognized me and I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. It seems like time slowed down, but I knew it hadn't. It felt like the two of us were having a private moment in this room full of people. Slowly, her face broke into a smile. She looked over the table one more time, then stopped and waited as the dealer dealt her in. I watched her every move. She was one person away from me. I was staring, shameless, I knew the way it looked, but I couldn't stop. I watched her look at her cards and then set down her chips.
Not even a hello, I thought. If someone asked me my name right then, I wouldn't know what to tell them.
The game started and I tried my best to concentrate. Honestly, watching her was more important than winning the game. Her luck wasn't good. She lost the hand. She frowned and shook her head, and she shrugged.
“I should have known,” she said.
“Are you playing again?” I asked her, finally gaining control of my tongue. She looked at me and I was rendered speechless once again.
“I should have learned my lesson from the first time. I'm rubbish at poker.”
“I reckon anyone can learn.”
She shook her head. “It's just not my game.”
“Then what is your game?” I asked. She smiled a smile right on the borderline of innocent and devious. It sent blood rushing down to my cock. Five years later and she still did it to me.
“Hearts.”
2
Edwina
Back in the belly of the beast, were we?
My dress felt tight. It wasn't tight, it fit perfectly, but even the sensation against my skin was irritating me. Rich people. My husband's people. Maybe a few of them even recognized me through him. Luckily thus far none of them had stopped me to say hello or make otherwise useless small talk.
Needless to say, I hated casinos.
I never thought that I would be walking back into one, but here we were. Even after his death, my husband still managed to make me humiliate myself in new and cruel ways. I wasn't even sure that the plan would work. I made my way around the tables of people gambling. Disgusting habit if I did say so myself. Maybe a little hasty of an assumption but without my husband's gambling problem, I wouldn't be in this position.
After dying and leaving me with nothing, money was tight. He was an addict and what he had left us was barely enough to keep the estate going. Recently, I found out that he had written a check to this casino in exchange for chips. Our banker was the one who had to break the bad news to me. What very well could have been the last of our money, was in the form of casino chips that my husband had secreted away in an old suitcase.
“So, do I take them back?” I had asked the banker. “They’re basically money, right? I can swap them for the cash, can’t I?”
“You can, but they are going to treat it like debt repayment.”
“I don't want to lose more money. I didn't even know that my husband wrote this check.”
“What you can do to get some money out of them is sell them to somebody at the casino, someone gambling. Give them a better deal than the house and maybe you can get a deal.”
It sounded easy enough at the time, but who the hell was going to buy a bunch of casino chips off of me? A stranger wandering the casino offering casino chips?