“A little warm, Ms. Fairchild? From looking at you, I would have thought you were slightly chilled.”

I open my eyes to find Damien smiling down at me. At my breasts, actually, and my rock hard nipples, very evident under my bikini top.

“You’re staring.”

“I’m enjoying the view.” He takes a seat on the lounge chair beside me. “Thinking about last night?”

“Every delicious minute,” I admit, and then swallow a smile of satisfaction when I see his eyes heat with my unexpected answer.

“And you?” I ask. “What are you doing this morning? Besides staring, I mean?”

“Staring, Ms. Fairchild?” His eyes flick up to my face, and then he draws his gaze down my body, moving so slowly and with such purpose that my skin tingles in the wake of his inspection, as if he is trailing a fingertip down the entire length of my body.

“Staring?” he repeats. “No, I’m studying. And planning.”

“Planning?” I repeat. “Now I’m very intrigued. Do tell.”

“Oh, just analyzing various strategies. How I’m going to touch you. What I’ll do to take you to the absolute heights of exquisite pleasure. To get you close but not let you go over, so that you are reduced to whimpering in my arms and begging me for release.” He looks at me blandly. “Things like that.”

My mouth has gone dry, and all my blood has pooled between my thighs. But even so, I manage to latch onto one key point. “In your arms, Mr. Stark?”

“Noticed that, did you?”

“I’m a very good listener.”

“I hoped that you would do me the honor of joining me for dinner.”

I tilt my head, considering. Tonight is our last night. If I want to take this flirtation to the next level, it really is now or never. And, yeah, I want to see what he has planned.

“Are you going to behave?”

“That’s highly doubtful.”

I laugh, because that is absolutely the perfect answer. “In that case, Mr. Stark, I’d love to have dinner with you.”

—

“How did it go?” I ask Jamie as we walk through the casino toward the hotel’s main shopping area.

“I think it went great. Gloria said she’d call me about more interviews, so…”

She trails off and I pull her into a hug. “Jamie, that’s awesome.”

“Potentially awesome,” she corrects, but she’s grinning happily.

All around us, men and women are seated at blackjack and roulette tables or standing around the craps table. Dozens of them are playing slot machines, and the din is brutal. For that matter, so is the smoke that fills the air.

It’s not even lunchtime, and yet this area is buzzing as if it were late at night. I suppose that’s the idea of Vegas, but my idea of decadent runs in a more private direction, and I smile to myself as I look forward to dinner tonight with Damien and every wicked thing that will come after.

We walk a bit more before I pause and glance around. We’ve reached an intersection, and I’m trying to figure out which way to go. As far as I can tell, the basic design of pretty much any casino is to not provide an easy exit. That way, once someone is in, they have no choice but to stay and gamble.

“Starfire Promenade?” Jamie asks, pointing toward a sign that directs us to the left.

“That’s it,” I say. “Let’s go.”

We reach freedom in another five minutes, and emerge from the casino’s relative dark to the well-lit sparkle of this high-end shopping promenade. It takes up three levels and every designer imaginable seems to have a storefront here, along with a variety of boutiques, restaurants, and even small galleries.

“What are you shopping for?” I ask.

She glances sideways at me. “You’re not shopping?”

I think of my closet back home, which is about the size of my college apartment and completely stuffed with the clothes and jewelry that Damien is always buying me. Sometimes I think he won’t be satisfied until I own at least one of everything.

“I might look for a present for Damien,” I say. “Then again, in this weekend’s reality, I don’t have a Damien in my life.”

“You’re still playing?”

“Sure,” I say. “It’s fun. I take it you and Ryan aren’t?”

Jamie lifts a shoulder. “Playing, sure. Pretending we picked each other up at a bar? Not anymore. Pretending other things…” Her voice trails off with a hint of a naughty lilt. “Well, a lady never kisses and tells. Or fucks and tells. Or blindfolds and tells. Or—”

“Jamie!” I slap my hands over my ears, laughing. “Stop. Please, stop.”

She shrugs good-naturedly. “Hey, you asked.”

I’m pretty sure I didn’t, but I don’t press the point.

“There,” she says, pointing to a display of embroidered jeans in the window of one of the fancy boutiques on the other side of this wide walkway. “Let’s check it out.”

“Sure,” I say and follow her. As we’re about to go in, a dark-haired woman rushes past us as she hurries to catch up with friends. Seeing her reminds me, and I turn back to Jamie. “I had that feeling again,” I say. “When I was by the pool this morning.”

“What? Someone you know?”

“I have no idea, but yeah. It’s a little disconcerting.”

“It’s probably nothing,” Jamie says. “Or if you really are seeing someone familiar, they’re probably just snapping pictures of you for Twitter. The price you pay for being married to a god of the universe.”

I scowl, but have to concede she has a point. Since marrying Damien, I’m regularly all over social media.

“Listen, go on in,” I say, pointing toward the store. “I want to look next door.” The jewelry store window has a display of emerald and diamond jewelry, and I would love to find earrings to match the stunning anklet that Damien gave me when we first got together.

“I buy denim, you buy diamonds,” she trills. “That pretty much sums up the differences in our lives these days.”

I just laugh. “Oh, those aren’t the only differences.” I start to count on my fingers. “Beach house. Limo. Private jet. And don’t forget the chocolate company in Switzerland.”

“Well, now you’re just being mean.” She hip butts me. “Catch you in a few.”

I grin, watching her go, then head into the store. It’s larger than it looks from the outside and surprisingly crowded. A uniformed security guard stands at the door looking bored.

Glass shelving lines the walls full of pricey decorator items like handblown glass vases and porcelain statuary. The center of the space is made up of glass display cases arranged in a horseshoe, and the customers walk around the U-shape to scope out both the items on the shelves and those in the cabinets. Some are filled with brand-new pieces, others display estate jewelry. I find antique emerald and diamond drop earrings set in platinum and a matching bracelet that are almost exactly what I have in mind.

“They’re stunning quality,” the man behind the counter says. His nametag identifies him as Frederick Pyle.

“I’m looking for something to match this,” I say, bending to remove my anklet. As I do, I see her again. My dark-haired shadow. And this time I am absolutely, one-hundred-percent sure that I know her. She has wavy hair that reaches her shoulders and a round face with prominent cheekbones. She’s petite, and looks even smaller because she keeps herself hunched over, as if she is trying to hide from the world.

She’s browsing the glass shelves, and I turn back to Mr. Pyle, both because he has brought out the pieces for me to look at, and also because I don’t want to catch her eye while I’m still trying to remember her name.

Where do I know her from?

I try not to think too hard, because that is a surefire way to ensure that I don’t remember. Instead, I put the anklet next to the bracelet. They are not a perfect match, but the settings complement each other beautifully. And, most important, I like them. “I’ll take them,” I say. And because I’m Mrs. Damien Stark and I never, ever do this, despite Damien telling me to buy whatever I want, whenever I want, I don’t even ask the price. Instead, I just tell him to charge it to my room. Then I tell him my name, show him my ID, and fight not to smile when his already polite and deferential attitude ratchets up about a thousandfold.