The Grifter
“Bullshit. Show me your cards.”
He hisses through his teeth at me and throws down his cards. An Ace and a two. I smile. I slide down my pair, three high. I was holding garbage, but it was better than his bluff.
“Fuck you, you whore. How the hell did you know I was bluffing?” Spittle flies through his mustache and hits me in the cheek. I raise an eyebrow and wipe it off with my bitten off nail.
“Listen, Romeo, buddy, if you’re gonna take it wrong every time someone takes you for all you’re worth, you gotta get a better poker face, that’s all I’m saying.” I stuff a cigarette between my teeth and light it with the gold lighter I won earlier in the evening. My diamond earrings glimmer off its surface.
It’s been a long night, but damn it’s been a good one. These little Kentucky bitches didn’t see me coming. Skinny and small, shaved head and tattoos from here to there, they thought they saw the latest liberal girl they could pound into meat when I stepped up to the card table.
That was until I won all their guns.
I hear another lighter flick on behind me and sweat breaks out across my forehead. Why the fuck hasn’t she come to the tables yet? I smell her clove cigarette and listen for her inhale.
She’s not like them. No overpriced fleece, no cowboy hats and diamonds. She’s in something black and silk, and it’s cut so modestly it’s driving me insane. She’s been turning a round gold chip over and over in her hand for three hours and doing absolutely nothing but sitting there.
I’m not showing off, but if she’d get her ass to the table, I’d show her what I’m about.
“Another,” the grey-bearded man whose farm I own snaps. “I want my wedding band back.”
“Bullshit,” I laugh. “You want your car back.”
The mustached man points at me. “You’re grifting.”
I shrug. “Tell me how.”
One of the men in suits surrounding the table claps. “Miss D’Avegio has seen enough.”
Ex-fucking-cuse me?
I turn my head to the woman behind me. She lifts her eyes and meets my gaze. Her eyes are green, piercing. Like the moss that eats away at buildings and rots it from the inside out — nature reclaiming a homeland.
“Gentlemen, you may leave.”
The men rise and bow to the woman before turning to the door. I gape at their backs. Huh? What the fuck is going on? As a matter of fact–
I spin to the woman. “What the fuck is going on?”
She stands, and she’s taller than I imagined from her curled-up place on the chair behind me. Her body is all circles and curves, her hair a cascade of black riding down her shoulders. She’s something unbelievable to behold and it’s more than a little distracting considering she’s apparently seriously fucking with me right now.
Couldn’t she be, you know, fucking with me instead?
“Quite the mess you’ve made, darling,”she says, her voice a rich Manhattan rumble. “Oh yeah, I’ve heard about you. You’ve been swindling little poker games all along the midwest around here, haven’t you?”
There are all kinds of pretty things that are real dangerous in nature, too.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Who I am doesn’t matter, darling,” she says. “You’re playing a real dangerous game. A real dangerous one.”
My eyes turn to the armed men in the room. Four men. I look down to the guns in the middle of the poker table. I’ve never been very good with guns.
Miss D’Avegio waves her hand and the men nod, heading directly for the door. They shut it behind them with a snap.
“Bullshit,” I say. “They’re right outside, I’m not on any sort of even footing with you.”
She takes a step towards me and turns my chair in her direction. She wraps one long leg over my hips, then the other, straddling my hips.
“Oh, you will never be on even footing with me, darling, but I’ll allow us some privacy.” She grips my face with her hand, hard and sharp.
I gasp.
“No one has worked out how you always know what the next call will be. Whether someone is bluffing or not. It’s like you’re psychic, if anyone could believe in something like that,” she says. “And I just watched you for three hours. Watched you never get it wrong.”
Idiot. She thinks I’m psychic. Despite myself, I roll my eyes. She releases my face to pull back and slap me. Hard.
“Tell me how you do it.”
I reach up and rub my face. “I went to college for it.”
She pulls back her hand and I raise up my other one in defeat.
“Please do not slap me again.”
She offers me a puzzled look.
“I went to school, learned how to read people.”
“Psychology?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Marketing. What people want.”
She snorts out a laugh and unhooks her leg from me, getting back up to her feet. “What they want?”
I stay in my chair. “If you determine what they want, you can tell how much to bet, and what’s a bluff. If they want you to believe them, they’re bluffing.”
Her gaze turns, skepticism clouding every feature. “What do I want?”
I consider her. Her full mouth, her ample breasts, the way her dress covers everything and yet leaves nothing to the imagination. The way she leans against the poker table.
“You want me, but you’ll never ask,” I tell her.
She straightens up. “Excuse me?”
I rise, nearly a foot shorter than her, but unafraid as I step into her orbit. “You’re always so in control. You want me to step in and dominate you. You pretend that straddling me was to put me off guard, but it excited you.”
Her eyes scan me as I get closer, close enough that I can feel the warmth of her body against mine.
“You want me to slide my hands up your dress — ”
I tease my fingers up the hem.
“And over your thighs — ”
My mouth moves over her neck as she straddles my hips.
“And bury my fingers in the heat of you — ”
Her mouth ghosts over mine. “Are you sure you’re not psychic?”
As we collide, I tuck the gold chip into my pocket.
Explore more smutty stories at the Naughty Nook —
