High Card: A Billionaire Shifter Novel (Lions of Las Vegas Book 1) (21 page)

Summer reaches across the console and puts her hand on my cock.

I jerk back. “What the hell, Summer? That
definitely
isn’t the vibe I was getting—”

“You should ask me how it went.”

I lift her hand off my lap, put it on the console, then wrap her hand in mine. She tries to pull away but I hold her tight. No way I’m letting go. I feel her shutting down. Wanting to run. She’s got a hundred grand in that backpack. It’s not the money stopping her.

Something else is keeping her in Vegas.

Her mother, sure.

But if I had to bet I’d say she has some scores to settle.

I’m not fool enough to believe it’s me keeping her here.

“How’d it go?” I ask, both not wanting and needing an answer.

“Vito has a play coming up. A big one. He called it his last shot at getting made. His uncle think’s he a fuck-up, which he is.”

Summer’s tone is flat and inflectionless. She could be discussing tax law. I’m beginning to get this girl. At least a little bit. The less emotion she shows the more involved she is. I try and think how that relates to me. To…us.
 

“What’s the play?”

Summer sighs. Pops a piece of Nicorette in her mouth. “Didn’t say. Just told me he has a job for me, details forthcoming. I played dumb, told him I needed a specific date so I could work around my parole meetings.”

“What’d he say?”
 

Summer finally turns to face me. “Vito’s play is in three days, Landon.”

“Savannah’s opening gala is on Saturday. That’s three days.”

Summer nods. “Vito knows his uncle has a hate on for you. I think Vito’s planning on hitting the casino hard that night. Impress Don Luca. Maybe gain his respect.”

“No mention of Blake?”

“No.”

“Fuck.”

“You got a nasty hate for him, huh? I mean, he’s a dick and all. But what if you’re wrong? About him wanting to destroy you?”

“We have a
history
.”

Summer slips out of her black leather boots and puts her feet on the Audi’s dash. Damn. All right. I’ve always love seeing my girl’s feet on my dash when I’m driving. And Summer has lovely feet. High arches. Perfect little toes with the nails painted light blue—

I slam the Audi in sixth and hit the passing lane. My blood’s boiling. My knuckles are white on the wheel—

“Shit, Landon. You in a hurry?”

Summer reaches back and grabs her seatbelt.

I check the speedometer. A hundred twenty. I ease off the gas, pull into the slow lane, force a few deep breaths. My lion’s roaring at me to track down Vito and Don Luca and all of Il Potere and slaughter every single one of them. I can taste their blood warm between my fangs—
 

It’s a dangerous thought.
 

A
deadly
thought.

Wildbloods have a word for our kind that lose control and go on killing sprees against humans. We call them bloodsick. They’re hunted down and culled by the Council.

I’m suddenly conscious of Summer staring at me. Waiting for me to say something. But the words are caught in my throat, and there’s a rumbling pressure in my chest—

“Landon? You all right?” There’s concern in Summer’s voice. And something else. Fear.
 

“No,” I manage to growl. “I’m fucking
pissed
.”

“You hear that?” Summer says.

“No.”

“Sounds like…ha. Whatever. Must be the car’s engine. Not like that silent Range Rover of yours. Thought I heard growling is all.”

“I need you to find out what Vito’s play is.”

“I know.”

“You don’t think he’ll tell you?”

“I think he’ll tell me ten minutes before the play. And he won’t tell me the whole thing. He’ll just task me. I’ll never see the entire picture until it’s too late. He doesn’t trust me like that.”

My phone beeps. I set Summer’s hand down and check it. A message from Rachael. My alpha challenge has been accepted by the Wildblood Council. Now they pass the challenge to Thorsa. He’ll leap at the opportunity. He’s only one step away from being bloodsick.

Like me.
 

So it’s on.

I need to keep Summer around at least until then. After that—who knows? I think I might pay her off and cut her loose. Even if she is my lifemate. I’m no good for her, not now—

“Landon?”

“Yeah?”

“What are we doing?”

“Going to the speedway.”

“No. I mean us. I wanted to keep this simple. Business or pleasure. Not mixing the two. But every time we’re together…”

Summer’s voice trails off. She stares out the passenger window again, her face hidden from view.
 

“I was thinking about what you said the other night,” I say. “About how I know everything about you, and you know nothing about me. So why don’t we change that?”

“I don’t need little facts like where you were born or what’s your favorite color to know you. Who you are is right there in how you act.”

“Sacramento. Orange.”

“What?”

“Where I was born and my favorite color.”

“Why orange?”

“Sunsets.”

“No shit?”

“Well, the sun in general. I love it. Burning up there in the sky. It just seems so…unlikely, you know? A huge ball of fiery gas burning in space. And yet…the leaves grow because of it. Flowers bloom. All this,” I wave out over the desert, “because of that one unlikely thing.”

Summer leans over and kisses my cheek. Neither one of us says a word until we pull into the Las Vegas Speedway.

***

“Holy shit,” Summer says, racing around my prototype Bugatti.
 

“Broke the land speed record for an electric fuel-cell modified car,” I say, looking at the sleek, streamlined sports car. “She’s been a public relations triumph for Blue Line.”
 

“Bright orange, of course,” Summer laughs. “Surprised you didn’t name your company Orange Line.”

“I tried. My people talked me out of it.”

She looks better than I did when I picked her up. Happier. The sun’s moving low on the horizon, its rays softening, lighting up Summer’s eyes and making them change color from deep brown to an almost golden hazel.

“I love how your eyes change color with the light,” I say, walking up behind Summer and wrapping my arms around her.

“I love this
car
,” she says, teasing.

“Modified Bugatti Veyron Super Sport.”

“Marry me?”

My mouth drops open. “What?”

Summer bursts into laughter. “Oh, shit, Landon. You should’ve seen your face. Priceless.” She looks around the speedway. “Where is everyone?”

“I reserved the speedway.”

“You
reserved
…for us?”

“Yeah.”

“How the hell can you even do that?’

I rub my index and thumb together in the universal symbol for money.
 

Summer laughs again. “You can be a real cocky bastard, you know that?”

“Bother you?”

“Only sometimes.”

“Racing outfits are in the car.”

Summer’s eyes light up. “We’re going
driving
? In a car worth a million bucks?”

“Two-point-eight million. But that’s before the electric conversion.”

“Holy hell. No way. No way I’m even getting in that thing. With my luck I’ll sneeze and—”

I reach inside the Bugatti’s open window, grab a one-piece leather racing outfit and toss it to her. Summer snatches it from the air.
 

“I hope it fits,” I say.
 

“Where do I get changed?”

I shrug. “Right here.” I slip my t-shirt off over my head, then drop my jeans. I feel Summer’s eyes taking me in as I grab my race suit from the car. Summer peels her tank-top off. She’s braless, her gorgeous pink nipples stiffening in the cooling air—

“You sure about this?” Summer asks, stepping into her suit.

“Never been more sure.”

“You trying to woo me, Landon Stone?”

“You need wooing?”

Summer finishes zipping up her suit. “A woman
always
needs wooing.”

I hand her a helmet. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”

Then I open the driver’s side door for her.

Summer looks terrified. “Uh-uh. No way. You saw me driving the Rover. This electric shit…no way.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

I hop into the driver’s seat and buckle my helmet.

Summer stares at me with a shocked expression.
 

I reach down and press the ignition button. The Bugatti purrs to life.

“You know what, Landon? I changed my mind.”

“You did?”

“I did.”

“Shocker.”

Summer swats me on the shoulder. I slide out of the driver’s seat and walk around to the passenger side, secretly praying she learned something with the Rover—

When we’re buckled into the car I say, “The stock Veyron does zero to sixty in two point four seconds. This car will do it in under two. But you don’t need—”

Summer slams the Bugatti into first and floors it, rocketing us both back against our seats. She looses a thrilled yelp while the tires cut loose, laying a hundred feet of acrid, smoking black rubber.
 

“Ease off a bit!” I yell, my head pinned into the headrest by the g-forces.

Shit. Maybe I should’ve drove—

Summer eases off just enough for the rear tires to catch. The car zooms ahead, the engine still silent but the tires hissing beneath us. She hits the shift into second, but third comes up quick and she misses it, grinding the gears—

“I’m fucking sorry!” Summer yells.

“Don’t worry,” I say as he banks into the first turn, trying not to think about the Bugatti’s precision gearing getting mangled—

“Was talking to the car, not you,” Summer yells, hitting third and fourth. We tear out of the first turn at a hundred sixty. Summer floors it on the straight, gets into sixth and hits two hundred thirty before hitting the brakes for the next turn—

I’m gripping the sissy bar, doing my best not to fret. I don’t give a shit about the car. Well…okay. That’s not entirely true. But mostly I’m worried about wrecking and Summer getting hurt—

“Woohoo!” Summer screams as we bank hard out of the second curve.

The Bugatti’s designed for speeds over two hundred. Anything less and she’s a bitch to drive. But get her to speed and it’s like being strapped to a rocket exploding toward space.
 

I glance over. Most of Summer’s face is hidden by her helmet, but I can see the wide grin splitting her lips and man does it make me happy, to see her happy, and right then all I want to do is run with her, say fuck all this madness and bullshit and take her halfway across the world—

My lifemate.
 

I want to hold her and never let go.

The truth hits me like a wall at a hundred miles an hour. How hard I’ve fallen for this girl. How little time we’ve spent together, yet how close I feel to her, how badly I need her to be mine—
 

Summer enters the third corner a bit sharp and a lot fast.
 

Brakes mid-turn.

A bad crash on a racetrack rarely has a single catastrophic cause. What usually happens is a lot of small mistakes add up, until suddenly you’re flipping through the air, the car dissolving around you—

But this? Nah. This crash will be because Summer hesitated, tapped the brake at precisely the wrong moment.
 

I hear myself yelling to give the car gas—

The wheel jerks in Summer’s gloved hands.
 

She looses a panicked yelp, cranks on the wheel, overcorrects. The car’s back end cuts loose, spins sideways and then the speedway becomes a dizzying blur of color as we enter the kind of high-speed spin that always ends in a shattering wreck. Summer and I are getting knocked around in the cab and all I can think about is the speedway wall coming up real fast—

I reach out and snag the wheel with one hand. Every muscle in my body’s straining against the spin, the car fighting to flip over.
 

But we’re slowing.
 

“Hit the gas!” I yell.

She reacts quick. Floors the pedal. The rear tires spin and I hear something grinding deep in the car’s guts, probably the steering column threatening to break free—

A tremendous explosion knocks the car sideways, then the sound of a metal rim grinding into the pavement—
 

Summer’s screaming.

The car’s front wheels dig into the pavement, lifting the back end off the ground and for a split second I’m certain we’re gunna flip end-over-end. Then the Bugatti settles and the rear tires bite and we pull out of the spin—

“Brake! Brake!” I yell, my hand still locked on the wheel.

Summer hits the brakes.
 

We slide across the last of the curve, nose against the barrier at about forty miles an hour, bounce off and wind up motionless in the grassy infield, each of us gasping or breath, choking black smoke from the blasted tires pouring into the car—

A flicker of orange from beneath the dash.

Not good.

“Get out!” I scream.
 

Summer looks at me, her eyes wide, not understanding.

“The fucking batteries are gunna—“

There’s a loud electric hiss, then a pop as sparks shoot from under the dash. I tear my seatbelt off and kick the door open and race around to the driver’s side while the electrical fire sparks and melts its way through the car. There’s no gas-tank to explode but if the fuel cell overheats it’ll blow up, spraying all sort of melted metal everywhere.

I fling the door open and Summer’s in my arms, too shocked for tears. I half-drag, half-carry her away from the smoking and sparking Bugatti. The fuel cell’s failsafe shut-off kicks in and the hissing zapping sound stops.

Summer and I are standing in the middle of the infield, the ruined Bugatti smoking behind us, holding one another. I take off my helmet, then hers. Her hair’s plastered with sweat and she’s shaking with adrenaline and nervous relief. She tilts her head up and looks me in the eyes and our lips meet. I wrap my arms around her waist and hold her close while our mouths part and we kiss and explore and taste one another with our tongues, the kiss long and passionate and perfect, the kind of kiss that sends ripples of pleasure from my toes to my head, a kiss that’s full of passion and desire and something more.