Queen Of Hearts 4

The cards riffled between my fingers with a soft whirr, the results of way too much practice. Even with the haze of cigarette smoke that filled the room and made breathing problematic, I could see the fingers of the man across the table from me. They were never still, those fingers.

Of course, when they belong to a professional card sharp, they never are.

I had noted him as a pro the instant he laid his left hand flat on the table, thumb hovering a half-inch off the baize. I had silently returned the inquiry, a left hand tapping once, twice, thrice on the table. We were, of course, strangers, but our communication had told each other about our hands. Almost like telepathy. But far less mystical.

I slid the deck to my left hand and finished the overhand stack. Poker was a mug's game when the cards were in pro hands. The man across the table had proven as adept as I at the double-handed shift and we had run up the tally of chips between us to a significant level without undue comment.

This would be a losing hand, I decided, and rested my hand with two fingers extended as the fat gentleman to the left cut the deck. His fingers interlaced; he understood. I dealt us both fair-to-middling hands and passed the spade flush to the dithery woman two to my left. She grew flustered (it was probably her only winning hand of the night) and the rest of the table didn't bother to run up the bidding; she took not much more than the ante in the pot.

It was the right call. Three hands later, the cards were back in pro hands and his signal was that this would be the breaker. High hands would fall all over the table, straights, flushes, high double pairs...and he flicked a card to me that I only barely saw come off the wrong side of the deck. His control was superb.

Four hearts: ten, knave, king and ace. And the three of spades. I smiled inwardly. The bidding went high; I pushed it a bit higher and was gratified when the dithery woman went all in. Calls came from five of the seven in the game. I watched the pro drop out and start dealing cards. I threw back the trey, and watched and the second card spun to me from the bottom of the deck. I knew even before I reached for it that it was the Queen of Hearts.

I called the high bid and watched as a straight, a full house and a three of a kind in nines went down. I paused for a moment and then revealed my hand. Expectations turned to groans around the table, but a smattering of applause came from the onlookers. I scooped the chips and stacked them quickly, accurately, and then signaled to the pit boss.

"Clear me out," I told him softly. He didn't even blink as he signed out a stack of small stack of black-bordered chips and ordered one of the attendants to remove the half-ton or so of plastic on the table. The pro across the table scattered the cards across the baize and stood, scooping his own chips up.

"Gentlemen, ladies," he murmured, his voice soft, almost sinfully so. "Your servant."

I found him, or he me, in the anteroom of the bar, where a more efficient ventilation system removed most of the fug and the music from the floor show trickled in. Truly, while I had been looking for him, it was he that arrived at my side, as silently as his signals had been.

"You were superb," he said softly. "I thought I knew all the locals."

"Not local," I returned calmly, twisting slightly to look at him. Out away from the omnipresent smog of the casino, he showed to significant advantage. A well-cut suit defined a big frame, a little rotund in the middle, but hardly fat. A pair of steel-rimmed glasses turned his eyes to weakness and ineffectuality, and the only adornment on him was his tie pin, a deep green emerald. He was the antithesis of all pros, except for his hands. His fingers moved almost continuously.

I remembered the ease with which he had shuffled and dealt, the easy motions that had seemed almost sensuous as he used the cards like an extension of himself. I remembered the speed of his deal and the almost caressing way he had thrown the last card to me. And I shivered.

"John MacGregor," he said, holding out his hand.

"Sam," I said, barely keeping a stammer out of my voice. His fingers closed about mine and he raised my hand to his lips.

"You are too exotic for a mere 'Sam'," he said, his breath dancing across my knuckles and sending little shudders through me. "Even 'Samantha' does not do you justice."

"Iptisam," I said softly. I almost never gave away my first name.

"Iptisam," he repeated, his voice husky, filled with the smoke of a hundred rooms and I felt a shaft of pure desire sink through me. "Might I ask a favor?"

"Yes," I replied instantly.

He smiled; he had still not released my hand. "I understand that they serve an excellent supper here," he said, velvet voice stroking over me. "Might I take you as my companion?"

Believe it or not, I was hungry; I had been at the table for several hours, and I do not drink alcohol nor eat anything whilst at play. "Of course."

He was as pleasant a dinner companion as he was a poker partner; I found myself often laughing at his quiet jokes and his sense of humor paralleled mine. Curiously, however, he showed no sign of despising the sheep which both of us fleeced to live. On the contrary, he showed signs of concern that one might have plunged a bit too deeply (I placed his concern after a second: the fat man to my right) and wondered aloud how to ensure that the night's losses did not overly injure him. Neither of us could come up with a plan that seemed feasible, however; having quit the tables, it would look odd, and probably suspicious to the sharp-eyed casino staff, if the two of us re-engaged the same poor player and commenced to losing where we had so recently won.

Dinner was followed with an excellent brandy and the talk turned personal. I found in short order that he was not married, his wife having passed away years before. He had no children, no relatives closer than a cousin and, in short, no one to care about or miss. I in turn told him of my father, inveterate card sharp himself, who had taught me to spot the sharps, but had never intended that I make my way in the world in his footsteps. But a sudden heart attack at age fifty-one had left the family (including my four siblings) little money; I had turned to cards as the one talent I knew and had supported my family thus for six years. My mother still lived on the annuity I had purchased for her with my winnings.

As the floor show changed to a new singer and band, I made my decision. "John? Would you like to come to my room for a nightcap?"

"Iptisam," his voice caressed my name as his fingers had caressed the Queen of Hearts, "I would enjoy that very much."

My room was on the seventeenth floor, two above his, but like his, paid for by the casino. Comping rooms was common; we hadn't paid for the meals either. Once inside, I turned from securing the deadbolt on the door and faced him again.

The nearness of his body flicked heat across me; I could almost see the shimmer as though a fire burned before me. Slowly, so slowly that I could have dodged him or stopped him at any time, he framed my face with his hands and touched his lips softly to mine.

Time slowed, spun on its axis and toppled off the perch. I could feel the warmth of his mouth as he explored the curve of my lips, taste the heady sweetness of the brandy as he traced my teeth and smell the golden scent of him as our tongues slid across each other. I moaned softly, sliding my hands into the thickness of his hair, holding his mouth on mine.

He broke the kiss, but not the contact, sliding his lips along my jaw line to my ear, which he nuzzled. Silvery lights popped behind my closed eyelids as his tongue traced the delicate curve of my ear, and then his mouth traveled down the side of my neck. I pressed closer, arching back and neck to expose more of myself to his touch and feeling my breasts, already tender and aching for touch, crush against the musculature of his chest. My breathing quickened, turned ragged. His fingers glissaded over me as though I were made of spun glass...or plastic-sheathed cardboard.

By the time he finally lifted his head away from me, I was a molten mass...and a melty mess. I ached for him in every joint I owned. My eyes were huge, dark with lust; I could see them reflected in his glasses. "Don't you dare stop," I whispered.

He smiled slowly. "I don't think I could even if you wanted me to," his velvety voice whispered over me. "You are the most exquisite, superb, wonderful woman I have ever met."

He was a poker player, master of the bluff. But, then, I was too. And what he was saying to me, with his hands and eyes and mouth, told me that his words were as true as any of us can make them. I reached behind me, undid the zipper of my dress and let it fall, pooling in silver-gray onto the creamy carpet. My breasts are small and high, requiring no bra, and I have never enjoyed the wearing of undergarments. As my dress slid to the floor, then, I stood exposed to him, clad only in thigh-high stockings and flat shoes.

He held me steady with his gaze has he peeled off coat, tie, shirt. Each was flung with perfect aim and negligent ease over the back of a nearby chair. His belt followed, and I felt my breath stop as he undid his trousers and pushed them, along with his dark gray briefs, to the floor. What was revealed mesmerized me.

He was huge. Porn-star god huge. I spared a pang of jealousy for the years-dead wife who had probably split herself on that tool regularly. My arousal, already trickling down my bare legs, increased in volume.

I reached out, touched it. Steel-hard shaft and soft skin. He reached down, covered my hand, holding me to his massive self. As if in a dream, I followed him slowly to bed.

I had originally thought about taking him in my mouth, letting him (if he wanted) feast upon my honey pot, but the sight of what he had kept in his pants had thrown all of that out the seventeenth floor window. I had only one way to honor such endowment.

He laid down on his back. I spread my legs, sliding myself up his shaft, letting hi tickle my engorged clitoris, bathing him in my dew, until his head rested at my opening. I didn't even need to guide him; it was as though some laser-guidance system on his love missile had already locked onto my target. I pushed.

My soft lips gaped to take him. If I had not been so ready, so much in heat, I do not think I would have managed his invasion. As it was, I felt myself stretching to accommodate him, felt his huge glans push aside my dripping membranes, felt him slide in, oiled by my hyper-aware body. He had not even reached halfway when my first orgasm ripped through me, launching me into a shuddering convulsion atop him. I felt his long gambler's fingers gliding over my hips as I rode out the firestorm. He asked for nothing I could not give, he did not pull me down on his spike, he waited for me to return to earth and resume what I was doing.

Centimeter by centimeter, I felt him invade me. His head made contact with my already softly ripe cervix, and I felt another shudder pass through me. Weeks ago, I had undergone drug and hormone therapy for an old injury; one side effect had been that my cervix was now dilated. I caught my breath and dropped the last two inches. Enough stars to need a new galaxy flashed inside my head as his huge member pushed through my cervix and into my womb.

I was totally, utterly, ineffably, filled. I could barely rock my hips. But that was enough. He moved with me, within me, setting me afire, making me gasp and then, as he held me suspended on the mountaintop, thrusting three times, hard, into me so that I flew off into the eternal void of ecstasy, screaming his name as I felt him erupt deep inside my womb.

I do not recall when he left. I cannot recall how many times we had come together. I cannot even remember locking the door when he left. But when I awoke the next morning and turned to look at the pillow beside me, my body aching from the abuse I had given it, I found a card.

Not Hallmark. Of course not. A plastic-sheathed bit of cardboard with his name and phone number.

I turned it over. In an elegant script it read: Happy Valentine's Day, Iptisam.

It was the Queen of Hearts.