...She felt herself flush. She was acting as if she had a schoolgirl crush on Ty. In a way she did, for she longed to be his student.

Hmm. Students who don’t learn their lessons get caned by the teacher, bent over with panties down…

“Hey!” a man with a bullet-shaped head and thick neck said. “Watch what you’re doing. You nearly knocked over my drink.”

Although he’d been the one to place his drink in harm’s way, she gestured apologetically. “I’m sorry, sir.”

I have to pay attention to the game. I need my job.

At the end of her shift, her boss took her aside. “We don’t pay you to daydream, Lucy. Make sure that during your next shift you keep your mind on dealing.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, sticking her tongue out at him after he turned his back. A nearby dealer unsuccessfully suppressed a smile.

After changing into the jeans and sweater in her locker, Lucy didn’t want to go home. Nothing lived there but boredom, so she might as well go play a few hands. She withdrew five hundred bucks from her bank account, the most she ever allowed herself to lose in one session. Then she headed for the casino across the street from her workplace. She didn’t like to gamble where she worked.

Suddenly, she remembered the wedding band. Pulling it off, she stuffed it in the coin pocket of her jeans. If she didn’t get lucky at the poker tables tonight, maybe she’d get lucky with a man.

Once she hit the casino’s poker area, she cruised the tables, looking for Bill Simmons, her preferred dealer. Instead, she saw Ty sitting at a high-stakes table.

I ask him for a little advice, and he decides to play poker at a completely different casino rather than play at my table. I really must have offended him.

Stepping behind a pillar to be less noticeable, she watched him play. With his dark hair, American-flag-blue eyes and square jaw, he looked like a superhero.

God, but he was hot. She wondered why he still worked full-time for one of the software companies in Vegas. He was good enough to support himself playing poker, not to mention the millions he’d won two years ago at the WSOP. She wondered what he’d done with the money, because he sure hadn’t spent it on clothes.

Her gaze followed his card play as fantasies rolled in her mind.

Naked, my arms are restrained behind me as I try to keep my balance on stilettos. Those cobalt eyes of his see my every desire. I know he’ll order me to go down on him. It’ll be like sucking off Superman. The whole time I’m giving him pleasure, he’ll play with the remote control to the vibrator he’s inserted inside me, buzzing me to the edge, then backing off. I suck and moan because it’s so damned hard to stay balanced, bent over to service him while my arms are locked behind me and my ankles are wobbling in the spike heels and the on-off-on of the vibrator is making me bounce my ass up and down, so badly do I want to be fucked until I come—

“Hello? Hello? Lucy?”

“Huh?” she said, acutely aware that she’d been staring into space, slack-jawed, her pussy wet and aching for action. She felt her face turn hot when she realized who was talking to her—Rod Parsons, a guy with whom she’d had once-in-a-lifetime hot sex.

“Uh, hi,” she managed around a mouthful of spit. “Rod. How’ve you been?”

He tilted his hand back and forth to indicate so-so. “I’ve had better years. Dani broke up with me, for one.”

Dani. That had been the woman he’d been dating when they’d had their hot one-nighter. Dani had been the reason Lucy wouldn’t have anything more to do with the lying bastard. Cheaters pissed her off.

“So you see,” he said, “I’m on the market. That night we had together was dynamite. Any interest in getting a drink and seeing where tonight might take us?” He bent down to whisper in her ear, “I’ve got an even bigger remote-controlled vibrator for you to try, plus some restraints that will—”

Lucy edged away. “No, I can’t. I’m meeting someone.”

He frowned. “You’re meeting someone behind a pillar?”