Love's Gamble by Theodora Taylor Read Free Book Online Page B

body, making it blatantly obvious that she would rather have him on top of her than the blanket he was holding.
    But Max, who prided himself on not living by the rules, followed this particular rule of consent for good reason.
    He averted his eyes from her delectable body and reminded himself why.
It’s a good way to get taken to court
, he told himself.
Do you really want to be that douche bag who gets a girl drunk in order to get her into bed?
he’d asked himself.
    No, he didn’t want to be that guy, but he did want Pru. There was that unfinished business in New Orleans that they had. The kiss that had continued to haunt him in the weeks before she’d called to accept his offer. And he still owed her for using her womanly wiles to basically serve him with his brother’s stupid demands.
    But he didn’t want Pru like this. Not in some drunken lay, meant to cap off a night of partying it up. No, he decided, when he took Pru, he wanted her completely sober. He wanted her to give in to him, not because she was drunk, but because she wanted him, wanted the things he could and would do to her body.
    Determined to do this his way, he moved in with the blanket. But at the last moment, she grabbed one of his hands with two of hers, bringing it down to rest on one perfect globe.
    “Max Benton, do you know how hot you are?” she asked him.
    Max went still. He could feel her heavily beaded nipple against his palm, and Max’s cock jumped inside his white tuxedo pants in response.
    Perhaps sensing that Max was at the edge of his restraint, Pru let out a sexy moan before asking, “Do you have any idea how hot you made me when we were dancing together? I want you so bad right now, Max. Please.”
    For a moment, Max was paralyzed with lust, locked in a battle with himself to throw his number-one rule straight out the window.
    Pru totally took advantage of that. Her hand snaked around the back of his neck and pulled his head down to hers for a kiss so hot, it made his entire body pound with need. His instincts howled to take what she was offering.
    But he somehow managed to pull back. He tore his lips away from hers and said, “Pru, I want to. You have no idea how much I want you. But not like this, okay? Not when you’ve had too much to drink.”
    He cursed himself now for letting that happen. When he started offering her shots, he’d thought she’d do the same thing she’d obviously done in New Orleans—pour them out when he wasn’t looking.
    He’d used a trick one of the old Benton magicians had taught him back in the day for making drinks disappear in front of a large audience, while Pru knocked back every shot during the vows and then grabbed a bottle of champagne for all the photo ops Max had prearranged for after their stunt ceremony.
    At first, Max had thought Pru was just playing her part to the tee. Pretending to be an anything-goes party girl like in New Orleans. But when the photos were done and they were free to do their own thing, instead of running to Tomas so that he could drive her home, she’d pulled Max out onto the dance floor.
    Some showgirls he’d met, even the ones with dance degrees, weren’t particularly great dancers when it came to getting out on the floor at a nightclub. Sometimes they were stiff when they didn’t have choreographed moves to follow, or more interested in how they looked while dancing than actually having fun.
    Pru wasn’t one of those girls. She’d dragged Max away from the cameras into the middle of the crowd because according to her that was the absolute best place to be. Then she’d danced with him. Really danced. Abandoning herself to the music and using him as an instrument of her appreciation, until eventually it felt as if they were one body, writhing together on the dance floor, held in thrall to the music’s sway. They danced like this for what felt like hours, him reveling in the feel of holding her close as they moved in time with the fast music.
    When Max had