Shadow Ridge by Capri Montgomery

Chapter One
    M iles Vanderbilt knew he liked what he saw the moment the brown beauty walked into the poker hall. God she was gorgeous with soft bouncing curls that looked natural yet smooth. Something about that told him she was at least biracial because her features didn’t hold true to being a straight black woman. She had high cheekbones too—she had to be part Native. Beyond that she was what his friend Sal would call proportioned to kill. She had stellar legs that seemed to dominate the room. She was five eight at most but those legs seemed to go on for miles. She was sitting at the bar area and the knee length pencil skirt she wore and the sharply thin red heels had him looking hard every time she crossed one shapely leg over the other.
    Every man who wasn’t at a table was clamoring to be near her yet she seemed more in tune with the friends who flanked both sides of her than the men who came up to her. Those men were the equivalent of male models so if she were on the prowl they could be the type she would go for given her own slender frame. She had perfectly shaped barely c-cup breasts. He wasn’t one hundred percent certain he was right about her cup size, but he figured he couldn’t be that far off the mark. She looked like an addiction waiting to happen sitting there in that too sexy button down that hugged her narrow waist and shapely breasts like it owned them. Yeah, she was a goddess in the flesh and some lucky man was going to become her slave if he got the chance to hold a spot in her life.
    So when he noticed her heading back toward the bathroom he knew this was his one chance. They were on a break before starting the new table round—ten minutes had been called so he took it. Instead of heading down the path that led to the men’s room he waited for her outside the women’s room and when she came out he cornered her.
    His mind told him this was a bad idea. Nobody, especially a woman, wanted to be cornered down a long hallway without a way out, but he didn’t change his game plan. With one hand on the wall beside her he invaded her space. He was never one to be shy. When he wanted a woman he went after her, and he wanted this woman.
    “I don’t play poker,” she said when he told her to sit in at their table. “I don’t even like it.”
    “Not like poker? Now how can that be?” He grinned as he looked her over with keen eyes. She wasn’t lying to him; at least he didn’t believe she was lying to him. She didn’t have those shifty eye movements he had come to recognize in liars, but at the same time, for all he knew she could be a world class deceiver.
    She chuckled nervously and tried to step back. She stopped trying to move. Obviously she realized she was already against the wall in a corner so there was nowhere to go. “I’m just out with friends tonight. They wanted to come.”
    “Me too,” he let his eyes rake over her from head to toe and back. His eyes focused in on her breasts which were rising and falling with her shallow breathing.
    “Um…I should go.”
    He didn’t make a move to release her from his human cage. “Let me teach you how to play. We can do a game of strip poker.” His lips curled upward.
    “I’m not going to play strip poker with you. Are you crazy?” Her eyes widened.
    He laughed and shrugged. “Just regular poker then?” She was coming off as classy as her clothes. Something told him this woman wasn’t just looking for the richest player to take home. He didn’t know anything about her, yet he wanted to know everything.
    “No,” she shook her head. Her eyes looked him over from head to toe too.
    “I could teach you a lot of things, beautiful. A lot,” he smiled and winked at her. She blushed; a twinge of red gracing her cheeks. The overhead light was just bright enough to illuminate the area but not starkly bright like the usual florescent beams. He would say that was one of the best things about this club—mood lighting, space, clean