Sold: A Billionaire Bad Boy Mafia Romance by Natasha Tanner, Molly Thorne Page A

friend, Vassily Zhurov, when he lamented that he wouldn’t feel the same thrill in Monte Carlo as he felt in Frisco when he almost lost everything but ended up winning half a billion. So Pip thought we could take Little Vegas to Monte Carlo so he would be happy.”
    “Huh, that was smart,” I whisper in his ear, and take a small bite, then chug some beer. “I hope you’ll pluck him whole.”
    “Do you think I should play against him?” Ace asks, cupping my breast in his hand. His cock strikes my navel underwater like a torpedo.
    “Most definitely,” I answer, articulating the words with my lips barely a quarter inch from his. I leave the beer bottle on the border of the pool, lean against the wall, let my elbows rest on the rugged tiles, and push myself up. He comes closer so that I can lower myself on his hard dick. When I do, my flesh welcomes his with a quiver.
    “You’ll need a name,” Ace says, pushing himself upwards gently, almost tenderly. His member fills me and brings a warmth to my whole body that puts goose pimples all over my skin, in a delightful contrast with the relatively cold water. My nipples harden and my lips feel the hunger of his mouth.
    “A name?
Oooh.
”
    “For a passport,” he says. “So that you can fly.”
    “Oh, that.” I put my arms around him, letting his prodigious body sustain my weight, lessened by the water. I close my eyes to concentrate on the pleasure. I am trying to think and feel at the same time, and it’s kind of hard. Speaking of hard... I feel him so stiff and strong inside me... but I need to think of a name. A name. A name,
oh for fuck’s sake!
    “OK. You’ll be Polina,” he says when I start panting instead of providing a name. “Any preference for the lastname?”
    Polina, like the female character in Dostoevsky’s
The Gambler
. How appropriate. Vanina in Monte Carlo like Polina in Roulettenberg, the fictional gambling paradise where the novel takes place. I think about it for a few seconds. Polina Alexandrovna, like in the book? Polina Chekhov? Polina Tolstoy? Polina Turguenev? Polina Karamazov? No, those are silly choices. Any immigration officer with two ounces of brain would see through it, like that idiot who had a fake ID printed under the name
MacLovin
in that juvenile American movie. It’s difficult to come up with a good idea when you’re being pounded on so sweetly.
    “Uh... oh... a l-lastname... l-let me th-th-think,” I sigh, wobbling my head around as he thrusts a bit faster.
    Then it comes to me:
Polina Igrok
. Not many people know that
Igrok
is the novel’s original title in Russian, and among those who know, a lastname simply meaning
gambler
wouldn’t be likely to raise suspicions. The full name has a nice ring to it, and so I decide that I’ll be Polina Igrok during my trip.
    “Well...?”
    “Well? Aaah!”
    “Have you thought of a lastname?” Ace asks, smiling wickedly as he covers me with kisses and redoubles his underwater attack.
    “Igrok! Igrok! Igrok! Igrok! Igrok! IGROK!” I exclaim, clawing at his mighty back as a series of spasms make my body shake and tremble. My lips close around his chin, his nose, his mouth, his eye, in a frantic attempt to cover him whole, to swallow him just like my legs and the kraken in between are swallowing him down below.
    Then comes what the French call the little death, and then the release, the languor, the happiness, and the beer warming on the tiles.

22. WRITTEN IN THE CARDS
    VAN
    Exactly the same as two years ago, but in reverse: the United States becoming smaller and smaller, then turning into a carnival of light as the plane rises, drilling into the frozen air of the night, and points its nose at Europe. Something is different this time, though. I’m not alone. Ace Hart rests in his seat beside me, holding my hand between his. He fell asleep as soon as we took off. I don’t know how he does it.
    I’ve never been to Monaco, just as I’ve never been almost anywhere else. But