A Chip and a Chair (Seven of Spades, #5)(14)

“Come on,” he said with an outstretched hand.

“I don’t dance,” said Levi, but he took Dominic’s hand anyway.

“It’s a slow song. All you have to do is sway.”

Dominic pulled Levi onto the floor, his right arm around Levi’s waist and his left hand clasping Levi’s right. Levi sighed and slid his free arm around Dominic’s waist as well.

They’d never danced together before. The act was startlingly intimate, their bodies pressed close as they rocked in time to the soaring notes of the song. They fit together perfectly, even if Levi had to tip his head back to meet Dominic’s eyes.

“You seem like you’re having a good time,” Levi said.

“The best. You?”

“Yes.”

Gazing down at Levi’s face, Dominic said, “Do you think . . .” He stopped there, though, and cleared his throat.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Dominic kissed him softly. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Levi rested his head on Dominic’s shoulder, closed his eyes, and surrendered to the moment, letting the music sweep him away.

After that dance, Dominic didn’t leave Levi’s side for the rest of the reception, stealing kisses and sneaking touches that grew increasingly bolder as the night wore on. Levi couldn’t help responding in kind. By the time they sent Carlos and Jasmine off in a shower of rose petals at the end of the party, they were both in a giddy, frisky mood, as drunk on each other as the other guests were on Champagne.

Out in the parking lot, Dominic shoved Levi up against Levi’s new car and kissed him ferociously. Levi cupped Dominic’s face with both hands and returned his aggression threefold, biting at Dominic’s lower lip and hooking one leg around Dominic’s thigh.

“Fuck, I need to be inside you,” Dominic said when they broke for air. “It’s too bad we took your car instead of mine. I could have fucked you in the bed right here.”

“No, you could not,” Levi said, though he was secretly thrilled by the idea of Dominic fucking him in public in the back of his pickup.

They kissed a few seconds longer, until Dominic retreated with a reluctant groan. “Actually, it is a good thing you’re the one driving. The way I feel right now, I’d probably run us off the road.”

Levi shooed him into the car, feeling a bit frantic himself. That mood only became more urgent as they turned onto the dark desert highway that would take them back into Las Vegas. Levi kept his eyes on the road, but he could feel the heat of Dominic’s gaze, and his peripheral vision caught the movement when Dominic dropped a hand into his lap and began rubbing himself through his pants.

“Maybe I should just jerk off here,” Dominic said hoarsely. “That way, when we get home, I can really take care of you. Last as long as you need, make you come all over yourself as many times as you want-”

“Oh, my God.” Levi was going to have to pull over. He was going to have to actually pull the car off to the side of the road and engage in public indecency, because otherwise they were going to crash.

His dashboard lit up then, displaying a phone call from Martine through its Bluetooth connection with his cell phone. Levi was relieved by the distraction until he realized that Martine would never call him this late unless something was wrong, especially when she’d known the wedding was tonight.

Dominic seemed to arrive at the same conclusion; he stopped touching himself and fell silent. Levi answered the call.

“What’s wrong?”

“Is the wedding over?” Martine asked.

“Yes, we’re on our way home now. What happened?”

“I told nobody to call you until I could be sure you’d left. I didn’t want to ruin-”

“Martine.” Levi’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.

“A construction crew was building a new access road in the desert north of the city,” she said. “They-they found bodies. Over a dozen corpses, in various stages of decomposition, buried in the sand. It’s hard to tell what killed the older ones, but the more recent bodies had their throats slit.”

Levi couldn’t breathe. Rohan had raised a theory about the Seven of Spades’s origins, but it was one they’d set aside for lack of proof. Until now.

“Levi,” Martine said, “I think these are the Seven of Spades’s first victims.”





Martine had to text Levi the GPS coordinates to the site, because it wasn’t near any real address. As they drove, Levi found himself wishing they were in Dominic’s truck, after all-the pickup could have handled this off-road desert terrain far better than his small Honda.

He and Dominic didn’t speak on the way; the silence in the car was tense and anticipatory. The only sound Levi was aware of was the roaring of his own pulse.

When they arrived, he realized Martine hadn’t been exaggerating about forbidding anyone from disturbing him all evening-this scene had been in process for hours. Portable floodlights were set up in a large, rough circle, with yellow tape strung around them. He could make out the hulking shape of construction equipment on the far side. The site was swarming with people in jackets identifying them as the LVMPD, the FBI, and the Clark County Coroner’s Office.

There were also a few vans from local news outlets parked nearby, and a gaggle of reporters and cameras clustered as close to the tape as they could get.