Fifty-Two Pickup: Aces (Jessica Rogers Book 1) Read online

  Then he kissed me. I was a tender kiss, slow, exploring my mouth, sensual. My breathing increased, my heart rate exploded. I grabbed his hair with both hands, pulling handfuls and kneading. He mirrored this and wrapped my hair into his fingers. Locked to him--my breasts tight to his chest--my mouth filled--my tongue pressed to his tongue--he stimulated my movements. His hands pulled my hair.

  Then, he shifted his hips.

  I can’t exactly describe the orgasm without sounding melodramatic: fireworks, explosions in my head, my back arching, my mind going blank. I might have passed out for a moment.

  Heaven.

  Joy.

  It started when he shifted his hips, his cock was delightful, but what sent me over the edge: he’d moved his left hand between us, and using his fingertips as a lever, he’d pressed his knuckles directly onto my clit as he’d slowed his stroke. I hadn’t been expecting it. I hadn’t thought anything. Actually, my brain just exploded.

  As I was in the deep throes of coming and panting and moaning, he’d released too. I realized right afterward that I’d watched his face contort, his eyes bulge, and his body convulsing as I was climaxing. It had been too much to comprehend simultaneously.

  I placed my head on his shoulder and relaxed. My body had little tremors and twitches for the next five minutes. I think I might have napped. He was gently rocking the plane, I realized, like a cradle. I was nestled in the sweaty, hot body of a stud, post-coitus, the smell of sex distinct, and he was rocking me like a child.

  Yes, I know I fell asleep because I don’t remember coming down. I hope he moved me into the co-pilot's seat before he landed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Handsome vampires are addictive.

  ~ Vianka Van Bokkem

  Sex is addictive. Poker is addictive. The Game is addictive. Losing is addictive, too. Don't be the chick that gets off on being a victim.

  ~ Jessica

  I AM NOT A SLUT OR A WHORE. A hearty 'Fuck You!’ to anyone who thinks this way. Men have been playing this game expertly for a long time--and I don't mean poker--although they've also dominated the felt for too long.

  I'm going to date fifty-two men. So what?

  Actually, it's down to fifty-one men.

  I dumped Patrick's ass yesterday. Oh, he was an amazing fuck, a good talker, and very handsome. And a great businessman, it seems, on the side. He'd been using his job as a commercial pilot for a small airline to smuggle. Not sure what. I don't think he's going to be arrested, but his company fired him, and it made the local paper. He tried to explain the whole situation to me, but I don't have time for that kind of drama in my life.

  I don't intend to have sex with every man I date just 'because' I can--you might think this is an obvious thing--but a few of my girlfriends assumed my plan was a subterfuge for a Revenge Fuck Fest. Like I was the shark in Jaws eating my way through a deck of men because ‘reasons’ as if I'm bitter and angry.

  No.

  In the first place, I'm very selective. It's like playing poker: patience is a key virtue. You wait for the right cards. If you're patient, but also aggressive and tight, you can score big at the tables. By the way: that was a double entendre. I do Kegel exercises every day. Don't you?

  You realize men like tight pussies, right?

  I like double entendre. Life and sex are very intertwined.

  In poker, being aggressive and tight means this: You don't back down easily, but you don't throw away chips, either. You fold when it's appropriate. You push hard when it's appropriate, too. And I mean there are times for being super aggressive, even after the river, when your hand is busted, and you know you've lost the hand even if your opponent has a pair of threes. Tight aggressive is a great way play the game of poker and play the game of sex. And don't be mistaken, sex is a game too, at least on this level.

  If you're happily married and trying to reproduce, well, that sex is different. It's probably a beautiful form of lovemaking (good luck, btw)... But I wouldn't know. Someday, I hope. As I said, I do expect a ring, a lovely wedding, and an exotic honeymoon.

  But with the right guy: The Perfect Guy!

  If he exists.

  I won the main event at World Series of Poker in Las Vegas: so I'm thinking that handling this will be manageable and probably a lot of fun, but it's going to involve kissing a few frogs, I'm sure.

  I'm delighted that you're taking the journey with me, stick with me, and maybe I'll invite you to the wedding.

  You'll need to book the flight yourself!

  Patrick Collins, my first of many dates, was the Ace of Spades. Using a deck of cards is how I'll keep track of the men I date. A mnemonic device for cataloging the good, the bad, the ugly, and in cases like Patrick (or Pat or Rick) a bit on the evil side. Never trust a guy that uses three or four names.

  Where am I finding men? Let me tell you, it's been a lot of hard work. I’ve built online profiles, posted pictures, and responded to endless messages. Some men actually beg...

  That's not attractive at all.

  So to find me: eHarmony, Match, Lovestruck, Dating Direct, POF, My Single Friend, OkCupid, Zoosk, Chemistry, Match Maker, Perfect Match, and Spark. I think that's all of them.

  Like I said: this is lot of work.

  But I'm in this game to win, and I want a decent man in my life.

  I’m willing to work for it.

  Aren’t you?

  If not, you can’t really bitch and moan about the assholes, can you?

  It’s the same with poker.

  Don't play poker if you're not there to win. I mean that. Don't be a tourist. Don't play for fun. You might as well take your money into the street and light it on fire. And something about poker: if you can afford to lose the money, if it's not going to sting a little, if it's just gambling to you, well, fine. Have fun. But you're not playing poker.

  The same thing goes for dating, relationships, and sex. Oh, I'm not saying don't fuck some guy you met at a bar an hour ago in the proverbial one-night-stand if that's your thing. I don't judge, as long as it's consensual. Do Your Thing. Have Fun. Be Safe.

  But what I'm saying here is this: Play by the rules you make for yourself and play to win.

  You do this because even at the top of your game, even if you've played perfectly, you can still lose. Let me explain.

  I WAS AT A TABLE, in a ring game, and running hot. My senses were sharp. I was in command of the table. I had a lot of chips. I'm in late position and I get Q-9 off-suit. By the way: don't be intimidated by the poker terms, I'll explain the game as we go along. It's a lesson in life and it parallels relationships and sex like you wouldn't believe. Life, love, sex, relationships: all just poker. Your life is the chips.

  Anyway: here I have a queen and a nine of different suits. Not a great hand, but being in late position means you act after the other players have placed bets, raised, or checked. So, in other words, you know what it is they are going to do first in each round.

  It's called playing or being on the button. Kind of like how I like sex: being on the button. Another way to look at it is like this: say you're on a date with a man and you're not sure if he wants to hold your hand, kiss you, ask you on another date, take you to bed, or never see you again. You want him to make the first move, or at least give you an indication of his intentions. If you move first, you might get embarrassed or surprised. Sometimes it works out--sometimes you get fucked--and I don't mean 'fucked' in a nice way: I mean screwed, bent-over, porked, poked, hammered, wait! All these sex references seem to suggest something terrible has happened...

  I got 'fucked' can be a good thing, too.

  Anyway, so acting last in poker is the same as getting signals from a date: you get to see what the other players are doing. Back to my example hand, and as I mentioned, I'll explain poker terms as we go along, so please don't feel overwhelmed.

  There will be lots of sex, too!

  So, my two hole cards were a queen and a nine. I was acting after an initial raise and a caller (so
meone that called the raise, but didn't raise himself—this indicated a hand like mine—a drawing hand).

  Because I was stacked with chips, and playing last, I called. The pot odds were good. This is kind of like going on a date when you only have some information: say the guy comes recommended by a friend and has a good job. It may end up being a bust, but the chances of something good happening is enough to say yes to a blind date.

  The flop came. The flop in Texas Hold'em, that's the game we're talking about, in case that wasn't clear, is when the dealer turns up three cards all at once for all the players to share. They are community cards, and at the end of a hand, assuming that at least two players continue playing, there will be five community cards on the table. You can play all five of those if they are the best cards, but generally, you will use one or both of your cards to make a hand with three or four of the community cards.

  Back to my hand: The flop came, and it had an eight, a ten, and a jack. This gave me a straight, my queen and nine fitting perfectly into that flop. Eight, nine, ten, jack, queen. Not only a straight but the nuts. The 'nuts' means you have the best possible hand.

  The first raiser went all-In. He was short stacked, so his bet wasn't meaningful, but the man to my right, the first caller, he raised.

  When you have the nut hand, and someone raises ahead of you, that's always a great feeling. I re-raised and put the second player all-in. There was over a thousand dollars in the pot.

  I can't even remember what the first guy had (sometimes people with short stacks just decide to gamble) but the second man had ten-jack. So he'd flopped two pair. I had the nut straight.

  If you're a poker player, you already know what happened next…

  The Turn Killed Me. Yes, another ten came which gave him a full house, and the winning hand. Fuck. Double Fuck.

  But that's poker.

  And that's life too, and it's why I'm bothering to talk to you about poker. You can learn just about everything you need to know about understanding how life works by studying poker. It's a game based on skill, luck, aggression, exploiting weakness, lying, manipulating, telling the truth when it suits you, destroying your opponents, crushing them ruthlessly, and winning--or losing--based on your mental attitude and the poker gods.

  Isn't this how life works?

  It certainly is how men view dating, relationships, and sex. If you understand this fact of life, things will go easier, and you won't be as likely to end up bitter, depressed, and unattractive to anyone but losers.

  When you've been born with a vagina and breasts, it's only a handicap if you buy into the bravado and aggression of poker players that think they own the game. Don't let them own you. Fight back.

  Something tells me you're wondering about my looks. I must be a hot, hard-bodied, model-quality, big-titted woman with long blonde hair and Angelina Jolie lips, right?

  Well, you'd be wrong.

  The fact is: I look kind of like you do when you're feeling sexy, confident, and dressed up. Look in a mirror when you've done your best to feel and look like a woman, I mean when you've done a little work and put in some effort. We aren't that much different, honestly. I'll tell you this: 90% of how good you look is attitude. Of the other 10%, most of that is: Do you have a pussy? Does it work? Okay, you're good to go. Men aren't super complicated, so don't over-analyze.

  When players sit down for a poker tournament, they all start with the same stack of chips. It's the same with life. You're born. You've got the goods. You have what every man on the planet wants, except the gay ones--and sometimes they'd be happy to fuck you too, trust me on this...

  In poker, the other players want your chips. In life, men want your body, your time, your love (sometimes) and it's a similar game.

  You need to play to win.

  I've got some dates lined up this week, and I'm traveling, too. I'll attend poker tournaments this year while I'm meeting new guys. Yes, there's a circuit. Yes, there are good tournaments in Europe, Australia, and other places besides America. I'll probably go to a few, who knows? Maybe I'll fall in love with a tall, handsome stranger from Belgium. Or France.

  The world is mine. Make it yours. Never surrender. And don't forget: life is a game, you can't win if you don't play.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Oh, I forgot to mention it: My brother is the kind of man whom women stalk. In cooperative packs.

  ~ Jim Butcher

  For several decades in the nineteenth century, Hartford was one of America’s richest cities. Today it’s one of the poorest. Tournament poker always has big chip leaders who squander away their stacks. I’ve seen women do the same with relationships.

  ~ Jessica

  I LANDED IN HARTFORD, Connecticut, early on a Wednesday. Being a poker player on tour can be tiresome, boring, and hellish. But since I’ve cashed a major win, the truth is, I don’t need the money. Okay, of course, I want the money, but I’ve made a few decent investments, so I won’t go hungry if I lose.

  Not that I plan on losing.

  I’ve paid off my house. It’s barely a home. Sometimes I think it’s a massive bookshelf as if I'd bought the place only to store my mother’s vampire books and my extra shoes. When I’m at home, I live in Rancho Palos Verdes, an ultra upper class (read that rich snob) neighborhood in Los Angeles County.

  I’d prefer to live in San Francisco, Portland, or Maui, but the big poker casinos--and the big games--are in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. But it’s too fucking hot to live in Nevada. Have you ever been in Vegas in mid-July? Exactly. The truth is, I’m in Vegas a lot as it is, I don’t want to live there.

  Rancho Palos Verdes quite literally means the 'Green Cock Ranch,' so it’s a fitting place for me to live. Besides, the ocean breeze helps keep the temperature down. Downtown LA is a lot like Vegas in the summer: hot, miserable, crowded, dirty, and filled with people from every country on the planet. But, there's excellent and varied restaurants, fabulous entertainment and sporting events, and many poker players.

  And of those, there are schools of fish.

  Some of them rich.

  I was in Hartford, (we’re back in Connecticut — keeping up with me is hard sometimes. Sorry, but life is too short to meander through stories) for a poker tournament at the Foxwoods Casino. I was going to fleece some Northeasterners!

  I’m sure there will be a few poker nerds there wearing Boston Red Sox caps. Dead money. Foxwoods is about an hours (yes, that’s optimistic) drive from Hartford, and Hartford is the home of Kirk Lucas, Attorney-at-Law. He works in insurance litigation. He tells me it’s dull work, but it pays well. Never married, Kirk is thirty-five, which is a little bit older than me, but not much. I've got a few dates lined up with men in their early to mid-thirties. I’m not opposed to experience. Too young is more of a deal breaker than too old. I simply won’t date anyone younger than about twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Younger guys like to fuck, and they’ve got the stamina for it, but I’ve come to realize if you want to feel good about yourself, it’s better to go with someone who knows how to touch a woman. I figure it takes about a decade and a half to have decent vagina skills.

  So, back to Kirk. Yes, he’s a lawyer, which is a bad sign right there!

  Don't take my sarcasm too seriously, by-the-way...

  Well, lawyering is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. Thank you, Mike Rowe, for making sure everyone in America understands this.

  In my email exchanges with Kirk, he explained some of the pro-bono work he does for the homeless. He specializes in helping homeless vets, so he’s probably a pretty decent guy.

  Yes, I know people lie, but it’s hard to catfish when you’re an attorney, there are some online things that you cannot fake. And, yes, I check everyone using Google, don’t you? Of course, don’t forget: tracers work in reverse.

  KIRK MET ME IN THE HOTEL BAR at seven-thirty for a cocktail. When he walked in, I recognized him immediately; some people do look like their online profiles. He was a good six one with dark, short hair. His
five o’clock shadow and well-cut suit gave him the appearance of a model in a sports car, watch, or men’s fragrance ad. Sharp bluish-green eyes met mine. He smiled with perfect teeth, took my hand in his, and instead of shaking it, he put it to his heart. Sweet. Then he lightly kissed my cheek.

  “It’s such a pleasure to meet you in person. Was your flight smooth?”

  A flash of my airplane ride with Patrick went through my mind and I could feel my cheeks heat up. Smiling, I said that my flight was smooth and easy. “But I’m happy to be on the ground.”

  “Shall we?” he asked pointing to the hotel bar.

  I followed him, placing my hand in the crook of his arm. He slowed his gait for me, which was nice. Often six-foot tall men forget I need a step and a half to match one of theirs. I was getting a good vibe from how he seemed in person, the way he composed himself, and how he looked at me with his sexy, penetrating eyes.

  As we walked, a woman called out from the other end of the bar, “Oh, Kirk. Kirk!”

  We both turned our heads.

  The woman stutter-stepped in her heels towards us. I started to withdrawal my arm from his, but he held it in place. Points scored.

  She stopped in front of us but pretended I wasn’t there. As if, bitch. Look, I don’t mind competition, and hell, this was only five minutes into our first date, but damn, let a chick look at her cards before you expect her to bet.

  “Oh, I’m so glad I ran into you. I was looking into the Henderson file this afternoon—”

  “Gloria, stop. Hold on. I’m on a date. Work hours are over.”

  He’d interrupted her and politely told her she was out-of-bounds. More points scored.