Cut and Run 3 - Fish and Chips

full, pouty lips?”
    “My sparkling personality,” Ty provided cheekily.
    “Your insatiable sex drive,” Zane drawled, splaying his hands on Ty’s back to anchor him in place as he tangled his lower legs with Ty’s.
    “That’s partly your fault,” Ty accused.
    Zane grinned. “I’ll take the blame,” he said. “If you tell me my best feature.”
    “That’s easy,” Ty answered. “Your partner,” he said cheekily, managing to maintain a straight face.
    Zane’s smile softened, and slowly he nodded. “I’d say you’re right.”
    “Oh, don’t do that,” Ty groaned with a little jab to Zane’s ribs. “Joke,” he murmured. “It was a joke.”
    Zane just chuckled and shook his head slightly, stealing a kiss just like Ty’s. “No joke,” he disagreed, though still smiling. “I am no kind of prize.”
    “Tell me about it,” Ty groaned.
    Zane laughed and buried his face in the juncture of Ty’s neck and shoulder, inhaling deeply.
    Ty hummed quietly and rolled onto his back, taking Zane with him. “We should think about getting cleaned up,” he muttered. “You made a mess.”
    “ I made a mess?” Zane asked pointedly.
    Ty growled deep in his chest as he pulled Zane closer, preventing Zane from fondling him like he was about to. “I enjoyed it,” he said with a leer.
    Zane turned his head to nip at Ty’s neck. “Shower, then?”
    “Mm hmm,” Ty responded, though he seemed to have no plan for moving.
    “Sounds promising,” Zane mumbled, smiling against Ty’s collarbone.
    “If we stay here all sticky, I may have to fuck you again,” Ty warned.
    “Oh, the agony,” Zane drawled, pulling Ty closer to kiss him soundly.
    Ty rolled him suddenly, putting himself on top of Zane with clearly every intention of continuing on in the same vein. But they were closer to the precarious edge of the round mattress than either of them realized, and when Ty put all his weight into Zane, both went tumbling off the edge of the round bed in an ungraceful heap of limbs, curses, and peals of laughter.

Chapter 11

     
    T HERE were twenty high rollers on board the Queen of the Mediterranean , give or take, and Zane had played poker with them all.
    Most of them were above average players. They wouldn’t be in the private room of this exclusive pay-to-play lounge if they weren’t. A few were excellent players, whether by virtue of skill, intuition, or the ephemeral Lady Luck, it didn’t matter. And then there were the experts.
    Zane hadn’t yet decided if he’d count himself one of those, simply because Vartan Armen and Lorenzo Bianchi weren’t , so Zane hadn’t pushed himself against the pros he knew well enough to be wary of.
    Two of those Zane considered experts sat at the table now with him, Bianchi, and Armen, making a flexible table of five. Luckily, he was here to relax and schmooze, not to win. Considering what a roller coaster his day had been so far, he could use an uneventful night at the table. Zane shifted slightly, trying to ease the mild discomfort from his rather active afternoon. Thinking about leaving Ty all warm and soft and sated in their bed made Zane smile.
    “Are you enjoying your evening, Mr. Porter?” Bianchi asked.
    “Definitely, Signor Bianchi, definitely,” Zane drawled as the dealer approached the table with several new packs of cards.
    Seeing the ship’s crew actually involved in the high-stakes gambling operation surprised Zane the first night. But it turned out the dealers were paid above and beyond their normal salary to work on their off hours for the players funding their own games in this private lounge. The ship kindly donated use of cards and chips of much higher denominations than any “normal” passenger would see in the game room proper.
    Money really could buy more money.
    Here in the private game, it was player’s choice as they went around the table. They played the old classics five-card draw and seven-card stud, the popular stars Texas Hold ’em and Omaha Hi Lo, and occasionally variations like Crazy Pineapple and Follow the Bitch.
    Crunching the numbers and figuring the percentages was in a way soothing for Zane. It was easy, it wasn’t life-threatening, and he didn’t even have to stress about the money. Granted, it was rather appalling to play $5,000 antes or $6,000 big blinds, but after a while the amount of money didn’t mean anything anymore.
    It all came down to the chips.
    Zane looked lazily around the table, cataloguing what he knew