Book Excerpt
This is so easy…so easy.
She opened her mouth and found his
tongue. He tasted and smelled wonderful. They dissolved into each other.
Clothing was gently removed, he helping her, she helping him. No
fumbling, no grabbing, every movement willing and deliberate.
Now Milt took the lead. Gently he laid
her down on the bed and brushed his mouth slowly over her face and neck
then her breasts and belly. She lay back, aware of every individual
caress until a need to return the touches overwhelmed her, and her mouth
found his delicious, smooth, firm skin, and her nose absorbed his
unbelievably erotic smell. She could feel a throbbing ache building in
her and knew that only filling herself with him would relieve it. And
she wanted him in every part of her.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please, now!”
And then he was pulling away from her, standing up and going toward the window, where all their clothes lay.
What had she done wrong? Had she told him
to stop? She hadn’t meant to, but she had done that so often with Jeff
because that’s what Jeff had wanted to hear; it had been her husband’s
signal to propel himself into her. Had she groaned some sort of protest
from habit? She didn’t want Milt to stop.
She was naked and alone in a big bed, aching beyond anything that was comprehensible.
Everything that had happened in the last
day roiled up inside her head like a montage from a thousand nightmares.
She had lost her grasp again; she was going to fall off the earth. She
turned onto her side, pulled her legs up to her chest, and her vocal
cords released the terror.
He was shaking her, his hands gripping her shoulders, his words finally penetrating her sobs.
“Hey! Hey!” He grasped her to him, and
she threw her arms around his neck. If she held on tight enough, she
would not fall away. Finally her breathing slowed. Milt’s arms were
still wrapped around her, and she felt herself being rocked back and
forth. She pulled her head away and looked at his face.
“What the hell was that?” His tone of voice softened the words. “What happened?”
Suddenly Georgia became aware of her
nakedness. She let go of Milt’s neck and reached for a pillow, which she
held up to her chest. Milt got up from the bed. The blanket and sheets
had been folded back by housekeeping the evening before. Milt pulled
them up over Georgia then sat next to her on the edge of the bed,
whispering soothingly, “It’s okay, Georgia. It’s okay.”
About The Book
Title: River Card
Author: Joan Destino
Genre: Psychological Thriller
“Who was she trying to fool? Herself? A little late for that. She had to win; her survival depended on it.”
Do you have what it takes to lose it all? Find out in Joan Destino’s stunning debut novel, “River Card.”
Georgia Kassov Cates is a business
woman, a wife, a mother…and a gambling addict. Desperate to recoup a
devastating string of losses, she risks it all for one last game- a game
that’s abruptly halted when the Las Vegas casino succumbs to a freak
blackout.
Georgia meets some fellow patrons of the
Las Vegas casino, including the wealthy Melanie Nallis, a woman haunted
by her horrific childhood; Zivah Koski, an enigmatic elderly holocaust
survivor; Phillip Vance, a billionaire casino developer; and Milt
Braverman, a professional poker player.
As they get to know each other, a
connection is slowly revealed: postwar Germany, a time and place that is
reflected in” River Card’s novel-within-a-novel, “Alexandra.”
Alternating between the opulence and
depravity of 1940s Germany, and the glamor and baseness of 1990s Las
Vegas, “River Card” reflects Georgia’s mounting fears-both past and
present-as she plays one last hand…
Author Bio
As
the daughter of an Army Officer, Joan Destino traveled throughout her
childhood, living in many parts of the U.S. as well as Germany. After
high school and college in New England, she taught kindergarten in
Boston while her husband attended law school. In the early seventies she
moved to the Los Angeles area, raising her family in San Marino. She
participated in the UCLA Writers’ Program for several years, culminating
with several semesters in their Master Novel Writing Class. After
playingTournament Bridge for years, shebegan playing casino poker in the
mid-eighties. She bought a second home in Las Vegas in the mid-nineties
and moved there permanently when her husband retired in 2004. Joan
plays both cash and tournament poker including the World Series of Poker
at the Rio Casino.
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