Once they were inside the casino, Tony scanned the room quickly. It didn’t take him very long to find a nearly empty Black Jack table near the high rollers section. He held Pepper close to make sure she still walked smoothly to not arouse any suspicions. He pulled Pepper’s chair out for her before sitting down himself. Since Tony had been here a few nights already, he pulled out his gaming card and gave it to the dealer.

“Ten thousand for me and the lady each.” Tony instructed the dealer as the waitress came around to take drink orders.

“DiSaronno and scotch on the rocks,” Tony told her and was tempted to tell them to skip Pepper but that would spoil their plan. In the end, even he couldn’t have too many. For what he wanted to do, Tony needed to keep his head as clear as possible.

“Sea breeze, please.” Pepper said with a smile as she and Tony were dealt their chips.

The dealer started to dole out the cards and Tony became intently focused on the cards that were being laid down. As every card came up, he was running statistics in his head and trying to keep track of what cards came up. He told Pepper when to hit, when to stay, when to split and when to double down. The dealer looked at him strangely once and Tony just explained that it was Pepper’s first time playing and she was inexperienced. It was a believable lie.

After only a few hands, the original $20,000 investment between the two of them had grown to $200,000 but their luck was turning. After Pepper had finished off her drink, she was totally done for. Tony knew he had to get her out of there before they were thrown out. He cashed in their chips and then helped her up to get her to the car to get back to the hotel.

By the time Tony and Pepper reached the suite, Pepper was gone. Tony picked her up and carried her into her room and set her gently on the bed. She seemed so peaceful despite the fact that she was unconscious but this presented a new problem for Tony. She couldn’t sleep in what she had on but taking care of things could easily get him slapped.

Deciding it was better to beg forgiveness rather than ask permission, Tony rifled through Pepper’s dresser to see if he could find her pajamas. The delicate scents of her soap and lingering perfume were hitting him and driving him to the point of insanity and making his pants a little uncomfortable. After a few minutes, he found Pepper’s pajamas and cringed. He looked at the two piece little lacy thing and knew he would be facing certain death if he even attempted to put it on Pepper. Not wanting to cheat death right at this moment, Tony thought quickly and went over to his own room and pulled out one of his t-shirts, something he could get on her with minimal risk of being killed.

When Tony returned to Pepper’s room, he sat down on her bed and pulled Pepper into his lap and leaned her against him, silently wondering how many times she had done something similar for him. He pulled the t-shirt over her head first and put her arms through before he unbuttoned the halter top of the dress and let it fall off of her without revealing a thing. Tony then picked her up again and tucked her into bed like he did after the movie and got the hell out of there.

And just like after that damned movie, Tony was left with the same problem…again. This was getting to be a bad pattern whenever he was in touching distance of Pepper and lead to less than desired results. He had to clear his head if he wanted to even attempt to go to sleep tonight without a repeat of that Pretty Woman dream.

Tony went down to his bathroom and started the hot water in the bathtub. A hot bath could definitely relax him and clear his head. He stripped down and slipped into the hot water and leaned his head against the back of the tub and closed his eyes. It wasn’t long though before his over active imagination took over and his semi-aroused state went to full blown with the images of Pepper joining him in the tub dancing around in his subconscious. The fantasy in his mind was almost deep enough for him to feel her body against his which brought on an increasingly annoying problem that would need to be dealt with and one he hadn’t had to deal with this much since he was sixteen.

Pepper awoke suddenly and deeply regretted sitting up as fast as she did when her head started to spin. Now, given her state of inebriation and lack of total wakefulness, no one could blame her for a poor sense of direction. She stumbled out of her bed and down the darkened hallway to the sliver of light that she thought was her bathroom to get a glass of water. She kept her hand to the wall to steady herself as she walked, not ever noticing that she was walking WAY too far. When she got to the sliver of soft light, Pepper pushed the door open, walked inside and then stopped dead in her tracks with a gasp. She swallowed hard when she saw Tony in the bath in a very aroused state. It wasn’t the fact that she hadn’t witnessed such a state before. On the contrary, she had seen it too many times for her taste when following pretty little playthings that she had to escort out in the morning. It was just this time her defenses weren’t what they usually were and the sight of him was going right to the primal core of her.

Tony froze when he saw Pepper open the bathroom door. He now had two options with this incredibly awkward situation and he had to choose one quickly. He could easily make some smart ass comment about Pepper joining him but it might not go over as well as he planned in her less than sober state. Option two required a bit more effort on his part…pretend nothing was going on and make sure Pepper was alright. Option two seemed the healthier way to go.

“Are you alright, Pepper?” Tony asked with concern as he sat up a bit in the water, trying to discretely hide something that wasn’t so easily hidden.

“I…I…I’m fine,” Pepper stammered out a little breathlessly as her gaze did not move from Tony.

“Do you need anything?” Tony asked gently.

Pepper shook her head quickly and swallowed hard again and took a few steps back out of the door. “I didn’t mean to…” she stammered out before turning around to make her way back to her room and trying not to look back.

Tony’s pulse rate only started to slow down when Pepper backed out of the door. That was definitely not how he pictured things. “This is going to be one long, frustrating night,” he thought to himself as he slid under the hot water.