"I see your three hundred, Mr. Rothstein, and I raise you another four hundred."

Arnold Rothstein took a delicate sip of milk from the tumbler in front of him and sighed lightly. This poker game had been going on for only four hours, but it seemed interminable at this point, given the company in which he was being forced to mingle.

"Very well, Mr. Perlman," Rothstein said tightly, flashing the middle-aged man opposite him a tense and forced smile. He pushed forward the appropriate number of chips and glanced down once more at his cards. He had a decent hand; three queens sat gracefully fanned among his dole, staring at him with gloomy eyes.

Edgar Perlman, the owner of a furniture factory in Queens, placed his hand neatly on the table for Rothstein to see. He had two pairs: two jacks, two aces, and a three. Rothstein, without so much as an upward twitch of his lips, took a steadying breath and placed his three of a kind on the table.

"Shit!" Perlman cursed, burying his face in his hands. He hadn't gone all in on this hand, but he'd gone damned near it, and his dwindling supply of chips was a testament to Rothstein's poker prowess. It was bad form, Rothstein thought, to clean a man out in a cash game. So he silently pushed his sizeable stack of chips toward the dealer, who gave him larger denomination chips in exchange.

"Good evening to you, Mr. Perlman," said Rothstein, nodding to his distraught opponent. He picked up his bowler hat from its place on the chair beside him and rose to his feet. "I do not think I shall be interested in investment here. You may cease all further communication regarding the matter, if you please."

As he stalked to the cashier's counter to make good on his winnings, Rothstein glanced around the shady casino and shook his head with disdain. Edgar Perlman himself had invited him here, because the factory owner had just bought into this underground gambling establishment and thought Rothstein might want a piece, as well. If Rothstein injected some funds into the place, Perlman had reasoned, it could expand into Manhattan's shining new phoenix of casino gambling.

It was late in the summer of 1921, and there seemed to be little money to be made in the gambling industry in Manhattan. Well, that wasn't entirely true. The adept professional gambler, like Rothstein, could make millions while living in Manhattan. He simply needed to conduct his gambling elsewhere, as the proliferation of New York casinos that had dotted the borough in the previous decade had faded, one by one. This smoky, boozy, speakeasy-cum-poker den was unimpressive at best, Rothstein thought, and sleazy at worst. He wouldn't sully his hands with a place like this. He was above this.

He wasn't above the $6,500 worth of chips he held in his hand, though, and as he approached the cashier's desk, he slid the chips across the counter and glanced up.

When he did, he felt his thick eyebrows rise, quite of their own accord, for the young woman serving as the cashier was strikingly beautiful, and Arnold Rothstein seldom took note of random women.

"Looks like it was a good night for you," the young woman said gently, picking up Rothstein's chips and quickly adding up the total in her head. For a long moment, Rothstein did not answer. He simply stared, like some sort of utter speechless fool, at the young cashier. His mouth fell ajar as he absently tried to acknowledge her remark, but all he could do was take in her appearance.

She was petite in stature – short and thin and just as small as a woman should be in Arnold's mind. Her chin-length black bob framed a face that was sharp and angular. From beneath thick lashes, she watched him stare with her own gaze, which was sapphire in color and deep as an ocean. A long, thin nose led down to full, pillowy lips, which smiled politely at him. The rouge on her alabaster cheeks matched perfectly with the rose shade of her silk cap-sleeved dress, from which emerged lithe and slim arms.

Rothstein took a deep breath to steady himself, as he so often did, though this breath felt uncomfortably shaky in his chest. It was just the high of winning, he told himself, and the thick smoke in the room. It was the dizzying reek of alcohol, of illicit whisky, which was making him so susceptible to the wiles of the young cashier. He was a man steadfast in his constant pursuit of profit, and though often surrounded by them, young and pretty women were not a common distraction for Rothstein.

So what was it about this one?

She was staring at him expectantly, like she was waiting for him to say something in response to a prompt. Rothstein could not, for the life of him, remember what the cashier had said in the first place, so he cleared his throat and straightened his bow tie with quivering fingers.

"I beg your pardon?" he asked courteously.

"I just said that it seems like you had a good night, Mr. Rothstein," the girl said again, her eyes flicking down to the chips in her hand.

"Indeed," Rothstein heard himself say, his voice sounding distant and hollow. The corners of the girl's pillowy lips curled upward in a friendly grin, and her blue eyes softened. She held up one finger, urging Rothstein to wait, and she bent down to cash him out. She rifled around behind the counter for a while, and then finally emerged with a neat stack of bills in her hand.

"One hundred, two hundred, three hundred…" She began counting the bills out for Rothstein, making a point to take a break at every thousand dollars. Rothstein wasn't paying attention at all to her counting; he didn't even count along to make sure that she wasn't cheating him. Instead, he watched her lips move as she spoke the numbers. He watched her delicate little fingers flick down the bills one at a time, and he stared at her cobalt eyes as they intently focused on the task at hand.

"Six thousand, five hundred dollars," the girl said finally, sounding rather out of breath. "Whew!" She giggled a little bit, and the sound was like the tinkling of bells in the unpleasant din of the casino. "Would you like this in an envelope, Mr. Rothstein?" she asked politely, pulling out a worn-looking yellow envelope from behind her counter.

Rothstein didn't answer her question. "Why is a woman as stunning as you employed in an establishment as sordid as this?" he blurted, taking the stack of hundred dollar bills from the counter. As he realized how uncharacteristically forward and flirtatious he had just sounded, he counted out five of the bills and left them on the counter. The rest he tucked into the pocket inside his suit coat.

The cashier looked taken aback by Rothstein's question. "I… erm… I sing here, sometimes," she stammered, her angular cheeks suddenly flushing red with embarrassment. "I like to sing. It's hard to find places that'll let me do it. When I'm not singing, I work the desk."

Rothstein nodded once, rather curtly. "I might be able to assist you in locating more… reputable… venues in which to share your vocal talents," he said thoughtfully. "Miss…?"

"Cohen," the girl answered at once. "Alice Cohen."

"Miss Alice Cohen," Rothstein repeated softly. He pushed the five hundred dollars on the counter toward her. "In gratitude for your superior counting skills," he said with a little grin, but Alice smiled graciously and shook her head.

"I can't…" she started.

"But you can," Rothstein countered. "Consider it advance payment for your first performance."

Alice's grin widened as she drummed her fingers on the wooden countertop. "You don't even know if I can sing, Mr. Rothstein," she insisted slyly.

"I'll bet you can," Rothstein nodded, pushing the bills toward her again, "and I'm something of a betting man. If you'd like a chance to sing at some more respectable establishments, and not have to work the cashier's counter, please do come to my office on West 57th Street, tomorrow evening, around six."

He nodded his farewell and turned to walk away from the cashier's counter before the girl could insist he take his money back.

Arnold Rothstein collapsed into his bed that morning at 6 o'clock, shortly before the sun came up. He assumed that his wife Carolyn was still soundly asleep in her own bedroom next door, and he thought he, too, would be asleep within moments.

He wasn't. An hour later, he was lying on his back, staring at the whirring blades of the ceiling fan as the gray light of dawn crept in through the windows. His hands folded neatly over his chest as Arnold Rothstein realized that for the first time in many years, a woman had managed to sufficiently hijack his consciousness so as to make sleep evasive.

Their encounter had been brief – too brief, Rothstein thought ruefully as he considered the glitter in her cerulean eyes. It had hardly been sufficient for him to be so disturbed and distracted by the cashier girl… by Miss Alice Cohen. He didn't know where she lived, where she'd grown up, or if she wound up going home to a waiting lover. All Rothstein knew was that Alice Cohen was strikingly beautiful and had no business whatsoever cashing out chips in a seedy joint such as the one in which he'd played poker the night before.

Rothstein's heavy eyelids fluttered shut, and he focused on the slow, steady whoosh of the ceiling fan blades. All he could see in his mind's eye, though, was Alice's piercing blue gaze, the sharp angles of her high cheekbones, her pillowy smiling lips… quite unexpectedly, Rothstein found himself rather wanting to find out what it would be like to press his lips against hers, to give her a kiss and see how she reacted.

Rothstein cracked his eyes open and thought of his wife in her own bedroom. She had to have been the most neglected woman in New York, Rothstein thought with a hint of chagrin. And it wasn't even as if there had been dozens of others in her place, either. There had been a few, most of no consequence whatsoever. Bobbie Winthrop, the Broadway baby he'd met in 1913, was still living in an apartment that Rothstein funded for her, and he saw her perhaps once a month for a tryst. She was the only one of any significance, but even she sometimes couldn't hold Rothstein's interest.

Neither Carolyn nor Bobbie had captured his imagination the way this cashier girl had done. Alice Cohen – almost certainly Jewish, Rothstein thought with curious vexation, as he reminded himself how fiercely his parents had opposed his marriage to a Gentile like Carolyn.

Poor Carolyn. He'd not kissed her in weeks; he'd not made love to her in months. It wasn't that Rothstein didn't enjoy sex. What man did not enjoy sex in some form or another? It was, instead, that he did not particularly enjoy sex with Carolyn. There was some degree of incompatibility between them. In the very early days of their marriage, Carolyn's personality had compensated for the fact that Rothstein found it difficult to stay aroused with her. Now it was harder to keep up the ruse. Her body did not excite him. Most of the time that he tried to complete the act with Carolyn, it was after a long night of gambling, and he was so exhausted that sleep was a far more attractive proposition than sex. And so Rothstein had spaced out their encounters more and more until he hardly ever saw Carolyn at all.

He hadn't made love to anybody in over a month now, and he hadn't touched himself, either. He realized this truth as he thought again of Alice Cohen's vivid blue eyes and enrapturing little smile. In his mind, he was pressing her against the mahogany bookshelves in his office, his smooth hands drifting over her tiny form as she writhed against him. His fingers were entwined in her inky hair, mussing her bob and holding her head tightly as he raked his teeth over the delicate skin of her swan-like neck...

Rothstein felt a stirring between his thighs as the sordid thoughts flooded his tired mind. A sudden heat flushed through his loins and he felt himself hardening at the idea of claiming Alice Cohen for his own. Sure, he'd only seen her once, had only spoken with her for five minutes, but it was enough to do him in now. Rothstein felt a torrent of heat rush through his veins as he continued to fantasize, until his member was pressing uncomfortably against the muslin fabric of the underwear beneath his nightshirt.

With a little sigh of exasperation, Rothstein hiked up his nightshirt and unbuttoned the underwear with trembling fingers. Once he'd freed himself and had his cock in his hand, his whirling consciousness returned to painting unclean pictures in his head. His neatly maintained fingertips began to glide over the tip of his member, drifting aimlessly around the silky skin there as he imagined the girl behind the counter at the casino.

She was lowering herself to her knees, grinning wickedly as if she had a naughty secret she was dying to share. Stray strands of cropped, inky black hair fell wispy around her sapphire eyes as she stared up at Rothstein, parting her velvety smile just wide enough to slip his member into the wet warmth of her mouth.

"Mmph," she moaned, from somewhere deep in the back of her throat, and within the snug constriction of her mouth, Rothstein felt the vibration of her moan shudder through the moist heat. "Arnold…" She ran his tip, throbbing and glossy, around her swollen lips as if she were putting on lipstick. Her lithe little fingers danced around his shaft, and as she moaned his name again, Rothstein felt the room spinning.

His fantasy was so intense that Rothstein shut his eyes tightly against it, willing it into reality.

"Alice…" he heard his voice whisper into the empty bedroom, and, embarrassed despite his solitude, he ignored it enough to focus on stroking himself.

Rothstein's arousal was heavy on his body, like a blanket made of lead, anchoring him to the bed so that he could scarcely move or breathe. He could see her, in his mind, suckling on his member like a child with a lollipop; as if it were the most delicious and pleasurable treat she'd ever been given. As he concentrated on the mental image he'd crafted, Rothstein felt a sensation of electrical charge come over his body where he lay on the bed. It was as if all the tiny hairs upon his form were on end. The tension spread and concentrated itself between his legs, and he felt his erection grow more firm and insistent in his hand. He groaned a bit as he rubbed his tip and shaft, wishing with all his might that it was not his fingers and palm upon his throbbing flesh, but rather Alice's delightful little mouth.

She was holding fast to him for leverage, her small hands clutching anxiously at his broad hips as she steadfastly took him between her lips over and again. Rothstein grasped her head, snaking his fingers through her onyx hair, and thrust himself roughly into her mouth, feeling his tip bump the back of her throat. It was almost too much; he almost finished right then and there, and so he pulled himself out of her mouth for a brief moment to recover.

"I want to taste you, Arnold," Alice was panting, her divine whisper jagged with excitement. "Let me taste you… Come on…"

It was all wrong, Rothstein tried to scold himself, as he felt his scrotum tense and clench like a fist up against his trembling form. It was foul and iniquitous to imagine a casino worker he barely knew begging him to spill himself into her mouth. But when he heard her little voice pleading with him in the echoing cavern of his mind, Rothstein was only spurred to touch himself more vigorously.

He heard himself panting in the quiet of the room and tried desperately to steady his rickety breath. His entire body was hard – not just his rigid cock, but also the muscles of his legs and arms, taut and tense as he felt his climax approaching. There was a sense of a building wave, a tsunami gaining power as the torrid images and sounds in Rothstein's mind grew ever more imperative.

"Come for me, Arnold," she was whispering, in between bouts of fellatio. "Please…"

There was very little from Rothstein's rare fantasies that he acted out in real life. This image of the begging harlot was not something to which he was accustomed, not in tangible sexual experience. And, yet, the very thought of Miss Alice Cohen on her knees, pleading with Rothstein to finish in her mouth, injected him with a sense of authority and control that pushed him over the edge. In his mind, and in his bed, he came, a groan pulling itself from between his smooth lips.

The pressure that had been building inside Rothstein's groin erupted like a spring let loose. In an explosion of pleasure, he felt his pelvic muscles spasm wildly, urging forth streams of his seed in an erratic and fervent fashion. Alice parted her lips just wide enough so that Rothstein could see the jets of viscous fluid land upon her tongue, and she moaned wantonly with every burst of his essence.

For a brief moment, just a flash, everything went completely blank in Rothstein's mind, and he was entirely lost from both his fantasy and his reality… he was suspended somewhere between. Then he came to, in a manner of speaking, and realized that he was indeed alone in his bed. His tensed muscles began to relax, starting with his fingers and toes and moving toward his core until at last his hips and groin were calm, too. The pounding in his ears slowed and faded as his heartbeat regulated. The ringing quieted, and the wave of pleasure subsided.

Rothstein was acutely aware of several things: first, that his abdomen was covered in little puddles of his seed and that he was sheened with sweat. He felt filthy, in so many different ways, and he heaved himself from his bed and ambled carefully into the en suite bathroom, reaching to turn on the hot water taps in the white-tiled shower stall. He adjusted the stainless steel Kohler taps until the water flowed in a scalding stream from above. Rothstein watched himself in the mirror with a steely gaze as he stripped off his nightshirt and underwear, placing them carefully in the hamper for dirty clothes that would be laundered by a nameless woman somewhere.

He took a small towel and wiped away the mess he'd made on his abdomen, and that towel, too, went into the hamper. With a final, disdainful glance into the steaming mirror, Rothstein stepped into the shower stall and sighed testily as the hot water coursed its way over his body. His hair became plastered to his skull; his body became slick with Ivory Soap as he scoured his skin with a bar of the stuff.

When at last he felt clean, or at least clean enough to go back to bed, Rothstein turned off the taps and stood for a long moment in silence in the shower. He felt his fists clench into swollen balls of anger at his sides and felt his chest heave with the undesirable loss of self-control he'd exhibited. Honestly. Masturbating to the thought of a near-stranger. He hardly knew her name, and he knew precisely nothing about her as a person.

After Rothstein had toweled himself off and wrapped himself in a cotton robe, he ambled slowly back to his bed and collapsed again between the sheets. This time, he fell asleep quickly and easily, lulled into slumber by the warm shower and the intense orgasm. He did not expect to wake until roused by his manservant at three o'clock in the afternoon… in just enough time to prepare for Miss Alice Cohen's six o'clock arrival at his office.

If, that is, she decided to come.