#dashlore

But back to the trouble bit. Dash comes across as a harmless sort; he doesn't run his mouth, doesn't talk out of turn. He's polite, he's debonair, and he's (nearly) always fair in love—oh, but he's always heeded the call of the cards.

Fame he may not seek out, more than comfortable with his fleeting familiarity with those on the ship, but money he does chase. There's something about that one floor with the casino, the clinking of the roulette table paired with animatronic joy blaring from all the slots that really lights his fire.

Blackjack's truly his game and he knows all the dealers by name and zodiac sign, but he's never quite been a winner. Sometimes he skates by and gets to take something back to his room, but most of the time he's losing just as he did on dry land.

What led Dash to be sequestered to playing blackjack on a boat was the trouble he landed himself in back at an earlier port. He fell. Hard. Hard and fast for a woman with big hair and an even bigger voice—she could project and slap the nosebleeds with the note, her control over her own sweet sound enough to bring him to tears.

Dash really was crying though when he ended up in her debt—Wilma was as beautiful as she was dangerous and while Dash chased after her, tossing his heart along with bundles of roses at his feet, she also got him caught up in every blackjack table in town.

Wilma made an honest living with her voice, but as Dash knows intimately, stardom doesn't come to everyone and she moonlighted as a loan shark. And every whispered promise of his salvation came with a forever increasing price tag.

The day he left Wilma (left is a strong word, she had him wrapped around her finger and he damn near had to use a crowbar to separate himself from her), that was the day he put himself in the biggest pickle of his life.

He owes enough money to bankrupt a few people, let alone himself, and Wilma's still chasing him down from port to port, ship to ship, trying to get what he owes her.