"I won't lose," Flint answers effortlessly. "What is this?" He shakes the drink and watches in horror as the cherries sink to the bottom.
"You must really want to get rid of me," I say bitterly.
He doesn't answer my question directly, just sighs in deep resignation and bypasses the straw as he takes a long sip of his drink. "If you don't like the terms of engagement, the door is that way," he says. "I can find something else to wager with."
So that's it. He wants to scare me off. I cross my arms and glower at him, chewing on my lower lips as I consider my options. If I leave now, I'll be alone in Omaha, Nebraska, without any resources. If I stay, there is the potential that Flint will lose, and I'll have to…what? Go home with this strange red-haired man as a result?
"Terms of engagement," I echo him, without quite realizing that I'm speaking out loud. "Great idea. I'll just change the terms of engagement."
Flint's eyes flex a little wider, but I don't stay to savor his reaction. I turn and walk back over to the pool table, rolling my hips a little more than I do naturally. The man—Keating—plucks an unlit cigarette off the side of the table and studies it, before raising his eyes as soon as he notices that I have returned.
"Hello. Keating, is it?" I smile broadly, and wish I had a little lipstick to kick it up to the next level. Keating doesn't appear to care that I'm bare-lipped; his pale eyes are drawn to every movement of my mouth. Perfect. "I'm willing to go along with this. But I hope you realize that I'm a grown woman. To use a clichéd turn of phrase, I'm an independent woman. So I'm afraid I'm going to have to weigh in on what happens to me in the extremely likely event that my friend here loses."
"Hey." Flint has rejoined us at the table, and evidently takes offense to my lack of faith in him. As if I care about wounding his ego—I'm furious with him. He's lucky I'm being so cool and collected.
"I agree to the wager," I continue as I purposefully ignore him. This becomes a little more difficult when he whips his leather jacket off and rolls his muscled shoulders, one after the other, as well as his neck. My mouth goes dry suddenly, but a quick sip of my beer allows me to continue as if I hadn't experienced a hitch at all. "But I want to define the terms of what 'having' me actually entails." I notice that Flint's eyes raise to look at me, but I pretend to carry on as if his opinion, much less the heat of his lingering gaze, matters little to me. I am already holding my beer glass, and I raise it a little for dramatic effect, as in in toast.
"A kiss," I say simply.
This time, I glance openly at Flint. I'm surprised to find a bewildered look on his face, and something more...it's almost as if my sudden rewriting of the terms bothers him. I would laugh at the absurdity if he didn't look so intensely serious. Instead, I feel my heart give an odd kick in my chest, and something stirs in the molten core of my belly. I hate the feeling of losing my breath, of having the rug pulled out suddenly from under me, that being around Flint seems to give me.
But this is more acceptable to me, and it should be more acceptable to this sometimes-gentleman than outright giving my body away to a total stranger as winnings in a game of pool. Right? There's no universe in which a 'kiss' is more of a violation than the things inferred by trading a person bodily to another.
"Deal," Keating says at once. I realize that the time I've taken to study Flint's look has only amounted to a few seconds. At Keating's agreement, Flint's expression hardens into a handsome mask. He turns away to lay his coat on a stool and extract a pool cue from the standing rack. I notice his glass has been drained and left on the table, and suppress a smirk at yet another of my perceived victories.
"Fine by me," Flint says as he sharpens his cue on a blue block of chalk. "Winner gets a kiss. Seems a little old-fashioned, even prudish, but I guess some action is better than none."
I feel my face flush as dark a red as my hair. I wish I wasn't so naturally pale and prone to blushing; my body continues to betray me in the presence of Flint Carter.
"Excuse me?" Maybe he didn't notice his word choice. "I didn't say 'winner' gets a kiss. Don't you already have it arranged so that you'll win something you actually want?"
"I'll break," Flint offers as he moves away from me to stand beside Keating. The two men converse amongst themselves, and I feel myself growing hotter by the second. If Flint is going to put me in yet another compromising situation, I'm not sure whom I want to win anymore. Maybe Keating deserves to earn a kiss from me, because the man who doubles as my ride over here certainly doesn't. In stark contrast to how I sashayed over here originally to try and vest some control back from the situation, I stomp back to the bar now to lay down more of Flint's cash on drinks I doubt he'll like the taste of. I try to convince myself that I haven't lost, but it's proving difficult. Maybe a shot will help lubricate my feelings and get me in the proper kissing mood.
The press of the cool glass to my lips is doing nothing to prepare me for what is to come; if anything, it is priming me for the taste and the heat of another's mouth against my own. The thought of Flint's crooked, insincere smile forming itself into voluptuous purse, and one that's coming straight for me…
… isn't such a horrendous thought, actually. In fact, I bet he's an incredible kisser. A man doesn't go through life looking the way he does without getting a lot of practice in. Besides, I doubt he would approach it in the cartoonish way my less-than-flattering thoughts are picturing it for him.
I lose myself in thought as I wait for the bartender to pour our next rounds. I can't help it. Sure enough, my mental image of Flint's kiss is transforming into something hot and unexpected, something that sends a chill racing through me that has nothing to do with feeling cold. I flinch and shiver as I let the fantasy overtake me, if only for a moment.
He wouldn't push his lips out. He would part them, and take me from an unexpected angle—sweep up from below, maybe, or slant his head to the side. I would be surprised by his assault. I'm not sure I would be able to stop him…and I'm not sure I would want to. What woman could resist the pull of having a face like his so close to her own?
So he would kiss me, and I would let him, submitting myself to an instinct much deeper than what my personality might normally allow. And yes, I would be startled—so startled that when the time arrived, the lips that captured my own would find my mouth parted, as if to speak out against what was happening to me.
But Flint Carter would silence any and all protest. He would direct the proceedings without question, the same way he directs our course on the road. He would grasp the back of my neck and cement me to him, and his tongue…
God, I must be drunk already.
My depraved thoughts are interrupted when the bartender finally returns with my drinks. Took him long enough, I think mutinously, even though he is absolutely not to blame for the direction my own thoughts have taken. I don't even bother taking the shot of tequila back with me to the pool table; I throw my head back and let the liquid fire race down my throat. Then I depart the bar to see what fate has in store for me.
Upon seeing me return, Keating plucks up the cue ball and offers it to me. I see what this is about. My eyes travel to Flint to watch for another betrayal of his expression as I lower my head and plant a soft, fleeting kiss against the surface of the rough sphere. I hold his gaze as I do this. I see a flicker in his eyes, almost as if he has resisted the urge to blink them, but nothing else registers. I withdraw and try not to feel too disappointed by this perceived lack of success. I'm playing a game as much as they are now. My future on the road depends on it.