Falling in Love (13 page)

“
Ah…yeah.”

He thought for a moment.

“
What are we betting
for?”

“
Wishes.”

Austin shrugged elaborately, getting
into the game as far as he dared.

“
Your every wish is my
command. You must be the Lady of the Lake or something.”

She giggled, covering her mouth. Then
she stabbed him with a look.

“
Cute.” Eyes downcast, she
nodded inscrutably, lips moving silently.

He settled down to wait with a look of
puzzled humour on his features. Looking up, she was
ready.

She rattled through the basic rules.
Austin was familiar with five-card stud, his mouth twitching when
the word came up. Her hands were a blur. He stared at the cards she
had dealt him.

He discarded, all well and
good.

“
Give me two.”

She gave him a couple of cards. This
one was in the bag anyway. Never start a battle you can’t win—her
crazy dad again.

“
So what do you mean?”
Austin’s eyes regarded her from across the blanket.

He looked down at his hand, and up at
her again.

“
Here’s how it works. I
deal, you make the bet. We switch back and forth. When you deal, I
get to make the bet. It’s only fair.”

“
So if I win, I get my
wish?”

“
Yep. And if the dealer
wins, then you have to keep your side of the bargain. The bet is a
fair trade. Promise? Do you promise?” His nod was quick and
assuring, so she went on. “That makes it interesting for both of
us. You can refuse a bet, but you have to make an alternate trade
for something else.”

“
Got it.” Austin looked at
his cards and thought for a second. “I still don’t know what we’re
betting for…”

She just let that one lie for a
moment.

Her look seemed to imply that he did
know. His heart stopped cold.

He had no idea of what to wish for…he
didn’t dare speak.

“
Just this once, I’ll go
first.”

Austin nodded, eyes darting right and
left, taking a small sip of wine as he looked at her with the most
profound solemnity on his face.

She had a gulp of wine and puffed the
smoke. Austin picked it up and had a haul off of it.

“
Socks for
socks.”

He looked at her.

“
If you lose, I get your
socks. If I lose, you get my socks…see, it’s easy, really.” She
looked archly at him, blowing him a little kiss.

Austin grinned at the relief.
Something small to start with.

Scene Three

Within four or five hands, Austin was
sitting in his gotchies, blushing beet red and with a big bulge in
his white cotton briefs announcing to the world that he was a man,
and a very aroused one at that. Within the first few hands, Austin
was in love with Bethany. She could do anything she wanted with
Austin. No problems there as far as he was concerned.

She regarded her prey.

Austin had the longest legs, with big
feet and shanks that kind of stunned her, all covered in curly
auburn hair. His chest could have used a little meat on it. His hip
bones stuck up. There was a thick patch of belly hair and smaller
tufts on his chest and around the nipples. His shoulders were good
and the stomach looked hard as a rock, an impression reinforced by
ribs rippling below the skin. Ian had always given the impression
of gently rounded shapelessness and pale, clammy flesh. She hadn’t
known any better at the time…

Austin worked in construction and had
a nice tan on his back and shoulders, although the legs were pretty
white. His ropy arms were tight with muscle and stark with tendons
and big veins going all up and down…the bones of his wrists stuck
out. He had strong, beautiful hands.

She sat across from him. Her feet were
bare and he’d managed to win her slender gold wristwatch. Oh, how
she enjoyed watching him crow over his little moments of triumph.
If only he knew. He seemed fascinated by her thin gold ankle
bracelet.

With unconscious grace, she removed
the band from her hair, shaking out the long, coppery tresses. She
gave him an appraising look, with her clear, intelligent, grey-blue
eyes.

“
So that’s a freebie,
then?”

She smiled her Mona Lisa
smile.

“
Why sure,
baby.”

“
Thank you for your
kindness to a stranger.”

She just smiled.

Austin was a goner.

“
Well, stranger. You don’t
seem to have too much more to lose.”

Austin looked down at his underwear
and then at Bethany sitting there cool and calm as an iceberg, her
high breasts poking at the cloth of her blouse. She didn’t much
look like a librarian.

Not anymore.

It was better to say nothing, not a
thing. He chewed his lip.

She showed no discomfort at sitting in
a room alone with a man who was virtually naked. He was the one
that was scared. He was afraid to ruin it. She stubbed out the
smoke and lit another.

She had a sip of wine. They sat
examining each other.

She had dealt the cards and he
discarded when necessary. She apparently did the same. But she was
really good. She was cheating on Austin somehow. That was all right
with him. Poker wasn’t so hard when you didn’t have to ante up cold
hard cash and if you weren’t too interested in winning. In this
game there was no way to lose. It took him a few hands, but he’d
figured it out. He started discarding high cards, anything he had a
pair of…he reversed the usual system.

He had her right where he wanted her.
The thought brought a sudden grin.

“
What?”

He shook his head.

“
It’s
nothing…really.”

“
You bastard.” Her jaw
dropped open and she stared in astonishment, but there was
something a little too theatrical about it…

He sat there in his underwear and
smiled at the girl across the blanket, straightening up his posture
a bit, flexing his hips and buttocks, and getting
comfortable.

She gave a sharp nod.

“
Right!”

He grinned.

“
Go, on, silly. It’s your
bet.” Come on, Austin.

Austin nodded.

“
I don’t have much to bet
with. How about a kiss for a kiss?”

“
No fair! That way you
can’t lose.”

He appeared to think, stalling a bit
now, but he had an idea.

“
One of my kisses for an
ear nibble. Or your panties. What’s it going to be?”

She nodded and spread her cards as his
heart pounded.

They hadn’t exactly clarified
that…

Sure enough, she’d won again. Austin
showed his cards, a handful of the dregs. Playing it cautiously, he
crawled over on his hands and knees to give the lady an ear nibble,
which involved licking and tonguing it as well. She clawed his ass
through the underwear and then up higher on his back and shoulders.
She pulled him close and kissed him thoroughly, whispering his name
and gazing deep into his dark eyes, her breath hot in his face.
Then she pushed him off. She lay gazing up at him.

“
What about the
panties?”

“
Hah!”

He cocked his head sideways and she
gave a gentle snort.

“
Aw, what the
hell.”

She laid back and raised her bum. She
watched Austin as he lifted the skirt and carefully peeled them
down.

The aroma coming from down there was
total revelation and the reality of what was happening really began
to sink in…he’d never even seen one, not up close before. Not for
real.

It wasn’t the proper time to say it.
But he really was kind of in love with Bethany. They’d only met
three weeks ago. He took the panties, flinging them aside without a
glance. He picked up the cards, staring as she took up a
comfortable pose, brushed her skirt down and waited for him to
deal.

“
You men think you’re so
smart.” She watched his hands as he shuffled and dealt, much more
professionally now.

Interesting. He seemed so clumsy at
first.

“
Now I know better,
Bethany. By the way, I think I might be falling in love with
you.”

He meant it. He wasn’t lying. She knew
it instantly.

He nodded, uttered a deep sigh and
shrugged philosophically. He seemed sort of vulnerable at that
moment.

They both knew what the stakes
were.

Their eyes were riveted on one another
as Austin dealt out the cards swiftly and surely, never taking his
eyes from her face.

She found herself blushing, needing
air all of a sudden. Her heart thudded. This was good. Really good.
It almost scared her. This was perfect.

He put the deck in the middle and
glanced at her glass.

“
More wine, old girl?
Heh-heh-heh.”

“
That sounded very much
like an evil chuckle.” With a curl of her lip, she blew a stray
wisp of hair out her eyes.

Giving Austin a long look, Bethany
picked up her cards and prepared to lose a few hands.

Cigarette smoke curled up unheeded
until Austin reached over. He took a puff and then decisively
crushed it out. He raised a glass in toast. She reached for her own
glass.

She was right about Austin.

This was going to be an interesting
night.

Throwing
Chocolate

Scene One

“
What the—”

Vicki Stewart, clad in leotards, high,
fur-lined boots and a brown woolen coat with four pockets, her
silken hair combed out straight, was browsing in the Laura Secord
store at the mall. She shared her mother’s feisty ways, although
she was a tall girl, in which she took after Dad.

She really wasn’t planning to buy
anything, merely to kind of drool over it. For her, Valentine’s
Day, coming up in a couple of weeks or so, wasn’t going to be a
happy thing. Not the way it should have been, could have been…would
have been.

Valentines’ Day wasn’t
even time for sorrow. It was more of an
anger
thing this time
around.

It took Vicki a moment to catch
on.

Something had just bounced off her
breast. Something fell to the floor with a clatter and a rustle. It
seemed to come from somewhere fairly high up…

At first she thought she had
accidently knocked something off a shelf with her elbow or her
purse, but a small and colorfully-wrapped candy was right there by
her foot. She wasn’t mistaken. It was right there.

She gave it a little kick and it
disappeared under the display.

There was nothing quite like that
right here, and hence it was hard to see where she might have
knocked against anything.

Something sailed into her vision and
hit her square in the chest. The small object bounced, tumbled and
fell, and skittered away in behind a pyramid of candied oranges or
something.

There was a strange man staring at her
from over the top of the display. He was grinning at
her.

He made a sudden flick of the arm and
another candy flew her way.

“
You toad!” Giggling, she
ducked away, admittedly now smiling.

What a fool. If the shop staff saw
that, they’d have a fit. They were in behind the sales counter,
with the rear glass doors open, bringing in fresh trays of
specialty chocolates and arranging them in the racks. He was kind
of cute, in a pleasant-faced twenty-five-ish sort of way, with bold
eyes, neatly styled dark hair, and a raffish grin.

Shaking her head, she
moved along the row. The smiling, and not
overly,
repulsively, ugly fellow
stayed in her peripheral vision. He bit his lower lip, keeping an
eye on the front counter, hands out of sight down low. His face
turned towards her again.

Something whizzed past her
head.

“
You idiot.”

Stop that.

Vicki bit her tongue for fear of
really letting loose on the guy. She had dealt with this sort of
thing before, though.

He was kind of cute, too.

The staff didn’t catch her hiss, and
the guy just didn’t care apparently. He was the class clown or
something, and he bounced another bright missile off her, hitting
her right in the breasts again this time.

“
What is your problem?”
She shook her head half in anger and half in amusement. “Who are
you?”

All she wanted to do was to kill some
time while Aunt Myrna went to the dentist. Aunt Myrna had to go to
a trendy mall dentist, instead of a stuffy downtown crappy old
Victorian house kind of dentist. Blast Aunt Myrna. Once in the
mall, with time to kill, her basic shopping instincts had been
aroused.