Lilia’s POV
The room’s dead air broke all at once.
Besides Jace and Kael, six more young men had piled into the game for the spectacle.
Once everyone was seated, liquor mixed specially for the game began arriving , bottles in a ring around the long table, their colors gleaming under the lights, everything from amber to violent pink.
Jace reached for a pink one and pressed it into my hands.
“Baby. Didn’t want it to wreck you, so I had them mix you a fruit wine. Thoughtful, right?”
I wasn’t about to thank him for it.
“You planned for me to be here in advance?”
Caught out, he wasn’t annoyed , he got more interested.
He went so far as to unscrew the cap for me, as if bestowing a favor, and his voice softened a shade.
“It’s fruit wine, but it’s not weak.
Drink slow.
And if you lose, it’s nothing , I’ll cover you.”
”You don’t want to win?” I asked, suspicious.
He crossed his legs, draped an arm along the back of my chair, and leaned in.
“I don’t want to win. I only want to win you.”
I gave up entirely and rolled my eyes.
“But I want to win.”
”Fine, fine.
Win, win.” He grinned, heartless.
“Are we playing or not?”
Across the table, Kael sat with a cigarette between his fingers, knuckles ticking against the tabletop, one beat and then another.
The men flanking him sensed the anger banked under it and started urging the game on.
“Jace, start already.”
”Whatever you two can’t stop whispering about can wait until the little beauty’s drunk.”
Only then did Jace, slow on the uptake, register the color of Kael’s face.
He clicked his tongue.
“He’s the one who wanted to play, and he’s the one sulking about it. Anyone would think I owed him money.”
I didn’t dare touch that.
I held my bottle in both hands and waited.
He waved at the waiter keeping time behind him.
“Begin. One second, one entry on the ledger. Winners split it. Slowest pays the forfeit and is out.”
The girls each took a bottle and tipped their heads back at the timekeeper’s signal.
I kept pace with the rest of them.
My tolerance was no problem , but this game was speed as much as quantity, and nobody wanted the bottom of the table. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
First to finish was Dana, the companion Kael had borrowed from another guest’s side.
Seventeen seconds for a whole bottle, and not one flicker crossed her face.
I came third.
The fruit wine went down sweet, but the alcohol behind it bit , I took thirty-two seconds and ended up coughing, hand pressed to my chest.
Jace patted my back, solicitous.
Behind him, his attendant pushed a stack of chips to the center of the table; with everyone else’s stakes, the first round alone had piled into a staggering sum.
Kael crushed out his cigarette, picked up a single chip, and turned it over in his fingers.
His gaze rested on my flushed cheeks, and the line between his brows drew in without his noticing.
The man at the bottom of the round had lost, but he wore an easy smile.
He knew perfectly well nobody was touching Dana’s numbers , the result of this whole game was already written.
Better to fold early, lose small, and enjoy the show.
He paid his chips and patted the small of his companion’s back.
“Cindy. Go take your forfeit.”
My eyes followed the girl called Cindy.
She was clearly used to rooms like this , no resistance at all, she rose and walked to the small stone platform set in the middle of the pool.
When I’d first come in, I’d wondered why a pool would have such a strange design.
So it was for this.
The music lurched into a different key, sultry and restless, and the lights overhead switched to drifting, ambiguous shades, washing the whole pool in something dreamlike.
Piece by piece, to a deliberately provocative dance, Cindy’s clothes came off, and whistles and cheers tangled into one roar that shoved the room past its peak.
Nearly every eye in the room was nailed to that platform.
Mine included , except one.
I could feel Kael watching me the whole time.
The look was layered, hard to read, and I’d thought I was hiding myself well, but some of the disgust and resistance must have shown anyway.
Aware of his gaze, I turned my head.
Across a table of bottles and chips, through the moving light, we held each other’s eyes in silence for a moment.
I held his gaze less than three seconds.
Then I took it back, reached for a pale-blue fruit wine, cracked the cap with a pop, and bowed my head to wait for the next round, quiet.
So that was my answer , I was staying in.
The performance ended.
The lights snapped back to a merciless white, and in that naked brightness Cindy’s face showed pale and drained.
Her knees buckled, and she dropped straight into the pool.
Jace flicked a finger at someone to fish her out, then beckoned the remaining players back to the table.
“Continue.”
He glanced sideways at me, head down and uneasy, and guessed correctly that this was my first time inside a scene like this.
A wicked little smile crossed his face.
“What’s this , you like what the girls are wearing?”
I shook my head fast.
“Just curious.
Women at your grandfather’s banquet should be people of standing.
Why are these girls dressed like,”
”They’re dancers.
Strippers.
Hired to keep us company.”
I gaped.
Jace took my shock entirely in stride.
“Baby. You’ve worked a tavern this long and no one’s ever brought you to one of these parties?”
I shook my head, honestly.
“Then I’m a little reluctant, you know.” He bit the inside of his cheek and went on before I could ask.
“Reluctant to let this room watch my baby take anything off.”
I seized the opening and dropped my voice to almost nothing.
“Jace, I’m not , I’m just an ordinary server at the Bloodthorn tavern. I’m not the kind of girl who gets brought out to games like this. Could I… leave first?”
He looked at me, half-smiling, turning his glass by the rim, in no hurry to answer.
“So you’re saying,” he drawled, “you don’t mind other people seeing , you only mind me?”
I had no answer to that.
He leaned to my ear.
“How about this. I’ll pay every man here to close his eyes for the rest of the game. On one condition. You stay, and you finish this round with me.”