by Kira Archer
Iris tried to nod but it probably just looked like she was having some sort of spasm. “Agreed,” she said.
“Let’s see if we can get a cab and find someplace warm to go.”
She gritted her teeth so she could smile without biting her tongue. “Best idea ever.”
They trudged back through the park, past the massive silver bean that still reflected the snow from its shiny surface, past the now empty ice skating rink, and finally to the road where they hailed a cab. This time Nash shoved the luggage in first and then bundled Iris into the backseat before sliding in after her. As soon as the door closed he pulled her into his arms again, and she settled against him with a sigh, basking in the heat blasting from the vents.
They stripped the soaking wet gloves from their hands. Nash took both pairs and shoved them in Clyde’s front zippered section. Iris’s fingers were still numb but it felt good to get the wet fabric off them.
The cab driver asked where they wanted to go.
“Someplace warm,” Nash said with a laugh. “Where do the locals go for fun?”
The driver looked them over, frozen and dressed in a strange mix of eclectic thrift store items, and Iris couldn’t help but wonder what was going through his head. His lips twitched, but he didn’t comment on their appearance.
“I think I know a place you might like. It’s not too far.”
“Great, thanks,” Nash said, settling back against the seat.
Iris purred with pleasure when he pulled her closer. “I hope wherever this place is, it’s indoors. Looks like you’re starting to thaw out. Your lips are finally a normal shade again,” she said, drawing one finger along his lower lip.
He looked down at her and the look in his eyes did more to warm her up than the cab’s heater.
“I know something that would warm me up even faster.” He leaned down and kissed her, firm but fleeting.
“Is that so?” Iris asked, wrapping her hands in his coat so she could pull him back to her. “We’d better try it again, then.”
Their lips met again, and this time she gave as good as she got, drawing him in, her arms wrapping around his neck as best she could without fully climbing in his lap. He deepened the kiss, and she moaned into his mouth, her head swimming. She could very happily spend the rest of the night kissing him. Her heart beat so hard breathing was torture, but she didn’t care. That distinctive, languid heat spread down to her lower body, building a delectable pressure there that caused a new wave of pleasure with every thrust of his tongue. Was it possible to orgasm just from kissing? She was about to find out.
The cab jolted to a stop, and Iris looked up in dismayed surprise.
“Here you are,” the driver said.
Nash and Iris glanced out the window. They were parked in front of a fairly ordinary-looking building.
“Hottest nightclub in town, at least judging by the number of people I bring here on the weekends. During the week, especially on a night like tonight, it might not be too packed. Then again, not much else to do on a night like this.” He chuckled.
Nash reached for his wallet, but Iris stopped him. “My turn again.”
He hesitated, and Iris wasn’t sure he’d agree. She hoped they weren’t going to have some fight over something so silly, but he nodded and climbed out of the cab. He didn’t look entirely thrilled, but he gained major points for letting her pay without an argument.
The cold air whipped through her, and she hurried over to the door while Nash retrieved Clyde and the Sloane Ranger.
The nondescript building didn’t look too promising, but at the very least it should be warm inside.
Nash opened the door for them and they hurried in. They were met by a blast of warm air, thumping music and strobe lights, and even a touch of a fog machine. Quintessential club experience in every way. And Iris loved it. Dancing was one of her absolute favorite things to do, and she didn’t have nearly enough opportunities to get her groove-thing on anymore.
“I don’t see any mechanical bulls, and the music definitely isn’t country, but it could be a blast,” she said, grinning at him.
Nash snorted. “I’m sure I’ll be able to make do. Though seriously, it’s your loss. I’ve been told I’m mighty fine to watch riding a bull.”
Iris’s stomach flipped at the image of him bucking around on a big old bronco.
“I bet,” she managed to say.
He gave her a slow, sexy grin and turned back to pay the cover (she couldn’t object since she’d just paid for the cab), and they began the rather laborious process of stripping off their thrift store treasures until they were back to their original layers of clothing. They stashed everything, along with Clyde and the Sloane Ranger, with the coat-check girl.
“Karaoke to the right, club to the left,” the girl said, so bored she didn’t even bother to look at them.
Iris glanced at Nash, then grabbed his hand and hauled him off to the right. She wanted to see if her cowboy could sing. To her surprise, he didn’t resist. The crowd on this side of the joint was even thinner than at the club. But there were enough people hootin’ and hollerin’ for a girl in hot-pink Lycra doing her best impression of a young Britney Spears.
Nash nodded to a table right in the middle. They sat, and he leaned over to talk in her ear. “You hungry?”
She wasn’t starving, but she could eat. Especially once she caught sight of what the people at the table were eating. “Want to get some hot wings?”
“I don’t know. I like them hot. Not sure you can handle it.”
Oh, he had no idea. “Bring it on.”
He laughed and signaled the waitress over. “An order of hot wings, please. As hot as you’ve got ’em.”
The waitress’s eyes widened a bit, but all she said was, “You got it.”
When she returned, she also put two large glasses of milk in front of them. “You’re going to need them,” she said.
“She’s obviously never been to Grandma Betty’s.”
“Your grandmother?”
“No,” he said with a laugh. “It’s this little hole-in-the-wall that’s part diner and part bar. The woman who runs it is this tough old woman named Lucy.”
“Then why is it called Grandma Betty’s?”
Nash blinked at her. “I have no idea.”
She laughed. “Okay then. So, she makes hot wings?”
“So hot they’ll burn your lips off. And I hold the record for eating them.”
“Impressive. How do these compare?” she asked, looking down at the basket in front of her.
Nash picked one up and sniffed it, pulled back a little, and then gingerly licked it. His eyes immediately watered, and his face flushed red. He put it down and took a sip of the milk. “Pretty close. Wow.” He blew out a breath and took another sip.
Oh, this could be fun. “How many was your record?”
“Six. Why?”
“Care to make a little wager?”
He leaned forward, his face alight with interest. “Such as?”
“I bet I can beat your record.”
Nash snorted. “I don’t think you’ll be able to get one down.”
Iris just smiled. No one ever thought she could do it. But hot was her thing. She’d been drinking bottles of salsa since she was a toddler, and not that mild stuff, either. Spicy was her flavor of choice.
“Then you take the bet?” she asked.
“How many wings?”
“The first person to get seven down wins.”
“Wins what?”
Iris squinted at him, thinking. She’d love to demand a few articles of clothing. But seeing as how they were in public and all, that probably wasn’t the best idea. Finally, something occurred to her.
“The winner gets to pick the first song the loser is going to sing.”
A huge smile spread across Nash’s face. “You’re on, Cookie.”
…
Nash signaled the waitress back over. As they each had six wings, they were in need
of two more. Something that perplexed the waitress until Nash explained what the extra two wings were for.
She brought the extra wings over. “The record is six. If one of you can eat seven, you break the record and get your picture on the wall. And win a hundred dollars cash.”
“Ooh, that’s a deal,” Iris said.
Nash picked up his first wing, watching as Iris did the same. The sauce coated his fingers and left his skin tingling. For a second, he doubted he could win. Sauce that affected your skin was a tad hotter than he was used to. He looked across to Iris, who seemed to be having the same problem, but she showed no sign of giving in. And when their eyes met, they both smiled, held up their wings, and got to chowing down.
The first bite was torture. His mouth burned like he was sucking down the flames of hell. He didn’t stop, though. He had a strategy. Don’t pause. Chew only long enough to keep from choking. Gulp of milk in between.
He sucked the chicken off one bone and dropped it to his plate, gulping the milk while picking up the second wing. The cool liquid barely registered. The sauce that was smeared all around his mouth tingled. He hoped it wouldn’t leave actual burns. He’d attempted to eat some wings doused with ghost pepper sauce once. He’d ended up with chemical burns on his face for a week afterward. But the wings he was currently downing weren’t that hot. Close, but not quite. He got the second one down and went for his third. Iris was already dropping bones on the plate and reaching for her fourth. How the hell was she doing that? Was her mouth made of Teflon or something?
They’d started to collect a crowd, each of them gathering their own little cheering section. Iris finished her fourth and went for the fifth. Nash was only a few seconds behind her. By the time he started on the sixth, tears were mingling with the sweat running down his face, and his mouth burned so badly he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to use the thing again. But he was one wing away from winning. There was no stopping now.
Unfortunately, Iris seemed to have the same idea. She grabbed her seventh wing a second ahead of Nash, stripped it, chewed twice and swallowed, dropping the bones moments before him. She raised what must have been burning hands, if they were anything like his, and stood up just long enough to take a bow, accept a conciliatory nod from Nash, and then she dropped back down and guzzled the refilled milk like there was no tomorrow. Nash tried to play it macho, but gave up and started gulping, his body relaxing slightly at the relief the cool liquid brought.
He wiped every ounce of the sauce he could find off his hands and face with a pile of moist towelettes, and finally sat back and took a deep breath that still burned on the inhale.
“Very impressive,” Nash said, raising his glass of milk to her.
“Not so bad yourself.” She took a bite of the soft, warm bread the waitress had brought (that woman was so getting a huge tip) and cradled her ice cold glass of milk in her hands, taking a sip every so often.
“I’m pretty sure I just got hustled,” Nash said, pinning her with an accusatory glare.
Iris shrugged. “Don’t blame me if you assumed that little ol’ me couldn’t keep up with the big boys.”
“My apologies. You are indeed not only capable of keeping up with us, but eating us under the table. My hat is off to you, ma’am,” he said.
That phrase took on a whole new meaning since he was actually able to tip a literal hat to her. Her cheeks flushed a gorgeous red. God, she was cute when she did that.
“Okay, so what’s your secret?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Not to get all chauvinistic on you, but how did an itty bitty thing like you just out-hot-wing a burly old cowboy like me? One taste of that sauce should have had you running for the first pile of snow you could stick your face into.”
She laughed. “That’s actually not a bad idea. I feel like I tried to swallow a live piece of charcoal. But to answer your question with a phrase you might understand, this isn’t my first rodeo.”
“Do this type of thing often, do you?”
“The whole karaoke bar? Yes. Removing a few layers from my mouth, no. I am partial to spicy. My grandmother makes a salsa that would knock your socks off. I think they used to put it in my bottles when I was little, and I’m only half kidding. I grew up on stuff that most people would run screaming from. I’ll admit, though, that those wings we just ate were pushing it, even for me.”
“Well that soothes my ego a little bit.”
Her laugh brought a smile to his lips. “You kept up pretty well,” she said. “Grandma Betty must have fried some of the pain receptors in your mouth.”
He chuckled. “Just about, though whatever the hell we just ate are a whole lot worse than anything that ever came out of Betty’s.”
“You go there often?”
He nodded. “It’s a regular diner up until nine o’clock at night. My dad used to take me down there at least once a week for dinner. Whenever Mom had had enough of us and needed a break.”
She took another sip of her milk. “How many of you are there?”
“Just my brother and me. But that was more than enough, my mom used to say.”
“Ah. I was just picturing a whole parcel of handsome cowboys running rampant out on the ranch, getting into trouble and making your poor sainted mother pull her hair out.”
He barked a laugh. “More accurate than you’d think. There was just my brother and me at home, but we always had friends over or the kids of the ranch hands. There were always packs of us kids roaming around and getting into trouble.”
“I bet your mom was relieved to get some alone time then,” she said.
“Yes and no. I think she enjoyed a little quiet time every now and then, but she always said she was happiest when she had everyone around her.”
“She must miss your brother.”
“Yeah. We all do. It’s weird not having him around, even after several years of him being gone. My parents, though, they had this dream of us both building our own houses on the property and living near one another, running the ranch.”
“Is that what you want?”
“I didn’t think so growing up,” he said, shaking his head at the somewhat belligerent kid he was back then. “And then when I was eighteen and graduating high school, I thought it was cool just because I was the only one of my friends who had my own place.”
“You had your own house at eighteen?”
He nodded. “I was going to the local college and still helping out on the ranch. I’d gotten good enough grades to get scholarships. So my dad said that since I was finally a man and living up to my responsibilities, it was only right I had my own place. We built a little house on the property, not too near, but near enough my mom didn’t feel like she was losing her baby. I didn’t really plan on staying there, though. I mean what eighteen-year-old kid plans to live that close to his parents his whole life?”
“True. When I was eighteen I couldn’t wait to get out of the house. Couldn’t quite make myself go too far, though. I lived in the dorms at school, but the campus was only ten miles from my parents’ place. I’ve moved three times since graduating. Each time I think I’m going to finally cut the cord and move far away.”
“And how has that worked out for you?”
“I’m currently living in a condo two blocks from their house.”
Nash snorted the milk he’d been drinking and grabbed a napkin in case any of the stuff currently burning his sinus passages decided to make an escape through his nose. She tossed a piece of bread at his head.
“Like you can talk. You’re still living in that house you and your dad built, aren’t you?”
He cleared his throat and grinned. “Just added a new bedroom and expanded the master suite and kitchen.”
“See?” she said, though her eyes twinkled with amusement. She brushed residual crumbs off her fingers, her amusement tinged with a mischievousness that did not bode well for him. “All right, cowboy, I think it’s time you paid your debt for losing.
You ready to sing?”
“Ah…no?”
She laughed and stood up. “Well, too bad. Get ready, because you’re up next,” she said, nodding to the stage. “I’ll just go let Mr. Karaoke over there know what you’re singing.”
Nash took a deep breath, adjusted his hat, and marched his loser ass up to the stage. He had no idea what was in store for him, and he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to like it. But, a bet was a bet.
The smile on Iris’s face as she returned to their table only confirmed his fears. When the first notes of Katy Perry’s “Roar” started playing, his mouth dropped. “Oh, you have got to be kidding.”
Iris clapped and hooted. “Come on, baby, sing it!”
Nash squared his shoulders. Challenge accepted. He was going to sing the shit out of this song.
He pranced, he sashayed, he shook his ass, and by the time he was on the last chorus, every person in the place was on their feet roaring for him. When the last line, “because I am the champion,” came up, he stopped, pointed straight to Iris, and sang “because YOU are the champion, so you’re going to hear me roar!”
She jumped up and down, clapping and laughing so hard she had to wipe away tears. The last notes died away, and Nash laughed along with her, bowing to the crowd before hopping off the stage.
He walked toward her with his hands held out. “Did I perform to your satisfaction?”
“Oh my God,” she said, laughing so hard she wheezed. “That was freaking awesome. You’ve been holding out on me. That was definitely not your first time on the stage.”
He snorted. “Honey, if you’ve never seen a bunch of drunk ranch hands belting out some “Sweet Home Alabama,” you just haven’t lived yet. My crew gets together all the time for a few beers and a good sing-along.”
She laughed. “Well get back up there then. Let’s see how you do with a song a little more suited to your”—she looked him up and down—“skill set.”
He shook his head. “Ladies first.”
“Did that last performance take too much out of you? Are you shy, all of a sudden?” She patted his hand. “That’s okay, Hazel. I’ll go warm up the stage for you.”
