by CD Reiss
She yanks one handle of her hobo bag over her shoulder and opens it, digging for her keys as we walk through the bar. She spends half her waking hours with her arm buried to the elbow. She stops in front of me in the middle of the half-empty, post-dinner-seating bar area to rummage for her keys. There’s a football game on the TV, cheers and groans in the air, laughter and clinked bottles. Our team must be winning.
I know exactly where my keys are, but I wait with her, watching the TV as the next play is set up.
In the tense silence, a voice breaks through, and I’d know it even without the British accent. I scan for Keaton and find him when the guy in front of me leans over to talk to the woman next to him. The British businessman/tech giant/hacker sits at the corner of the bar, ordering a drink.
Keaton looks calm, almost serene, more the threatening villain than I ever thought possible.
“Got them!” Frieda exclaims to a jingle of keys.
The play completes. The crowd cheers. Keaton’s drink arrives.
She pulls me forward. “Let’s go.”
The man next to Keaton gets up, and our eyes meet. Keaton looks right at me, picking up his glass and tipping it in my direction. I’m frozen still, shot through with hot steel.
I can’t turn away. He’s half in shadow, one foot on the floor and the other tensed against the rail of the stool, holding me still with his gaze where most men would have bored me already.
Frieda snaps her fingers in front of my face. “What are you looking at?”
She follows my stare to him just as he puts his drink on the bar as if he’s not relieving his hand of weight but making a statement about who he is and what he intends. Everything about him is calculated and deliberate.
“Let’s go,” I say.
I don’t want Frieda to see him. She won’t approve, and I’m just not in the mood for it. She’ll ask me to make sense of the way I feel around him, and I know I don’t have an answer for it.
What do I want out of Keaton? He’d refused to get me into Third Psyche four months ago, and he won’t do it now. He’s not going to do anything but make me feel unsure and vulnerable. He’s going to set off alarm bells and a war between heart and head.
Nobody. No one needs to be all liquid under their skirt. No one needs to feel their heart pound or feel the air press up against them.
A guy in full team regalia tries to sit in the empty stool but makes the mistake of looking at Keaton first. I can’t see what passes between them, but the guy, who has tattoos up his arms and a goatee, holds up his hands as if he’s sorry for causing offense.
Keaton puts his fingers together and points all four at the seat as if to say, Are you sitting or not?
“Are you coming on or not?” Frieda shouts over the growing din before the next play.
Who needs to feel as though they’re being devoured by a man’s seven o’clock eyes, a four-course meal for a hungry jaguar. Who needs to be touched by a man shrouded in mystery? To fall into the music of his voice?
I am a federal agent. I have a law degree. I worked my ass off to get this far and I’m not jeopardizing it with an untrustworthy businessman.
Do you want to go to CID or not?
If I want to get this done, I’m going to have to stretch my values thin.
Frieda’s looking at me as if I have lipstick on my teeth. “Is this Mister Smirkypants?” She jerks her head in Keaton’s direction. Her voice is flirtatious, as if she’s trying to pack a hundred syllables worth of yowza into one word.
“How did you guess?”
She draws the same circle in the air as she did over the dinner table. My face gives me away apparently. Somehow, that’s enough for me to know I’ve already made a decision.
“I’ll see you later,” I say.
“You going to be all right?” Yowza off. Concerned friend on.
“Yeah.”
“Call me.” She holds up her fist, and we bump.
“I will, my sister-in-the-law.”
She hugs me and heads for the exit.
Taking a long, deep breath, I stride over to Keaton. That happened so fast, I have to take my steps slowly before standing by the barstool he’s saved for me.
His eyes take a quick, almost imperceptible tour of my body. I’m in sensible work clothes and naked at the same time.
I’m wary. He senses it.
I’m turned on. I’m sure he senses that too.
“Fancy meeting you here,” I say.
“I stay in the club when I’m in town. The suites are quite nice.”
Is that an invitation? Am I supposed to answer that with a yes or no?
He doesn’t wait for my response. “You’d better sit before I have to kill a man to save it for you.”
“I want to be clear,” I say. “And honest.”
“I expect no less.”
“I’m not sleeping with you.”
“Indeed.”
He indicates the stool again, and this time I slide onto it. For the first time, I wonder how this will look. The patrons seem like regular folk from Barrington and Doverton. The Doverton customers have the smack of wealth. I could separate them out if I had to, but I don’t. I’m not interested in who’s from where. I’m concerned with being seen. I don’t see anyone from the bureau in the bar, but you never can tell.
“Are you looking for a boyfriend who might see you with me?” Keaton asks.
“No.”
“Then who?”
I don’t answer. He knows damn well.
“What are you drinking?” he asks.
“What are you drinking?” I touch his half-empty glass with its pale fizzy liquid and mint leaf.
“Bitters and ginger beer.”
I think that’s non-alcoholic. I don’t want to drink around him. I already had a glass of wine, and that’s my limit if I want to keep my wits about me.
“I’ll have one of those,” I say, hoping I’m right.
He orders it with a tilt of his chin and a flick of his fingers. The bar is packed but the bartender gets right on it.
“Wow,” I say. “I would’ve had to wave a twenty at her for half an hour.”
He shrugs as if he doesn’t know the reason for his superpowers. I’ve noticed no one with them knows where they come from.
“How have you been?” he asks.
“Fine.”
“Did you ever get where you wanted to go?”
“No,” I say with regret and a little shame. I tried and failed the forums while Ken and I followed other leads.
“Do you like puzzles?” he asks.
“Actually, yes.”
He leans forward, elbows on the bar, closer to me than I expect but not as close as my body wants.
“To your left,” he says, pointing at the couple next to us. His limbs are so long he could wrap himself around me. If I turn, my nose will brush his neck, and that’s exactly what I want/don’t want.
I look at the couple. He’s young, with a short haircut and a clean-shaven face. She’s got long curly brown hair, a skinny-strapped, over-the-shoulder bag, and a giggle. She likes him, and he’s trying to impress her with a bar game. He’s set up drinking straws in a tic-tac-toe pattern, and he shakes a little stack of coins in his closed fist.
The crowd groans at something on the screen, but these two don’t care. He hands her the coins.
“Six coins,” Keaton says. “Place them so that they don’t make a line of three.”
She places the first one in the middle.
“She’s already lost,” I say.
“Really? You know this one?”
“Four sides and two corners. You don’t have to know the game to win.”
“But you do.”
“I know them all.”
He leans back. The bar has settled into a murmur. It’s the halftime show, and no one cares about dancing girls.
My drink arrives. He gets a refill without asking.
“Let’s make a bet,” he says.
“I don’t make bets I can’t win.”
“If you show me a pub game I don’t know, I’ll answer any question truthfully. If I show you one, you’ll do the same.”
“I can’t give you any classified information. Anything I know from the bureau.”
“Personal information only.”
Is his connection to Alpha Wolf personal? Can I ask, and will he answer?
Is that the question I want answered?
I want more, somehow. I know he’s Alpha Wolf, but I can’t prove it. A verbal confirmation is meaningless. I want to know about him, who he is, what he does, what he likes. I want to know things about his past that I can’t find in a dossier, and things about his future outside the newspapers.
“Deal,” I say.
“Let’s make it even more interesting.”
Spoken like a true gambler. Interesting means riskier.
“How?”
“We’ll each mention a pub game and answer a short question if the other knows it.”
“Fine. But that’s as interesting as I’m getting tonight.”
He nods. Reaches for bar straws. “Front-facing dog.”
I stay his hand, then pull it away. “No need to demonstrate. Pivot the nose so he’s looking back.”
“Yes. Your question?”
“Are you single?” It shoots out of my mouth before I even filter it. “Still not sleeping with you,” I add when he looks at me. His eyes don’t wander away from mine, but I feel naked again. “Just asking.”
“I am single. And I promise, you won’t do much sleeping.”
My cheeks tingle. I’m glad it’s dark because my face must be beet red. I rush to the next game. “Dime in a shot glass. Remove it without touching it.”
“Blow on it. Hard.” When he takes a drink, he moves the straw to the side and sips from the edge of the glass. He puts it down before his question. “Are you single?”
“Yes.” My face tingles. I don’t know if he can see it in the dim light of the bar.
He reaches behind the bar for two brandy snifters. The bartender shoots him a look but lets him get away with it. Being seen, caught, and walking away is its own superpower.
He drops an olive on the bar and covers it with one of the snifters, leaving the other face up. “Move the olive—”
“Please.” I hold up my hand. “Allow me.”
I rotate the down-facing snifter against the bar until centrifugal force pulls the olive into the deep part of the glass. I pick it up and drop the olive into the upturned one.
“Very nice,” he says.
Without the football game on, my trick has gotten us some attention. The couple with the tic-tac-toe quarters is leaning forward with the guy explaining the trick to the shoulder-bag girl.
I hold out the snifter with the olive in it. “Want it?”
“No, thank you.”
“Are you Alpha Wolf?”
“Want it? is a question.” He smirks. “But I’ll change the answer.” He plucks the olive out of the glass and pops it in his mouth.
“Fine.” I put down the glass. “Let’s make this more interesting.” The tilt of his head is a show of respect, and I let it warm me. “Let’s play a lying game.”
“As opposed to this dance we’re doing now?”
“If you don’t know the next trick, you lie to me for as long as it takes the trick to complete. If you know it, I’ll lie to you.”
“You’re on.”
I get the bartender’s attention. “Can I have a shot of whiskey and a shot of water? Fill both to the rim. And if you have a playing card?”
“Yep.” She pours out the whiskey.
“Do you know this one?” I ask him. I haven’t done this trick in years. I almost hope he knows it.
“Nope. Spent a lot of time at the pub, have you?” Keaton asks.
“My mother taught me.”
I swallow the rest of the story. How she practiced on me. How she told me her cons, testing the tricks to see if they were easy enough for a child to figure out.
The bartender places the two shot glasses and a joker card on the bar.
“I’m going to move…” In the middle of the sentence, I stop, because I’m not invisible. A dozen sets of eyes are on me, not the least of which are as blue as the deep side of twilight. “I can switch the whiskey and the water without dumping either glass out.”
He stares at the glasses and the playing card. Glances at me as if the instructions might be written on my face, then turns back to the tools of the trick. “You’d better start the trick.”
“And you’d better start lying.”
Placing the card over the water-filled shot glass, I turn it upside down and place it over the whiskey so that the rims would touch if the card wasn’t there. It stays. Everyone in the bar gasps, and Keaton leans forward so only I can hear him.
“My lies are facts.” His shoulder is an inch from my lips. I smell the tweed and the remnants of the morning’s aftershave. “I’m a black hat hacker trying to establish an honest career.”
Turning away just enough to finish the trick, I tap the card. Nothing. Tap harder. It shifts.
What does he mean by his lies being facts? I keep tapping while Keaton keeps talking.
“I have a long list of criminal activity I’ve covered up. I have no morals. No ruler except money.”
The tapping moves the card enough to open a space between the glasses. The bartender gasps, but there’s no need. Because both glasses are full, they create a vacuum and there’s no spill.
Keaton continues. “I’m a cold, empty person and I don’t want you.” I hold my breath, watching the whiskey swirl upward like a marble cake. “I don’t wonder what you taste like behind your knees, inside your thighs, or where your cunt is soft and wet.”
“Keaton.”
“That’s my name.”
I turn my head slightly, and he’s turned his. Our noses are so close, I feel his breath on my lip.
“This isn’t what I had in mind,” I say.
“I haven’t thought about holding your arms behind your back while I fuck you from behind. Taking you by the hair and pulling your head back until I see you breathless when you come.”
I sit back with my hands clutching the seat. My face is frozen in a rictus of shock, but my body’s melted into a puddle of desire.
He smirks. Without taking his gaze off me or moving away, he says, “I think your trick is complete.”
“You knew it,” I say without even looking at the glasses. The lying is over. The football game has started again. I can see the green mass around the line of scrimmage in the mirror behind Keaton.
He shrugs. “There are some lies that need telling.”
The spell is broken, but the damage is done. I cross my legs, but I’m engorged and it sends a shot of pleasure through me.
Snap out of it.
Holding the card in place, I flip the whiskey, losing only a few drops.
“Now you know.” I push the whiskey toward him. “I’m driving.”
He picks it up and drops the liquid in one of the brandy snifters he took for the olive game, swishing it around. “What do you want, Cassandra? No games. What do you want?”
I want a reason to touch you.
“I want a lot of things.”
“What do you want badly enough to invite me into your car?”
One glass of wine isn’t enough to affect my judgment. I sip my drink, thinking of what I want and how much of it I can tell him. “I want to get reassigned out of Doverton. I want to say I’m Special Agent Grinstead with CID. But I’m not part of the old-boy network. I don’t get invited out. I don’t get mentored. I’m not good at cozying up to my boss. So I need to do something big enough that someone notices. Something they can’t ignore.”
“And getting into Third Psyche will do that?”
“Yes.” I’m so sure of it that there’s not an ounce of doubt in my voice.
He drinks the whiskey in a gulp. “I think
you’re beautiful and sexy. But mostly, you are fascinating.”
“That was a cute trick you just did.” I put a ten on the bar for the whiskey. “But I’m not available for you, and I’m not fishing for compliments.”
He pushes the ten back toward me. “I have a tab.”
“Leave it for a tip then.” I slide off the stool and shoulder my bag. “It’s been nice hearing your lies. Bring your A-game next time.”
He helps me get my jacket on. It’s silly to think so hard about how he does it, but I have time, because his motions are efficient and languid. The sleeves are placed perfectly. The satin lining is cool against my skin, and when the coat drops on my shoulders, I feel the weight folding around me as a comfort.
Which is a completely pointless thought process, but I can’t help it. Being around him is like stepping into a world where every part of my body is sending data to my brain.
As I tie the belt around me, he grips my shoulders from behind. My hair flicks against my ear when he speaks. “Come upstairs with me. Like I said, we won’t be sleeping together. You don’t have enough fingers to count all the times you’d come.”
I’m red. For the record, my cheeks don’t tingle. I don’t get flushed. I started perfecting my poker face in third grade. Sure, the unexpected sex talk is enough to make any girl tingle, and he delivers it with a matter-of-factness in his English accent that only accentuates how damn sexy it is.
“I can’t.”
I finish tying my belt, and his hands slide down my arms. When he’s no longer touching me, I feel my attention turn back to the room, the sound of the game, the placement of my body as it relates to the world, not to him.
“I’ll walk you out,” he says when my silence is long enough to tell him how far off course he’s thrown me.
“No.” I’m too curt. I blink hard. Soften. Impulsively, I take his hand and squeeze it. “Just let me go. I had a really nice time.”
He brushes his thumb along the top of my hand, and it feels so good, he might as well be drawing his tongue along the seam between my thighs. My cheeks tingle all over again.
“Me too,” he says, bowing slightly. He lowers his head further and brings his lips to my hand, kissing it.
He’s chaste and respectful, but those lips on my skin will be the end of me. Every nerve in my body goes dead so my brain can process the softness of their touch and the firmness of their intent.
