by Kenya Wright
With a confused expression, Dawn arrived at our table. “Hello, guys. I’m so sorry I’m late.”
I stood too, in order to not make it seem weird that Max was up. “Don’t worry. We were willing to wait as long as possible. Right, Max?”
Max scowled at me and didn’t say anything. Tension thickened in the air.
The hostess cleared her throat. “Can I get you anything before I notify your server that the whole party is here?”
“I don’t’ know.” Max tapped his watch’s surface. “What do you think, Freddy? Will I be staying?”
I directed my attention to Dawn and probably shouldn’t have. Just being close to her muddled my thoughts. Her skin glowed in the dim lightening. A sensual fragrance radiated from her—some sinful mixture of sex and many other things that I planned to discover. I wanted that scent on my sheets and pillowcases, all over my couch cushions and carpet. Knowing that I’d taken her from my brother would be the lovely icing on a designer seven-layered cake.
“Fine.” I nodded at Max. “You’re on.”
Sitting down in her seat, Dawn quirked her eyebrows, making me wish we’d finished this conversation before she got to us. The woman was too smart. We both had to be on our toes around her.
Max still hadn’t sat down. “Two hundred thousand?”
I cringed. “Yes.”
“Then let the games begin.” He winked and sat back down.
Chapter 3
Max
I had trapped Freddy into the deal with the lure of a sexy woman and the excitement of our sport.
I knew my brother better than he knew himself. He worried about my gambling problem, but never considered his own addiction. He loved females too much, and got them way too easily, so easy, it bored him. There was never any competition unless I was around. That’s when things changed for Freddy, and became uncertain.
He had insecurities. I could write a book on them.
Like most guys with our heavy wallets, we never knew if we caught women based on our wits, style, and looks or simply because of our ability to pay the bills. For rich men who owned it all, it was the little things that made us hungry. One of the biggest things a millionaire asked in his head as a sexy beauty wrapped her mouth around his erection was if she did it because she craved him, or was she doing it for the money. I never had to ask that question. The answer never changed. All women did it for the money. But the millionaire couldn’t swallow that honesty down, so he pretended it was about him as he closed his eyes and enjoyed himself.
I’m not that gullible.
I was good-looking, sure, but when a female spotted me, she saw what I could provide. I didn’t mind that. It just didn’t keep me exhilarated in going after them, so I discovered pleasures in other places.
When I win, I’ll just use half of it on a good poker game. The rest I’ll save up so Freddy won’t get his panties in a bunch, run back, and tell our parents that I have some sort of gambling problem.
And I would win Dawn. By this time, I recognized Freddy’s methods and finally figured out a way to counter them. He wrangled women with deception. This time I would trap Dawn with the truth.
“What do you mean let the games begin?” Dawn formed her lips into a smile. “What are we playing at tonight?”
“Nothing. There’s no game.” Freddy lifted his menu. “You’ve picked an excellent restaurant, Dawn. Are you a foodie?”
She didn’t glance his way and seared me with her gaze. “What do you mean let the games begin?”
Damn you. I like you more and more. You’re smart and assertive.
I lifted my wine glass and gently twirled the amber rose liquid around the rim, making sure it never spilled, but simply shaded the glass with color. “I don’t know if I should tell you about my brother’s and my game. It may be unfair for one of us.”
“Hmmm.” Her smile never wavered or left. “Does your game involve me?”
“No.” Freddy was a bundle of nerves across from me. I could’ve wagered a million that sweat would appear if the conversation continued on its present path.
Again, she didn’t turn to him. “Does your game involve me?”
“Yes.” I held her gaze.
“Interesting.” She sipped from her glass of white wine. “Am I the prize or the means to get it?”
That question rattled me. I tip toed further into this verbal word play, making sure I formed each sentence well enough to not get trapped by her. “You’re sort of both.”
“Both?” Her smile widened. “I would love to hear more about this.”
I didn’t check Freddy’s face. I could already sense the angry glares coming from his way. If I could die from just a look, I would’ve been dead right there.
You never said we couldn’t tell the women, dear brother. Let’s see if you can win her if she knows the truth. Let’s put us both on equal footing this time.
“So should we order first or are you going to tell me all about this game that I’m soon to be a part of?” She opened up her menu and browsed over the entrees.
“How much do you want to know?” I smirked.
“As much as possible, without messing up either of your teams. There are teams right?” She glanced up over the top of her menu.
“Well, just us three are involved, but yeah. It’s sort of team Freddy and team Max.”
She returned her attention back to the menu. “Are there team jerseys?”
I laughed. “No.”
“Cheerleaders?” She winked. “Maybe even mascots?”
I risked a glance at Freddy. He was now chugging his wine down.
Oh yeah. I knocked him off his game for sure.
“No one else, but us three,” I assured her.
Freddy cleared his throat. “Let’s talk about this restaurant. You have divine taste, Dawn. I mean you—”
“Nope. I want to talk about the game.” She closed the menu. “Plus, I know what entrée I’m going to order. Have you two picked?”
“You already know what you’re ordering?” He raised his brown eyebrows. “But you’ve just sat down.”
“I’ve been dreaming of eating at this place since I moved down here. They have three signature dishes. I’m choosing my most favorite.”
“Why not choose all three?”
“Because I’m only one person.”
“No. Order all three for the table,” I interrupted. “Then we can do it family style and sample from them all.”
“Is that what you’re used to, sharing?” She centered those endearing eyes on me. Earlier on the beach, she claimed they were just gray. I knew color. They didn’t own just one, they held on to them all. Even as I stared into her pupils, the irises changed, swirling into a light shade of blue and then darkening to green. I bet they broadcasted her emotions like two mood rings, altering with each spurt of happiness or rage.
What color will they be when I thrust inside of you?
“Are you going to answer my question or just stare?” she asked.
“We don’t share women. We just compete for their attention,” I said.
“Maybe compete is too strong of a word.” Freddy finished his whole glass.
“It’s not too strong of a word, if you both consider getting women, a game,” she countered. “Do you? Are women a game to you, Freddy?”
The way his name curled off her tongue made me envious. I wasn’t too big of a man to admit it. In an effort to get the spotlight back on me, I said, “What we do is pick a woman that we both find attractive and see who can get her to fall in love with us first.”
“I’m going to need another glass of wine,” Freddy muttered as he placed his empty one down. I chuckled to myself. What would he do now? He had to be himself, that very fact would shove him over the edge. I wasn’t sure if Freddy even knew who he was.
You might as well just give me the two hundred thousand dollars now and save us both some time.
“Okay, so one of you get the poor woman to fall in love?” She tw
isted her lips to the side. “How do you even define the win? How do you know she’s in love with you or your brother?”
“By the person she decides to have sex with.”
She laughed. It came out bubbly and rose high over the table. She must’ve realized it because she covered her mouth with both of her hands, but still the giggles escaped. “I’m so sorry, but I just think that’s not a good way to test out if a woman loves either one of you or not. Sex just says who she’d rather sleep with. And still that’s not a good measure. Whoever she messes around with first, just says that one of you didn’t put your foot in your mouth on that given moment when she was hot and ready.”
I had nothing else to say.
“Wait a minute, I don’t think you understand what my brother is trying to say.” Freddy waved his hand. “We court these women together and after a while, she picks one of us.”
“Just to sleep with, but how do you know it’s not for another reason?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he argued. “She’s picked and that’s enough.”
“It obviously matters if you both keep doing this a lot.” She glanced at me. “And you two do this a lot don’t you?”
“We do it enough,” I replied.
“What are you two really trying to discover?” She rested her elbows on the table and peered at us like a teacher wondering about two naughty pupils. “This game means a lot to you both, since you do it all the time—”
“No one said all the time,” Freddy interrupted.
“I bet you do this as much as you can,” she guessed. “What else do you have to do? You don’t work. Are women the means behind telling you your worth or just a source of entertainment in your restless world?”
Damn.
Unease plopped down to my gut. Now it was my turn to chug my wine.
“Go ahead and answer that question, Max,” Freddy said, “since you’re the wise guy that decided to let it all spill. Why do we do this?”
I tapped my foot in a crazy staccato rhythm that made the table shake. “It’s fun.”
“Do you break any of their hearts?” She leaned her head to the side. “How far does this game of yours go?”
Freddy tilted her way with a neutral expression masking his real emotions. “You’re pretty smart, Dawn. What do you think?”
“I think that some of the girls you hustle with love are probably gold diggers anyway and may be used to rich guys and their twisted mental hobbies. However, I bet there are a bunch of women in this world that you two hurt pretty bad. How do you feel realizing that you may have broken some hearts with your. . .fun?”
Both, Freddy and I stayed quiet, probably waiting for the other to respond.
Maybe this wasn’t a good tactic after all.
“Nothing to say?” She turned from me to him.
We both remained quiet.
“Oh well. No need to answer that. I think I can guess that you’ve hurt a whole lot of women and couldn’t care less.” She rubbed her hands together. “So I’m your game for tonight?”
“No, Dawn.” Hunger laced Freddy’s voice. It was the subtle change in his tone that happened right before he decided to take a woman to his bed. “You’re the game for this summer.”
Her expression didn’t break, never faltered or changed. She leaned in closer to him and licked her lips. I could’ve sworn I heard Freddy growl or maybe I’d done it myself. Her confidence did something to me, it lassoed my senses in, made me want to touch my dick and do nasty things.
“If you think you can last the whole summer with me involved in your little game, then you’re not as smart as I thought. Are you Freddy?” She moved in closer. Her breasts hovered beautifully over the table. Her face was half a foot from his.
Freddy gripped the table so hard; I could see the whites forming around his fingertips. “You like saying my nickname don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Get used to it, you’ll be moaning it soon.”
“Hmm. You’ll have to earn a moan from me, sweet Freddy. You’re not the first rich guy I’ve met and you won’t be the last.” She sat back in her seat. “I’ve been one of the women that you’ve hurt. I’ve been right in their shoes years ago. I can tell you right now that if you can get me in your bed, then you’ve truly won.”
“You think that’s a big if?” Freddy asked.
“Yes. The biggest problem with the two of you is that you both represent everything that disgusts me.”
The waiter arrived. No one looked up at him, so he silently backed up and walked away.
“Explain,” Freddy said.
“I hate guys with money. Let’s face it, males tend to be born assholes all on their own, but to give them a fat bank account is to add to their idiocy.”
“You hate men?” I asked her.
“That’s just one of my many redeeming qualities.”
We ended up courting a man-hater. Awesome.
“What are the other things that you hate about us?” Freddy asked.
She held her index finger up. “You both are over confidant, emotionally abusive—”
“Not fair,” Freddy interjected. “I’ve never emotionally abused anyone.”
“You admitted yourself that you broke women’s hearts.” She pointed at him.
“I still disagree.”
“Fine. I have plenty other reasons why you suck.” She grinned. “Your egos could fill the Atlantic Ocean.”
“You’ve already said that when you stated we were over confidant,” Freddy argued.
“Nope.” She shook her head. “One can argue that over-confidence and big egos can be different in many ways.”
“Then that person would be wrong.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “How about this then? You think you’re so clever and enticing, but really you’re just a pathetic good-looking guy with mommy and daddy’s money to keep your head above water, and if you ever were to lose that bank account, you would lose in everything else—friends, women, life, love, anything your black heart cares about. You would—”
“Tell me something, Dawn.” Freddy licked his lips.
This bastard is still on the hunt. Has he lost his mind? There’s no way she’ll fall for either one of us now.
“What?” She glared.
“How long have you been waiting to tear into a guy’s behind like you’re doing right now? A year or two?”
“Three years.”
“So some rich guy broke you three years ago.”
She reached for her glass with shaking fingers. “He didn’t break me.”
“I bet he did and how could he not?” Freddy’s gaze decorated every inch of her body. She looked my way. All I could do was shrug and watch the scene unfold. I had no idea where my brother was going with this, but I damn sure was interested in the ending.
“You say I’m over confidant,” he said. “That’s your fault too. You think you’re smarter than my brother and me.”
I raised my hands in surrender. “Hey, leave me out of this.”
“No way, Max. You’re in it. You decided to tell her the truth, let’s see where this takes us.” Freddy concentrated all of his attention onto her. “You want to get back at the guy that broke your heart?”
“I already did by moving on.” She sipped her wine, but this time she drank more than before and her hands didn’t stop shaking.
“Has the guy that broke you moved on?” Freddy asked.
“I don’t know. Probably. Why wouldn’t he?”
“Does he still call?”
She set her glass down. “Of course.”
“Of course?” I chuckled. “Freddy’s right. You are over confidant.”
“No. I’m just smart. I actually loved the man, the real person inside of him and when I gave him all of me, I did it because of who he was, not what he owned. He’ll probably never find that again, not the way I was willing to sacrifice.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “So yes, he still calls, but I don’t answer. Althou
gh he’ll never find anyone like me, there’s a bunch of guys like him walking the earth. I’m staring at two of them right now.”
Freddy nodded. “Then will you play with us?”
I tapped my thumb against my watch. “Dawn, you must admit that your knowing about our game and disliking us, sort of raises the interest in our stakes. If one of us wins, it would make the impossible possible.”
“Which will temporarily help one of your insecurities?” She crossed her legs under the table. I knew because, since she’d been sitting next to me, I’d had my body slanted to the side enough to ogle those thighs.
“Yes or no, Dawn?” Freddy asked. “There’s really no reason not to play. Unlike the other women, you know the score. The hard work will be for us to woo you.”
“Which means one of you having sex with me?”
“Oh definitely. Sex with you is the only way I’ll play,” Freddy said.
“I second that,” I added.
“I don’t know,” she said. “This seems like a loser’s wager. Especially since I think you both suck.”
“Hey, it puts the odds against us.” Anticipation surged through my blood stream. Suddenly, I was right there at a card table pushing a large pile of money to the center, ready to bet it all. “This is certainly my kind of game. Come on. Worst case scenario is you have two men spoiling you with lavish dates for several days. That can’t be a bad thing. What else did you have planned this summer besides studying?”
Silence passed for all of us.
Off in the corner I caught our waiter standing by and monitoring our faces. That type of service was what separated a high-end restaurant from a regular one. The servers remained aware of the diners’ needs, recognizing when to interrupt and when conversation seemed too heightened to focus on a dinner order.
She blew out air and picked up the menu. “The game can’t be for the whole summer.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“I do eventually want to spend my time meeting other people in this city. Plus, I have a huge reading list to finish.”
“How long will you give us?” Freddy opened up his own menu, but I could tell it was all a front. Anxiety pooled in his eyes, the sort of fear that he would lose something before even getting a chance to try it. I didn’t see him look like that much, but when he did, I knew he wouldn’t give up. Never surrender. Dawn had no idea, but her annoyance with him had only lit a flame, not put out the fire.
