Darren
Not a lot of time had passed before he finally decided to get over himself and use his phone again. He’d never put the thing away. It’d just been sitting there in his hand, waiting for him to actually do something while he just ran his fingers over it, over and over again.
He tried to tell himself that he didn’t know who to call, but the fact of the matter was that he did. He just didn’t like going to people for things. Sullivan's number was so easy to remember. He didn’t even have to look it up before he keyed it in.
Sullivan picked up on the third ring.
“Hello?” he said.
His voice was suspicious and slightly raised, like he thought this was either a collect call or something bad about to happen. Probably the latter. Darren hadn’t seen Sullivan in at least a year; he’d left, gotten out of the city. It’d been too much for him and he wanted to run off with some girl, but then she broke his heart. They couldn’t patch it up, but he’d left anyway. Not that that was a bad thing. Darren got it.
He’d never run away, but this wasn't about him. It wasn’t even about his opinion on Sullivan’s choice, which was, at the very least, understandable.
But it hurt that Sullivan didn’t know it was him.
“Hey,” Darren said. “It's me.”
Sullivan would at least recognize his voice. And he did; Sullivan’s voice perked up instantly, getting less gruff and a little happier at realizing who was on the other end of the line. It made sense that Sullivan didn’t know it was him. After all, this was just one of many phones Darren had had over the years, and he’d never called Sullivan on it before. It didn’t make sense to just assume that Sullivan would know it was him, after all.
“Darren!” Sullivan's voice was almost cheery, except for the fact that members of the Bloody Saints never had voices that were cheery – or, when they did, they were never cheery when they weren’t committing some kind of mischief. But Sullivan wasn’t much into mischief anymore, and he wasn’t a member of the Bloody Saints, even though Darren could argue that with him to the death. His voice sounded like it dropped a notch when he spoke next, so it was deeper. Even deeper than Darren's. “What's the matter?”
Darren let out a sigh. This was it. He’d called Sullivan, so he was going to have to go through with letting the man know everything. Sure, he could hang up now, and Sullivan probably wouldn’t go to anyone they knew about this. But that wouldn’t change the fact that something had happened, and it might make Sullivan trust him less.
He drew in another breath. Yup. He had to go for it.
“I think someone's watching me,” he said.
This got a laugh from Sullivan. It wasn’t what Darren expected. Part of him felt like a weight had been lifted from his chest; his old friend, as usual, wasn’t going to judge him for what was going on. He probably wouldn’t even take Darren seriously. But then another part of him just felt irritated. This was serious; it was no time for giggles. It was time for nothing that wasn’t of the utmost importance, and he breathed in sharply before speaking. It felt like all the words he had were pooling up in his stomach. They were about to fall out. But he couldn’t let that happen. He was used to keeping himself restrained from others, and this was no different than the countless other times he’d had to do it before.
But Sullivan was a close friend. They’d known each other when they were both just boys, and now they were both men. Even if Darren hadn’t mentioned something to Sullivan, and even if he hadn’t been weird at the beginning of this phone call, he probably would’ve had to tell him anyway. Sullivan would’ve just guessed that something was wrong.
“I'm being serious, Sullivan,” Darren continued.
This got Sullivan's attention. As much as he had laughed just a few seconds ago, Sullivan was no fool and he was able to tell when something was seriously wrong. Darren wasn’t the type to play jokes like this. If that changed for some reason, Darren wouldn’t be this serious about a joke – he wouldn’t let it go this far.
There was something in Darren’s voice that was deadly wrong.
“What's going on?”
“There’s this girl here,” Darren continued, then paused. He wasn’t sure how much he should say to Sullivan. He trusted Sullivan more than he could trust just about anyone right now, and that even included himself. He decided he was going to tell Sullivan everything. Everything that he could, at least; there wasn’t a whole lot going on besides what Darren had pieced together himself. Even then, he’d only really thought about it on the drive back from saving Victoria, and in this little room here.
Suddenly, he felt really self-conscious of the way his voice echoed as he talked. He knew that no one could hear him in here anyway, and that there probably was no echo, and he was likely just imagining it, and that there was no point in worrying.
He kept talking. “Victoria Parker,” he decided to say her name. Maybe Sullivan would know who he was talking about if he put a name to her. There was no way Darren was going to be able to put a face to her; Victoria was already hard enough to describe, and all he had to work with was some basic terms. “You know her?”
Darren could almost imagine Sullivan shaking his head on the other line, his somewhat long hair moving before he realized Darren couldn’t see him from where they both sat in separate rooms.
“No,” Sullivan dragged the word out. “Can't say I do.”
So he was going to have to explain everything about her. “You know that run down bar off Main?” But as soon as he started describing everything, he knew that this wasn’t going to work out in his favor. Sullivan had left a long time ago, and the Bloody Saints switched up the bars they frequented often enough that Sullivan probably wouldn’t know what he was talking about.
“She’s a bartender,” he started. “Well, she was…”
# # #
Darren wasn’t sure exactly what time it was when he got off of the phone. He’d check out the window to use the sky as his clock; that way he could try to guess at the time by how low the sun was in the sky. But, alas, he was still in this little cornered off room. There was no window in here for him to look out of.
He still had his phone in his hand. He had this bad habit of leaving it out to stare at it, just sitting there and doing nothing. It’d make more sense to actually get up. He tried to think about how long he’d been in here, but nothing came to mind. Not really. He could look through his phone log to see how long the phone call had lasted, but he didn’t really want to do that.
Victoria was probably pissed, though. Or neutral. She seemed like the type of girl who didn’t care about much of anything. That didn’t make him feel much better about it, though. And that thought made him pause and take another look at himself. Why did it matter how he felt about it, and why was he even feeling anything?
He tried to quit thinking about it. He also tried to wipe off the look he knew had to be on his face, the look of concern and mild disgust; both of his attempts were unsuccessful. It was easier to just walk and try not to think. Making his mind empty was easy, it was just his heart that was the issue. How the fuck was he starting to care about a girl he hadn’t even really talked to yet? This made no fu –
His thoughts started to cut out as soon as the hallway started to run out. It hadn’t even been a minute since this thought process had started, and he was already starting to see into the living room.
Victoria didn’t see him yet. The cards she’d placed out in front of her on the table were still spread out everywhere, and all of her attention was focused on them. As alert as she liked to think she was, she had no idea that Darren was staring at her, much less that he was approaching her.
# # #
Victoria
She looked at the cards in her hands. She loved this game, usually. But it was a simple game and eventually it bored her; just because she could play solitaire by herself, in a sad room in a safe house, didn’t mean she wanted to. And the game was easy, too. She flipped through the cards in her hands. Finding the card she was looking for, she put it in the correct order beneath even more cards. All in all, she had six or seven stacks she was working on.
Darren was probably hiding somewhere in the house trying to keep from hanging out with her. That figured, though. It wasn’t like they’d hung out with each other properly in the time she’d been here, anyway. He probably didn’t even have any interest in her. And why would he? Why would she ever think otherwise? There was nothing between them, and realistically there never would be.
She accidentally dropped a card as she thought that. God damn it. So of course, he was going to go and stress her out. But was it even really his fault? No. He’d done nothing. But she’d dropped things because she was thinking about him, so he might as well have done something.
She was in the middle of thinking about this and trying to re-organize her cards when she noticed him. It took a minute or so, though; she wanted to say she was aware, but there was some trait about Darren that always caught her off-guard. She didn’t think she would ever get used to it, even if they were around each other all the time. And that wasn’t what was going to happen.
He was watching her. She wasn’t sure why, and she didn’t think to ask. She was distracted by his eyes. They roamed over her with purpose, looking around slightly before descending on her. She raised her head and looked back, sticking a little bit of her chin out for good measure. While she was sure that in the past Darren had had a lot of people look away from him, or look at him like they were terrified of him, she refused to be one of those people.
So she raised her head, looked him in the eyes, and spoke first. “It took you long enough.”
She hadn’t imagined that he might actually stand her up. They were both stuck in the same small space, and they would probably have to see each other again within a few hours. Neither of them could avoid each other forever, so if he just didn’t want to deal with her, he might as well have just said it.
“I was doing something.” He sounded like he was making excuses, but that wasn’t a very Darren thing to do. From what he’d shown her so far at least.
She raised an eyebrow at this, throwing in the usual sass. He just shrugged at her, and, moving over, began to make his way towards where she sat on the couch.
She started moving away as soon as she realized he was trying to sit next to her. She knew she shouldn’t push him away. Then he’d never tell her anything. And just because she wasn’t going to ask more about what was going on didn’t mean she didn’t want to know, but she felt like asking him about it first would make her seem desperate. Still, there was no reason for them to be physically near each other, not really.
Images of his naked body wrapped in steam flashed through her mind. She struggled to shake them away, and in the end she found she couldn’t. She bit her lip. God, he was hot.
And he was only about two feet from her. She moved to the other end of the couch, making it as obvious as she could. All this did was make Darren smirk, but he did nothing about it.
They both waited in silence for a couple of minutes, but those minutes were filled with tension.
Darren placed a hand out and reached for some of the cards she’d left on the table. Even though she’d tried to re-arrange the deck and keep the game intact, she hadn’t really done the best job of it. And when she noticed that Darren was staring at her, her hand had shaken and the cards in her hand had fallen back on top of the piles.
He grabbed those, looking up and flashing her a sly smile. She thought he was going to place them where they belonged, turning this into some weird game of two-person solitaire.
He didn’t.
Instead, he moved the cards he was now holding in his right hand so that they were all in his left. She noted that he held them between his index finger and his thumb, in the hollow there; it was a weird way to hold onto something, and it made her like him all the more, even though she definitely didn’t have any kind of feelings for him. It reminded her of being a child and holding a pencil the wrong way, and getting callouses from writing. She glanced at his fingers, checking to see if he had any there. He did.
She imagined him pressing his fingers inside her pussy, and a flash of heat overtook her entire body. She prayed he wouldn’t notice. And he didn’t, thank God. He was still holding onto the cards.
Once those few cards were safely secured in his left hand, he started picking the cards up from the table. He did this with his right hand, and the entire process looked awkward. It didn’t help that this, too, was actually going on in silence.
She didn’t know what he wanted to do, but she was going to go with it. His left hand was starting to get full of cards, but so was his right. He poked at a loose card with the one free finger he had on his right hand, the tip of his finger scraping against the material of the card as he failed to pick it up.
And so Victoria decided to be merciful. She grabbed the card. But that was too nice, and she wanted to know exactly what had been going on earlier today – and where he’d been when he was leaving her here by herself. She didn’t hear the front door open, so presumably he must’ve stayed inside the house. But you could see everything except for the bedrooms from where she was sitting, and she hadn’t heard either of those doors open either.
So where could he have gone? She wagered that he’d been gone, and that she'd been sitting here all alone, for at least an hour. She didn’t know what he could’ve been doing. Maybe he’d been in the bathroom the entire time, but that was unlikely too.
But she wasn’t going to ask. That’d show too much interest, probably, and she bet that she could figure it out herself if he didn’t just say. Darren was too secretive, though, and they were too similar, so they just sat there adjusting cards in silence.
Victoria picked up as many as she could, much to Darren’s chagrin. Even though he was grateful for the help, Victoria didn’t know what he needed them for and was probably just holding onto them to make him frustrated. No, that was definitely what she was doing. And it was working – she looked over her shoulder and saw him set his jaw into a tighter line than it usually was when he was calm.
She was about to go back to the table when it happened. She saw it before he moved, and she congratulated herself on her self-awareness. And to think she thought that her brain was turning to mush around this man.
Darren brought his arm out towards her, trying to take the small stack of cards she’d amassed. There were 52 cards in the deck; Darren had more than her, and, if she had to guess, Victoria only had maybe 15 cards. The other 37 were with Darren, and he wanted what she was holding. She’d invited him to play a game earlier – was this going to be it?
She raised her hand out of his reach. He was taller, though, and bigger; his arms were longer than hers and could reach farther. She had to press her body even further against the couch to try to get away from him, holding her arm up so he couldn’t reach the cards. But he kept getting closer and closer to her, and eventually there was no more space for her to go.
Her back hit the arm of the couch, but she still tried to move. It was futile. Darren must not have realized what had happened, though, because he kept going and –
His chest was against hers.
She pushed a hand against his muscles. If he asked, though she doubted he would bother, she was trying to push him away from her. But she wasn’t. She was actually just touching him for the sake of touching him, and even through the fabric of his shirt she could feel the hard muscles rippling across his chest.
She tried to suppress the urge to pull away the fabric and feel his bare skin.
He looked at her, and they made eye contact. Neither of them smirked, or smiled, or laughed. It was just a moment of intense staring, their eyes locked in on each other's as Victoria thought about…
What was she thinking about? She was starting to lose track of everything besides him and the fact that she was stuck here. And the longer she was left in this place, the more she was starting to just focus on Darren. This was unacceptable. She couldn’t deal with this.
But he was still on top of her, and her hand was still on his chest. She couldn’t focus on anything else. She didn’t want to focus on anything else. But there was only so much time before he said something about it.
She thought about squirming for a second before she did it. She wiggled, trying to adjust herself. And promptly felt something hard press against her thigh. She blinked, realizing what she’d done. She was pushing herself closer to him. And the way she was wriggling herself against him in an attempt to get away was only pushing her towards his cock.
She froze for a second, feeling it hard and hot against her. She wanted to stay there and just feel the way his body pressed against hers. While she still didn’t know that much about him and what she did know about him pissed her off, there was still something so right about the way he was lying here above her.
She put her other hand on his chest and pushed him away, firmly. He didn’t move much. He was way bigger than her and weighed more, and the force of her hands did little but leave a small indent on his shirt. The indent disappeared in an instant, though, and she was still stuck here.
But she didn’t have to be.
The words came out with no small difficulty.
“Get off of me,” she said. She didn’t want him off of her, but she had a part to play. And the cards that were in her hand had landed on the floor, and she just knew she was going to have to be the one to clean them up later. She imagined a card getting stuck under the couch, and her having to crawl around on the floor getting all dusty…but then, she’d been wearing the same clothing since she’d arrived her. She was probably filthy and smelly already.
A pang of embarrassment flashed through her. Darren had just gotten out of the shower and here she was beneath him, getting him all gross.
As soon as the embarrassment hit her, it left. She had no reason to be ashamed. Besides, it’s not like he hadn’t had worse. And this whole situation was his fault anyway.
It was interesting to watch the look that flitted across his face, though: Darren’s eyes showed a flash of something she barely recognized as surprise, and then that emotion was quickly replaced by his familiar mask of arrogance. She had to wonder how fake it was.
She didn’t ask.
He lifted himself so he was just slightly above her before he got off. She looked at his arms, seeing the muscles in them standing out more prominently as he held himself up over her body. She loved the sight of it, but she knew it had to end.
It felt like almost no time at all when he was on her, but he was gone too soon. He pushed himself up with his arms, drawing himself back. Then he just pushed himself backwards using the muscles in his legs and his butt, and he sat facing her on the opposite end of the couch.
“What are you staring at me like that for?” He cocked his head to the side, watching her.
She wanted to say nothing, but the habit of just letting him walk all over her with his words was too much. So she settled on saying, “Because you took too long to get off of me when I asked you to.”
“It's not like you didn’t like it.” He winked at her, and she slapped him on the arm. It was true, but it didn’t change the fact that she hated that.
“Whatever,” she rolled her eyes, trying to subdue the feelings she could sense rising up in her chest. “You dropped those cards.”
His eyes went to the pile of cards strewn around on the floor, but he didn’t seem to care much. It irritated Victoria that they were there, and it irritated her more that Darren didn’t mind.
Sullivan“Let me get those for you, Your Highness.”
Her thought process ended as soon as Darren’s words cut through the fog in her head, and he jumped up off of the couch in a quick act of melodrama. She was almost worried that the way he twirled his body would make him hit the coffee table, but then she wiped away that worry too. She couldn’t keep worrying about this guy, and he didn’t even know she did it. There was no point to it.
He got over to the pile of cards, kneeling down. He glanced at her as he reached for them. She stayed on the couch and did nothing.
Darren frowned. “You're just going to let me do this by myself?” The way he said it was almost convincing. His eyes were wide and puppy like, in the saddest expression he could muster; the lines of his mouth were held so that nothing he did could be misread as any kind of smile.
And it almost worked on her. Almost.
She nodded, telling him that no, she wouldn’t be helping him pick stuff up. Part of her wanted to, sure. But the rest of her knew that he could do it on his own, and he was a pain in the ass anyway. It wouldn’t hurt him to put in a little effort.
Another thought came into her head, and she wondered what it’d be like to grab some of those cards from him and tease him. But that would just get her back into the situation they'd just been in a few seconds before, with him on top of her and her pushed back into the couch cushions.
“Really?” His mouth twitched up in the barest hint of a smirk.
“Yeah.” She took a second, pretending that she was reconsidering everything that’d just happened. But she knew what she wanted, and she still wondered why he was gone earlier. What had he even been doing while she was sitting here waiting for him? Not that she was waiting. “So.” She paused, rolling her tongue around in her mouth for a second before forcing herself to stop. “Is this the part where you come clean to me about everything you’ve been doing?”
For a second, Darren really, really considered it. But he didn’t get a chance to say anything. The look on his face must’ve had too much shock in it.
“What?” Victoria moved, adjusting herself so she was sitting straight up and looking at him. One of her hands went to her left hip, one part comfort and one part sass. “You act like it's too much to handle.”
She thought she’d caught him off-guard, but she hadn’t. It took him less than a few seconds to recover, and then he was grinning.
“I can't believe you,” he said, his voice low in his throat.
He shook his head, rising from his kneeling position on the floor. He had all the fallen cards in his hands now, and he walked with purpose back to the couch. This time when he picked a spot, he set himself down closer beside her. And this time, she didn’t move away.
He pressed the cards down hard against the table. She could feel the heat of his thigh pressed against hers, but she didn’t push away from him. There was a reason to stay beside him, and that reason just might be that he’d tell her more about what was going on. With Darren, being secretive was an art, or so it seemed.
She watched him move the cards. After he set them down in one initial pile, he took the time to grab each card and place it flat down in a straight line. Victoria couldn’t see what each card was supposed to be, and Darren couldn’t either. This definitely wasn’t a game of solitaire, though, and Victoria watched him, wondering what exactly he was supposed to be doing.
Then, once he’d carefully arranged all of the cards he’d just placed down, he picked them all back up again. He flipped the cards through his hands, shuffling them. What he’d been doing by laying the cards down must have been some kind of weird shuffle, and maybe now he was going to pass them to her.
He placed a card down flat in front of her. Then he did the same for himself. He continued doing this until they both had seven cards laid out in front of them, and then he put the stack of remaining cards in the center between the two of them.
So it was a game.
He turned to her, holding his stack of cards in his hand with a smile. “I have a proposition for you.”
This was going to be good. She was in the middle of reaching for her own cards when she froze, wondering.
He gestured with his head, encouraging her to take the cards.
She waited.
And waited.
And waited for an explanation.
When none was forthcoming, she decided to just take the bait and ask, “What?” She hated that she did it, because it was obviously what he wanted. As soon as that word was out in the air, he reached over.
She didn’t even have time to freeze in surprise. He gripped her by the shoulder, his touch light and shocking and firm. And then he ran his hand down her arm, moving it in closer to her torso. His hand grazed her side, moving closer to her stomach.
She thought that maybe he’d go so far as to touch her between her thighs, and she wasn’t sure if she should tell him to stop. She didn’t want him to stop. But, much to her dismay, he did. He pulled his fingers down to her stomach, past the skin there, and grabbed the fabric. Then he gave it a small tug, smiling at her, and his fingers fell away from her body.
She felt her breath catch in her throat. She was going to make some kind of joke about him wanting something sexual from her, but maybe it wasn’t a joke after all.
She looked at him, biting her lower lip without thinking about it. She felt her legs start to shake again, and she imagined his fingers digging into her hips. His hands should’ve gone so much lower when they’d touched her, but they hadn’t. She tried to quit thinking about what it would be like to have his fingernails drag across her skin, but she couldn’t.
She looked at his hands. His fingernails were short and orderly. She couldn’t let herself imagine them sliding into her. That wouldn’t be good. Sure, she was in a bad situation and he might be a bad boy, and she might’ve been seen as a bad girl for working at a bar. Being a slutty bartender and all that. But really…
She finally broke the silence. “Earlier. In the bathroom…”
Darren didn’t look at her. He was focused on the cards in his hands. She could tell that he was still focusing on her, though, even though he was trying to pretend to be disinterested.
He shuffled them a little more, saying: “You didn’t take offense to it.”
All the shuffling he was doing was unnecessary. But she just let what he said hang there before he started saying some more. Darren liked to try to press her into asking about things, but she wasn’t going to put herself through that embarrassment. But why was it embarrassment?
“It sounds like it might be fun to play a little game,” he paused. “Doesn't it?”
She nodded, unsure of what to say. What was making her so shy? She turned her head so she was looking him in the eyes. She didn’t know when it had happened, but she’d been looking just under his chin, trying everything she could to avoid his stare.
“Say it.”
“It does.”
“That wasn't as full of emotion as I was looking for,” he teased, but then he looked at her, and actually saw her.
Victoria's face was flushing, and she kept biting her mouth. She refused to look at him full on. The few times she did, her eyes darted away from his after just a moment. She was aroused. She had to be. And so this was going to be much easier.
“Have you ever heard of a game called Snap?” He picked up a couple more of the cards from the big stack between them, giving them each an equal handful to add to their own piles. “Here. Take these. It’ll be more fun if the game goes on longer.”
He wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t know what it was. At the same time, though, part of him wondered how she couldn’t know. She was the type of a girl to work in that bar, after all. And even so young. Just being a bartender and a woman meant nothing, but it usually implied something. And it implied even more things when the bar she worked at was frequented by a club, especially one as big as his.
Victoria took a second to think. “Is it kind of like poker?” It had to be. A lot of games were based off of it, anyway, but she hadn’t really heard of anything called Snap.
“Sort of.” He laughed, making his voice go a little bit lower before he spoke again. “Except for there's stripping.”
“So it's just strip poker.”
“Well...” She wasn't reacting the way he thought she might: a little offended, irritated, mildly aroused. “Yeah. Basically.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “And here I thought this was going to be a big deal.”
He laughed. His hands went down to his ankles, pulling away the socks he had on. He said that they didn’t count, but he didn’t even get to finish his sentence before she broke away in giggles.
She raised a foot at him, and then the other. “I don't have any socks. I don't have any clothes other than this, actually. I don’t have anything here, in case you hadn’t noticed. Including any food I want to eat.” Harsh, maybe, but she needed to get the point across. It had already been long enough.
He just smiled at her, though, and she couldn’t get in his head to figure out what he was thinking. “We'll deal with that after the game,” he said.
“And you’re going to tell me about what you’ve been up to,” she countered.
He winked.
She winked back.
The stakes weren’t high, really. They didn’t have much going for them. And...
“There's not any chips,” Victoria said.
They were only maybe two rounds into the game before Victoria said something about it. They weren’t playing for money, just for information. Still, though, Victoria didn’t like that they had no chips. It wasn’t right.
“We don't really have anything we can do about it.”
“Yes, we do. Wait here.” Victoria stood up and went back to the bookshelves. This was going to be a mess, but at least it’d be something.
She grabbed the small journal she’d seen earlier. Flipping the book open, she grabbed a page from it and then returned to the couch she was sitting on earlier. Darren was looking at her quizzically, but she didn’t even bother turning to him. It was imperative that she do this, that things be made better by this.
But she couldn’t let it all fall to the floor. She held up the paper as best she could, and then ripped it clean in half. And then she did it again, and again, until there were a bunch of little pieces scattering the table. Hitting them with the flat of her hand, she pushed them so the majority were in the center of the table, by the stack of cards, and then gave some to Darren. She was sure to leave a reserve for herself as well.
“You're supposed to bet,” she said.
He raised his eyes at her. “These are scraps of paper.”
“They can represent what we're actually betting.”
The game progressed fast. The rules of it weren’t exactly what Victoria was expecting. While she knew about strip poker, she’d never actually played it, and Darren seemed to want to play it with a twist. Some of it was normal poker. Every third hand or so, though, each of them pulled a card out. Whoever had the lower denomination had to give up a piece of their clothing.
The game progressed fast, but not very far. Victoria was more than aware of how much clothing she had: just four pieces. She had on her bottoms, her top, her bra, and her underwear. That was it. Even if she’d worn socks, Darren had already said they didn’t count; she wondered if she should wish for a sweater, but she loved the temptation of it, of everything she was doing with Darren.
And Darren, she knew, had even less clothing. He was just wearing jeans and a shirt. He might not even be wearing boxers, but it wasn’t like she could ask.
She put down two cards, waiting for him to call out what he was going to do. He’d put down his cards first, and she was in the habit of watching his eyes to try to figure out exactly he was thinking.
They continued their game, each throwing down cards and watching the other. They folded, they bet. Victoria drew two cards and misread them. Her misplaced confidence was revealed as soon as she threw them down, and Darren’s perfectly blank expression rose up into a smirk.
“Royal flush,” he proclaimed.
They both looked at the cards together.
“You know the rules.”
She sighed. She wanted to argue with him, but she also wanted to show him her skills, and her skin. Her hands went to the bottom of her shirt, by her hips. Kind of like where he’d started to touch her earlier, before they’d both pulled away from the other. She stopped her hands at the fabric, looking up for a second before deciding what needed to be done.
Then, taking in a quick breath and ignoring the speed of her heart beat, she took off her shirt. She felt his eyes roam over her, and then they stopped where she expected. But she kept her hands up over her head for a second, letting him look.
Then her arms fell back to her side and she resumed the game. She was just playing in a bra. That was all. Never mind the fact that Darren was staring at her. But it was working to her advantage. She drew two more cards, and looked towards Darren just in time to see a tell.
His arms looked like they were getting more tense, and she watched that tension move from his arms to his shoulders to his neck. There it rose up from his neck to his face, and she saw the barest twitch of his lips. He had a bad hand.
So she didn’t fold.
And when they checked their cards against what they’d originally drawn, it had the outcome Victoria was expecting – she was the victor.
“Are you expecting me to take my shirt off?”
She laughed at him, giggling out an “obviously,” before adding, “You owe my some other things too.”
It took him less time to get his shirt off than it had taken for her to do it, but it took her more time to get back to normal after seeing his skin. She thought that maybe Darren was still staring at her, but she couldn’t get over the chiseled muscles of his chest. And she’d even seen it before. Her skin had been new to him; why couldn’t she get over this?
She coughed to try to avoid what she was thinking. “And?”
“And? What more do you want from me, woman?” He laughed, and she struggled not to laugh too. Another small giggle fell out, though, and that just got an even bigger smile from the man.
“I want to know what you were doing when you left me here by myself.” She fisted her hands at her sides, trying not to touch him. It was so hard not to. She could easily put her hand on his shoulder, or drag it down to poke him in the thigh. Or worse.
She could tell by the look on his face that he was thinking about not telling her. He finally did.
“I was in a hiding space.”
“What?”
“A hiding space.”
“Just repeating what you said doesn't help me figure out what you meant, Daniel,” she said.
“You full-named me!” he exclaimed. After another pause, he said, “The safe house has some secret spaces I haven’t shown you. Places people can hide in...” He trailed off.
She knew where he was going with that general direction. As happy and warm as she was feeling right now sitting here with him, there was still the fact that someone wanted her or him or both of them murdered. And she didn’t want to ask too many questions just yet; he was barely telling her things, and she didn’t want to risk the chance of scaring him off. So she waited for him to continue, leaning in just barely closer when he started speaking again.
“I was on the phone with an old friend,” he continued. “Sullivan.” He looked at her for a second, recognizing the way her eyebrows crinkled in confusion at the name. “You wouldn’t know him.”
“So anyway, I wanted to know his thoughts on all this.” He waved his hand around in the air, as if presenting something to her. Victoria couldn’t figure out what it was, but she went with it anyway. “Scores need to be settled. You know what I mean?”
She didn’t. She nodded anyway. He could explain it later, and she didn’t think she’d be able to make sense of any his club crap right now anyway. It was stupid to get involved in that stuff, and she was sure whatever was going on was equally as stupid too.
He smiled. “Good. So, I called him and asked about some debts that haven’t been paid off. Looked for possible grudges to be had.” She looked at his hands while he talked. He moved them a lot. His touch kept going back to the cards, and she could barely register what he was saying. Eventually, he noticed, and he smiled at her and then shut up.
So they kept playing the game, and he promised her he would show her everything later. And even though he meant in the safe house, Victoria hoped he meant something else.