Breaking Even by C.M. Owens

seen her smile when she wasn’t torturing me. It’s actually a damn good smile.
    ***
    RYE
    After forty minutes, I’m sweating and my dick is begging for mercy. We’ve downgraded from liquor to beer, both of us holding our fresh bottles while we dance on the floor. I lean down just as Brin turns around.
    “Ow!” she screeches while grabbing her head.
    I mimic the reaction, rubbing the sore spot she left on me after our skulls collide. Fucking hell. As if the alcohol wasn’t going to leave me with a painful enough headache.
    “We called truce,” she growls, staggering a little from the large amount of alcohol she has put inside her small body.
    “You think I did that on purpose?” I ask incredulously.
    She steps toward me, her spiteful little glower almost making me laugh. Almost. I’m distracted when she presses her tits against me in order to try and be intimidating.
    She’s not intimidating. Not even a little bit.
    She looks past me, and then glances down at her watch. “Ah, hell. I didn’t realize it was so late.”
    I glance down at my phone to check the time, and frown. It’s not even ten yet.
    “Late?” I ask as she staggers again.
    “Yeah. I have to be at the museum at five in the morning to catalogue a new exhibit. Shit. I should go.”
    She starts walking, and I follow. She’s crazy if she thinks she’s driving in this shape.
    “You can’t drive,” I say loudly, trying to shout over Base’s loud singing.
    “There are always cabs waiting out front. This place is easy pickings for fare.”
    She comes here often? I’ve never seen her here, and I come regularly. Of course, it’s usually well after ten when I get here. Damn early bird.
    I follow her to the booth, and she starts hugging the girls, bidding them all farewell as I hang back and sip my still nearly full beer. She then turns back to me and her smile actually does something fucked up to me.
    I’ve had too much to drink.
    “Thanks,” she says sweetly. “For dancing with me, I mean.”
    I shrug, acting as though she hasn’t given me the worst hard-on ever.
    “No big deal. Dates dance,” I say casually.
    Of course I usually fuck after dancing—on the rare occasion that I dance. Not tonight. Not with her.
    She starts to walk away, and again I follow, until she stops abruptly and I have to do one hell of a maneuver to keep from running over her.
    “What are you doing?” she asks as she turns around.
    “Walking you out and paying for your cab.”
    What does she think I’m doing?
    She laughs as though I’ve said something funny.
    “That’s not necessary. I paid for a cab here, and I can pay for my cab home. I don’t trust you. I might end up in Arizona if I let you anywhere near the cabby.”
    “Fine,” I say again, even though it’s irking the hell out of me. “Then... I guess... Well, I’ll see you at home... Er... I mean... You know what I mean.”
    I curse myself for suddenly sounding like a nervous kid. What the hell is in my beer?
    “Yep,” she says with a growing grin. “And something nice will be waiting for you.”
    For a second, that sounds dirty, but in the next breath, it sounds terrifying. What has the devil woman done now?
    I start to speak, when she slaps the bottom of her beer against the top rim of mine, and my beer starts foaming and bubbling out, distracting me as I try to pull the bottle away from me before my drink gets all over my clothes. When I look up, her head is thrown back as she laughs and walks away.
    Tag comes up beside me and sips his beer while joining me in gazing after the little pain in my ass. He’s not scowling like me, though. Now I need a new beer.
    “I can’t tell if you want to fuck her or throttle her,” Tag says, the smug bastard sounding amused.
    My eyes land on her ass that suddenly seems so much more tempting than it did yesterday.
    “Yeah, well, that makes two of us,” I mutter dryly, hoping he didn’t really hear that.
    Watching her hips sway like I’m entranced