Ava Gray - Skin Game

Kyra held the guy’s balls in the palm of her hand. Literally.

Just for a second as she brushed by him, but it was enough. His eyes widened, and she knew he took the touch as a sign he’d get lucky after he won her last hundred bucks. The crumpled bill lay underneath his, weighted by a cube of pool chalk.

Poor, stupid mark.

She slid him a slow smile as she racked for their fourth and final contest. His friends stood with beers in their hands, half-smiling in anticipation of a sure thing. In a seedy place like this, they had only an old table with worn felt near the right corner, making it necessary to compensate. That wouldn’t slow her up this game, though.

Her opponent had years of practice on this particular table. A scruffy, hard-drinking son of a bitch like him had no better skill, nothing else going for him. No, calling himself reigning champ at Suds Beer Factory defined him. She counted on that.

Spinning her cue stick between her palms, she paused before taking the first shot. “You want to make this interesting?”

Her voice had often been called throaty. Kyra sounded like she smoked unfiltered Camels and drank too many whiskey sours. In fact, she did neither. That was just one of nature’s cons, more flash for the package to distract people from what lay underneath.

“Darlin’,” drawled one of the barflies, “it already is.”

Now somebody would comment on the sweet curve of her ass or the way she filled out her jeans. Kyra managed not to roll her eyes, but it was a near thing. If she ever sunk so low that she needed a boost by picking up a man in a place like this, she hoped somebody would shoot her and put her out of her misery.

The man she’d been reeling in for the past hour couldn’t resist asking, as she’d known he couldn’t. People were so damn predictable. “What’d you have in mind?”

“Double or nothing.”

“You don’t have the cash,” he scoffed.

Her smile didn’t falter. “No, but I have a fully restored 1971 Mercury Marquis parked outside. It’s nice, fresh powder blue paint. You’d get a good chunk for it.”

“That’s yours? Big ride for a little thing like you,” her opponent said. Chet, she thought his name was.

For that comment alone she wanted to smash his nose through his forehead, but he’d feel the hit worse in his wallet. It wasn’t like he used his brain much, after all. Kyra faked a smile as she put her keys on top of the two bills.

A stocky guy near the bar shook his head, a crop of coarse, brown curls bristling from beneath his baseball cap. “Don’t take the lady’s ride. She probably has a gambling problem—don’t know when to quit even when she can’t win.”

“I never walk away from a bet.” She hadn’t affirmed what he’d said, but these yokels would never notice the difference. “What about you? Scared?” she mocked gently.

Oh, that would never stand. As a chorus of “ooohs” arose from his friends, Chet shook his head. “It’s your funeral, lady. You’re on.”

Finally. She never knew how long a boost would last, so she needed to get this game in the bag, or she really would lose her ride. Since the car was the only thing she owned, that’d be catastrophic.

Kyra broke then, a perfect scatter. The red three slipped into a pocket, deciding whether she’d shoot solids or stripes. Four more shots lined up for her, and she called them in a neutral tone.

A con could go south pretty fast if she didn’t play it right. Chet might suspect he’d been hustled when she was done, but men seldom started a fight with “a little thing like her.” If they did, they found themselves unpleasantly surprised—after she tapped the toughest among them.

Bank, carom, and suddenly she’d sunk half the balls on the table. Suds got really quiet and someone muttered, “I call lemonade.”

“Yep,” another guy said. “She’s torching him.”

If she hadn’t been worried about the clock running out, she might have stalled a shot and put a ball in jail just to let Chet use his cue, but she needed to wrap things up. Kyra rounded the table and sank the next shot easily, as she knew everything about this game and this particular table. She didn’t bother with showy play; the point was to win, not to impress.

The bar was dead quiet when she pointed to the far left pocket, called it, and banked the eight ball toward it. She narrowed her eyes as its roll slowed. She hadn’t noticed the faint wear near that pocket as well, but it didn’t matter. Chet had learned to compensate over long years of practice; thus, so had she.

The black ball sank with a quiet plunk.

“I believe that’s a dime in all,” she said with a smile. “Cash only.”

A dime was a thousand bucks. Kyra knew pool-hall slang because she’d worked this particular con a lot. Now it just remained to be seen whether he’d pay up politely.

“You played me,” Chet growled.

She pretended to misunderstand, opening her eyes wide. “So I did. I won, too.”

This was the moment of truth. Most guys wouldn’t take a swing at her, no matter how mad they were. She’d run across some real sons of bitches in her travels, though. So Kyra braced herself.

“Pay the lady,” came a low, rough voice from the back of the bar. “Unless you want people to call you a welsher.”

With a muttered curse, Chet handed back all the money he’d won, plus a few hundred more. Kyra smiled, claimed her keys, and the last two bills beneath the chalk cube. She thumbed the white rabbit’s foot on her keychain, as she did after every successful con. Superstition had its place.

“Table’s all yours, boys. Thanks for the fun!”

Before the mood could turn from puzzled to hostile, she grabbed her denim bag and headed out. It was best to hop into the Marquis and hustle down the road. Nobody prevented her from pushing past the front door and into the humid kiss of Louisiana twilight. Jasmine growing wild on a broken-down fence scented the air.

Kyra cast a look back at the timber roadhouse. Places like this made up her bread and butter. So many suckers, so little time. She loved the euphoria of getting away clean.

Then she heard the crunch of footsteps on the gravel behind her.

Shit, she thought. I knew it was too good to be true.

She picked up the pace to no avail. A hand on her arm spun her around, and she found herself craning her head back to see who had a hold of her. At five foot four, she was neither petite, nor average, and he topped her by a foot. More interesting, he hadn’t been involved in the game.

“What did you do in there?” She recognized his voice—a cross between black velvet and a buzz saw—he’d demanded Chet pay up. The guy had been drinking alone near the back, but she hadn’t gotten a good look at him.

She’d remember a face like this, hard angles softened by a spill of midnight hair, and eyes so dark they seemed to drink the light—black pools with azure lightning in their depths. He had skin like old mahogany, weathered but lovely. But his fine, unusual looks didn’t give him an excuse to touch her.

Thanks to this ass, she’d be lucky if she didn’t wind up in the fetal position, groaning through a migraine. With a prowess she must’ve snagged from him, Kyra neatly broke his grip on her forearm. Surprise flickered in his gaze, as if he recognized the maneuver but didn’t understand how she’d done it. Well, hell, she didn’t know how, either, and sometimes it got damn confusing, but it was a living.

“I won a pool game. And now I’m leaving.” Her tone dared him to try something, especially when she sensed the deadly readiness in her muscles. She knew without a doubt she could snap somebody’s neck. Comforting . It’d be better if she wasn’t nearby when the skill she’d stolen reverted to him.