She'd staged a silent battle before her on the table, and the first shot round echoed in the wedging clunk of her boot arch riding the edge of already worn wood. He imagined that the slouched way her hips angled against the plush cushions of her living room couch, and the vulnerably open cock of her lifted knee, both were supposed to lull him into a sense of safety. Age and the sum of history led him to ignore the way the drawn out line of her instantly halved both his resolve and his strategy for winning the fight that she'd so obviously and painstakingly planned out.
Chibs rubbed his thumb idly along his bottom lip, nodding slowly as he studied the cluttered coffee table. He crouched his body down and low, leaning elbows to the denim of his barely balanced knees. He felt the creak of his boot leather as he leaned himself forward slightly, avoiding the mixed and mingled colors in her eyes so that he could instead inspect the weapons she'd trounced proudly before him.
"What stakes are ya fighting for, love?" he let his voice hum down to a slagged drawl as he tipped the whiskey bottle back and forth with one finger against an unspun cap, letting the rocking glass thud the wood in a timed echo. "Because I'm afraid y've underestimated your opponent."
"Quarry." The correction was swift and without tonal affection of any sort. It was succinct and white bright with some sort of righteous purity.
He knew for an ever lovin' fact that Althea Jarry was a few figured miles from pure.
Self righteous? Maybe. But he liked the way it threw her shoulders back into confidence more often than not.
Filip lifted his head with a smile, and he caught the shift of her hips as she watched it ride his scars out toward nearly haunted dimples of a smirk. "I'm to be the prize then? You'd be a poor judge to a fox hunt then."
"Where were you?" she drew her foot down slower than was necessary but it gave him an eye level view of long thighs and low riding denim. "You're late."
"Redwoody." He shrugged, studying the liquor bottles and lime and salt and the ashtray. A pack of smokes and a lighter and an unpeeled orange. A bottle of water. And beside it all her firearm, snug in its happy holster home.
"Broads and blow, just dial 'O'." there was a rasp of annoyance in her tone as she drew two pony glasses to the center of the table but he ignored the way it tugged toward nagging while he enjoyed the curve of each breast. She uncapped the whiskey and Patron, pouring slowly while noticing how his shoulders had knit tight and farther back.
"I haven't touched a single one of those girls." He hushed the words out as he shifted, tugging his knife up as he reached for the lime, easing his weight onto his knees and letting his butt ride back against boot heels as he started long slices into the lime.
Jarry finally gave him a smile and he felt more than embattled as she blinked at him, pouring an extra large serving of whiskey into one glass as those long lashes continued to blink.
"Lately." He amended softly, unable to swallow the taunt of a grin from his lips.
Her chin ticked up in a sudden defiance and he felt as though he'd been unseated from a horse as her glance thinned.
When she set the bottle to the table, the sound was the shot that gunned him in.
And when she swallowed the shot herself, the bloomed smell of citrus muddled the mossy scent of the liquor.
And that was the last thing he remembered smelling before he died into the triumph of her eyes.
"Fuck me." He shook his head into a slow chuckle. "You're cruel, woman."
"And you're losing." She hushed over him as she set the glass to the table.
Chibs lifted hand with the blade, shying the knife to the side and sucking the lime juice off his thumb. "You cheat, Sheriff."
"Cry for justice, Scotty" She mocked in soft amusement. "As though you're a saint."
"I never - "
"Guns and blood and money and drugs." Each word was staccato and tight as she poured herself a shot of the tequila, swiping the lime slice away from him.
Filip watched the hazel of her eyes tint toward a still gray steel as he nudged the salt shaker in her direction, his voice stirring toward a grated sound. "You're guilty of all those things, Ally."
One of her eyebrows arched before she skimmed her tongue against salted skin and he felt his stomach drop with the lay of her tongue.
The way she was looking down at him was the same as a seasoned sniper squint.
And she drank. Shot down, he was.
The rebel corner of heaven seemed to smell a hell of a lot like a citrus grove.