Chapter 15

Bucky made a dramatic scene considering her proposal before accepting. Then they shook hands on it before proceeding to an empty pool table.

"You're lucky this isn't chess or I would have won already." Ella said matter-of-factly.

Bucky grabbed a pool cue from the rack on the wall and looked over at her, an unbelieving look on his face. He made his way back over to her as she leaned up against the table.

"What makes you so sure about that one, sweetheart?"

"I am a master strategist."

She leaned in to whisper into his ear.

"Why be two steps ahead when you can be five?"

Bucky shivered. Ella slipped past him to select her own cue from the wall rack while he racked the balls up.

"Ladies first."

Bucky recalled a time when he would have slid up behind her to try and show her a move or two while making one of his own. Trying to get as close as possible to make her giggle and blush.

He smirked to himself remembering the man he once was as he watched Ella lean over the table to line up her first shot. He may have a lot in common with that man, but that was not who he was anymore.

Either way, he highly doubted Ella would have any of it. She would have probably kicked his ass in front of the whole bar for even trying something like that. She was certainly a far cry from the shy, timid, and falsely modest women of his day.

Bucky pulled himself out of his reminiscing to see the break. He watched as three striped balls sank into various pockets. He sighed inwardly; his confidence was waning. Fast. This was going to be harder than he had anticipated.

They played on in silence as a few more people tried their hand at various pop, rock, and country songs. Both Ella and Bucky were carefully watching the other when they were not focused on their next shots. They danced around each other almost like the game they were playing on the table.

Bucky was enjoying observing Ella. She was fascinating. She was always charting the playing field as it changed and morphed with the game. She was very thorough in her execution of every calculated and well-thought-out shot.

During one of these examinations of the table, when there were only a few stripes and solids left, Bucky noticed something. Something that immediately set him on edge.

As Ella made her way around the table, carefully eyeing the playing field, Bucky saw a group of obnoxious guys at the bar. Each of these men was carefully watching Ella like she was watching the game.

Bucky did not know when he had become distracted enough to not notice these ingrates. That thought disturbed him. He should know better than to let his guard down or to let anything go unnoticed. Yet, here he was completely preoccupied with a game of pool. And entirely taken with the person whom he was playing with.

Ella leaned over the table to take her shot, her back towards the bar and the men gathered there. One of the guys leaned into his friend without taking his eyes off of a certain part of her and said something. They both laughed at whatever the one had said.

Bucky watched them as his jaw clenched and his muscles instinctively tightened. He abruptly felt the compulsory urge to rip the one's throat out with his bare hands so he would never be able to speak again.

A feeling of bloodlust erupted in his veins. He felt his hackles raise and his tendons dance beneath his skin. A growl began to rumble within his chest.

Ella slowly made her way around the table and over to where Bucky was standing, still as marble. Afraid that if he moved, he would lose his self-control and do exactly what he was picturing in his head. Part of him was horrified. Another part reveled in it.

"Easy there, tiger. They aren't staring at, or talking about, you."

She said in a quiet, nonchalant tone. She hadn't even taken her eyes off of the pool table.

'No, but they are staring at and talking about what's mine.' Snarled a voice in the back of Bucky's head.

Ella must have missed the look of horror and confusion that crossed his face at the intrusive, and frankly startling, thought.

"At least they are only looking. It could be so much worse." She looked up at him. "Believe me."

Darkness filled her eyes and expression for an instant. A darkness he himself was all too familiar with, but could not place. In a flash, it was gone. Just like all of her other guarded expressions that were fleeting and momentary. Each one held so much meaning that he wished that he had more time to decipher them.

Ella smirked at him.

"Besides, you should be more concerned about that redhead from that group over there. She's been trying to work up the bravado to come over here to see if you would buy her a drink ever since it was her friend's turn up at the mic."

Bucky got the feeling that she was trying to divert his attention. As to the reasoning behind his feeling, or the reason why she was trying to distract him, he could not say. But it worked.

"Now why in the world would I want to do a thing like that?" Bucky blatantly blurted out.

Efficiently snapping himself out of the inhumanity, out of the beast inside of his own mind, that had started to consume him. At least for the time being. The absurdity of the idea being enough of an interference.

Ella threw her head back and laughed.

"Why don't you tell me. Now take your shot, Sailor."

The next few rounds and songs went smoothly. They both kept barely missing sinking their own balls, both trying to keep the other from easily sinking any of their own shots. Around and around, they went, circling the table and each other.

They kept playing until they were down to a single stripe, two solids, and the 8-ball.

Ella was watching the table and strategizing, planning her next move. As she was slowly making her way down the side of the table, her back to the bar, a voice reached both their ears.

"Hey, sugar. Want to save the next game for me?"

He realized in an instant it was the same prick that had whispered to his friend from earlier. Bucky bristled. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end.

Ella acted like she hadn't heard a thing. Though the set of her shoulders and the muscle tick in her jaw told Bucky otherwise.

"You know it's rude to ignore someone, right Sugar?" Came the smarmy voice from the bar, again. The man looked and sounded all too full of himself; his head weighed down with the mass of his false sense of self-importance.

Bucky was surprised the pool cue in his hand didn't snap in half or explode into a hail of splinters. He was too busy observing Ella for her reaction or response. Although he desperately wanted to, it was not his right to step in. This was not his fight.

'Yes. Yes, it fucking is. It's both. I am going to fucking kill him. Excruciatingly slowly.' Growled the voice from the back of Bucky's head. He would have and should have, been taken aback because this voice was new. This was not what he was used to. This was not the Winter Soldier. This was something else. He just shook it off the best he could and prepared for this to escalate.

Ella had been bent over, about to take a shot when she abruptly stopped. Again, she was facing away from them with her face in clear view to Bucky. What she did next was unexpected. In every single way conceivable.

Ella closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them, they were on Bucky.

The expression on her face and in her eyes was like nothing he had ever seen there before. It was downright menacing. Bucky didn't think he was even looking at the same person anymore. A wall had suddenly appeared in those green eyes.

The look she was now fixing him as she straightened out of her position was one of warning. He didn't need her to say a word, as she all but verbally told him to stay out of it. Bucky knew an order when he was given one. The terror gripping his spine was back. Full force. He was frozen in place by her stare as well as her silent order that he could not help but comply with.

Then everything changed. Right before his eyes. All at once she squared her shoulders and held her head up high. An air of authority manifesting around her. A pleasant smile swiftly appeared on her face as she turned around to face the group and the offending excuse for a man. That smile was almost as unsettling as the guy himself.

Her voice was different. More threatening. It was lighter, higher by an octave, breathier. Almost ethereal. For some reason, this just made her even more sinister. The word 'lethal' came to Bucky's mind.

"You do know that it is extremely rude to interrupt someone else's game. Let alone interrupt their shot. Right, sugar?"

Her voice was sickly sweet and dripping with malice, a threat.

Had he not been in check of himself he was sure that he would have borne his teeth at them. Bucky felt like a caged wild animal on the verge of breaking out. He wanted to snarl a warning at the fuckwad who had the audacity to still be breathing.

The same man who had addressed Ella spoke again. Bucky had to lock every muscle in place for fear of making any other sudden movements. That didn't stop him from squaring himself up towards the group.

"Why don't you ditch your boy toy over there and come hang out with some real men who can show you a good time."

Though he could not see her face, Bucky didn't need to. He could only imagine the look on his own face, let alone on hers.

As she lazily approached the group, he noticed the muscles in her shoulders and arms were rippling under the skin. Coiling, ready to strike.

She stopped a little more than a few feet in front of the man who had spoken to her. The same man who now had an overly confident smirk on his face. The same man who mistook the seemingly inviting smile on Ella's face as something other than the trap that it really was.

Ella rested the end of her pool cue on the floor in front of her. Between her slightly spread and steady legs, her left leg just in front of her right. An obvious fighting stance. She rested both hands over each other on the tip of the pool cue and tilted her head to one side.

In her falsely pleasing voice, she addressed the cretin again.

"Now why on earth would I ever do a silly thing like that? You could never handle me. Even if I came with instructions. Not like you seem the type that could read them anyway."

Bucky managed to bark out a laugh. Then several things happened at once.

The aforementioned twat appeared to have registered what she had said and took a few steps forward and reached out his arm as if he were about to grab her.

Bucky himself reacted and took a few steps forward to pull Ella out of the way. However, she was just a little bit faster than both of them.

Before either of them, Bucky or the asshole about to attack her, could finish their movements, Ella stepped forward. She grabbed the pool cue and swung it up from its resting position. She thrust it straight out and up between the guy's legs with immense force.

She then gripped the cue halfway down its length and swung it up and around her head like a lasso, then back around and caught the bastard right in the side of the neck. Upon contact, Ella just held the cue to the side of his neck. Everyone was frozen.

Then he dropped like a sack of potatoes at his friends' feet. The douchebag was down and out for the count before Ella could rest the pool cue back on the floor. In the same position that she had started in, ready for another round.

As she stared down at him, one of his friends came to the front of the group.

"What the fuck just happened?!"

Bucky couldn't help but bark out another laugh.

"Looks like she just thoroughly kicked your friend's ass."

The one who had spoken laid his eyes on Bucky and started to advance towards him, trying to pass Ella. She stepped in front of the other offending asshat, stopping him from getting any closer to Bucky. All she did was look up at this guy and he backed up with his hands in the air.

The fact that Ella was keeping someone else away from him, of all people, almost made him laugh again. Of all the people in this joint, he was the only one who could kill every other person there and have no one outside be any the wiser. The action still made that new voice in the back of his head, and himself, pleased beyond all measure.

When Ella grabbed her pool cue and pointed at the door with it, every single guy in that group of twats flinched. One even recoiled so hard he spilled his beer all over the bar top. Ella just looked at the lot of them. Bucky wished he could see her face.

"I think it's time you took yourselves and this trash out." She said in the same sickly sweet yet sinister voice while poking him in the chest with her cue.

Then her normal, low, and slightly raspy voice returned.

"And stay gone."

Every single dude from that group stared at her in absolute horror for a split second before two stooped down to grab their still unconscious friend. Then they all left with their tails between their legs and more than a few terrified glances back at Ella.

Ella then went to the bar and talked to the bartender. She offered to pay for their tab but was refused. Apparently, that group had been a nuisance for some time now and the bartender had wanted nothing more than to 86 them from the bar.

Now that Ella had done it for him, their drinks for the night were on the house as a gesture of gratitude. She thanked him profusely.

Bucky knew that he had been staring with his mouth hanging slightly open at the spectacle that had just played out before him. He quickly snapped it shut when Ella turned back around from the bar. The bartender, however, had caught him staring and winked at him.

When he saw Ella's face, the look on it made Bucky's blood feel as if there were shards of ice running through his veins. The smile she had given the bartender faded rapidly and was replaced by what Bucky assumed had been the look she had been giving that group of douchecanoes. No wonder they had been so scared. At this moment Ella was beyond frightening, bordering on horrifying.

'If looks could kill' did not even come close to describing the expression on her face. Bucky felt a slightly unfamiliar, yet entirely familiar, emotion. Genuine fear. Again. This was exactly how he had felt that first time they had looked at each other in the park. Only this time the Winter Soldier was nowhere inside his head. Instead, he felt an animal-like instinct. To do what, he could not quite figure out.

Just like that, the expression on Ella's face changed rapidly as she got back to their pool table. In its place a self-satisfied smirk. When she looked at Bucky there was not a single trace of what he has just seen.

Bucky was in awe. Speechless. As well as still being slightly terrified. He still felt the clutches of terror grasping at him. But this feeling was greatly overshadowed by surprise and admiration.

"Ok. Now, where was I?"

Ella got back into position and took the shot she had been lining up before she was so obscenely interrupted. And she missed, sinking one of his solids in the corner pocket instead.

Bucky could still not help but outright gawk at her while she cursed under her breath. When she looked up at him, she gave him a quizzical look.

"What? Was that too much? It certainly threw me off my game. That's for sure." She chuckled nervously, looking anywhere but at Bucky.

"No. No that was… That was…" Bucky found himself stuttering, at a loss for words.

Ella looked down at the floor and finished his sentence.

"Intimidating?"

"Well, that is not exactly the word I would have used. Intimidating? Possibly. Unexpected? Slightly. Impressive? Absolutely."

Bucky tried not to let his feelings color the way he spoke. He paused and watched a blush creep across Ella's cheeks and disappear before he continued.

"I thought for sure he was going to grab you. Or worse. I was afraid there for a second. I thought they were going to get to you before I could."

Bucky admitted this while rubbing the back of his neck. If anyone had touched a hair on her head, that would have been it for the entire group. He knew this to be a fact, and he was okay with that. Which he should not have been.

"Oh."

He saw another blush appear on her cheeks and another flash of something in her eyes before she quickly recovered. He perceived how quickly she was able to shift and cover emotions and reactions. Bucky thought how she must be one hell of a poker player.

"How did you do that?"

Ella looked puzzled.

"You mean how did I hit that guy with a stick?" she said dryly.

"No, I mean how did you make him drop like that? All you did was hit him with a stick."

Bucky knew exactly what had occurred. Some part of him just wanted to hear her say it.

"Oh! That. Well, did you notice how I held the cue against his neck after I made contact? I effectively hit and collapsed his carotid artery, which caused a temporary disruption of the blood flow to his brain. Once that disruption hit his brain it was lights out. Unfortunately, he will be fine."

Sweet satisfaction. Now another question he was suddenly dying to ask.

"Why did you step between his friend and me? Do you really think I need protecting?"

Bucky watched as the gears in Ella's head began turning at an alarming rate. She was measuring and formulating her reaction as fast as she could. He wondered why this response needed to be thought through so carefully. Her answer was surprisingly simple.

"I wanted to keep you out of it. That and he would have been heading right into the wolf's den. I wanted to keep you out of any unnecessary trouble."

Ella smirked at Bucky's reaction. His thoughts, however, were on something he had seen on some nature show what seemed like a lifetime ago. Something triggered by her saying 'the wolf's den'.

Before he had even registered Ella's existence.

He thought about how she had stepped between that guy's friend and himself. He unexpectedly felt like an alpha male wolf being protected by his alpha female. How the female put herself at the male's neck to protect him from the threat they faced. Was that how Bucky was starting to see Ella? Is that how he was beginning to feel about her? Did that explain the new voice in the back of his head? What did all of this mean?

Another moment passed of Bucky looking at Ella as his thoughts raced before she reminded him that it was his turn.

Bucky thought for a moment and was honest with himself, for once. His mind was no longer on the game. He kept replaying Ella's words and actions in his head over and over. They were so seamless. So effortless. The word 'impressive' came nowhere near covering exactly how much he had enjoyed that show. Then the action of stepping between him and an opponent came to the forefront of his thoughts.

It was beyond sexy, past the point of being hot, and more of a turn-on than anyone, or anything, had been in years. Bucky had not expected any of this from the unassuming woman from the park.

That possessive voice in the back of Bucky's mind purred with satisfaction and an almost animalistic longing when he looked at Ella. With all of the theories running through his head one stood out more than the others. Maybe T'Challa had been right in calling him the White Wolf. The Winter Soldier was making himself known less and less as this new aspect to his personality emerged and made itself more pertinent. None more so than tonight.

Maybe there was a transition happening and he hadn't even noticed it.

Preoccupied with this train of thought, Bucky made his shot. He was far too thoughtful with this new theory to care about this game anymore. He was, however, more than interested in the woman who seemed to be the one bringing out this new part of him. Bringing out the White Wolf.

Ella, on the other hand, seemed distracted in a more negative way. She took her next shot and missed again. This time she sunk the 8-ball. Winning the game for Bucky.

"Well, shit. I guess it's time to go pick a song before they stop taking requests for the night."

Bucky grabbed her hand as she turned to where the host was sitting, collecting names and requests. She turned around and he didn't let go. Her hand felt hot in his, even though he was wearing leather gloves.

"You know, you really don't have to. Not after that stunt with all those guys. That obviously threw you off your game. That hardly seems fair."

Ella smiled at him; her eyes as warm as her hand.

"No, Bucky. A deal is a deal and I never go back on my word. Never. How about I meet you back at our spot at the bar and you order me another drink while I pick a song?"

Bucky looked at her and responded.

"Fair enough. You're stubborn you know that? Same poison?"

Ella nodded as she smirked, gently pulled her hand out of his, and turned towards the host and ledger of songs.

Bucky ponied up to the bar in their previous seats. He flagged down the bartender and ordered Ella's drink. He would have ordered himself another one since he had the disadvantage of a supercharged metabolism. Which meant he couldn't get drunk anymore. But Ella didn't know that and he did not want to come off as irresponsible or reckless. Considering he had driven.

By the time her drink came, Ella was still not back at the bar. Bucky looked across the room and found her at the high-top table next to the host. Her brows were furrowed and her full lips were drawn into a straight line. She was obviously more than seriously considering her options.

As she flipped through the large book of available songs, again, something must have caught her eye. Bucky watched as her eyebrows shot straight up. Then a roguish smile graced her lips. Ella looked over at the host and asked a question that obviously surprised the young man.

With a slightly confused expression, he answered her as he shook his head back and forth. Bucky wished that they were positioned in a better way as to make it easier for him to read their lips.

Ella looked back down at the book before making her way to the host's table. She grabbed the clipboard that held the roster of songs to be played, then added her selection. All while the host gave her a strange look.

Apprehension and sheer disbelief were written all over his features as he watched Ella add her information to the piece of paper. When she handed him the clipboard, Bucky could finally read their lips.

The host looked down at the clipboard then back up at Ella and asked 'Are you sure?' To which Ella gave one hell of a smirk and replied 'Oh, yeah.' Before a huge smile spread across her face.

Bucky quickly composed his face and looked away and in the direction of the current dude singing his country song with an achy breaky heart. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ella turn back to him and made her way back to the seat next to him.