Page 24 of Blood and Magic (RBMC: Helena, MT #2)

Hell, more than that, I repulsed him, and there was proof.

The minute I sat down and grabbed the tiny red cups to pour each of us a scotch, Vermillion scooted away from me.

When I handed one to him, he grabbed it by the rim and set it on the table in front of him.

And when I held mine up to say cheers and thanks for letting me crash their guys’ night, he barely touched mine before downing his entire drink and getting back to the game.

“Aquila,” Mill said. “Deal the cards.”

The younger man did as commanded, and I sipped my scotch, delighting in the burn that echoed down my throat and into my stomach.

I hadn’t eaten much today, so it hit me much harder than I thought.

But I could see why my father liked it so much.

This was as smooth as honey compared to the swill coming out of Kentucky.

Two cards landed in front of me, and I glanced at them, trying not to let my expression show how dismal I thought my odds were.

“So Vanderbilt,” Columba said. “What brings you down to the trenches?”

I shrugged. “Fenris invited me.”

Mill snapped his tumultuous gaze to his friend. “Did he?”

“Yeah, but I’d been thinking about crashing for a few weeks,” I said. “Sol’s gone. Ava’s in Paris. Guin is off doing whatever it is she does. It’s lonely in that big stupid house with no one else there.”

“Poor you, huh?” Aquila said. “Must be rough, having all that money and no one to share it with.”

“Hey!” Fenris cut in, smacking him on the shoulder. “Be nice or I’ll have you shucking shit tomorrow.”

Aquila lifted a pack of cigarettes to his mouth, bit into one, and lit it, inhaling before letting the smoke out on a sigh.

But I’d never let a taunt like that go unanswered. Perhaps it was this new wild side that Mill had awakened in me, or maybe I wanted to show them I wasn’t afraid of them.

“Yeah, you know what? It is,” I said. “But you get it, right? Must be rough for you, too. All those muscles and not a single brain cell to back them up.”

Fenris balked and Mill straightened, but Columba laughed and gripped Aquila’s shoulder.

“She fucking burned you, brother,” Columba said. “Now say you’re sorry and laugh at her joke.”

Aquila chuckled and shook his head. “Alright. Sorry, Vanderbilt. Old prejudices die hard and all that.”

“Hey, I get it,” I said. “I’m literally sitting in a room full of Bastards. I thought you all were bloodthirsty monsters up until six months ago.”

“Well,” Columba added with a wink, “only on the full moon.”

I giggled at his joke, and the night carried on with jovial conversation.

Fenris won the first round, and Poe won the second, and by the time we were halfway through the bottle of scotch, both Columba and Aquila had lost all their money.

But this hand…oh, this hand was going to me.

I had a full house, and unless someone else had gotten incredibly lucky, no one had anything better.

“There!” Fenris flipped his cards over, revealing three of a kind. “Pay up, bitches!”

“Ugh, I got nothing,” Poe said, pushing his cards toward the center of the table.

“Me neither,” Mill grumbled.

“Aww, poor grumpy gills,” I said, pouting at the guy on my right. “But it’s okay. Because your money is mine.” I flipped my cards over and reveled in how Fenris’s features dropped.

“What? No!” He balked and widened his eyes at me. “You cheated!”

“I would never!” I pretended to be offended while I gathered my chips and stacked them in front of me. “You accuse me of this deception in my own house? In my own house?”

Mill laughed and sipped more scotch while Poe grumbled and rubbed his hands over his face.

“I’m out, guys,” he said, pushing to his feet. “I’m broke and, between you and Vanderbilt, I’m a lost cause.”

Suddenly, a song on the radio got the guys’ attention.

“Hey, turn that up,” Aquila said, wrapping an arm over Columba’s shoulders while he started singing the bluesy country song at the top of his lungs.

“One more round?” I raised an eyebrow at the two men left sitting with me. “All or nothing?”

“Sure,” Mill said, finally lowering himself to look at me with unfiltered heat. It must have been the alcohol. “Anything for you, sweetheart.”

“Yeah, I’m in,” Fenris said, drawing my attention back to him.

He glanced between Mill and me before shuffling the cards and dealing them out.

The liquor had gone to my head, making me woozy and warm and almost completely uninhibited.

Mill drank the last little bit of scotch in his cup, and a drop spilled out of the side of his mouth, dribbling down his chin.

I licked my lips, praying for the courage to lean in and lick it off myself.

He looked down at me, and maybe he could read the urge in my gaze because he smirked and leaned closer.

“What are you thinking about?”

I bit my bottom lip between my teeth, rubbing over the tiny cut he’d made yesterday. “Nothing good.”

“Alright, you two,” Fenris said. “Since it’s all or nothing, there are no blinds or calls. We’re going right to the river.” He flipped all five cards in the center of the table. “Reveal your hands.”

Disappointingly, I had nothing. I flipped my cards over and pretended to pout. “Not my lucky day after all.”

“I’ve got two pair,” Fenris said. “What about you, Mill?”

“Flush,” he said, smiling like the cat who’d absconded with the cream.

“Wow, you lucky son of a bitch.” Fenris shook his head and gathered the cards, glancing at me with squinted eyes and a smirk. “Can you believe this guy? Death, Texas Hold’em, nothing beats him. Practically fucking Rasputin.”

I sighed and held out a hand for Vermillion to take. “Good game.”

He glanced at it before meeting my gaze again, gingerly taking my palm. “Good game, Maeve.”

I tried to stand, deciding I wanted to join the guys in their sing-along, but Mill held on to my palm, placing his other one on top. He furrowed his brows like something was wrong.

“How are you feeling?”

“Tipsy,” I said. “And rowdy. Now, if you’ll excuse me.

” I tugged away from him and grabbed a beer from the fridge before standing next to Poe, who sang the Garth Brooks song at the top of his lungs.

My older brothers used to listen to this, so the lyrics came to me from the depths of my subconscious.

Our voices were off-tune and our words slurred, but it was the lightest I’d felt in a long time.

Here, in this den of cow shit and testosterone, it didn’t matter what my last name was or where I grew up.

It didn’t matter who I’d been the day before or who had run out of my bed in disgust. We had shared a bottle of liquor and alleviated our troubles in each other’s company, and wasn’t that the point?

Whether we had friends in low places or no friends at all, we had this one moment, this one night, together.

Poe put his arm over my shoulder, and Columba held me around the waist, and together, in one drunken entourage, we sang our stupid little hearts out to an endless night sky.