Drunken Bargain
Lily took a steadying breath, then pasted on a dazzling smile as she sashayed over to take her place beside Ethan, offering a lilting greeting to the assembled revelers. "Hello, everyone. I'm Lily Anderson."
"Miss Anderson, a pleasure." A bald-pated older gentleman eyed her speculatively before darting a questioning glance at Ethan. "I don't suppose this lovely young lady has been cast in a role for your upcoming slasher opus?"
A confused silence fell over the group as they digested the man's query.
Were they truly engaged in some cinematic tête-à-tête here amidst this bacchanalia? If so, why had Ethan summoned her to join them?
Ethan's rich baritone cut through the awkward lull, his words clipped and authoritative. "My woman is no actress."
He leaned forward, trailing an idle finger through the condensation beading one of the ice buckets arrayed across the low table, before swiveling to pin Lily with a challenging arch of one eloquent brow.
The silent gauntlet indelibly laid before her, demanding she prove her mettle.
Lily was nobody's fool; she understood the unspoken ultimatum crystal clear. Somehow, someway, she must drain those decanters if she hoped to gain any negotiating leverage, to extract even the merest concession from this inexplicable man.
Yet the sheer volume gave her pause, the ice buckets brimming with easily a dozen assorted bottles of top-shelf spirits – a veritable Everest of alcohol to be summited, one that stretched the very limits of her capabilities as a consummate lightweight.
Could she possibly drain even half that bounty before succumbing to inebriation?
As if plucking the thought from her very mind, Ethan's taunting timbre sliced through her deliberations. "Afraid, babe?" His words rang with dismissive certainty as his smoldering gaze bore into her. "Then crawl back to whatever rat-hole you emerged from."
Lily bristled at the degrading insinuation, her resolve stiffening into unbending steel. "If I can match you drink for drink, you'll drop the lawsuits plaguing my uncle's magazine – and leave Kevin's entertainment conglomerate be?"
The barest hint of a smirk played across Ethan's sculpted lips as he appraised her boldness, his expression otherwise impassive and unreadable.
With a muttered oath, Lily snatched up the nearest bottle and defiantly upended it, the searing liquor blazing a molten trail down her throat. One bottle down, and already her body flushed with unnatural warmth, a burning ache blossoming from her chest.
Jaw clenched against the agony, she grabbed another decanter, draining it in several desperate gulps as one hand clutched at her painfully scorched sternum. A third bottle followed in rapid succession, the lurid liquid further stoking the inferno raging within her slender frame.
The crowd looked on in shocked awe as Lily slammed down the third empty vessel, spontaneously erupting into raucous cheers and an accompanying drumbeat of applause. "You go, Miss Anderson! You show 'em! Woo, Miss Anderson! Miss Anderson!"
Flushed and visibly swaying where she sat, Lily fumbled for a fourth bottle, her unfocused gaze landing hazily upon its amber-tinted depths as the world tilted alarmingly around her.
Through her drunken haze, she could feel the weight of Ethan's smoldering regard, knew he assessed her rapidly deteriorating condition with the cold calculation of a hunting snake poised to strike.
The mocking glint in those fathomless obsidian depths screamed loud and clear – your bravado is folly; you are no match for that which you have challenged.
Even as her fingers wrapped around the fresh decanter, Ethan's hand clamped down upon her wrist with uncompromising force, staying her reach. His grip was unyielding, immovable as granite, yet the contact itself raised an altogether different heat along her sensitized skin.
With a defiant snarl, Lily summoned every ounce of her waning strength to shove him away, her reddened eyes blazing with furious obstinance as she bit out her demand through a clenched jaw. "I can do this! Let go!"