Page 12 of Mister Prick

“They go down too easy.” She raised her glass. “Sure.”

“I’ll get you one.” I lifted mine. “But, I’m on my third.”

She grinned. “I’ll see what I can do to catch up.”

I ordered her another martini. As she fidgeted in her seat and nursed her drink, it dawned on me that I had a man handcuffed to four hundred pounds of weight in a spare bedroom of my weekend retreat.

“When you’re finished, we probably need to--”

“I think I’m going to have one more,” she said. “Then, we can do whatever.”

“I was thinking we should--”

“Do you have any more tattoos? Other than the one on your hand?”

“I have a few that aren’t visible, yes.”

“Can I see them?”

Completely caught off guard by her question, I set my drink aside and grinned. “Not if I’m clothed, no.”

She looked me up and down. Her mouth twisted into a smirk. “You’ll need to get undressed for me to see them?”

I leaned onto the edge of the table, glanced at her cleavage, and then met her gaze. “Yes.”

“Is that something you’re willing to do?”

There were many reasons I couldn’t be in a relationship. The biggest was that in my line of work, trusting someone put me at a tremendous risk, and I wasn’t in the risk-taking business. “I told you. I’m not relationship material.”

She laughed no differently than if I’d told the punchline to a joke. After catching her breath, she looked at me as if I were crazy.

“There’s three kinds of men on this earth.” She raised her index finger. “The men I want to fuck.” She extended her middle finger. “The one man I hope to marry.” Her ring finger joined the other two. “And, the men I prefer were dead.”

She cocked her head to the side and grinned a sly grin. “I’m not sure where you’re going to end up, but right now I don’t see any wedding bells in our future, and I don’t want to kill you. At least not yet.”

It seemed the martinis were bringing a dose of courage with them. I met her gaze and held it. “I don’t get undressed to simply show off my tattoos. If I’m taking my clothes off, we’re going to go the distance.”

She lifted the bottom of her glass and drained the few droplets that remained. “Okay.”

“So, you’re up for a one-night stand?”

“I was wanting to see your tattoos, but I’ll settle for that, yes.”

There was only one acceptable response to her offer.

I raised my index finger and gave it. “Check, please.”