wide mouth offered him a private smile that spoke of the intimacies they’d shared long ago.
He wanted to ask her what she wanted, what she was trying to say. He wanted to growl his frustration with this vacation that was becoming too crowded. But he had too much of an audience, and before he could get to his feet and pull Sydney along with him out onto the veranda, Poe returned from the kitchen.
Her rummaging had produced a serving tray bearing eight highball glasses, a decanter of bourbon, another of water and a bucket of ice. Standing behind the chair she’d occupied earlier, she set the tray in the center of the table.
“Now,” she said, continuing the conversation she’d dropped like a bomb. “Since none of us are sleeping together, let’s get drunk and talk about sex.”
2
“YOU HAVE GOT to be kidding.” Lauren pulled her feet up onto her chair and wrapped her arms around her knees defensively.
“Not at all, sweetie. In fact, I’m dead serious.” Poe tugged the stopper from the whiskey decanter and set it on the tray. And then she cast a wicked look around the table, teasing her dinner companions with a sinister gleam in her almond-shaped eyes.
Ever since Poe had made her observation of the room’s sexual tension, Sydney had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. After all, she’d been warned earlier out on the veranda—a warning left wide-open, giving Poe plenty of leeway and absolutely no boundaries.
And so Sydney wasn’t a bit surprised when Poe finally grinned and said, “Truth or dare.”
Stunned silence greeted Poe’s announcement. Sydney knew that, given another second, the gang would come around. But she wasn’t going to wait that long. She was more than ready to get started, more than ready for fun. And, so, with a mental Here goes nothing, she reached for a glass. “I’m game.”
Lauren gave an audible gasp. “You can’t mean that.”
“I can mean it. I do mean it.” Sydney tossed ice cubes into her glass and poured the bourbon. She looked down the length of the table, silently daring Lauren to say another word. “This is my vacation and I want to have fun.”
“Truth or dare is fun?” Lauren asked, anyway, a brow raised.
“The right mood, the right company.” Sydney lifted her shoulders, lifted her drink, glanced briefly at Ray as the fiery liquid slid over her tongue. The look in his eyes added to the burn, and it was all she could do to finish her reply. “Not to mention the right alcohol in the right quantity.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Poe said, and finally everyone relaxed enough to laugh. Everyone, that is, but Lauren.
Lauren looked around the table, meeting one gaze after another, lingering the longest on Anton, whose expression was impossible to read. He definitely had stoicism down to an art, Sydney thought, but whether the look in his eyes was anger, intrigue or true indifference, she couldn’t tell.
Lauren, obviously, wasn’t having the same trouble. What she saw when she looked at Anton seemed to be all she needed to make up her mind. Decision made, she reached for the decanter and splashed a double over the ice cubes she’d added to her glass.
With a quick shake of her head, she downed a quarter of the drink, whistled, shuddered, then thumped the crystal against the table. “Fine. I’m in.”
“All right,” Doug said, and clapped his hands together. “I think we might just have ourselves a party.”
At that, Anton grabbed his own glass and, not bothering with water or ice, downed the shot he poured. “Hell. If the subject is sex, count me in.”
“Then sex it is.” Poe pulled the stopper from the decanter of water and gave Sydney a quick wink. Sydney mentally crossed her fingers, hoping Poe hadn’t gone too far. The last thing she wanted was for this game to backfire.
What she wanted, in fact, was for this game to rid the room of inhibitions. To rid Ray, in particular, of any hang-ups he might have that would prevent him from being open to her advances. Judging by the look in his eyes, however, judging by the way his gaze fairly simmered with uninhibited invitation, hang-ups weren’t going to be a problem.
“So, Poe. Does your version of this game have rules? Or do we make it up as we go along?” Jess added two cubes of ice to two separate glasses, splashed both with bourbon and passed one to Kinsey. “I’ve got as good an imagination as the next guy but—”
“But like the next guy, you need direction. You just hate having to stop and ask.” Smiling brightly, Kinsey toasted the other women with her drink and a round of high fives.
The men sat back, glowered and glared. Sydney had a feeling they were only biding their time. She’d yet to know a single man who didn’t get a kick out of delivering a slam dunk comeuppance—especially to a woman.
“Hey, I asked. I asked.” Jess tossed up his hands in exaggerated exasperation. “And like the next guy, I can’t seem to get a straight answer, which is what I expected with a woman in charge.”
This time it was the men exchanging the loud whooping endorsement of Jess’s commentary on the female game plan. So, Poe did what any self-respecting woman would do when faced with a group of male chauvinists.
Leaning across the table, she beckoned him closer with the crook of one finger, running a fingertip over his lower lip when he met her halfway. “Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is?”
Jess frowned, obviously confused by the switch in Poe’s gears. “I don’t get it.”
“Since you seem to think I don’t know what I’m doing, you figure out how this game should go down.” She eased back into her chair. “Unlike you men, we women don’t mind a bit when a man tells us what he wants us to do.”
“I agree with Poe. Having a man in charge makes things run so much more smoothly.” Kinsey scooted around in her chair and got comfy, having a whole lot of fun at Jess’s expense as she stretched out her legs and crossed her ankles in his lap. “I just don’t know what we’d do without you.”
Jess ignored the batting of Kinsey’s lashes, and smiling to herself, Sydney finally started to relax. Maybe a good time was about to be had by all. Poe’s leap into the center of the tension was certainly proving a lot more effective than the eggshell route. Even Lauren had a grin on her face.
Jess rubbed his hands together, then he rubbed them from Kinsey’s ankles to her knees. His brown eyes glittered and he lifted one dark brow. “Now this is more like it. Getting drunk, talking about sex, a man in charge and a woman in his lap. Doesn’t get any better, does it, boys?”
His enthusiasm earned him a cuff to the back of the head from Kinsey. “You’re forgetting one thing, mister. And that is paybacks are hell.”
Jess thrust out his chin, tapped it with one finger. “C’mon, then. Your best shot. Right here.”
Kinsey drew back a fist. Anton, sitting on her other side, caught her hand from behind. Sydney, in the chair next to Anton, leaned across and pried his fingers from Kinsey’s, and when he turned to protest, she stuck out her tongue.
At the other end of the table, Lauren poured herself another
