2019-10-11 - Playing Chicken

It's not unusual that Cris is one of, if not the, last person to leave the Platinum on nights he's working. He at least dutifully stays until the last girl has gone home safely, unharrassed by customers, and has been known to even drive some home a time or two in a carpool of glitter and cheap perfume. This usually puts it around the 4 a.m. mark that that he finally makes it out into the parking lot to motor out to where ever it is he's currently staying.

With the door closing behind him, he habitually reaches back to make sure it's locked before pausing just under the eave of the building to light up a cigarette where the light drizzle can't hamper the flame, squinting against the sudden flare of light and curl of smoke that rises from the tip. He's dressed in his usual 'uniform' of black on black on black, though a buffalo plaid shirt has been thrown over his tee against the autumn early morning chill. With a crunch of boots against the concrete, he sets off towards his dark blue '66 Ford Fairlane parked out the outskirts of the lot.

Out in the lot, perched on the front hood of a beautiful dark blue 55 Ford rests the ass (and rest of) one H. Everly Sutton. Usually it's the dancers finding creepers in the lot, not a bouncer, his car having sprouted a blonde hood ornament. To make matters more interesting, Sutton's wearing all dark clothes, cargoes, a studded belt with a heavy silver buckle, a dark blue tee, GHFD, and a hoodie, not hers, that's oversize: GHPD. Her shoulder-length, layered blonde hair is just as flyaway as usual, styled lightly and like a beacon in the moonlight.

Her hair's a little damp, not soaked, and neither is she, so she couldn't have been sitting here too long. She probably hates wasting time. Must have figured out when he gets off, gets out, and planted her ass on his classic muscle car right before the door opened. She watches Cris come, hands slid into the pockets of her zipped up hoodie.

As Cris spies Sutton using his car as a lawn chair, there is a quick glance given back over his shoulder as if to make sure the parking lot is otherwise vacant. Perhaps expecting Bad Men to be lurking in the shadows or otherwise checking to see that there isn't an audience to Sutton's debut on the mainstage of his hood. When he glances back to her, a wry smile sprouts at one corner of his mouth spreads until it splits his lips, the security lights giving it a slight white predatorial glint.

"Either I have my first official stalker or you just need a ride home again, and figured me for a sucker." Thankfully the drizzle isn't enough to soak the paper of his cigarette, allowing him to take another lazy drag as his eyes travel from her stem to stern and take their sweet time in soaking in the details.

Sutton watches him turn and check the lot. She watches him and the corner of her mouth quirks. Checking for witnesses for sure, says her expression, like she thinks he doesn't want someone else to see his reaction to a blonde sitting on his classic car. He doesn't immediately attempt to feed her the steering wheel, so that's an improvement over how the rest of her week's gone. His smile only prompts hers to part her lips a little. Less predatory, more charmed. She must approve of this grin of his.

"You've never been stalked before? Hard to believe, Cristo." She gives his name a little flourish, a Spanish pronunciation with a soft T, tongue against her teeth. "You say sucker, pet, I say gentleman." Better stop her before she says that more loudly and someone who works here hears it. "Is that an offer of a ride home, or are you teasing me?" She thumbs back over her shoulder.

"Maybe I like the way your car purrs." Sutton's figure is largely disguised by the clothes she's chosen, but that pretty little face, her full lips, both always look like trouble. No bruises. Must not be too much trouble recently. "Would you like to play a little game?"

"Let me clarify: first Gray Harbor stalker." Also to his credit, beyond not trying to make Sutton snack on his car accessories, Cris doesn't seem that worried that she's going to scratch his ride with that studded belt or dent the hood with a misplaced knee. He must either trust that she'll respect his ride or knows he's capable of getting any damage fixed without much fuss.

His foot steps take him just short of of the front fender as twin streams of smoke roll out of his nostrils and dissipate in the light stirring of breeze. "She purrs better when there is a woman handling her gears and I get to sit back and watch." Out of his pocket come his keys, lobbed in her general direction. "Guess it all depends on what type of game, doesn't it? I'm not about to play Russian Roulette with a semi-automatic." Though, he might have signed up to just that by suggesting she drive.

How she ended up on this stretch of Lonely Highway doesn't seem to be much of a mystery. Her car isn't in the lot — does she even have a car? There's nothing out here but some housing, a few old buildings, stuff almost no one comes here for, except this strip club. Particularly at four AM. She wasn't inside tonight, either, though she has been before. She brushes a dribble of rain water of off of her cheek, running her fingers back through her lightly dampening hair.

Sutton's hand doesn't hesitate in coming out of her pocket when the keys make an appearance, once it's clear he's going to toss the keys. She snatches them out of the air, then she hesitates, bur only briefly. "Mm." Oh, Cristobal. What have you done. "I never risk that big with my own life, love. I was thinking more along the lines of Twenty Questions. I would propose a game of Never Have I Ever, but you really should be drinking with that one." She slides off the hood. And yes. She's careful of all her metal accessories and his paint job.

"Letting women drive your car. I imagine that gets your hand pretty high up a lot of inner thighs." She shakes the keys out with a jingle, and steps around to unlock the passenger side door first, though she has to slide past him to do it. Her fingers skim his hip. "You're a little dangerous." And a little bit crazy.

"Twenty questions. We talking back and forth or a full on interrogation of Cruz, because if it's the latter, I'm going to have to wonder what I'm getting out of the deal." Although the way he watches her slide off the hood of his car implies he's getting plenty just by Sutton being here.

As she crosses close to Cris, deliberately using the excuse of nonexistent tight quarters to touch his hip, there is a noise of him sucking hard against his teeth. "Would you think I was lying if I told you you're the first double x chromosome to sit behind the wheel?" His eyes lower slightly as he watches her walk from passenger side to driver, only moving to open the door to shotgun when she makes the turn for the latter. Before he slides into the black leather interior, he flicks his cigarette in the vague direction of a puddle and then ducks inside to lean across the seats and pop her door before she can get there, giving it a little nudge so it goes ajar.

She's around in time to catch that door just as it pops open, sparing the leather interior from the splash of more than a negligible bit of rainwater. She slides in, and pulls the door closed behind her. Yes, she does need to adjust the seat. Sutton's short comparatively, though she doesn't move it much. She likes to drive sitting pretty far back. There's a pause of a moment while her fingertips skim lightly over the controls, locating the headlights, wipers, blinker, shifter. She slides the keys in the ignition. Only once it's started with a rumble does she reach up to adjust the rear view.

"Back and forth, love. Unless you like being grilled with only half my attention on you. I am driving." Sutton grins. "I give as good as I get. I can take whatever you have to offer me, so don't be shy." Her fingers slip across the back of his arm before she adjusts her grip on the wheel, glances over at Cris. "I would absolutely think you were lying to me, yes. Would you like to try to lie to me? It's technically against the rules of the game, lying, but we haven't exactly started yet."

"We're starting now. No lying." She holds up a finger. "I'll know." She might, she might not. "First question. Why did you give me your keys?"

"I just need to test our your bullshit meter to make sure it was working." Cris says simply before he's leaning in to her with his inner hand resting on her knee. Perhaps she was right in thinking that Cris takes giving a girl the keys as open invitation to go right for the inner thigh. His face comes close to hers with that wolfish grin returning as his outer arm reaches across her torso close enough to brush the fabric of her hoodie before he ...simply snags the seatbelt and draws it across her.

"Safety is sexy." Something about that phrase brings him great amusement, making the soft skin around his eyes crinkle for a moment as he buckles her in and then slouches back into his own seat to do the same.

"First question, two part answer: first, my eyes are fucking tired. Second, I thought you might like it. Not wet panties sort of like, but you seem as if you're the type to actually enjoy handling this much metal. And the way you pet my girl when you got in, indicates I was right. My turn: how do you know de la Vega?"

Sutton's eyes are on his mouth when he snags the seatbelt. She doesn't even twitch with his hand across her body, though the hand on her knee does inspire a moment's hesitation. She doesn't ask him to remove it, but there was some kind of thought sliding behind those hazel eyes of hers. "You're absolutely right. Safety first." She says this in a slightly throaty voice, a little amusement along the edges. Of course the questions aren't the entirety of the game.

"Hm." She turns her eyes back to the road and rests her hand on the shifter. "You're right." About what? Most of that? All of that.

To his question, she says, "I first met him dispatching for GHPD when I fucked up my back. 6 weeks of bossing his entire shift around pretty much made my year. He's cranky as fuck on the radio, much to my personal amusement." She gives Cris barely any warning before she glances both ways and then tests the acceleration from zero to why the fuck are you driving this fast in the rain.

A beat later she says, "My brother worked with him in Seattle, though. Somehow didn't meet up until here. I know him intimately, if that's what you meant."

"Second question. Do you?"

At her sudden acceleration, Cris merely just lifts his hand and rests two fingers up by where the top of the window meets the jamb, the spread of his knees and placement of his feet keeping him from sliding around the barely bucketed seat as the Fairlane fishtails slightly, lacking the fancy four-wheel drive or traction control of much more modern models of cars. The box in the back seat doesn't fair quiet as well, his other hand snapping back to keep the cardboard box stuffed with artificial flowers and candles still in their plastic wrap from dumping all over the place.

"Bouncing your ex-partner's sister around the bedroom is usually looked down on in the force." Not that his words hold a hint of judgment, just an observation to flavor the conversation. "Nothing between he and I quantifies as intimate, but yes we fucked. Return question: why did you ask that one?"

Sutton's eyes lid a little heavier when she pulls out onto the rain-slicked highway, tires gripping well despite the acceleration, after a brief fishtail. She probably kicks up good bit of gravel behind her. Might be a problem if the lot wasn't basically deserted already. She hugs the road right enough, hands positioned, shifting in the right places, which suggest that though she doesn't have a car here, she's a decent driver. At the very least. "This is a hot car," she murmurs. He knows it, though.

"No, it isn't. Nicely spotted." There's a bit of a smirk there. "He was threatened with death, apparently, if he ever touched me. It's all very macho." She glances over at the admission, "Fucking is always intimate, whether it's hard or sweet or violent." She smiles. "I asked because I already knew the answer and I wanted to see if you'd tell me." Her gaze flicks back to the road. "How long were you a cop?"

Once he's certain that his supplies won't go tits up in the back seat, Cris' one hand drapes casually back in his lap. A car like this was meant to be driven like this, and so far he has no qualms about Sutton is handling herself behind the wheel. So of course he knows it is, but still has that slightly smug look with one corner of his mouth shifting up lopsidedly over a canine when she says so.

"Guess that was a pretty empty threat, considering." Considering Ruiz is still breathing and all. "And you did say no lying, and I see no sense in denying. Though I'm pretty sure it was an act of some sort of self loathing on his part. Not that that'll help you sleep better at night." His eyes tick over to her profile with the next question, perhaps wondering what else Ruiz has told the blonde about him. "Almost twelve years before I was offered an early pension. Border cop, down in El Paso." To his third question, "Why were you really waiting for me tonight?"

After a few miles along this long stretch of road to get a feel for the steering, the way the tires ride the pavement, how her body rests in the driver's seat, she eases off the speed from slightly terrifying to a little too fast. It's raining, after all, and though it's been raining a while, she still down-shifts in the tighter turns. She isn't reckless so much as she drives with a heavy foot. The more she relaxes into it, the more of that English accept creeps into her casual conversation. "It wasn't empty. My brother died before Javi put his hands on me."

"Most of the things Javier de la Vega does are to destroy little pieces of himself." She lets that one go for free, not that it's... a surprise. It's not hard to spot those, particularly in their respective professions, the ones grinding themselves down on purpose. "What did you do to earn yourself a fuck off and we won't pursue this package?"

"I'm curious about you, Cristobal. I want to know why a man with your face and bearing, who talks like an ex-cop, who has such pretty eyes, lights such a baleful fire under Javier Ruiz de la Vega's ass. Why it nearly sent him off the edge seeing you touch me. He didn't come to my bed that night." Which of course begs the question — they the fuck is she hanging out with Cruz at four am knowing it'll blow Ruiz's gasket if he ever finds out. Is her list of reasons all to do with Ruiz?

As Sutton settles into the feel of the car, Cris' hand falls away from its hitch to find the handle for the window, cranking it twice to create a gap at the top where a whistle of fresh air whips in. His hips lift slightly from the cradle of the seat so he can dig in his pocket for a partially crushed pack of cigarettes and a cheap ass plastic lighter. "You don't mind." It should be a question, and yet it's flat at the end. Of course she doesn't mind, it's his car. He's allowed to smoke in it if he pleases. And it pleases.

The pack is a soft side instead of a box, the foil torn away haphazardly from one corner so it takes a bit of shaking for one filter to pop up higher than the rest. He pulls it the rest of the way with his lips, leaving it dangling there as he answers. “I think in the spirit of the game you need to narrow that down a bit to just one question, if there was even a true one in there.”

"I'd tell you if I did." Sutton seems to take no offense at his statement made in his own car, a car he's graciously handed her the keys to drive. She smiles a little, shifts down to take a bend in the forested road at a slightly less reckless speed, once she's sure the tires are in good enough condition to handle it. "Why did you retire so young?"

She settles into a longer stretch of road, a few miles of relatively straight road, one hand on the wheel, the other resting lightly on the shifter.

"None of your business." Cristobal says simply, though his tone has taken on a slightly darker edge as he shifts in his seat slightly so he can look at her profile without craning his head too much. "You know what I think, Sutton? I think you're here, looking for some tiny redeeming quality from me. Maybe because you like me, and so you want Ruiz to like me. Or maybe you're just here to dig up a little dirt on me, report it back, try to give your man an edge." His tongue touches his bottom lip as he starts to get a little irritated at the thought. "But you're trying to get blood from a stone, Little Pepper."

He leans towards her, his voice quiet but there is a cut to it. "You want to know why?" He asks, studying her features as he creeps closer, eyes ticking over the curve of her jawline and her ear, muttering terribly near the latter as he moves a lock of her blonde hair around the shell of it. "I killed twenty six people."

As the words are said, Sutton can feel the accelerator depress beneath her foot, the engine revving as the car picks up speed.

Sutton is silent for a long while, while he tells her it's none of her business. Through that tone, the edge. She glances over, only briefly, hazel eyes appraising. She returns her gaze to the road again, briefly, and then back to Cristobal as he continues to speak, when he uses that little nickname he's given her. "Is that really what you think?" Which thing does she mean? Any of them. She can feel Cristobal leaning in, his breath across her ear when he says that last horrible thing. She takes a very slow, very deep breath.

And then she takes another when the accelerator drops on its own. The stretch of road is straight on for a while yet, but there's a curve coming up in less than half a minute. Perhaps less time, if the vehicle continues to pick up speed. She takes her eyes off of the road. She turns her head to Cristobal. Her eyes find his. Hazel to blue. When she turns to face him, her cheek very nearly brushes his lips. "Would you like to die tonight, pet?"

Three beats go by. "Sometimes, if you're fast enough and you're not wearing your seatbelt, you'll die on impact. More often the shock to the system is so great it's lethal, but it hurts a good deal and you feel your life choking out of you. If you're lucky your aorta will tear before the pain from the shock of lacerated organs and the broken bones make you scream for release." That's said softly.

"Would you like to die tonight?"

Cristobal's head tilts slightly as he remains in her space, his arm slinging casually around the back of her seat. "Sure, you're accelerating now, but until you shift to a higher gear, we'll top out or the transmission will blow. You and I both know that these cars were never equipped with airbags. So maybe you can unclip my belt in enough time to eject me, or I'll break my face on the dashboard. But maybe what you don't know is that this is a '66 Fairlane. The collapsible steering column wasn't mainstream until '67. So you'll hit the steering wheel and the force will drive the column into your chest plate, where. It will inevitably crack every rib sending sharp pieces of bones into your lungs and your heart, and I'll likely walk away with a nasty headache. But if you want to play chicken, sure. Keep your foot on the gas pedal, see which of us dies. Or and maybe they'll bury us both some place nice."

Wait, what? He thinks that she's the one dropping the lead.

Sutton isn't shifting, nor is she going for the brake, nor is she paying her full attention to the rain-slicked road. The bend looms in the distance, though only someone very familiar with the road would likely realize it's coming. All those trees tend to disguise what's up ahead, and the occasional flash of lightning in the roiling clouds above does little to illuminate that. She glances back to the road briefly, when the thought skips through her head that he doesn't even know he's doing this.

"A steering column into my heart will kill me instantly. How do you feel about adding number twenty-seven."
There's a good chance H. Everly Sutton is a little bit deranged.

There's a beat before she says, "Babe. I'm not accelerating. You are." Her hand comes up to touch the side of his face, across his body, off the shifter. She turns her hand and it slides down. Her nails, short as they are, bite suddenly into the delicate skin just under his jaw. It's then that Sutton's soft voice takes a different tone and she says simply, "Stop."

Cristobal's eyes flash to the whites, either from the bite of her words or her nails. Probably both.

He's doing it? He's doing it.

A flare of his nostrils as he tries to rein in what little ember inside of him that she sparked with the question about his forced retirement. "Shit." The man next to her hisses, as his pulse beneath the fingers driving into his skin starts to skip around erratically, yet on the surface he seems to keep his cool. "I don't. Know. How." But yet cutting him to the quick with her nails doesn't seem to be the answer. The accelerator doesn't inch.

His eyes immediately go to the road ahead, flicking back and forth quickly. "If I can't, slam on the brakes, I'll pull the emergency. Steer into the skid and with any luck we'll spin out and hit the tree line with the back fender..." It's as good as he's got as far as ideas go.

Sutton has about five seconds to make a decision, and the decision she goes with is to attempt a sharp strike with the edge of her hand to Cris' throat just above his collarbone. Too much force, a wrong angle could crush important things permanently. Not enough? Just makes him angry, or he blocks it entirely and then they're struggling. A single strike with precision is more of an ohshit choking situation. Hard to maintain focus on other things when your brain is in emergency shutdown mode screaming for air.

If that doesn't work in easting the pedal up, she'll be operating the brake and the emergency and the steering wheel all on her own. Fuck fuck fuck. Maybe slightly suicidal Sutton doesn't want to tie tonight after all. Self preservation is such a bitch.

Her foot comes down on the brake, easing into it before she takes the risk of throwing everything into a skid. If she has to, she will, but while her heart rate rockets, the rest of her is thinking about how she doesn't know who the fuck's question it is.

Well. That's certainly one way to do it.

It's also an effective way to do it.

Cris lurches away from the sudden blow, hands flying up to his throat as he inhales a sharp, wheezing breath, uncaring of the cigarette that falls from his knuckles and bounces off his jeans, the cherry searing an instant hole through the material and sending ash everywhere before it falls onto the center console and into the divot with some spare change rattling around in it.

As he chokes and gags, the unseen pressure on the pedal sudden lifts.

If this was an action movie, Sutton would retrieve the cigarette, tuck it between her lips, and execute some spin drift shit. She sees him bobble it, mutters, "Fuck me," and so begins a long, tense rapidly increasing pressure on the brakes. She lays down a long skid of rubber but the car somehow manages to keep the road, fishtailing briefly with a skip of the tires through some low-lying water before it blessedly comes to a complete stop with all but one wheel on the pavement.

Sutton drops back hard against the upright of her seat, the pulse point in her tanned throat. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Questions. Are. Their own fucking reward.

She puts her hand on his chest. "Give it a minute. You're fine." He probably already knows that in his mind, but choking narrows the fucking field. She sits there, stopped in the rain, blocking an entire lane of traffic at 4am. Not many cars come out this way at 4am. She might not be fine if he chooses to retaliate once he catches his breath, much larger man as he is. Little blondes, man. Vicious creatures. "I'm sorry I asked, but thank you for answering me." Not entirely sorry, then.

It's only through a bit more forced relaxation of his throat that Cristobal manages to slow the panicked urge for his lungs to regain air, and a measured bit or two he's speaking again, albeit with a hoarse sound that sounds like the words are coming through a tube of gravel that rattles around from the passage of speech. "I take back...what I said..about getting in the ring with...you." Though there is a crack of a grin that indicates she shouldn't take that all too seriously.

"What does it matter?" He finally asks, head tilted back and eyes closed.

Sutton stops rubbing Cristobal's chest when he's grabbing enough air to crack a joke. She laughs and her hand skims down his abs before she drops her hand to the shifter. What? Like she wasn't going to take an excuse to find out how much he works out his core. Good things to know if you might end up in the ring with someone later in the week, next week, soon.

"It's a piece of you." Sutton's hand slides off the stick, her other drops to the bottom curve of the wheel. They sit there with the headlights cutting across all that falling water, twin beams of pavement, shoulder, grass, and the upright, rough trunks of Sitka spruce beyond. Her heart rate comes down slowly. Her hands don't shake, though. She takes a short breath. "Javi doesn't need my help with you, and I'm not looking to save you, Cristo. That's not what I do." Professionally, yes, it really is. Privately?

Privately is another matter. Her gaze skims the line of trees, how close the bend is up there. How close that was. She licks her lips and brushes the back of her knuckles against them. Three beats later she drops her hand and takes another short, sharp breath. Hanging onto that composure by a thread.

"It always matters."

There is a rumble in his chest as Sutton's hand slides down it, a warning or a deep purr it's hard to tell, considering. For the moment, he doesn't deign to look at her, he just sits there with his eyes closed as she explains her reasoning. Or rather doesn't at all. Which under the guidelines of the game, isn't really against the rules.

Whatever inner thoughts are churning in the bouncer's brain, it doesn't seem to land on a happy thought as he leans away from his seat, only to slam his head back against the rest as if that will bring him back to clarity.

"You okay." His gaze is suddenly, intensely on her again, like the night at the club where his switch flipped from playful and flirting to rushing her out the door to get her home.

Sutton pops the door without a word, leaning as far out as she can get her torso, no belt, rainwater soaking through her top and blowing into the car while she hurls up her guts on the roadway.

She's a triple heaver, but it's over quickly. Her stomach was nearly empty. Just half a grilled cheese stolen earlier at the diner. She spits, wipes her mouth, and hangs there a minute like she's not quite sure she's finished.

Cris maybe doesn't know exactly how close they both came to dying just then. Or maybe he does. Maybe he does.

The sound of Cris' belt being released clicks as soon as she pops open that door, and his body shifts over the center console and is suddenly invading her seat at an awkward angle. His palm rides up her spine and back down again as she throws up onto the road, "There you go, let it all out. Let it out. Ahí lo tienes, está bien. Esta bien. Atta girl. Lo siento te he asustado Me asusté a los dos. I got you. I got you."

There is something about this situation, trying to comfort Sutton as she finally succumbs to downward spiral of an adrenaline spike. Something about it just must strike the man raw, because his forehead drops to her back as he keeps rubbing it, almost mindlessly and just muttering over and over. "Lo siento mucho bebé nina. Lo siento mucho."

So maybe he does know.

The rubbing her back seems to help, at least she finally calms down, now bent across the seat with Cris at her back, both of them taking up that small space. Were a semi truck to come along now, barreling down toward the bend, they might have larger problems, but it seems the gods of fate are giving a momentary respite to these two gamblers, and she sibilant rolls of all that lyrical Spanish is half-swallowed by the purr of the rain pattering across the vehicle, along Sutton's upper back, Cris' hand, the footwell. She breathes for a while before she even tries to sit up. Her hoodie is damp. Her cotton cargo pants are damp. Her hair is damp. It's Washington, and everything is colder when it's wet.

Even hot little blondes. Even with a blue-eyed Latino apologizing in a breathless string against her back. "No te preocupes. Yo también los asusté a los dos." Don't worry. I scared us both too. She laughs softly then, a little shimmer of a laugh, one absent her usual humor, no biting wit there. "No es así como pensé que una noche contigo irías." This isn't how I thought a night with you would go.

She straightens, slowly, to give him time to do the same, and runs her hand through her hair. "Ay." She swallows, and her hand drops across the center console. "Apologies for making you drop your smoke." That's what she chooses to say so softly in the cab between them. She pulls the doors shut when she's able, and brushes wet strands of unruly blonde hair out of her eyes, looking over at Cris.

What she said and what she means don't always quite line up.

As Sutton straightens up, Cris pushes himself back into his seat, staring at her as she apologizes for the dropped cigarette. "Fuck it." He says simply, plucking it from the tray and flicking it out the window before he cranks the window back up and seals them both inside. As if that little gesture is meant to mean all is forgiven between them.

As they breathe, the windows start to gain a slight fog which seems the least of the hazards they've faced tonight. His hand reaching across the distance between them seems a greater one, but he's just fingering a lock of blonde behind her ear again, this time with much less malice weighing in the air.

"Let me drive you home."

That's actually somehow worse, this moment of mingled understanding and apology between them. It's somehow more honest, more real than that round of questions that really did start out as a game. She's learned this many times in the very recent past: asking someone for honesty is a dangerous game. "Yes." She watches him briefly, his fingers close to her face, a lock of her hair around one.

"Next time, if we continue these questions down to the twenty, we will be drinking, and neither of us driving, mm?" Her gaze skims across his body, up to his face. She watches those unusually blue eyes set into that swarthy skin. "Or you take me dancing." Fewer mechanical errors likely in a dance club. "Lo entiendes?" Understand?