Mardi Gras falls on February 13, this year, which is next Tuesday, so you might have thought I'd post this mug next week. EXCEPT Valentine's Day is the 14th and I have a Valentine's Day themed story releasing on the 13th. So...I'm posting this now.
On the upside, the story I'm excerpting below is one of the first books I set in Atlas Beach and next week's release is set there too. So...that works, right?
The original Games We Play books came about when one of my publishers at the time (Loose Id) came up with the idea of asking authors to write three connected stories each of which had to be set at a different winter holiday. I eventually chose Valentine's Day, Mardi Gras and St Patrick's Day. Which is really stretching things, but my mom had broken her neck and there was no way I could meet the deadlines for the holidays I'd first chosen--Thanksgiving, New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day. Plot-wise, this worked out much better so, there's that.
Anyway...I love New Orleans. I've been there many times and set a few stories there (I have a freebie here: ) and while it's not the only city that celebrates Mardi Gras in this country, it might as well be. I haven't been to Mardi Gras in NOLA, but I did catch parts of Carnevale in Vienna and Venice, which...is kind of the same thing?
Anyway...that's the story behind that.
Now here's a scene from Never Have I Ever--it has nothing to do with Mardi Gras, that just happens to be when the scene takes place.
Mardi Gras…
By Tuesday evening, Kristy was back to barely speaking to Luke. And Luke was back to wanting to kick himself up and down the street a couple of times for having let that happen. He’d meant to upset the status quo—sure. But in the opposite direction. He guessed he could blame the boggart for that. And maybe his cousin for putting stupid ideas in his head.
He hadn’t been scheduled to work the day before, but he’d shown up at the bar anyway, intending to give Kristy a break so she could get some dinner. Kristy was busy when he’d arrived, and Luke was surprised to see that the ladder Cam had been using to hang up the decorations, and which Luke had watched him put away the previous day, had reappeared—right in the middle of the fucking galley.
“What’s this doing here?” he asked, annoyed at Cam for leaving it there and at Kristy for not moving it out of the way. Unless it was there for some other reason. Had something else gone wrong, some new problem that no one had thought to mention to him? In that case, he was still annoyed with Cam and Kristy—and with the boggart, for causing trouble, and with whoever had taken it into their own hands to solve the problem without involving him.
When Kristy didn’t respond to his query, Luke raised his voice to ask again. “Hey, DiLuca! What’s with the ladder?”
Kristy started. She turned in his direction and frowned. “Oh, I don’t know. D’you want help moving it?”
Luke shook his head. “No, that’s okay. I got it.”
It wasn’t until he’d taken hold of the ladder to close it that Luke noticed the plastic bucket that had been perched on the top shelf and which was already tipping and raining down five gallons of water and ice chips on his head.
What the fucking fuck?
It was all Luke could do to keep from cursing out loud, especially when laughter broke out all along the bar from patrons who’d obviously enjoyed the show he’d just put on. He fought through the shock and the anger and was still trying to put a self-deprecating smile on his face when Kristy scurried over, nearly skidding to a stop at the sight of him.
“Luke…what happened? Are you all right?”
Luke nodded. “Yeah, it’s just this bucket…” He snagged it off the floor, ignoring the impulse to kick the offending object across the room with enough force to put it into orbit. Or at least through the front window. More breakage was the last thing they needed right now.
“Oh, so that’s where it went,” Kristy said in surprise.
Luke stared at her. “What?”
“The bucket. I couldn’t remember where I put it.”
“Wait…you did this? You put a bucket of water on top of a ladder?”
“No, of course not. It was filled with ice.”
“Ice?”
“I guess it must’ve melted.”
Luke stared at her. Maybe Gwyn was right. Maybe Kristy was behind at least some of the pranks. “Are you saying you wanted to dump a bucket of ice on my head? Seriously? What are we, twelve?”
If she wanted to play games, he had a good one for her. A little temperature play, a little restraint. He could trap her up against the bar and run a couple of those ice chips over her nipples till she begged for him to warm her back up again with his tongue.
“Luke, of course I didn’t.”
“Clearly, you did.”
She leaned in close. “Have you lost your mind? You’re making a scene.”
“Trust me; this isn’t me making a scene. Me putting you over my knee, on the other hand—that’d be a scene.”
Kristy reared back like he’d struck her. The look in her eyes was more than just surprised—and nowhere close to being interested. She looked stricken, betrayed. Luke could only stare at her in dismay. Obviously he’d said the wrong thing.
“I’m going on my break now,” Kristy announced. She grabbed her things from beneath the bar and fled, leaving Luke, already cold and uncomfortable in his wet clothes, to deal with everything else.
By the time she returned, he was too angry to say anything else to her. He went home to change, and when the time came to head back to the bar to help with the cleanup, he stayed right where he was. He reasoned that Monday night was slow, that it wouldn’t hurt her to close by herself for a change, that a little space, at this point, was the best thing for both of them. But the truth was that he was just too frustrated to deal with her sanely.
He told himself that he didn’t want to make things worse, but almost twenty-four hours later, he had to admit that he might have chosen the wrong tactic.
He was still trying to figure out how to get back in her good graces when his cousin Brenda stopped by the bar, accompanied by a red-headed guy who looked vaguely familiar, though he couldn’t place him.
“Hey, Luke,” she said. “How’s it going? It looks like we’ve got a good crowd in here tonight.”
“Yeah, it’s good.” They were busy as fuck, which would have been great, except that it only made Kristy’s rigid, cold, distant politeness all the more annoying. He was too busy, too rushed, and too annoyed to tease her out of her bad mood—in part because he was forced to ask her for everything he couldn’t immediately put his hands on because she refused to anticipate his needs, refused to do anything more than the bare minimum. He hadn’t even realized until now how much she did, what a very good team they made, how effortlessly they worked together, and how they balanced each other out.
If she ever spoke to him again, he’d have to be sure she knew how he felt.
Never Have I Ever
Games We Play 2.0
Kristy loves Luke but if anything was clear to her back when they were kids it was that gawky, awkward, tomboys didn't stand a chance with the king of the schoolyard. She watched her older brothers set their caps for Luke's glamorous cousins and get shot down. So she did what she had to in order to salvage her friendship with Luke. She hid her true feelings and her need for him to take control.
Luke wants Kristy in the worst way -- actually, in all the worst ways: tied up, held down, beaten, bitten, whipped. But he knows he has no chance of ever having her. They'd been childhood friends and sweethearts, until she friend-zoned him in the fifth grade. He knows he can either keep her as a friend, or take her to bed and lose her forever. His biggest mistake—so far—was in hiring her to work alongside him in the bar he and his cousins inherited from their grandmother. He knows Kristy needs the money and the job, but Luke's self-control can't take the constant contact with the girl he wants to dominate–both in and out of the bedroom. Something has to give—and soon!
https://books2read.com/NeverEver
https://books2read.com/RingRosie
