“Okay,” I said. “Those can be the stakes if you win. But if I win—” I paused. “Come here for a second.”
He raised an eyebrow but leaned in. He was close enough that I could smell him: fresh sweat, cheap cologne, and something warmer rising off his skin. I put my lips to his ear.
“If I win,” I whispered, “you wear a chastity cage for a week.”
He pulled back and looked at me. Really looked, like he was searching my face for the punchline.
“You can’t be serious,” he said.
“Do we have a deal or not?”
I watched him process it. I watched him glance at his friends, who were grinning because they assumed Brett was about to embarrass me for sport. I watched him decide I wasn’t a threat.
That was his mistake. He’d underestimated me for two years. Tonight, I was finally getting my turn.
“Deal,” he said.
He even offered to let me break. How generous.
I broke. Stripes. Three balls dropped clean, and the cue ball rolled to exactly where I’d calculated it would.
“Lucky,” Brett said.
I didn’t respond. I just moved around the table and got to work.
Brett played by instinct and ego. I played by physics. He’d never seen cold deliberation up close and didn’t know how to read it. He kept waiting for me to flinch or rush, and I gave him nothing. I just moved to the next shot, and the next one, and the next one after that.
By my fifth consecutive pocket, the table had gone quiet.
I heard him say “Okay” under his breath. Just to himself. He was having trouble processing.
I left him two stripes on purpose. Let him breathe. He sank both and looked up at me with something new behind those brown eyes. It wasn’t panic. Not yet. But those were the early tremors of it.
I ran the rest of the table without a word.
Eight ball, corner pocket. Called it. Hit it. Done.
Brett stood there holding his cue, staring at the table like it had personally betrayed him. The silence from his friends was its own reward.
Then he seemed to remember they were there.
“Okay, so,” he started, “I think we can all agree?—”
“We had a deal,” I said. “A bet that you made. Out loud. In front of everyone.”
“Miles.” He’d never called me by my name before, and hearing it in that deep, rattled voice sent heat straight to my cock. “Come on.”
“I am coming on,” I said. “You agreed to the bet.”
His friends smelled blood. Dane, the tall one, leaned in. “Bro, what was the bet?”
The red hit Brett’s neck first. Then his face. Fast and total, that flush, and it was the single most satisfying thing I had ever witnessed in my twenty-one years of life.
“It’s private,” Brett said through clenched teeth, jaw tight, the flush only making him look hotter.
“I’ll keep it that way,” I said quietly. “Nobody will hear it from me. But you agreed, Brett.”
He stood very still. I watched him run the exits and find them all closed. He’d made the bet in front of witnesses. Walking away clean wasn’t an option without costing him something he valued more than comfort: his own ego.