Her eyes glittered with mischief as she stepped into me. With the foot difference in our heights, I had to lean down a bit to give her access. When she wrapped her hand around the back of my neck, I closed my eyes and puckered up in anticipation of her sweet mouth. But the kiss I expected didn’t land on my lips. Instead, she pressed her luscious lips to the corner of my jaw, lingered for a second, and stepped back.
“There’s your kiss.”
I should have clocked that warning in her naughty gaze. But when she played with the stakes, she gave me ideas for the rest of the night.
“Thank you.” I smirked. “Stay right here.”
I set my one extra ring beside the square of glowing pegs and jogged across the field to where I’d set up the next game: glow-in-the-dark cornhole. After I turned on the game’s lights, I trotted back to my date. “Let’s see how we do with the next one.”
She shot me a dubious glare when we walked up to the game. “You play this at every football party, I bet.”
“Nah. I’m usually representing the boys at the beer pong table.”
Ignoring my comment, she went on. “Plus, your roommate is from Kentucky. I read somewhere that this game originated there.”
“Maybe.” I shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. But I don’t play it as much as you think.”
“Hmph,” she snorted.
Suppressing a laugh, I said, “Same stakes?”
Shooting me a side-eye, followed by an eye roll and a secret little smile, she nodded.
“Which one do you want?”
Chess walked over to the red-lit cornhole box and picked up the matching glowing beanbags I’d stacked on the edge of it. I picked up the glowing blue beanbags and stood on the other side of the box from her.
“You go first,” she said.
I tossed a bag at the illuminated blue box opposite us, landing it on the slope below the hole.
With impressive concentration, she lined up her shot and tossed, landing her bag on the lip of the hole.
“Hmm,” I said and lined up my next toss.
She cleared her throat right as I swung through, and I let go of the bag a fraction too late, sending it up in the air to land on the turf at the foot of the box.
“You did that on purpose.”
Turning that liquid blue gaze to me, she batted her lashes. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She lined up her next shot, and right as she swung through, I snorted into my hand, “Cheater.”
My antics didn’t faze her. She followed through with a perfect toss that dropped the bag through the hole, taking the one clinging to the edge with it.
“What was that?” she asked, her tone all innocence. “I don’t see how you can cheat at cornhole.”
Without giving her another chance to distract me, I tossed my third bag, landing it beside the first one on the slope of the box. Her next toss landed on the box right above my two bags. My next toss skidded off the end of the box, and hers landed beside it. When we tallied up the points, she had me down five to zip.
“Seems to me you’ve maybe played this game once or twice,” I said as we retrieved our bags from the blue box and set up to aim at the red one.
With a noncommittal toss of her hair, she said, “I might have played it before.”
Might have played it before, my ass. Chessly wiped the floor with me, beating me 21-9, and she hadn’t wasted any time doing it.
“Remind me to have you on my team at the next party,” I said as we stacked the bags on the blue box.
She stood in front on me, an expectant expression on her pretty face, and it was my turn to tease. Leaning in close, I nibbled my way along her jaw to the sensitive spot behind her ear where I lingered an open-mouthed kiss and relished the shiver that stole over her. For an extra second or two, I stayed where I was, inhaling the soft floral scent of her perfume, a smell that shot straight to my groin.
