Kat from Home

Kat slid onto the bar stool, her sleek dress shifting to expose three additional inches of tanned leg. She lifted a manicured finger to get the bartender's attention. Her scarlet lips quirked with amusement as he made a beeline to her. Easy men soothed her wounds.

She leaned forward. His eyes shifted downward.

"I'll take a French Kiss," she purred. The bartender brought his eyes from her breasts to her lips and stared, transfixed before moving away.

She leaned back in her seat and toyed with a bar napkin wondering how long it would take him to look up the drink and make it. She studied the crowd of people lining the bar. Men in suits flirted with college girls with blond streaked hair and tight jeans. Women in pencil skirts clinked glasses and let their hair down. Same crowd, different night. She suppressed a sigh and wished, not for the first time, she'd gone home with take out and a good book. Home where a half empty closet mocked her inability to move forward, she reminded herself.

"One French Kiss," the bartender subtly flexed his muscles while setting the frothy drink in front of her. Kat rewarded him by leaning forward with a shift that exposed more of her breasts. She took a sip and let out a small moan of pleasure. "Delicious."

"That's fantastic." A deep voice laced with laughter distracted her from her small game of cat and mouse.

A man lounged on the stool next to her, his hand wrapped around a glass filled with amber liquid and ice. He stood out in the after work crowd. His shirt was wrinkled and unbuttoned partway down a nicely toned chest sprinkled with golden hair. His cobalt blue eyes laughed in a face too tanned to be comfortable in a boardroom and hair slightly too shaggy to belong in this neighborhood.

She turned dismissively to her drink noticing the hunky bartender had moved further down the bar.

"Do you ever pay for your own drinks?"

Kat turned back to the man and raised an eyebrow. "Are you insinuating I flirt for booze?"

"I'm not insinuating anything," he said with a grin. "I'm saying it flat out."

Kat frowned slightly. This was a different approach. She lifted her drink and took a sip. The strawberry and champagne liquid was perfect on a hot summer night. She let her eyes roam his body. The shirt rested, untucked, on worn jeans molded to muscular thighs. The hand holding his glass was tanned with square tipped fingers and tendons that stretched to an arm that made Kat briefly wonder if it was as firm as it looked. She looked back to his face. He stared back in amusement.

"I haven't seen you here before."

"I've been around," he said, "watching."

Kat pushed down the discomfort his words brought. She twisted her lips into the cat-like smile she was paid thousands to use. "Are you done watching?" She wondered how long he'd distract her.

He picked up his drink and downed it in one swallow. Fishing a couple of crumpled bills from his pocket, he set them on the bar.

Moving closer to her, he leaned down, on hand on the back of her bar stool, the other resting lightly on the bar. His breath smelled of whiskey, his body of soap and wood. "Not yet." He stood and walked away.

"Definitely a different approach," Kat muttered, intrigued.


This post is in response to a Write at the Merge prompt on Write on Edge. If you don't know who Kat is, you haven't read Metaphysical Gravity where she made her appearance as Abby's BFF. So go buy and read.