It was getting late. The minutes to midnight were rapidly ticking away, and still the night showed no signs of being over. Laughter rang out periodically through the house, and the click of glasses being knocked together chimed regularly, once every few minutes or so.
Devin hadn't expected this when he had accepted an invitation for dinner, but the night was turning out to be finer than he had thought. The house was impressive, the dinner even more so, and now, the group had withdrawn to the living room for several hands of poker.
The host was a man Devin knew as Tatch, an old friend of his brother Drew, back when they had all been kids running roughshod over the sprawling city of Kingston. Tatch had moved out onto the islands with his family a year before Devin's parents had died, and they had only just gotten back into contact. It was only then that Tatch had learned of Drew's death.
That had been several months ago. Now, Devin returned to his seat with his whiskey glass full again, settling in for the next round. His gaze flitted from one person to the next. Directly across from him sat Lawrence, a rich lawyer from the city who owned a stable full of fighting Mokai and never once touched the animals nor stepped foot into the stable. To his left sat Ariana, a woman in her early forties whose husband worked in Kingston ten months out of the year and whose half hungry gaze had followed Devin all night. To his right sat Tatch with his arms wrapped around his beautiful wife Maria.
Frankly put, Devin felt (and rightly so) out of place. He didn't have the money to match any of them, and the only reason he was here was because of an old connection to Tatch. That didn't mean much in terms of giving him the right to play poker with the lot of them, and every time he remembered how wealthy they were, he felt uncomfortable. Consciously suppressing the urge to fidget, he took a sip of whiskey. Light, sultry jazz played softly in the background as Tatch momentarily released his grip on Maria's waist to reach for the deck and shuffle.
"How about we make this round a little more interesting, hm?" He said with the customary wink and twinkle in his eye. Tatch was a man who knew how to have fun and had the means to pay for it. Losing a bet here and there meant nothing compared to the thrill of upping the ante and watching it all unfold. "I'm sure I have plenty in this house that would interest you. Like Maria here." He laughed as she lightly slapped him and scolded him with a quick "Tacio!"
"I'm just kidding, darling," he reassured her, encircling her waist with his arm again while she leaned in for a kiss. "So, my friends, how about it? Should we raise the stakes?" Nods came from all around the table, but Devin frowned and shrugged.
"Well, I don't... I wouldn't say I had anything of much value to bet," he admitted. He felt something brush up against him, and a quick glance under the table saw Ariana's foot, clad in 5-inch heels the color of rubies, slide meaningfully up his leg. He took another hurried sip of whiskey. The situation was anything but comfortable. How he had managed to find himself mixed up in the company of these people, he would never understand. "I... I mean, except for, maybe, I have a young Mokai that I haven't quite decided what to do with yet. Not... I mean, he's young, but he has... potential." It was hard to speak coherently when he was putting so much effort into blocking out Ariana's less-than-subtle gestures.
"That'll do," Tatch cut in before Devin could change his mind and began to deal. "Blinds." Devin and Ariana placed their money into the center of the table. He avoided her gaze, and concentrated instead on his cards. He lifted the corner. A queen and a seven, both clovers. Devin had to smile. A queen and a Seven, that certainly described his life with the russet Mokai.
"Oh, uhm," he snapped out of his reverie to see expectant gazes fixed upon him from all sides of the table. "Call." He placed his money on the table. To his left, Ariana checked, and Lawrence called the blind. Tatch stared momentarily at his cards, then called the blind.
Glancing from one player to the next, Tatch dealt the flop, laying three cards down in the middle. Five of diamonds, ace of spades, eight of clovers.
Devin thumbed the corners of his cards again, staring down emptily at the cards. It was a backdoor draw, no matter how he looked at it, straight or flush. He calculated the possibilities quickly in his head. A four and a six, or a six and a nine would give him a straight. Two more clovers would give him a flush. He took a breath, and then, "Five hundred."
Beside him, Ariana nodded. "Call."
Lawrence stared stoically down at cards for a moment, before tossing them toward the middle. "I fold."
Tatch smiled. "Call." He reached for the deck again and dealt the turn, laying down one more card in the middle. Ace of clovers.
Devin reached for his chips. "Five hundred." Ariana shook her head and folded.
Tatch smiled again, a deviously little half smile that meant nothing and everything at the same time. "I will see your five hundred," he said slowly, counting out his chips. "And I will raise you... two thousand." He tossed the chips into the center, and leaned back, arms folded.
Devin hesitated, glancing at the cards in the center. Pair aces. He wondered if Tatch might have a pocket ace, or if he himself would be lucky enough to get another clover at the river. "Call." He said finally, adding his chips to the pile.
Tatch dealt the river. The five of clovers. Devin stared at the cards. Pair ace, pair five, eight. It was a dangerous situation. Cavalier as Tatch was about tossing his money away on games, there was also the chance that he was lucky. A full house wasn't out of the question here. And yet. He had his flush.
And what if Tatch was bluffing? There was always that possibility.
"All in," Devin said finally, pushing his chips toward the center.
Tatch grinned. "I will see your bet," he said, mimicking Devin's motion. "And, I will raise you... One Mokai from my stable, daughter of my two champs. She'll be worth a good sum, even if she doesn't win anything in the ring. She'd be a good breeder, if nothing else, and she's pretty." He saw Devin's hesitation, and chuckled. "Ah, come on, Dev. You throw your little puppy in the pot, and we'll call it even, hm? What you gonna lose, you weren't really going to keep the little bugger anyway."
"Fine. Call." He said, speaking half out of pride and half out of curiosity.
Tatch flipped open his cards. Eight of hearts, seven of spades - two pair. Devin couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. That was a lot of money on the table, not to mention Seven's only son. He flipped his cards over. "Flush."
Tatch laughed aloud and reached over to clap Devin on the shoulder. "Well played, Dev. Well played." He swept the chips over to Devin's corner of the table. "A win's a win. If you come with me, I'll show you the Mokai you just won." He reached to down his whiskey, and motioned to Devin to do the same before turning to the others. "Well. Now that this boy's cleaned me out, I guess we'll call it a night. It's been a real pleasure having you all over."
They rose. Devin turned to make his way to the coat room with Ariana close behind. "Beautiful hand, Devin," she said softly as they entered the room.
"Oh," he half started at her voice, realizing with a pang that the others hadn't come along and that it was only the two of them in that dark little room. "Thank you," he said, sifting hastily through the coats for his own.
"You know, I appreciate a man who isn't afraid to bet big when he doesn't have much to lose," she said, and in the next moment, he felt her hand on his chest as she pushed him against the wall.
"Uhm," he swallowed, feeling her fingers trace the line of his pecs and shift slowly downward toward his abs. "I... it, not, not something I do often..." he managed, frantically seeking a way out.
She brought her lips close to his ear. "Well, when you want to start taking a bigger risk, call me." And then she was gone. Shakily, Devin shrugged on his winter coat and made his way back to the front door.
"What too you so long?" Tatch asked, shooting Devin a sideways glance before ushering him out and shutting the door behind him.
"Oh, nothing... I just... coat. Was hard to find." Devin cleared his throat. "Anyway, this Mokai of yours..."
"Ah, yes. She's a good one. A little too shy to do anything big with me, but maybe you'll be able to coax her out of her shell. She's a good one, this Mokai, but I can't afford to keep her here if she's not going to earn her keep." They strode through the compound and stopped at a stall with a plaque that read "Senna" across the door. "Here she is." Tatch opened the stall door.
Inside lay a pale Mokai, white and gray and striped. At the sound of the door, she rose to her feet and padded over, curious. Devin watched her. She moved with an ease and grace that belied her highly refined fighter heritage, and there was a certain elegance around her that made her seem... beautiful. That was the only word to describe it.
"That's her? That's the Mokai you don't want?" He asked, shocked. "But she's..."
"Beautiful, I know," Tatch admitted, staring down at the Mokai almost wistfully. "But she's not going to do great things for me, I can see that already. She's got no confidence. I couldn't even train her with that. Could you imagine her training against one of my other fighters? She'd get creamed, that's what would happen."
Devin stepped into the stall and crouched down in the bedding beside her. Senna sniffed him carefully, tail wagging to signal her welcome. She seemed to give off a similar impression as Seven did to most - more like a house pet than a fighter - but he didn't doubt that she had talent. All that grace and power, it had to amount to something.
"So she's mine," he said, turning to Tatch. Already, his friend had gone and brought the Mokai's lead, a rope of polished leather with her name etched onto the handle.
"All yours," he said with a nod, deftly clipping the lead onto Senna's collar. "Take good care of her, will do? And for God's sake, try to figure out a way to make her fight. She deserves as much."
Devin nodded. "I'll do that." He promised, stepping out of the stall with a light pull on the lead. "Come on, Senna," he added, looking down at the pale Mokai. "We're going home."
WC: 1919
