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“I don’t need your money,” Clarke grinned, sliding the bill Bellamy had offered her back across the bar counter. “But I could use your help with something.”
As he asked with what, suspicion and apprehension filling his low voice, Clarke spun around and grabbed the megaphone, raising it to her lips, which were curving up into a smirk.
“Ladies! Attention, ladies!” She yelled, hopping up onto the ancient but sturdy bar. “Did I mention we have a last-minute addition to our list of specials on tap for tonight?”
The raucous crowd of women quieted a bit, to her surprise—who knew a small-town girl like her, new to the bartending scene, could command the attention of one of the hottest joints in New York City. Of course, it could have something to do with the cutoff shorts and extremely tight crop-top she was wearing, because that seemed to be working pretty damn well for more than a few of the women in the bar tonight. (And Bellamy too, if the heat lingering in his dark eyes every time he looked at her was any indication).
Running a hand through her messy hair, Clarke glanced at Bellamy, whose apprehension had slipped into stunned nervousness, and then at Anya, who appeared to be somewhere between annoyed and amused. There was no turning back, though, not with all the attention suddenly on her. So Clarke took a deep breath in, hoping and praying her gamble would (figuratively and literally) pay off.
“We’ve got a prime cut of man right here for auction, and the bidding starts at twenty-five dollars! Any takers?”
“What?” Bellamy exclaimed, though Clarke could barely hear him over the whoops of the bar’s patrons. “Clarke, what are you doing?”
“You just promised you’d help me repay Anya,” she called down sweetly to him before raising the megaphone up again and asking for higher bids. “This is how I’m going to do it.”
“Thirty to start? Really, Princess?” Raven questioned from behind the bar, staring up at her co-worker with raised eyebrows.
“Yeah, that’s a little low,” Bellamy muttered through clenched teeth as he tried to smile at the advancing women.
Raven scoffed. “The ego. I was clearly implying that was on the high end. I would’ve started with fifteen.” Then she hauled herself up onto the counter, a feral grin on her face as she bent down and teasingly ran her hands down Bellamy’s chest from behind. He swore colorfully, and she chuckled before straightening and losing herself to the rock music blasting in the bar, her hips swinging wide and low as she shook her ass to the trilling drumbeat.
“This cannot be happening,” Octavia muttered as she raced around, the only one of them still focused on getting drinks to their customers. Though, truth be told, the women in the bar weren’t as focused on their drafts and tequila shots anymore, instead lasering their focus on an increasingly blushing Bellamy. When one reached out and squeezed his bicep, he jumped, letting out a nervous laugh.
“I’m going to be scarred for life,” Octavia added, a bit louder, scowling up at Clarke.
A pang of guilt flooded through her, because Bellamy didn’t deserve to be treated in quite so objectified a manner. She had started something though—and it was working, because dollar bills were flashing into the air from all corners of the room—and Anya was looking less pissed, and more intrigued. Quite a feat that was, and it gave Clarke the confidence to continue.
Thinking quickly, she leaned down, whispering in Bellamy’s ear, “I’ll let you up on the counter to get out of grabbing range as long as you look like you’re having a good time, and I’ll make sure someone sane wins.”
At the disbelieving frown he gave her, she just smirked and amended, “Okay, semi-sane is the best I can do.”
“And a date with you,” Bellamy blurted out, shocking Clarke.
Her surprise waned quickly, though, and then she was smiling like an idiot, which she didn’t quite mind, because Bellamy was grinning back just as hard.
“I spend tonight at the bar with someone semi-sane, and we go on a date,” he insisted.
“Deal,” she relented, letting her lips just barely brush against the curve of his ear as she shot back up.
The responding growl he gave in response to her tease had her giggling, and she extended a hand to help pull him up. With denying shake of his head, he sat up on the bar on his own, spinning with flair as he rose to stand beside her and earning high-pitched cheers from the already enthusiastic crowd in the process.
At her surprised expression, Bellamy bumped his hip against hers. “I know how to work a room, Clarke.”
She snorted, ignoring the way her stomach flipped as he started rolling up the sleeves of his button-up shirt, revealing more skin and thick muscle.
“Alright,” Clarke shouted, turning back to the megaphone to distract herself from the inappropriate thoughts of his arms banded tightly around her bare midriff. “Alright, I hear you ladies. You like him, I can see that—but do you like him enough to up the bid?”
Calls of fifty! and sixty-five!, eighty! and no, one-ten!, I’ve got one-thirty! rose over the guitar riffs pounding out of the crackling speakers that lined the room. Clarke grinned, enjoying her role as auctioneer, dancing around Bellamy who was getting more comfortable in his role as the night’s main attraction. When he began unbuttoning his shirt, wiggling his hips with surprisingly good rhythm, the bids skyrocketed, and Clarke could’ve sworn she saw Anya smile.
What a night: she was probably going to pay off her damages to the bar, make her impossibly grumpy boss happy in the process, get Bellamy back for him impersonating that art dealer, and, as an added bonus, score a date with him.
Suddenly, searing heat pressed up against her side, and she turned, stunned to see Bellamy shimmying into her, making her want him moving against her in a completely different, not-suitable-for-public, very down-and-dirty way. Just as her breath returned—because the boy could seriously move—he leaned in, his nose brushing the sensitive spot behind her ear, and whispered tauntingly:
“You’re going to owe me one long-ass date, Princess.”
The way his voice spiraled inside her, settling low and flooding her with want, made Clarke shiver even though the bar was blazingly warm. Dazed from his enticing proximity, she barely managed an agreeing nod. She felt Bellamy grin against her ear—that was payback for her earlier tease, she figured—and her cheeks flushed as his hips rolled against her one last time before he spun away, stripping off his shirt and causing the crowd to go wild.
Feeling pleased with herself for more than one reason, Clarke smiled again, lifting the megaphone up and excitedly shouting out, “Okay, anybody for two hundred?”