HOMETOWN GRUDGE, part 5

The music and the sound of drunken voices was deafening, but Alex managed to order a drink and find a corner of the tavern’s long bar to lean against as she scanned the crowd. She found a few friendly faces registering their surprise at her visit and engaged in a few conversations, with more than a few guys trying to talk her up. She didn’t understand it herself, but Alex felt no interest in starting anything up with any of the local boys tonight. Part of her was wondering why she was here at all, especially after being warned away from the place.

She didn’t see Kristin Colt until well past eleven, long after she’d downed enough alcohol to get a pleasant buzz on—but that evaporated instantly at the sight of the lean, raven-haired brunette at the other end of the bar. Alex felt her pulse start to hammer as the other girl’s dark eyes met her through the haze of cigarette smoke, neon lights casting her in a devilish red glare that made her look even more coldly beautiful and sultry than Alex remembered from their last violent encounter.

She saw Kristin take a long pull from her drink as she stared down the bar at Alex, and Alex found herself instinctively emptying her own glass as she tried to recharge the numbing glow of booze in her belly that had been extinguished by the sight of Kristin Colt. Kristin wiped her mouth with her forearm, and Alex took a moment’s solace in the idea that the other brunette needed to take a drink once she’d sighted Alex at the other end of the bar. Kristin’s mouth twisted slightly in distaste as she stared at Alex, and Alex felt her own features hardening in hatred as she glared down the bar at Kristin. There must have been thirty people between them, gesturing, drinking, shouting and laughing, but they all seemed to fade into ghostly non-entities as Alex and Kristin drank in each other’s faces and traded hard, angry stares through twenty feet of intervening space.

Kristin was seated, and she made the first move between the two of them, slowly pushing herself away from the bar and rising up to her full five foot eight-inch height, and setting down her glass with a crack that could be heard even through the overwhelming bar noise. Alex pushed her glass away from her and moved a foot or so away from the bar. She felt almost like she was in some Old West movie where she and another gunslinger were facing one another down in a saloon, but there was nothing to laugh about here. She was closer to the exit than Kristin and, if she wanted to, she could end this right now without a problem. It would take her a few minutes probably to push her way to the doorway but Kristin had a much longer way to go and would never be able to catch her before Alex could disappear into the night and leave this all behind her again.

She never gave the idea a thought. She began pushing her way through the crowd slowly toward Kristin and she could see the other young woman eagerly, coldly maneuvering through the crowd toward her. Alex had kept in very good shape for the past five years—there was barely an ounce of fat on her body, just enough to give her pelvis and butt some sexy curves and to fill out the C-cups in the black bra she wore. But pushing through this New Year’s Eve crowd was more than an effort—it was almost frightening as she felt the crush of dozens of people pushing in against her from all sides. Making any forward progress at all called on all her muscle, mostly centered in her thighs and butt as she had to make herself as slight an obstruction as possible to squeeze through the drunken denizens crowded around her. Just moving through six feet of bar space seemed to draw on all her effort and she was panting and almost choking as the hot claustrophobic air of the tavern, human respiration and body odor closed around her. She could see Kristin Colt’s black mane, now mussed and starting to matt against her forehead and cheekbones as perspiration provided a glossy sheen on the other brunette’s sleek, sultry features. Alex could feel sweat on her own forehead and chest as she slowly, implacably fought against the bodies around her to push her way toward Kristin, grateful—at least she thought—that the other dark-haired beauty was making her way towards her with equal effort.

From time to time, Kristin’s face and hair and her bare, toned shoulders would disappear behind some bouncer or other man much larger than her, or someone would push in front of Alex and block her view, so her target would disappear and reappear a few feet closer, making their actual meeting point hard to predict. Alex was breathing hard now almost as much from an electric anticipation as she was from the bone-crushing effort of moving forward. Her limbs felt heavy, aching with exertion as she fought her way forward. For a long, infuriating moment she lost sight of the other brunette, and she felt herself gasping in frustrated fury wondering if Kristin had cut away toward the exit like some coward.

Instead, the enemy brunette suddenly appeared out of the crowd terrifyingly close to Alex. She locked onto Kristin’s beautiful, cold-blooded face now barely two feet away from her and she saw the other young woman’s features twist in hate, her gorgeous, almond-shaped eyes widening in anticipation as she registered just how near the two rivals were to each other now.

Alex felt fingers tighten around her left bicep and nails dig into the flesh there, and she felt Kristin Colt’s powerful right arm dragging her, forcing her between two large men. It took Alex to add her own effort to push herself between the two guys until finally there was nothing between her and Kristin Colt. Kristin shoved herself up against Alex’s body and she felt the other woman’s lean, toned muscle crushing into her own. Kristin’s face pressed nose to nose, forehead to forehead with Alex’s, hot, panting breath blasting across Alex’s face as the other brunette breathed in sharp breaths, glaring at close range into Kristin’s eyes with a hungry, predatory excitement.