Loving Her Crazy by Kira Archer Page A

flames of hell. He didn’t stop, though. He had a strategy. Don’t pause. Chew only long enough to keep from choking. Gulp of milk in between.
    He sucked the chicken off one bone and dropped it to his plate, gulping the milk while picking up the second wing. The cool liquid barely registered. The sauce that was smeared all around his mouth tingled. He hoped it wouldn’t leave actual burns. He’d attempted to eat some wings doused with ghost pepper sauce once. He’d ended up with chemical burns on his face for a week afterward. But the wings he was currently downing weren’t that hot. Close, but not quite. He got the second one down and went for his third. Iris was already dropping bones on the plate and reaching for her fourth. How the hell was she doing that? Was her mouth made of Teflon or something?
    They’d started to collect a crowd, each of them gathering their own little cheering section. Iris finished her fourth and went for the fifth. Nash was only a few seconds behind her. By the time he started on the sixth, tears were mingling with the sweat running down his face, and his mouth burned so badly he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to use the thing again. But he was one wing away from winning. There was no stopping now.
    Unfortunately, Iris seemed to have the same idea. She grabbed her seventh wing a second ahead of Nash, stripped it, chewed twice and swallowed, dropping the bones moments before him. She raised what must have been burning hands, if they were anything like his, and stood up just long enough to take a bow, accept a conciliatory nod from Nash, and then she dropped back down and guzzled the refilled milk like there was no tomorrow. Nash tried to play it macho, but gave up and started gulping, his body relaxing slightly at the relief the cool liquid brought.
    He wiped every ounce of the sauce he could find off his hands and face with a pile of moist towelettes, and finally sat back and took a deep breath that still burned on the inhale.
    “Very impressive,” Nash said, raising his glass of milk to her.
    “Not so bad yourself.” She took a bite of the soft, warm bread the waitress had brought (that woman was so getting a huge tip) and cradled her ice cold glass of milk in her hands, taking a sip every so often.
    “I’m pretty sure I just got hustled,” Nash said, pinning her with an accusatory glare.
    Iris shrugged. “Don’t blame me if you assumed that little ol’ me couldn’t keep up with the big boys.”
    “My apologies. You are indeed not only capable of keeping up with us, but eating us under the table. My hat is off to you, ma’am,” he said.
    That phrase took on a whole new meaning since he was actually able to tip a literal hat to her. Her cheeks flushed a gorgeous red. God, she was cute when she did that.
    “Okay, so what’s your secret?” he asked.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Not to get all chauvinistic on you, but how did an itty bitty thing like you just out-hot-wing a burly old cowboy like me? One taste of that sauce should have had you running for the first pile of snow you could stick your face into.”
    She laughed. “That’s actually not a bad idea. I feel like I tried to swallow a live piece of charcoal. But to answer your question with a phrase you might understand, this isn’t my first rodeo.”
    “Do this type of thing often, do you?”
    “The whole karaoke bar? Yes. Removing a few layers from my mouth, no. I am partial to spicy. My grandmother makes a salsa that would knock your socks off. I think they used to put it in my bottles when I was little, and I’m only half kidding. I grew up on stuff that most people would run screaming from. I’ll admit, though, that those wings we just ate were pushing it, even for me.”
    “Well that soothes my ego a little bit.”
    Her laugh brought a smile to his lips. “You kept up pretty well,” she said. “Grandma Betty must have fried some of the pain receptors in your mouth.”
    He chuckled. “Just about,