Текст книги "Under Locke"

Автор книги: Mariana Zapata

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In typical Dex fashion he picked up on the last thing I would expect. “You been to Trip’s place?”

Did his tone sound off or was I imagining it? One look at the straight line of his jaw had me deciding I’d imagined it. “Once.”

“Huh,” he huffed. Those dark blue orbs narrowed for a split second. His fingers tapped against the counter before he started talking again. “I used to live in the same complex before I bought this place. Fuckin’ hated it there.”

“Really?”

Dex lifted up a shoulder. “Made me feel like I was livin’ in a beehive. Kinda reminded me too much of bein’ all cramped up in a double-wide as a kid, too.” When he went to start scratching at his throat, I understood how awkward and uncomfortable the memories of living in a trailer made him feel.

Then I remembered everything he’d said about growing up with his drunk of a dad. That kind of man in such a small place? Oh hell. With two sisters? Where the hell would he have even slept?

Acid built up in my chest and throat so quickly it caught me off guard. I was suddenly the one that felt uncomfortable. “I had to share a room with my little brother—bunk beds—until I was nineteen.” Yia-yia’s house had been so small, but it’d been home. I swallowed hard at the memory of sleeping on the couch at the apartment we’d moved into after selling the second home I’d ever known. “So I get it.”

And then, nothing. Silence.

O-kay. I could let that topic go.

I fumbled my way through making sauce for the pasta, hoping it wouldn’t taste completely bland since I didn’t have the right ingredients. In the mean time, Dex watched quietly, only getting up to grab a beer from the fridge and asking if I wanted a drink.

We sat on opposite sides of the kitchen bar, Dex drinking a beer and me with a bottle of water he’d pulled out from somewhere in the fridge I hadn’t seen. Considering the absence of necessary condiments and herbs, I thought the food came out pretty good. Dex’s murmurs of enjoyment told me he was either a great liar or it wasn’t too bad.

“Good food, babe,” he finally muttered after twirling ribbons of pasta around his fork, gaze leveled on me.

I smiled at him, taking a few more mouthfuls of food. I glanced up again only to see him still looking at me.

O-kay.

“Is there spaghetti sauce on my face?” I asked.

He shook his head, stringing more noodles along the tines of his fork.

I let it go until I caught his eyes one more time. “I’m not kidding, what’s on my face?”

“Nothin’.”

I narrowed my eyes in his direction but kept watching him. Until he did it again.

Oh dear God.

I put my hand over the middle of my face. “There’s a booger in my nose, isn’t there?”

He looked at me for a long moment, a moment that stretched light years and galaxies. Time-wrinkled centuries  and possibly eons. Generations—

And then Dex was laughing. Laughing and laughing and laughing. Muttering something that sounded suspiciously like, “You’re the goofiest fuckin’ girl,” between bellows of barrel-shaped laughs.

And I might have had a booger in my nose, though I’d probably never know for sure, but that laugh coming from that man.

So worth it.

Chapter Eighteen

“That’s fucking outrageous!”

Dear God, what in the hell had I been thinking working at a tattoo parlor? A tattoo parlor that was right around the corner from a body shop. A body shop that was owned by the president of a biker club. A biker club that owned a bar, which seconded as headquarters for said club, who were enemies with stupid asses that beat up innocent—err, pretty innocent—people.

Where had my quiet life disappeared to?

And why hadn’t I insisted on going with Sonny?

With the exception of Rick, the drunk guy who had yelled at me and called me a bitch, every other client had been incredibly nice. Even when they had to pay the steep rates that the shop charged—with good reasoning. The reasons were framed all over the shop in printed acclaims.

The first time I heard how much Blake charged his client, I had to stop myself from choking. The prices could be down payments on used cars. I’m not exaggerating. But it was standard practice to agree on a fee before any piece got started so the customer didn’t have a fit at the end.

Obviously, not everyone functioned on the same wavelength.

This customer had been in once last week to talk to Blue about having some detailed script done on his ribs. Blue had drawn out the idea, spoken to the guy about the pricing and the man had scheduled an appointment to come in and get it done.

So why the would-be client was now standing in front of me while I was trying to take payment and having a fit to end all shit-fits—and this included the year I worked at a daycare—was beyond me. “Blue had already spoken to you about the pricing last week,” I reminded him.

Blue stood directly behind me, silent.

“You never said it was going to be that expensive!” the guy shouted at Blue, completely ignoring me.

Yes. Yes, she had.

“Sir, before we schedule anything in advance for custom artwork, the rate is agreed on,” I told him.

Pissed Off guy just shook his head. “Fuck that. I’m not paying that much for a goddamn tattoo.”

Blue and I looked at each other and shrugged. “Okay.”

There were payment options that Blake had told me about, but that consisted of the customer paying in advance for artwork or doing bits and pieces at a time as they could afford it. But if Blue wasn’t going to say anything about it, then I wasn’t either. I think we both could be perfectly happy having one less belligerent customer coming in over a period of time.

“Fuck that and fuck you guys!”

Blue and I glanced at each other again and shrugged.

“Fuck this place! You fucking thieves. Your shit ain’t that good.”

We just stared at him.

“You short little shit.” He pointed at Blue.

Blue blinked like she didn't give half a crap what he thought, but I did.

"Hey, that's unnecessary," I snapped back. Why did people have to be so rude?

And then the pissed off man moved his finger in my direction, ignoring my outburst. “And you, you—“

“Get the fuck out, man.”

Blue and I both whipped our heads over our shoulders to see Dex come prowling down the hallway from his office.

Oh snap!

With the mood he'd been in all day, I'd been relieved when he'd locked himself in his office as soon as we'd gotten to the shop. That morning he'd come out of his bedroom with his lips pursed, jaw locked, angry at the friggin' world. He'd snapped at me for just asking if he'd heard from Sonny. Sheesh. I wasn't sure what had gotten him so ripe but even I knew better than to ask.

So when the man yelling looked relieved, I didn’t understand why. Obviously, he’d never spoken to Dex before because if he had, he would have known the look on his face was the opposite of anything that could resemble salvation or relief of any kind.

“Bro, your two drones here are trying to charge me an arm and fucking leg for my piece!” Pissed Off Guy said with that same relieved smirk on his face. “Can’t I get a hook-up for being a new customer?”

Dex had closed the distance between his office and my desk by the time the guy finished talking. At that point, he was standing right next to me, seven inches of space between us. If I moved my arm, it would touch the muscular tattooed thigh he’d shown me days before. The muscular thigh then made me wonder, for all of a microsecond what kind of piercing Dex had on his penis before I snapped myself out of it. Somehow I'd gone from a relatively content virgin to a woman who was constantly thinking about pierced genitals and nipples.

“No, bro, I won’t, and if I did, I wouldn’t give it to someone who comes into my fuckin’ shop, hollerin’ and callin’ my employees little shits and whatever the fuck you were gonna call Ritz,” he ground out with a slight grumble to his voice.

Pissed Off Guy sagged, shaking his head in a way that told me he didn’t think this conversation with Dex was over. “Aww, c’mon, bro.”

“Get the fuck out before I throw your ass outta here, bro,” The Dick warned.

Ooh, wheee. I somehow caught Blue’s gaze and we each made our eyes wide.

Dex inhaled a long, deep breath through his nose. “You got five seconds to get the hell out.”

There was no room for interpretation. I would have left and taken my carbon footprints with me. Dex was pretty scary when he was pissed off—though Dex on a daily basis was pretty scary. I used to think it was all that ink on his arms but it totally wasn't. Since he usually wore t-shirts, his tats were always visible. All that black and gray on tanned skin was the first thing your eyes went to when speaking to Dex. Now, the more I got to know him, the more I realized that it wasn’t just the tattoos that made him intimidating.

Dex was a scary asshole period. He just radiated this pure “I-don’t-give-a-fuck” attitude, and that was scary. You couldn’t control or anticipate a person who didn’t care. They were wildcards. Add that in with his Dyna and his tattoos, and yeah—intimidating on the outside.

When the Pissed Off Guy held his arms out in a what-the-hell gesture, Dex shook his head.

“Five,” he started counting. “Four, three—“

“God. Fuck you guys and fuck this fuckin’ overpriced bullshit!” Pissed Off Guy’s voice had taken a slightly shrieking edge to it.

“Two—“

With all the class in the world, the guy shot us a one-finger salute and got the hell out.

Well.

Long, warm fingers wrapped around the back of my neck as Dex dropped down to his haunches, eye level with me. “You all right, Ritz?” His bright blue eyes were on mine, all traces of annoyance gone from his features.

“Yeah,” I told him. “He was just pretty dumb and rude.”

The smile he gave me in return was so soft it was hard to understand how his mood went from one side of the linear line to the other in seconds. It also reminded me of exactly what I’d told him on the ride back from Houston. The kindest, grumpy ass man in all of Texas.

“Yeah, he was,” he agreed. Dex’s fingers gave my neck a squeeze. The action made my throat close up momentarily.  “C’mon, I’ll buy you a Coke.”

Like I was going to tell him no.

“You want a pop?” he asked Blue as he turned around.

She scrunched up her nose and shook her head. “I’m good.”

I followed after him, waiting patiently while he put in the dollar bills to get our drinks. He popped the lid for me, handing over the drink with a frustrated smile.

"I can't stand assholes like that," he grunted. "What I wanna do is go beat his fuckin' ass."

Both my eyebrows went up. "Calm your horses. It's not worth you getting into trouble," I reminded him of what Shane had hinted at back in Houston. “Or messing up your hands, dumb-bum.”

“Dumb-bum?” He blinked.

I shrugged. “Yeah. What would you do if you broke a couple fingers?”

“Babe, you only break fingers if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Blinking slowly, I opened my mouth and closed it. “I know you’re not kidding and yet…”

The corner of Dex's mouth tilted up, but it wasn't a smile of amusement exactly, it was more of a knowing smirk. "Babe."

“I’m being serious. You have to take care of yourself. Keep that rage under control.”

“I’m good.”

The look I gave him was half disbelieving, half resigned. Then the opportunity hit me, and I stopped caring. “You weren’t good this morning.”

He scowled. I hit the battleship!

“What happened?”

“Nothin’ important. Don’t worry about it.”

What was it about that saying that grated on my nerves? I should shut up. I should mind my own business. The only thing was, I didn’t want to. “Did a bird poop on your bedroom window?”

Dex’s cheek ticked up in agitation. “Smart ass.” He blew out a long breath from between his lips. “My pa called my sis askin’ for money to buy new shoes.”

“Okay…”

Then he burst out unexpectedly, “And the dumbass gave it to him!” He squeezed his eyes shut, thumb and index finger pinching the bridge of his nose. “I don’t get what the hell is wrong with ‘em. I can sleep at night knowin’ he’s runnin’ around with holes in his shoes.”

Well, what could I say? Don’t be mad? Please. No way. If he disliked his dad half as much as I disliked mine, then...yeah. That didn’t mean I had to let him wallow in his frustrations even if it seemed to have passed. “There’s nothing you can do about it now though, is there?”

When his cheek ticked up again, I lifted both of my shoulders and wiggled my fingers. “Just let it go, your highness. Just let it all go.”

The look he gave me could have seared the flesh off of my muscles and made me break into hives if I hadn’t recognized that little gleam in his eye that assured me he would never physically hurt me. Yell at me? Sure. Call me names I’d use on my future dog? Yeah. But hurt me? Nah.

“Babe?”

“Yeah?”

“Get your ass back up front.”

Oh.

~ * ~ *

“I like having you around,” Slim told me while we were seated on the couch, waiting for Blue and Dex to finish up whatever they were doing for closing.

“Why?” I asked him carefully, smiling a little.

“Because Dex is hilarious when he’s pissed off.”

I gave him my best bug eyes. “You like seeing him mad like that?”

He nodded like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Trust me, you know Dex a few years like we do, him getting pissed is like an early Christmas present. He never gets riled up enough to lose it at Pins. Mayhem is another story but here? Never.”

I’d thought about that after I’d finished off my soda with him in the back. His mood had switched to laid-back Dex in the blink of an eye. He’d asked me about what my life had been like back in Florida, and if I’d ever dealt with so many insolent people before at any of my other jobs. The answer to that last question had been a blatant “no” that made us both laugh.

Despite the fact that I had no doubts Dex would have kicked that guy’s ass if he hadn’t left and that it was kind of scary that someone could get so angry, I had to say, it was kind of hot.

Pretty hot.

All right, it was plain hot.

But I didn’t know what to do with it and knew I shouldn’t do anything with that thought.

Dex was my boss. My boss who’d been a dick to me in the past, but still was a dick to other people.  On the other hand, this was still the same man who had opened up to me about things that were undoubtedly difficult for him. And the same one who knew things I hadn’t told anyone. The caring grump.

“How’s your piercing?” Slim asked.

Not wanting to pull up my shirt while I was sitting—my pants were really tight and that was the excuse I’d use for the little roll hanging over the waist band– I stood as I told him. “Good, I think.”

I pulled up my shirt, just over the belly button. “It’s only sore if I touch it, but that’s normal, right?”

Slim nodded, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees to look at the green gem in the middle. “Yeah, that’s normal. It looks good.”

I pushed the ring up and down like he’d told me to, to keep the skin from healing around the metal. “I like it.”

The alarm beeped from the hallway, followed by the sound of motorcycle boots on the tile floor as Slim reached up to poke at my rib cage with his index finger. “One day, you have to let me do something here. I think it’d look pretty wicked, Ris.”

I snorted at the same time that familiar figure came into my peripheral vision. “Let me think about it.”

Dex stopped and eyed our placement critically through narrowed eyes before I yanked my shirt back down and shot him an innocent smile.

“Ready?” I asked.

He nodded his reply.

I called out a goodbye to Blue and Slim when we were out of the shop. All of us except Dex were used to walking toward the lot together each night. Dex always parked in front of the shop. Every single time. It was like the universe and all of its inhabitants knew that spot in front of Pins was his and only his.

Dex had barely gotten on his bike, having passed me the helmet when he said, “I got somewhere to go tonight. I'm taking you to your car, and you can drive back to my place from there.”

I pretty much knew how to get to his house, and while I wasn’t crazy about the idea of staying there alone when he lived in the middle of nowhere, I couldn’t really argue or be a baby about it. “Okay,” came out of my mouth but it was reluctant.

He parked in front of the driveway again when we stopped at Sonny’s place. It was eerie how quiet the house seemed. Usually by the time I came home from work, Sonny had already turned on the porch light, and another light inside of the house would be on as a welcoming beacon for me. But there were no lights anymore, his SUV was gone, and his bike, along with Trip’s, were under the carport. It hit me how mad the sight of it made me.

All because of our dad.

I’d barely taken the helmet off when I frowned at Dex. I asked him the same question he'd snapped at me for earlier. “Still nothing from Sonny?”

His head shake was grim. “Not yet, but it ain't a big deal. Knowin' them, they're drivin’ nonstop, babe.”

I let out a deep breath and nodded. There was no way I could realistically expect Sonny to keep tabs with me, and especially not with Dex. I couldn't imagine a man in his thirties calling his little half-sister to tell her every single time they stopped for gas. “Okay. Well, I guess I’ll get going.”

He extended his hand out to wrap around my wrist. “Text me when you get there.” His heavy eyes stayed on me the entire time. “There’s a spare key under the garden gnome in the front yard.”

Ahh, that would explain the garden gnome’s existence. He’d seemed so out of place in the plants that hadn’t been tended to in way too long.

“Will do.” Taking a few steps back toward my car, I wiggled my fingers at him. “Be safe.”

~ * ~ *

I tried to tell myself that there was nothing to be mad at.

I did.

I shouldn’t have been worried that Dex hadn't come home that night, that he never texted me after I messaged him that I made it to his house. He was a big boy. He could do whatever he wanted.

I swear, I really tried not to be mad, but I was.

Falling asleep on the couch was nothing new. Being paranoid that someone would break into the house that was in the middle of nowhere—without a friggin’ alarm!– was too much. I kept envisioning those men who had taken Sonny showing up. When that disaster ended, I'd start thinking of serial killers with masks on breaking a window and killing me, and then flaying my skin off to mount on their wall. Dramatic? Maybe a little.

So maybe my lack of sleep was part of the reason why I was so annoyed—not mad—that Dex hadn’t made it back. Or texted me.

I'd sent him another message that he didn’t respond to.

Feeling weird being at his house by myself and not wanting to deal with it any longer, I left a note on top of his dining room table telling him that I was going to run some errands. First, I stopped at the YMCA and swam as many laps as I could push through. Then I ended up going to the mall and bought new pants and a couple of shirts so that I wouldn’t be walking around worrying about clean cardigans that covered what my tank tops didn't. After that, I watched another movie and went to work.

Almost immediately, I regretted making it in.

I'd been in the middle of trying to look up videos on how to fix the thermo fax when a little hussy—I say little but she easily had three or four inches on me while I probably had about five pounds on her—appeared.  She came in wearing a mini-skirt that looked like something made for someone my height—or a ten year old’s—and thick red hair that made me a little jealous. And she was carrying a vest that looked familiar.

Her thin, pretty face pinched into a scowl when she stopped in front of my desk, looking at me through the dark tint of her huge sunglasses. “I need to drop this off for Dex.”

“All right,” I told her, already extending my arms out to take it as my annoyance factor went up about twenty degrees.

“He left this at my house last night,” she added. Why she mentioned that I had no idea.

Why I felt a twitch at my eye, I had no idea either.

I just blinked at her, taking the vest from her hands before I stood up, my stomach fluttering. “All right.”

“All right,” she repeated in a low voice. “Later.”

And just like that she was gone.

Then, just like that I got even more annoyed.

I’d sat there worrying about goddamn Dex doing something stupid to help us out with the Reapers, while in the meantime he was off at some woman’s house? I swear even my butthole tensed up in frustration as I carried Dex’s jacket to the back and hung it up on a chair in the break room.

I knew it wasn’t worth the effort worrying about a grown ass man like Dex. I knew it, but still, I’d lost sleep over it. Asshole.

“Skyler bothers the fuck out of me, too.”

I turned around to see Blake standing at the doorway to the room, hands shoved into his pockets. “You know when you meet someone and you’re immediately annoyed?”

He laughed. “It’s her face, and maybe those windshield sized sunglasses she’s always wearing.”

They really did look like tinted windshields, the visual made me grin at Blake as I ignored the fact he'd hinted that she'd been in before. “Yeah, you’re right. That’s probably it.”

Blake's easygoing expression melted into a worried one as he crossed the room toward the vending machine. "I heard about Sonny."

Ugh. I frowned at the reminder.

“You heard anything from him?”

I wished.

“No, but then no one tells me anything either.” I paused for a second to look at my fingernails. "I'm sure he's fine."

Oh boy. How many times had I used and heard someone use the word "fine" to describe how they were doing? I could happily go the rest of my life without hearing that vague term ever again.

Blake sighed. "Sounds like a mess. That crew’s nothing to fool around with though." He raised both his black eyebrows. "You need to be careful until it all gets sorted out."

The urge to laugh was right on my tongue. Sleeping at Dex's alone was definitely being careful. Right.

I flinched a little at the thought. Where the heck had I gotten so negative? It was weird.

He shrugged. “Well, let me know if you hear anything about him. I need to go set up for my next client.”

The bald man I'd seen twice flickered through my brain. Then the memory of being terrified at Dex's house pushed that one aside.

The need to work out the issue going on with my dad seemed too important all of a sudden to leave Sonny to deal with it alone. It wasn't friggin' fair for either one of us. Plus, would they really do something to me? Oh boy, I hoped not. "Wait! Blake!"

He paused at the door, looking over his shoulder. "Yeah?"

I snapped my fingers together to play off the question poised on my tongue. “What's the name of the president of that Reapers club? The bald guy?" I was so full of shit but I knew Blake wouldn't tell me if I made it seem that Dex had hidden something like that from me.

Blake's face scrunched up. "Liam?"

I snapped my fingers like a little liar. "Yeah, I couldn't remember." I smiled at him as he shrugged and made his way toward the front, leaving me in the back to try and figure out a way to get the guy's last name without being conspicuous.

And that would be by asking Slim when Blake was busy. Sometimes a girl's gotta do, what a girl's gotta do. In my case, it was finding a way back to Sonny's.

Chapter Nineteen

Standing outside of the strip club, I knew what I was about to do was monumentally stupid. Astronomically dumb. And if—okay, when—my brother found out, he'd more than likely try to strangle me.

But screw it. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and I was used to dealing with things on my own. If the tables had been turned and I’d been the one who had gotten the shit kicked out of me, every nerve cell in my brain was confident that Sonny would have done something equally as stupid to get me back.

I wasn't about to let him down when he needed me for the first time.

That's exactly what I kept telling myself as I flashed my license at the bouncer standing at the entrance. He looked at me, then my ID, and then back at me before waving me in.

I really was a moron.

After asking Slim in passing what the last name of "that Liam guy" was, I'd then asked him "where do the Reapers hang out again? Dex told me not to drive by there but I can't remember the name." My poor, sweet Slim had answered so nonchalantly, he never could have expected that I was planning on visiting the rival motorcycle club.

Or...maybe he just didn't assume I'd be that dumb. You know, being the daughter of a former member of the Widowmakers, and that specific member happened to owe them a crap-ton of money. And the half-sister of a current member that they'd beat the crap out of. Triple the shit factor, and also the employee of a short-tempered Widow.

Well, I'd had a good run while I had the chance.

Using the excuse that I had a "girl emergency", I'd stormed out of Pins a little after seven. It'd taken me nearly an hour to drive to the strip club the Reapers hung out at in the outskirts of San Antonio. Judging by the five motorcycles I'd seen parked in the lot, I figured at least a few of the members were there.

Hopefully the bald guy was there. He had to be one of the main guys in the MC.

No sooner had I walked into the smoke-machine infested club with two dozen strobe lights and black lights dazzling the room, did I spot the corner where five very gruff looking men sat like kings.

The bald guy was hanging off the edge of his seat, looking more bored than entranced by the monstrous E-cup breasts onstage. My hands had started shaking at some point, so I clenched them into fists and took a deep breath.

Sonny would do worse than this for me.

Plus, they wouldn't kill me or do something crazy like that in public? Right? I friggin' hoped so.

Those twenty steps around the club to the corner of doom were the longest of my life. At about fifteen out of the twenty, the bald guy—who didn't look like he was actually bald the closer I got—spotted me. He didn't tense up or look alarmed as I sucked in a breath and steeled myself to beg for something. Was that what I was doing? Begging? For my dad?

Apparently, I was, but I liked to think that I was doing it more for Sonny than for our deadbeat father.

The other men had turned to look too, all at least ten years older than me if not twenty. They looked more interested than I'd like. It might have been because I was the only female in the building wearing more than tiny shorts and a top that ended half a dozen inches above my waist.

I was two feet away from the bald guy—not bald, his hair looked like it grew in everywhere but must have been shaved often– when he tilted his chin up at me and my nerves kicked in. When that happened, I turned into an idiot—a blabbering idiot with no social skills.

"Hi," I squeaked out. And then I waved.

Jesus Christ, what was wrong with me?

The bald man, Liam McDonaugh from the intel I'd gathered from my unsuspecting coworkers, raised a single dark eyebrow. "Hey," he replied hesitantly, more than likely believing I was nuts.

If they didn't kill me, I'd kill myself for this stupidity.

One or two of the other men grunted in response, making my nerves worse.

What in the friggin' hell had I been thinking? Seriously? What? That these men would compromise with me? Give my dad an extension for his debt? God, why the hell hadn't I at least told Slim or Blake where I was going?

"Not that I don't mind a pretty face standing in front of me, but you look like you're gonna puke, doll. I don't wanna get thrown up on," the Liam man drawled.

Screw me. Screw me now.

"I won't throw up on you. I swear." I smiled nervously, trying so hard not to think about bursting into frustrated tears.

Liam just looked at me in that same intense way Dex did, stripping me of my dignity and strength slowly.

Shit!

"My dad—," crap! That wasn't the picture I should paint. "Curt Taylor owes your club money and you went after my brother for it—," I had to suck in a breath to try and steady my speech. It sounded like I was trembling. "Is there any way you can give him an extension? He doesn't even like us," I blurted out.

The bald man, Liam, smiled crookedly. His eyebrows tented up. "That so?"

"I haven't seen him in almost ten years," I told him honestly. "I swear he won't give a crap what happens to either one of us."

That smug, crooked smile stayed in place. "I find that hard to believe, doll."

Holy moly. My hands shook though they were still in fists at my sides. "Look, I don't know why he hasn't paid you back but I'm sorry. I'm really sorry." I could feel the tears singing in the corners of my eyes as panic swelled like a tidal wave in my chest. "If I had the money, I'd pay it back so that you wouldn't go after my brother again."

I had to purse my lips together so that I wouldn't start sniffling.

Liam's eyes widened. In the dark building, I couldn't exactly see what color they were but I'm sure they were dark on his pale face. In fact, it was a pale, handsome face if you liked that rugged, late-thirties bad-man type.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands dangling between his outstretched legs. Those murky eyes roamed over me quickly, once, twice, three times. "You new here?"

I'm sure he already knew the answer but I nodded anyway.

"It's safe to say that you don't know how shit is run then, doll. You didn't know that bitches—excuse me, ladies don't come around dipping into their men's business. The last thing your cute ass needs to be doing is coming to my place and asking me for something I have no obligation to give you," Liam said carefully.

This wasn't exactly going the way I wanted it to.

I must have made a face because he held up a finger to interrupt me. "But, you're here and I can tell you're scared out of your mind." This was true. Totally true. Now standing, Liam didn't exactly tower over me like Dex, but he was still at least six feet. His build was broad, more bodybuilder type than lean and hard-packed. And his personality? Guh. Made him seem even bigger. It might have been the intelligent, crazy look in his eye that seemed oddly familiar. Hmm.

"I can appreciate the guts it took you to come over here, asking for your bro's sake," he said, coming to stand directly in front of me while I stayed rooted in place mainly from fear. His gaze, which I could now confirm as being brown, bore into mine. "And you're smoking hot. That helps out my temper, too."