"He doesn't give a shit about us." I swallowed, keeping an eye on his ever descending lips.
Holy cow, his mouth was literally a few millimeters from mine. Don't do something stupid, Iris! Don't do it!
Liam chuckled again, sounding deeper. "Whatever you say," he whispered... right before he kissed me.
~ * ~ *
I wanted to kick my own ass.
Getting behind the wheel of my Focus with my lips still tingling from their visit with Liam's mouth, and what seemed like a ten pound weight settled nicely in my belly, I felt sick. Like I'd done something horribly wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong.
It also didn't help that I knew I'd been a complete idiot walking into that strip club. Such an idiot—
The wailing ring of my cell phone snapped me out of the mental ass-kicking I was giving myself. Pure, sickening dread lined my belly. Because I knew, I knew somehow that I wasn't going to want to answer the call. Don't tell me how I knew, I just did.
And when I picked my phone out of my purse—the one I'd left in the backseat of my car when I'd gone inside—the screen flashed the name of possibly the only man I dreaded speaking to occasionally.
Dex.
Shoot me now.
I sucked in a breath and let out the exhale as soon as I hit the button to answer. "Hello?" My voice might have been a little more squeaky than I would have liked.
"Where the fuck are you?"
Oh boy.
"Ahh..."
Dex didn't even wait a second to bark out, "Where the hell you at, Ritz?"
"I'm driving back to Pins," I croaked, hitting the mute button while I turned the ignition and put the car into reverse so he wouldn't hear anything that would give me away.
"By yourself?" he asked in a slow, careful voice that did nothing to ease my anxiety.
"Yeah." I wasn't going to lie to him about that.
The pause it took for him to respond made me steel my spine for whatever was going to spill out of his mouth. "Iris," he said in a low, low voice. "Meet me at Mayhem." His tone was way too controlled. Crap!
"I should get back to Pins, I've been gone awhile."
I could hear him breathing over the phone. "No. See me at Mayhem."
Before I got a chance to argue with him anymore, he hung up. Hung up on me. That dick. Shit! No!
The realization that they had no idea I'd driven all the way to San Antonio was right on the front of my thoughts. I was going to need to do some serious speeding to remotely save my ass because there was no way in hell I was going to tell him where I'd gone if he'd gotten that pissed off over me leaving to begin with.
Unfortunately, I sped. The speeding caused me to get to Mayhem a lot quicker than I liked, even though I knew that I still hadn't gotten back fast enough to really play off being nearby.
The lot for the bar was packed for it being a weeknight, then again, I probably shouldn't be surprised. I highly doubted most of the people inside cared whether they drank during the work week or not. I'd barely stepped into Mayhem after flashing my license at the bouncer, when I caught sight of the blonde I'd seen Dex with back at the body shop so long ago. She was sitting at the bar, right next to a Widow by the patches on his heavily weathered vest.
Well, I guess Son wasn't kidding about the girl getting around.
I didn't see Dex anywhere but that didn't exactly ease my nerves. I mean, he couldn't kill me with so many witnesses around.
"Have you seen Dex?" I asked the first bartender that walked by me.
The lady tipped her head up. "Upstairs, sugar."
Sheeeit.
It felt like I'd just been doomed to participate in a Death March. God. Sucking in another breath, I reminded myself that Dex wouldn't do anything to me. He wouldn't. Except maybe rip me a new butthole with his mouth. Well, with his words.
The same WMC member that had come into Pins when I'd first gotten the job—the one with the beer belly—stood at the bottom of the stairway that I'm sure was about to lead to hell. He cocked an eyebrow at me . "Sonny's sis?"
I nodded.
A smirk inched across his face. "All the way up," was the only thing he said.
I will not gag. I will not gag. I will not gag.
"Thanks," I muttered, making my way up the first, and then the second flight of stairs. Despite the loud music blaring from the main floor, I could hear the deep rumble of voices coming from the third floor.
The doorway led to a large room with two loveseats and a futon closest to the door facing no particular direction. Just behind the seating on the far side of the wall, three desks took up the remaining space.
And seated at the desk in the corner, surrounded by Luther and two other Widows, was Dex.
Dex who was staring at me like he was plotting my murder.
I did the only thing a logical person who feared for her safety—kind of—would do. I pretended like nothing happened by flashing the most fake grin in the natural world.
He stared at me, the tick in his jaw was noticeable even so far away.
Dex's gaze didn't waver for a second. "Get your ass over here, Ritz," he demanded in a cool voice.
Nothing was going to happen. Nothing.
My feet moved on their own with no regard to the fate they were leading us to. "Hi."
Did I get a "hi" back? Nope. Four faces stared back at me, completely unemotional.
I stopped just next to the member I recognized from the day Dex had shown up with Trip after Sonny's disappearance. He happened to be the only one who didn't look like I'd stomped all over his sand castle.
"Baby." Dex sat back in his chair, crossing those long, heavily tattooed arms over his chest.
I swallowed.
"Where you been?" He enunciated his words a little too carefully.
Well, there was no way in friggin' hell they were going to get the truth out of me, and in retrospect, what I blurted out my mouth really wasn't any better. At all. "I went to go buy some tampons." That wasn't so bad, but the rest...? "And then I had to run over to Sonny's house to change my pants since I bled all over them."
Kill me. Kill. Me.
Tampons. Bleeding on myself. Sonny's place.
Dex leaned forward over the desk, his elbows coming down hard on the surface. I could see the movement of his tongue sweeping over his teeth beneath his closed mouth. And then his jaw locked. "You went to Son's?" His lips peeled back to reveal a line of straight white teeth. "By yourself?"
I'd crapped all over that explanation, hadn't I? It wasn't like I could backtrack, dang it. "Yes," I tried to tell him as securely as I could.
He blinked, shifting his eyes to Luther's looming frame just to his side before returning to me. He blinked again, reaching up with one hand to run his thumb and index finger down the sides of his mouth. The pause was pregnant and heavy.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the member I didn't recognize shaking his head.
"You dumb little shit."
Uhh, what?
The muscles in Dex's biceps popped as he gritted his teeth, talking to me. Me! A dumb little shit?
"You know your pa owes the Reapers twenty?"
Why, yes, yes, I did but I couldn't tell him that and regardless, it didn't seem like he wanted an answer because he kept talking.
"What the fuck do you think they'll do to you, Ritz?" I think he may have gnashed his teeth. "They beat the shit out of Son back before they decided to up the debt. What the fuck do you think they'll do if they get you?" he asked in a louder voice than I'd ever heard him use. His features were too tight, too pissed off. "Huh? You can't be that fuckin' stupid, can you?"
Holy crap.
Something nasty knotted in my chest and all of a sudden, I couldn't bear to look at him.