"Liam was just outside," I rushed out. "He offered to give my dad an extension if I went with him."
At the mention of the biker's name, Dex's pencil stopped its movement in midair. His entire body tightened, strained, and shifted in ripples of muscle and stress. It was the fact he kept his face down that worried me.
"I told him no. I told him I was with you," I blabbed out.
Oh boy.
The way he slowly looked up at me could have been creepy, but for some reason it just fell short. Instead, he pushed his chair back roughly, smacking the wall with the back of it. In a growl, he rounded the desk and pointed at the chair I stood in front of. "Wait," he said and stormed out the door.
Fudgsicle sticks.
I should have listened to him and waited, but I didn't. I was out the door and going after him a split second later. If Liam was dumb enough to still be outside in front of Dex's shop, on Widowmaker territory, he was a dead man. Or at least a bloody one.
But it wasn't his being that I cared about.
It was the moron running after him that I didn't want to get in trouble.
I could only imagine what Dex had to look like as he ran out of the shop that had the employees and the clients captivated. The door was barely swinging shut when I jogged up to it.
Dex was stalking toward the end of the block, a phone held up to his ear, and I could hear him barking something ugly and low into the end.
Shit.
I gathered up my guts and followed after him, catching bits and pieces of "Motherfucker—at Pins—lost his fuckin' mind—Ritz!"
Oh boy.
The moment he thrust his cell phone into his pocket and made way to start stomping across the street, I slid my finger through the belt loops at the back of his jeans and tugged. "Charlie."
Miraculously, he paused.
"Hey, he's gone," I told him in the most soothing voice I could come up with. My free hand settled on the small of his back. "Calm down."
Dex turned to look at me over his shoulder before gradually turning around, the tips of his boots pressing against the tips of my flats. For once, that carefully blank expression was missing. In its place, Dex's mouth was pulled back in a tight snarl. His eyes narrowed.
Yeah, he was pissed.
I smiled at him, hoping that it would calm him down, and I tugged at his belt loop again. "Chill out." I used the same words he'd used on me so long ago. "Nothing happened."
"Ritz," he gritted out. "He came here. To my shop. On my territory. And tried to fuckin' get you to go with him." He bared his teeth. "That's not fuckin' nothin'."
Sometimes I just wanted to roll my eyes at him. "But he's gone, and I don't want you to get in trouble."
Okay, he was still pissed.
"And I'm here with you, not him, so it doesn't matter."
He stared at me for a long moment, his gaze hard. Then his hands were cupping my face. He tipped my head back to nip at my upper lip, sucking it between his.
Oh my crap.
Dex moved to do the same to my bottom one before I reacted. Before I tried to kiss him back the same way he was kissing me, with the dull edges of my teeth catching his bottom lip. He tilted my head even further back, arching me against him as he wrapped an arm around my waist.
His hot tongue slipped into my mouth the first chance he got, brushing against mine with more force, more possession, than I knew what to do with. But it didn't matter that I'd only kissed three people before him. That his experience more than likely eclipsed mine by hundreds, because he moaned into my mouth. He pulled me tighter against him, gripped my waist more strongly than he needed to.
The kiss was a claim.
His tongue dueled mine in a way that was completely friggin' inappropriate on a busy public street. His hard body curled over me, consuming me.
And I loved it. I let it happen. I sucked his tongue into my mouth like I knew what I was doing. Like I'd cease to exist if he didn't bite my lip again.
"Iris." He gently bit the soft place between my jaw and throat column.
Holy, holy, holy crap.
I was going to go up in a pile of flames. A burning inferno that rivaled hell, that would be worth every second of pain to have Dex's mouth so aggressively on mine.
He bit down again before nuzzling the line of my jaw. "You're mine." His lower body pressed into my stomach. Hard, he was so hard. "Your mouth, your face, your ass, your pussy, Ritz. You're all mine."
Me, who had never even kissed another person in public, was panting. Ready to give everything and more to the man that scared the crap out of me.
And if it wouldn't have been for the throat clearing that yanked me so abruptly from the sexual daze I was in, I would have gladly stayed there with his tongue in my throat and his teeth at my jaw forever.
"Uhh, Dex?"
He sucked my lip one last time, hard, into his mouth before pulling his mouth away reluctantly.
The sound of that same throat clearing came from behind me again.
"Dex, Luther's on the phone." It was Slim talking. Slim that was clearing his throat.
Slim that had caught us making out. In the middle of the sidewalk. In the middle of the day.
Oh. No.
The ginger had a smug look on his face and I really don’t think I imagined him mouthing, “I knew it,” at me.
I'm sure my face turned a kaleidoscope of reds and pinks as I tried to take a step back and away from Dex, but when he kept his arm tight around my waist, it was useless.
"Okay," he finally answered in a hoarse voice, not bothering to turn around.
Dex kept his head down, toward me. His arm was stiff on my back. Sucking in a crisp breath through his nose, he let out a shaky exhale out through his mouth. He leaned in and whispered three words that made me break out in goose bumps. "This isn't over."
I really friggin' hoped not.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
"Tell us what happened."
Ef me.
Sitting across the office from Dex, Luther, and that cute biker that worked at Mayhem, I sucked in a breath and folded my hands across my lap to hide the fact that I was on the verge of panicking. I mean, it wasn't like I didn't know the question was coming. It had to be.
After our brief make-out session outside of Pins, the subsequent phone call that Dex had with Luther in his office, and then seeing at least two motorcycles drive down the street in the opposite direction of Mayhem—I found myself there. In the office. Under the second Inquisition.
Now, I could lie. Or I could tell him exactly what happened outside with Liam. That's what made me panic.
I'd been a moron and I was scared to admit it.
But I hadn't been a liar before this, except for kind-of, sort-of not telling Sonny about my arm for months. Since then, I'd tried not to lie because keeping things quiet by omission wasn't lying. Right? I think it depended on the circumstances, or at least that's what I liked to think to keep my conscience clear.
"Ritz," Dex spoke up, screwing the Rangers cap on his head from side to side in a gesture I wasn't familiar with.
Well, shit.
I was tougher than that. What did I have to be scared of?
Looking at Dex's pissed off face, I knew exactly what but that didn't mean I was going to cower from his judgment, damn it.
"He saw me outside and he said he had a proposition for me," I started. "He said that he had a solution to save my dad and Sonny from the debt that needed to get paid at the end of the week."
Luther looked over in Dex's direction with a wary glance I didn't miss.
"He said he'd take six months with me in exchange for... I don't know, not going after one of them if it wasn't paid. I just told him no." And then told him I was with Dex.