Under Locke

by Zapata, Mariana

  Extraordinarily stupid.

  My silence as I thought about how much of an idiot I was being, was taken as a token of a possibility when the rough man in front of me kept going with his proposition.

  "You wanted a solution, I got you one, Miss Taylor," he purred easily, taking a step so close to me that he managed to reach out and almost touch my face.

  He didn't because I dodged his hand, but when he laughed, I figured it wasn't really a deterrent.

  "How bad do you wanna make sure we don't have to go after your bro when your daddy doesn't pay up this week?" Liam asked.

  This week? "What do you mean this week?" I asked him carefully.

  Liam licked his lips in a move that most women would probably find sexy, but I found overkill. "Your daddy's got till the end of the week to pay up." He grinned. "I'm offering you a chance to help him out. Help your brother out, too."

  If I'd screamed “Shit!” out of my mouth at the same volume I screamed it in my head, it would have been heard across two city blocks. Instinctively, I wanted to panic but I didn't. I took a deep breath and made myself calm down. This guy could be bluffing. That wasn't out of the question. He could also be taking advantage of the bout of stupidity that had ganged up on me when I’d gone to visit him last time.

  The point was, I realized how dumb I'd been in going to Busty's, the strip club, now. Sonny would probably kick my ass if he found out that I was bargaining with the bald devil in front of me.

  The sudden image of Dex's face was my second warning. He'd kill me.

  And if he happened to walk out and see me talking to Liam, he'd probably kill us both. Or, at least beat the crap out of the other man, which was something he had no business doing because of his record and his career.

  Did I really want to risk him getting in trouble just because I'd been an idiot?

  No. I didn't.

  I also didn't want to offend Liam more than necessary but I had a feeling that he was the type of person who didn't deal with rejection well. Which meant I was totally screwed. But better to save myself from the devil I knew than the one I didn't.

  "How much does he owe you?"

  "The same thing he did last time," Liam snickered. "But I'll take you for six months in exchange for some more time."

  What. The. Ef.

  Any sense I had in handling the biker gently went right out the friggin' window. Six months with me in exchange for an extension? My virginity. My pride. My honor. My friggin' common sense.

  No.

  Absolutely no.

  If I didn’t let my ex pop my cherry after we'd dated for four months, then I sure as hell wasn't going to let this manipulative jackass do it.

  "No." I told him calmly. There was no, "No, thank you." No, "I appreciate the offer, but no." None of that. Nothing to ease my way out of the situation.

  Sonny would never forgive me for doing something so stupid for him, and especially not for the sperm donor. Most importantly, I wouldn't be able to forgive myself. I wasn't a prostitute and I wasn't a pawn in whatever game this psychopath wanted to play.

  His eyes flashed in brief anger. "No?" he scoffed, incredulous. "You're telling me no?"

  Well, there was no graceful way out of this. "My dad doesn't give a crap about any of his kids." I watched him carefully, seeing that he wasn't taking that as enough of an excuse. There was only one thing left to do: lie. Desperate times call for desperate measures, dang it. "Either way I don't think you'd want sloppy seconds."

  "What?"

  I needed to end this conversation three minutes ago. "I'm with Dex." That was better than saying I'm Dex's, wasn't it? That sounded too possessive. Too permanent and the situation I was in was neither.

  The carefully controlled mask that had graced Liam's face morphed into one that barely contained the irritation lurking behind his eyes. He was pissed. "Locke?"

  I nodded.

  Liam wasn't just pissed, he was incredibly pissed. He straightened to his full height and visibly ground his teeth. "You're right. I'm not a fan of Widows' seconds." He raked his gaze over me one more time. "Didn't know you messed around with trash like Locke, doll."

  Trash? He thought Dex was trash?

  If there was a word to describe the facial expression that came over me it had to be described as a sneer. I knew in my gut that I shouldn't say anything back to him. He'd been fine and relatively decent before but did that mean he was harmless? No way.

  Trying to diffuse the situation I gave me a shaky smile. "Thank you for the offer. I hope you get your money back soon."

  The words had barely gotten out of my mouth before grabbing my bag off the floor like a lifeline and darting into Pins. I may have burst through the door a little too loudly, catching Slim's confused expression over his shoulder while he worked.

  "You all right?" he asked before focusing back on the tablet below him.

  I looked around to make sure Dex wasn't nearby and let out a deep breath. "I'm fine." I wasn't. At least not completely.

  What I needed to do was catch my breath and decide whether or not to tell someone that Liam had been outside propositioning me. I didn't want to. My gut said it was a bad idea but wouldn't it be a worse idea for me to keep my mouth shut? Of that I wasn't positive.

  Craaaaap!

  I hustled down the hallway toward the break room, briefly glancing into the office to see Dex on the phone. That was okay. That was better than okay. It gave me time to keep thinking through what I was going to do, if I did anything.

  Keep your mouth shut, Ris, my logical brain said.

  Tell him, Ris, the other half—the emotional half—egged on.

  Double friggin' crap.

  I forced my wrap down though I'd magically lost my appetite for once. It took me longer than it would have if I'd still been starving but I didn't care. With my trash in the garbage I walked out of the kitchen slowly, still debating whether or not to say something to Dex. As I came to the office doorway, I found him sitting at his desk, drawing.

  I wasn't going to lie anymore, I'd told myself months ago. I’d failed that, so at least I’d keep it to a minimum.

  Oh lord. My fingers shook a little as I knocked on the door faintly.

  "Hey."

  Those dark blue eyes flicked up in my direction, Dex ducking his head just a bit. "Come in, babe."

  The two steps in felt like I was going to the gallows. I started wringing my hands as I stood awkwardly to the side of the chairs in front of his desk. He'd looked back down at what he was drawing, which was the only way I managed to start talking.

  "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.

  "He didn't say anything else?" The hot older guy asked.

  I shook my head. "Nothing important." He just called Dex trash, but I'd be an idiot to bring that up.

  Luther blew out a deep breath that made his lips flutter in exasperation. "That son of a bitch."

  Hot biker guy shook his head incredulously. "I heard he just split up with his old lady not too long ago."

  "I heard the same," the president of the MC agreed. "But why the hell would he try and take Ris as an exchange? That doesn't sound like their style even if he's trying to piss us off doing it."

  Now that question, I had no answer for. And all of a sudden, I felt guilty that I hadn't agreed. That I wouldn't do my part to assure Sonny's safety but...

  "I’d do almost anything for Son, but I don't want to go with Liam," I tried to explain to them in a small voice.

  "You're not goin' with anybody," Dex interjected quickly. "Not for Son, your dad, for nobody, Ritz. Ever."

  I happened to be looking at Luther while Dex spoke and I could see his mouth twitch.

  "This is Taylor’s shit. You shouldn't have gotten dragged into it," he said.

  There went my guilt.

  If I kept the truth to myself it would bother me forever.

  "I did something stupid," I blabbed, looking up at the ceiling because any balls I had beforehand disappeared.

  Just rip it off like a Band-Aid. Quick, quick, quick.

  "I went to Busty's last week to talk to the Reapers to see if I could talk them out of going after Sonny. That jerk said it wasn't any of my business." I let out a weird breath continuing to damn myself. "He kissed me and I ran out of there."

  Si
lence.

  Complete, mind-numbing silence.

  "I know it was stupid but I'm fine." Like that was going to help the situation but something was better than nothing. I hoped. Holding up my hands, I flipped them over. “See? Nothing happened.”

  The first thing that came out of anyone's mouth was a long, drawn out, "Fuck." It might have been the hot guy or Luther.