Did this man just... scold me?
And what the hell did he mean this side of town? This side of town seemed safe enough.
“My car’s just right there,” I told him, pointing in the general direction of the nearby lot.
Dex shrugged. “You gotta have some self-preservation or somethin’, babe. Can’t be walkin’ around here by yourself.”
“It’s right there,” I repeated, pointing again. It was seriously thirty steps away.
“I don’t give a fuck,” he pointed out. “C’mon, I got a business to close. Last thing I need is your goddamn bro callin' me, bustin' my balls over somethin' happenin' to you.” Dex wrapped his fingers—long, not too slim but most, most, most definitely manly—around my forearm and pulled me across the street.
I wiggled my arm in his grasp a little, pointing at my car with my free hand. “You can let go of my arm." I jerked it again futilely, thankful he'd grabbed the good one. "I don’t need a babysitter, but I appreciate the gesture,” I groaned under my breath, shaking my arm in his grasp once more.
“Obviously you need a babysitter if you’re walkin’ around shitty ass Austin alone this late, babe.” He shook his head, yanking me not so gently around Blake’s white Nissan Frontier and toward my old Ford. “So fuckin' stupid,” he hissed under his breath.
Jerk. Total jerk.
"I'm not stupid and I'm not a friggin' idiot," I snapped, wiggling my arm again but he didn’t let go.
He also didn't say anything. The only noise that came out of his body was a sharp inhale that was impossible to miss.
"Can you please let go of my arm now?" Why the hell was I saying please? I tried jerking out of his grasp, feeling like an idiot for asking permission to get control back of my body. I should have just… demanded it, damn it.
"No."
His simple, curt answer grated on me.
“Not till you’re in the car,” Dex explained.
I pulled at his hold. “Let. Go. Of. My. Arm.” I lowered my voice into a whisper. “Or else.”
He didn’t need to know that the or else depended on me slapping his tiny nuts with the back of my hand.
Dex didn’t respond and he didn’t say anything either as he pulled us to a stop in front of my Focus. I was fishing through my purse the minute my arm was free.
“Thanks for walking me over,” I murmured to him, still indignant. Still pissed. Still keeping my eyes a million miles away from Dex The Dick’s face.
You need the job.
You need the job.
You need the job.
But that didn't mean I completely shut up. My dumb mouth kept going. "I'm not stupid enough to not pay attention to my surroundings, by the way."
Well, that could have been a lot worse.
Normally, I would have been shocked by how angry I felt all of a sudden. It was as if the two days of working with this asshole and the last ten years of my life had suddenly joined together in a tsunami of pissed-offness that threatened to drown everything in the world. Normal Iris would have and should have just continued to ignore Dex Locke. Pretend like his words hadn't bothered me but that Iris was a victim of the tsunami, apparently.
He didn’t say anything for a long minute, an ink covered hand pulled at the sleeve of his crew neck shirt. His tight gray crewneck shirt. Guh. It seemed so friggin' unfair. It should be a standard that attractive men be just as nice on the inside as they were on the outside. But they weren’t and it sucked big time.
“Ritz?” he asked in a softer tone than I’d ever imagined hearing from him. The dry, bored tone seemed to be a staple in his vocal cord usage.
I groaned. “My name’s—“
“Ritz.”
“No,” I told him—well, his neck.
“Look at me,” he said but it sounded more like an order.
I didn’t want to, and I knew he knew it too.
“Babe, look at me,” he repeated the command, still in that lax, casual voice.
Slowly, like a snail making a long trek, I rolled my eyes over to his face, taking in the flawless bone structure staring back at me from over demon flesh incarnate.
When my eyes landed on his bluest of blues, he frowned. That handsome, angled face shifted in uncomfortable displeasure. Should it have been a surprise that a look that resembled guilt seemed so foreign to him? No. “Chill out, yeah?”
I forced that same look he'd copyrighted onto my face. Flat, plain, and emotionless. “Sure.”
He blinked. “You’re lyin’.”
I tried to take a step back. “Goodnight.”