Under Locke

by Mariana Zapata

  "Me and your boy won't let anybody mess with you," he offered. "You'll come?"

  Oh, what the hell. I hadn't been out in almost a year with the exception of the last trip to Mayhem. "Yeah, sure."

  Trip grinned.

  Glancing down at my watch, I sighed. It'd been twenty minutes since I left the shop and the last thing I wanted was to get in trouble when I got back. "See you tomorrow?"

  He nodded, still grinning. "Sure will."

  Waving at Trip, I kept taking steps backward. “Bye, Trip.” He winked at me right before I waved once more and speed-walked down the forecourt.

  I spotted Sonny bent at the hips with his entire upper body suspended over the motor of a Chevy and since I didn’t see Luther—more than likely the boss— around, I yelled at him. “See ya, Sonny!”

  He didn’t move but I heard him call out after me, “Later, Ris!”

  It might have been because Trip was a handsome flirty bastard, or it might have been because Sonny went above and beyond the call of being a half-brother who had spent less than a year of his total life with me, but I smiled the entire—short—walk to work.

  ~ * ~ *

  “You ever thought about getting a tattoo?” Slim asked me.

  It was a little after ten. Blake was working on the same piece he’d been going at for two hours and Blue had just gotten saddled with piercing a cute but barely legal girl's tongue. I had a feeling she was going to regret that thing tomorrow, but I kept my mouth closed.

  Rule number one in working at a tattoo parlor according to Blake—don’t talk customers out of services unless they were a really, really bad idea. Which meant I really, really needed to find out what they thought a bad idea was. Maybe a facial tattoo?

  Slim and I had just given each other bug eyes when Blue walked off with the nervous girl and we'd followed after them with our eyes until they disappeared into one of the private rooms. Earlier, a woman well into her thirties had come in requesting to get one nipple pierced. Blue had been in the room with her for ten minutes when a scream pierced through the parlor, scaring the crap out of all of us. It was a miracle that Dex hadn’t messed up the tattoo he’d been working on because I’d whacked the computer mouse across the room in response.

  I was fondly starting to call the private room the “torture chamber” in my head.

  I nodded my head at Slim. “I wanted to get a tattoo on my lower back when I was eighteen.”

  He raised an incredulous eyebrow. “A tramp stamp?”

  The guy enunciated the words a little too carefully. Smart ass.

  For that, he earned a smirk. “For the record, I didn’t know they were called tramp stamps before I wanted to get one,” I gave him a flat look. “I just thought they were kind of cool.”

  “Cool?” He smiled, still enunciating slowly.

  I repeated myself with a smirk.

  “But…?” Slim trailed off, fishing for an explanation.

  “But I couldn’t think of anything I liked enough to get tattooed on me for the rest of my life, you know?” And I'd found out two weeks later that I was going to need another surgery, but I kept that tidbit to myself.

  Slim, who from what I’d seen over the last few days, was tattooed from ears to toes, nodded in understanding. “They’re addicting. I was only going to get one when I turned eighteen, and then one turned into two, and two into three—“

  “And three into—,” I fanned out my fingers and wiggled them, “Everything?”

  He snorted. “Exactly.”

  I got it.

  Pretty much ninety percent of the clientele I’d seen over the week were repeat customers. They’d mostly all been familiar with one or all of the guys working, and while not everyone had the amount of ink coverage that the artists had, two tattoos was more than my whopping zero.

  And they were cool. Almost all of the work that wasn't walk-in was original, hand-drawn and transferred. They really were pieces of art or at least pieces of art in the making.

  From what I’d seen in such a short amount of time, the tattoos weren’t just random crap people would regret when they were elderly. The pieces clients got seemed to be so much more than that. They were memorials and declarations. They were outpourings of love and pain. Letters and images, icons and symbolism, personal and eternal.

  It was eye-opening for me. The art that they created were badges of honor. It was impossible not to get sucked into the emotion that went behind the artwork.

  Well, at least that was the case with most of them. I’d already seen a sketch for a flaming penis that made me cringe.

  “You have great skin. It'd be a perfect canvas.” He lifted both of his eyebrows before looking up abruptly and lifting his chin, still grinning but past me. “Done hibernating?”

  I tensed up.

  “Done with three hours of Club financial shit,” that grumbly, deep voice that I’d learned to associate with Dex’s cool mood answered from what felt like just a few feet behind me.

  “Bummer.” Slim made a face.

  “I don’t see us gettin’ any more business. Ritz, you’re free to go home whenever you’re ready, and Slim, clean up, yeah?” Dex said.

  Slim nodded, hopped off the edge of my desk and walked toward the back. I heard the soft sound of Dex’s motorcycle boots lumber off, and I got up. I’d already cleaned everything about thirty minutes before. The frames, the coffee table, all the free surfaces. My stuff for the day was done.

  Blake happened to look over when he took a mini break as I was throwing my purse over my shoulder, so waved at him and mouthed, “See you tomorrow.” He closed both his eyes and nodded before I walked out of the shop.

  The street, usually heavy with pedestrian and automotive traffic during the day, was eerily quiet. There weren’t any cars besides the two Pins clients’ and it freaked me the hell out. It was like one of those scary movie scenes before the heroine gets chased by some psychopath serial killer but manages to survive. Survive half-naked, whatever.

  Instantly, I regretted not asking one of the guys to walk out with me, but I didn’t want to ask them for favors. I didn’t need to get babysat and plus, I didn’t like being that needy girl. I'd been on my own for years. I could walk to my car by myself.

  Sucking in a breath, my feet were brave enough to make their way down the strip, passing the real estate agency while I talked myself out of looking in. The last thing I needed or wanted was to see some masked face staring back at me from the other side.

  I’d barely made it to the end of the street when someone yelled out, “Yo!”

  Under normal circumstances, if I thought it might have been a stranger instead of someone from the shop calling out after me, I’d start running. But it wasn’t. It took me a second out on that empty street to realize it was Dex's deep voice yelling.

  “Hold up!”

  I forced myself to turn around and see him jogging over. “Yes?”

  He cut the distance between us to stop just two feet away. “What the fuck are you doin’?”

  I blinked. What? “You told me I could leave when I was ready.” I blinked again. “I was ready.”

  Dex’s amazing eyes, even under the dim streetlight that cast shadows in the shadows, looked incredulous. “Girl, I said you could leave when you were ready but not by your fuckin’ self. You can’t be walkin’ around this side of town all alone so late.”

  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.”

  Dex's hand whipped forward to grab the hem of my shirt, stopping me. “Ritz.” His tone was insistent.

  “That’s not my name.”

  He chose to ignore that. “Will you look at me?” he growled, exasperation dripping from his words. That soft voice disappearing in an instant.

  I looked at him but felt a million miles away.

  Dex cut the distance between us, towering over me. His brilliant eyes searched over my face, resting on my mouth for a brief moment before looping back up to my eyes. "Son already bitched me out."

  I tugged on my arm. "Goodnight."

  “Babe," he said, tugging on my button-down. "I got a bad temper and that was a crap day for me. I say shitty things when I'm pissed."

  Sure, because it was that friggin’ easy. He had a shitty day so he could call me names behind my back. Right. Made total sense. Not.

  Dick.

  I just stared back at him.

  “Just let it go, 'kay? It drives me fuckin' crazy you won't look me in the eye,” he breathed. "I don't do this awkward shit, babe."

  “If I look at you from now on will you leave me alone?” I asked him in a whisper.

  Something shuttered across his eyes. “You’re not gonna let this go?”

  My chest flared with white hot anger. Getting fired would be better than quitting if I was standing up for myself, wouldn’t it? Sonny was my brother, he’d understand in a heartbeat if I explained. Then afterward, some kneecaps would be busted.

  There was always the job at the damn strip club. Lord.

  Schooling my features, I leaned forward to close the short distance between us to a microscopic one despite the near foot in height difference.

  “It’s not everyday someone I don’t know calls me a fucking idiot, then insults my clothes and my time management.” I looked him right in the eye, not caring that he winced. “I’d say I’m sorry that I had to ask you for help, and that I can’t pretend you didn’t hurt my feelings, but I won't. If you would've showed me what to do slower or not rolled your eyes each time I wrote something down in my notebook, I wouldn't have had to. I'm not stupid or an idiot or a moron or whatever else you've called me.” In all honesty, I hadn’t intended to tell him he’d hurt my feelings but once the words were out in the universe it was a done deal. Whatever. I couldn’t take them back so I had to stand by them. “And now, I’m just pissed off, and I want to go home.”

  And Dex, Dex just looked at me with those irises the same shade as a crayon. “You don’t know what it’s like to have a shit day, princess?”

  Princess?

  Princess?

  This dickwad had no clue.

  I sucked in another breath, steeling myself. I wasn’t going to be a pushover again. No. Friggin’. Way. I was done. If I could get fired, it’d be better than leaving on my own. So I laid it out on him as politely as I could. “When I have bad days, princess,” I whispered, opting at the last minute to leave out the Duke Dickface teasing my tongue, “I cry. I read. I clean. I eat crappy things. I swim or do the yard. I don’t make people feel like crap, your royal highness.”

  Chapter Six

  “Are you sure this won’t get you into trouble?”

  Sonny’s upper body had disappeared beneath the car minutes ago with tools and a pan. I plopped down on top of a tire that was sitting off to the side of the bay at the body shop he worked at, watching him because I had no idea how to help. “It’s fine, Ris. Trust me.”

  Well, shit.

  The shop was closed on Saturdays; there was a very clear sign by the gate that we’d come through. Personally, I’d rather not get arrested for trespassing but Sonny didn’t look worried even a hundredth of a fraction. Plus, I’d spotted three bikes and two cars parked alongside the big adjacent building to the bays, so I figured we either weren’t alone or somebody was using the space as a parking lot.

  Only I wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not.

  “You trust me, don’t you?” he asked in a teasing voice when I didn’t respond.

 
"No." I extended my leg out to nudge his knee with my toes. “Yes.”

  Because I did. A lot. Sonny had never let me down when he knew I needed him.

  Regardless, I still didn’t want to risk him losing his job all because I couldn’t change my own oil. “You're positive?”

  A dirty blue rag went airborne and smacked me in the face. “Quit asking.”

  "Sheesh," I muttered but made a face and picked the rag up with my index finger and thumb before tossing it back at him.