More accurately, his cock needed her to back off.
Pronto.
He didn’t get the chance to say that.
She got there before he did.
“First, we have a rule here at S.I.L.We don’t call theyoung ’uns‘fucks’or‘motherfuckers’.”
She left that a beat, and when he didn’t respond, shecontinued.
“And tied for that top spot on the don’t side of our do’sand don’ts list, we don’t threaten them.”
Even if all he could see was her, he could still feel theglimpse of her sexy shoes in his crotch, and he could smell her and she smelledlike pepper and moonlight and flowers (the only way he could describe her scentwas “luminous,” and Jag was not a poetic person, but there it was).
He still started laughing.
“Jagger, I’m not being funny,” she said into his laughter.
“Babe, you could have a neon sign coming from the ceilingpointing to them that said ‘bullies’ and those two would still scream that shitlouder than neon.And the only way to handle a bully is to be a bigger bully.”
“Yeah?Do you have years of juvenile counseling and study ofadolescents under your belt to back that wisdom?”
“No, but I was a kid once.”Then, out of curiosity, heasked, “Do you?”
“Jagger,” she snapped.
And even pissed, he serious as fuck liked the sound of hisname coming from her mouth.
So he said, super low, “Baby, I know we are nowhere nearhere, but I really dig what you’re wearing and you smell great, so do a man asolid, and take a couple steps back.”
Her eyelids straight-up fluttered in a sexy version ofsurprise and she took a gigantic step back.
Now he could see the whole package, which didn’t help, buthe couldn’t smell moonlight and her lips weren’t a duck of his head awayanymore, so that was good.
For more than one reason, he moved to the window, and lookedout of it.
There was stuff in the way, but he saw all the kids werecleaning up the mess, and it looked like some staffers were helping them.
The cash registers—and there were two, one on either side ofthe front door—were up high, with a view to the whole of the space.
And from what he could tell, there was ice cream at the sodafountain.
He still wanted a cherry Coke.
“You got real cherry Coke at that fountain?”he asked thewindow.
“Jagger,” she called.
He turned to her.
She was leaning a hip against a messy desk, her hair waspiled on top of her head, a lot of long tendrils floating down, some of themshe’d braided, and yeah.
He should have continued looking out the window.
“I was handling that,” she said.
“Yeah?”he asked.“How?Mal looked like he was about to pisshis pants, the only thing stopping him was how upset he was that your store wasfucked up.”
