Until finally, the coast is clear.
And that’s when shit really goes sideways.
Chapter 8
Penny
“What the actual fuck are you doing?” I demand as Griffin slowly lowers my feet to the ground in an alley. At least he avoided the dumpster I can smell from here, and my cute shoes are nowhere near any puddles of questionable origin.
My cheeks—both sets—are heated. I don’t need a mirror to know they’re pink, but I tell myself it’s not arousal from being manhandled and spanked. And it’s not embarrassment from the whole street seeing me hanging over his shoulder. It’s anger. And since I was literally hanging upside down, it’s probably gravity working its magic.
Thanks for nothing, Isaac Newton!
“Uh ...” Griffin rubs his jaw, the scruff of his beard making a scraping sound I’d like to feel myself ... against my palm ... as I slap the audacity right out of him.
“Who do you think you are? You can’t go around picking people up and moving them where you want them.” I poke my finger into his chest to emphasize that point but get slightly distracted by the hard muscle beneath my fingertip. “What are you made of? Steel?” I poke him a little harder.
“Penny.”
The rough gruffness in his voice irritates me anew, and I remember why I was mad in the first place. “You also can’t spank them without permission. That requires discussion of hard limits, soft limits, safe words, and consent.” I count out the rules on my fingers, wiggling them in his face.
Griffin’s eyes widen, and he makes an odd sound that kinda sounds like a chicken getting strangled—or what I imagine that’d sound like, because the only chicken I’ve ever been around comes vacuum-packed from the grocery store. He also immediately starts coughing.
“Shit,” I hiss, moving to pound on his back. “You okay? Why do you keep choking like that? Do you have reflux or something? The team doc could give you a scrip if you need one.”
“What the hell are you talking about safe words for?” he manages to force out.
I throw my hands in the air. “That? You spanked me, ergo, ipso facto, safe words. The two are obviously related.”
“Ipso what?” he repeats, his brows furrowed like I’m speaking another language, which technically, I am. Latin, I think?
“I don’t know. I heard it on a TV show. I think it means something like ‘this—dot dot dot—that.’ The ipso facto is the dot-dot-dot part. I think.” Tilting my head, I try to remember the context I heard it in, then shake my head to clear it before refocusing on him. “You’re distracting me. Why did you run away from Carolynn’s like the building was about to blow? It’s not, is it? If so, I didn’t do it.” I hold my hands up, the picture of complete and utter innocence.
I swear I can see the wheels turning in his head like the little hamster is struggle-bussing to get motivated on a Monday morning after a forty-eight-hour weekend rager. There’s even a tiny squeak as the wheel gets rolling. Oh wait, that’s someone pushing a cart on the sidewalk.
“I just—had an idea—” Griffin stutters.
He’s lying. Right through the cosmetically enhanced smile the teams’ dental sponsor, Dr. Velspur, helped create. But I decide to givehim enough rope to hang himself and stay silent. Glaring doubtfully but silent.
He licks his lips and then blurts out, “A pawnshop.” I arch agimme morebrow, and he rushes to explain. “The thief, he probably doesn’t want the ring. He wants money, so where would he go to get quick cash on stolen goods?” He gives me an expectant look, assuming I can put one and one together and get Means and Methods of Common Thievery in the Twenty-First Century.
I blink, letting the idea marinate in my brain for .02 seconds, then slap Griffin’s bicep—which is just as hard, or maybe even harder, than his chest. “That’s brilliant! Why didn’t you say so? We’re wasting time. Let’s go! Where’s the nearest pawnshop?”
Now I’m the one dragging him, although I have no idea where I’m going.
“Wait, wait,” he argues, planting his feet. Given he’s a solid foot taller than me, and outweighs me by ... an undisclosed amount (because ladies don’t discuss their weight, especially after a few too many boxes of Girl Scout Cookies and a scoop of Chocolate Orgasm), I can’t budge him. He might as well be a rock or a mountain, which is admittedly kinda the same thing on a different scale.
He carefully peeks around the corner like he’s looking for something ... or someone. I scoot up close to him, my side plastered to his, and peer around the corner, too, though I have no idea what I’m supposed to be searching for.
“Did you get recognized at Carolynn’s?” I whisper. “Some psycho bunny begging to have your babies right here, right now? Or a middle-aged fan who ‘played a little hockey in his day’ telling you how to take the season all the way, like that’s not literally what you’re trying to do?” I’m not making those scenarios up. They happen more often than you’d think. I’ve seen it with Dom, and with Griffin.
“Yeah. I was recognized,” Griffin says. But his voice sounds wrong. Maybe it’s because he’s actually talking to me and not grunting like I’m stealing his precious oxygen by being in his vicinity?
“What’s she look like?” I’m going with the obvious statistical guess on who we’re hiding from. An in-your-face fan? Griffin would tell him off. A woman throwing herself at him? The manners he occasionally has—with everyone other than me, of course—make him less likely to be rude to her.
“He. Two of them. Big guys. Right there.”
I look to where he’s pointing and see why he didn’t tell off the fans offering unsolicited advice—which is almost as bad as unsolicited dick pics. Notasbad, though, because at least you get a laugh out of the dick pics because it’s always the guys with weird-looking Leaning Tower of Pisa dicks who send pics. Seriously, who in their right mind sees that and goes,Hell yeah, call me Bugs Bunny, because I want me some of that carrot stick?
