Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 115763 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 579(@200wpm)___ 463(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115763 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 579(@200wpm)___ 463(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
“Upsy-daisy,” I declare.
“Griffin Mahoney, you put me down right this second. What the fuck, man?” she shouts, drawing eyes from all around us. When she starts kicking her feet and pummeling my back with her fists, a few people give me concerned looks.
“She’s into that BookTok stuff, you know,” I mumble, rolling my eyes like I’m annoyed by her little fantasy flirtations. The concern turns to wolfish grins.
“Lucky girl. Make sure to smack her ass,” one lady suggests with a wink and a knowing nod.
Figuring it couldn’t hurt, I slap my palm against the ass that has been the object of my dreams . . . and my nightmares.
Penny gasps in shock, but she does still.
“You did not just do that,” she sputters. But she doesn’t sound angry or, well, not any angrier.
Huh, maybe she is into that.
I’ll have to save that for later. It can’t matter right now, because we’ve got to get out of here. I’m making long strides to move us farther away from the antique store and the goons who are now going to be looking for Penny. I turn the nearest corner, and then another and another, trying to zigzag away so they can’t follow us.
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 give him enough rope to hang himself and stay silent. Glaring doubtfully but silent.
He licks his lips and then blurts out, “A pawnshop.” I arch a gimme more brow, 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.