Chapter 8 Penny
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.
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.
Not as bad, 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?
Point being, the fans . . . those guys . . . look like bad news partnered with oh shit and a dash of uh-oh.
“Good move on not telling them to fuck off,” I praise, nodding approvingly.
“I don’t think they would’ve taken your ‘when was the last time you went to the playoffs, bud’ question as well as that last guy did.
” Because, yeah, Griffin actually did that once and turned a lifelong fan into an enemy for life. Not that Griffin gave a shit.
“Glad you agree,” he says, sarcasm dripping from every word.
“Ah, there you are,” I say with a twisted smirk. “I wondered when the asshole was going to show back up. Like Hulk, you can’t contain him for long, can you?”
“Can we just go to the pawnshop?”
“It’s fine.” I wave a hand, dismissing him. “I’ll go by myself.” I take three steps—out of the alley, down the sidewalk, and then stop. Without turning around, I say, “You’re right behind me, aren’t you?”
There’s a grunt. It’s either Griffin answering my question or a bear, and given no one else is freaking out at a randomly appearing bear on a downtown sidewalk, I’m pretty sure it’s Griffin.
“Suit yourself. I’m going to find that ring. I have to.”
He mutters something that sounds like, “Yeah, we do.”
But that can’t be right. There is no we where Griffin and I are concerned, unless you’re grouping humans that live in the same city. That’s about all we have in common. Or people who Dominic Lee actually like, which is an admittedly small group. But beyond that, nothing, nada, no we to speak of.
Yet Griffin is still behind me when I find Paul’s Pawn, which is the closest pawnshop according to Google, only a couple of blocks away.
“Well, hellooo. You just made my day better, pretty lady,” the guy behind the glass display case purrs with a flirty smile as I walk through the pawnshop door. His eyes drop from my face to my feet, with extra-long stops at my breasts and hips, but that all disappears as Griffin enters after me.
Did I shut the door in his face? Yes, I did. Was it stupid and immature? Also yes. Would I do it again? A million times over. Didn’t stop Griffin even a microsecond.
“Shit. Sorry, man. Didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” the guy apologizes to Griffin, when he should be apologizing to me for being a skeevy jerk. Griffin doesn’t respond, and the guy clears his throat uncomfortably, sounding much more professional when he says, “How can I help you today?”
Griffin steps forward, starting to speak, “We’re looking for a ring—”
Nope, he’s not in charge. Not of me, and not of this clusterfuck of epic proportions. So I shoulder my way in front of him, pushing him back . . . and promptly stepping on his foot.
“Fuuuck,” he hisses, jerking his foot from beneath mine and shooting laser beams of death my way.
It was accidental. Truly, it was. But I’m not going to let him know that. I clench my teeth, snarling through them, “Back off, bucko. I’ve got this.”
When I turn back to the pawnshop guy, his eyes are ping-ponging between me and Griffin.
It’s obvious who he thinks is the bigger threat, but he’s dead wrong.
Griffin might be all big and tough, and rough and hot—wait, not that last one; I mean, he is, but not to me—but I’m hell on wheels when the situation calls for it.
And sometimes, even when it doesn’t. No one would be the slightest bit surprised if I accidentally broke a display case or two.
It’d be right on par with any given day in the Life of Penelope Lee.
So this pawnshop guy had better watch it.
“We’re looking for a ring,” I say, and when Griffin mumbles behind me, “That’s what I said,” I willfully and pointedly ignore him. “A five-karat, bezel-band gold ring.”
“That’s very specific.” He scans the display case between us like he’s not sure what’s in his inventory. If there’s one thing I know about pawnshop people, it’s that they know what they have and what it’s worth.