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That fucker really let me come out here all by myself.
All so he could get inked by the one person Iwant ink from.
Fucker.
Glancing left, and then to my right to make sure that no one is paying too much attention to me, I finally step up to the truck and growl my order through the little window.
Another step down to pay, and another past that to wait some more for the containers to be handed out, I stack the shit in my arms in a way that maneuvering around the crowd won’t force me to drop them.
I hope his ink is ugly.
And stupid.
As I walk what feels like a mile on the surface of the sun back to Cedar’s setup, I know my face is screaming what I’m feeling in my gut when the crowd parts for me without requiring pointed looks and pretending to throw daggers their way. They just move, and they watch, until I’m too far out of sight to keep an eye on.
Normally, I’d be having a heyday. Snapping pictures and posting online just for the kicks of those potential people to look back and realize they were so fucking close to someone from As Above, they could have licked me.
Which is a comment I’ve actually gotten.
And I fucking laughed.
But Peach and his bullshit. And Cedar and hertwitching bullshit that has me on a much higher alert than I was when I jerked off in her parlor.
Probably shouldn’t have done that.
I can’t take it back now, though.
The thought of what could make a woman like Cedar jumpy and distant has my palms itching to hurt and my blood boiling through my veins.
Her ability to threaten me with the bat that night, and practically lob it at my head, means that she’s had to protect herself from someone in the past, doesn’t it?
Someone like me?
Pausing at the threshold between the stadium that pulses and the main vendor row, I force a breath as I glance up at the fading sun with a clenched jaw and a racing heart.
And that sends me right back to one of the last nights I played with the Saltwater Skulls, where some chick’s boyfriend got taught a valuable lesson about treating women poorly while I signed her shirt.
Not someone like me.
I leave women twitchy for a different reason.
I puff out my cheeks with the force of the breath I release and compel my feet to move me forward. It’s not a difficult feat knowing that I’ll have Cedar back in my sights soon, but I’m more concerned with how hard it was to leave her there to begin with, even with Peach.
And how difficult she’ll make it later when the show closes.
Still, I shake those thoughts from my mind. That’s a problem for me to figure out later because not having her in my sights is no longer an option.
I shoulder my way into Cedar’s worn-ass tent with every intention of making her eat, even if that means Peach’s ink is incomplete.
“What the—” Freezing in place, my face falls when I find Peach leaning over Cedar’s curled-up body. She’s in the chair, her face hidden from me, her feet kicking in little pedaling motions that make the heat rise up my chest and my words growl out past my lips. “You have three goddamn seconds to step the fuck back.”
“Not so hard!” Cedar throws her head back, her mouth wide, her blue eyes scrunched up and hidden from me.
My hands are already clearing to wrap around my bodyguard’s neck when the sound that ratchets its way past Cedar’s red-stained lips registers in my foggy brain.
“If I lighten up at all, you do this shit.”
“Because it tickles—”
