AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I—”
“No,” she snapped, jabbing a finger at him. “I don’t actually want you to say it again. It would probably be pretty fucking unwise for you to repeat yourself, actually.”
“Okay, I won’t. I apologize. Again.”
Good thing he was used to apologizing to women—Nikki made sure of it.
“What I meant to say was that I didn’t ask you to leave. I asked who you were and what you were doing here. In fact, it would probably be ‘pretty fucking unwise’ of you to leave because it’s dark, the temperature’s dropping, and the rent-a-cops who do night rounds in this development can be a little overzealous. Probably wouldn’t take kindly to someone wandering around at this hour.”
The corner of her mouth had twitched skyward when he’d turned her words back on her, and he was glad. He’d wanted to make her laugh. He’d fallen short but he’d take a lip twitch over a stake through the heart any day.
“Here, I’ve got a proposal for you.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed and she crossed her arms over her chest, the raggedy bat smooshed into her considerable cleavage. Lucky little flying rodent.
“If it involves any sort of sexual favors, you should shut your fucking face before I shut it for you.”
“I don’t doubt that’s true,” he replied easily, trying to if not reignite that spark of humor that had been there before, then let it smolder. “And no, I wasn’t going to suggest anything of the sort. I was going to say if you’d be willing to give me your name and tell me why you’re here and how you got in that…”
Vance was about to do something fucking unwise, and he could picture the epic face-palm Nikki would do when he told her about it. But he knew what it was like to feel as though you had no place to go and he didn’t like this woman feeling that way. It sucked.
Despite her threatening him, he liked her. And if she did in fact have some little in her, he hated the idea of her wandering around in the dark even more. Yeah, her grown-up self seemed like she could take care of business but she was still small and he didn’t think she was actually armed. Sometimes people’s little selves could show up at the worst times, like when they felt abandoned and hopeless. He could not,would not, send this girl out into the dark.
So fucking unwise it was.
“That you could stay here and I’ll go home. To Clover City. Unless there was someplace you wanted me to drive you? I didn’t see a car.”
A stricken look flashed across her features, accentuating her pale skin.
“No,” she muttered, looking away from him. “I don’t have anywhere to go.”
He didn’t think she’d meant for him to hear that because as soon as she’d let her shields down, she threw them back up.
“Don’t think you can just rape and murder me and no one would notice. I have a sister. She just has four kids and a deadbeat husband so the last thing she needs is me showing up on her doorstep. But we talk every day. And I have friends. I just…can’t.”
The soft curve of her jaw flexed and Vance wanted nothing more than to give her a hug, tell her everything was going to be okay.
He knew kickass women who enjoyed being little sometimes. Nikki for one, although she’d been having a lengthy mommy drought and frankly it showed in her more-snappish-than-usual attitude. And hell, Arthur’s wife Saoirse seemed to spend most of her time outside of work hours being his babygirl. But that was achoice, and Saoirse had Arthur to take care of her. If she got desperate enough, Vance had known Nikki to schedule a session or two with Hudson at Hive just to tide her over.
This woman though? Didn’t seem to have anyone, never mind a daddy. Or whatever her preferred form of caregiver might be—mommy, babysitter, uncle, nanny.
But he also suspected any attempt at even the most innocent physical contact would get a heel of one of those boots smashing his toes so he’d keep his distance.
