AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I take my wallet out and throw some cash on the table, then slide out. Standing in front of her, I hold my hand out. She slips her palm into mine. Curling my fingers around her hand, I keep my gaze on hers as she slips from the booth.
Together, hand-in-hand, we walk out of the restaurant, but instead of heading to the car, I guide us toward the strip mall a couple of hundred feet away.
ChapterSix
PIPER
When I livedwith my brothers, I wasn’t permitted to go shopping alone. In fact, they usually just bought things online and had them delivered to the house. I’ve never really been in stores before, and now I’m in a strip mall.
I’m sure there are bigger malls all over the country and that this isn’t that big of a deal, but just the fact that I can go into any of these stores and choose what I want is a bit overwhelming. There are racks and racks of clothes, a million more options than wedding dress shopping yesterday, and I thought that was vast.
Stopping in my tracks, I look around the room. It’s like a sea of rainbows all over the place. I’ve never seen so many colors and options. Itch clears his throat as his fingers flex around mine. Turning my head, I look at him, and he lets out a grunt.
“You need everything, so get started and get whatever you like.”
“I don’t know what I like,” I confess.
He doesn’t say anything. I don’t know what I expect, but I don’t expect him to curl his grasp tighter around my hand and take off. His long legs move through the store, and my shorter legs are forced to practically run behind him just to keep up. He stops in the middle of the women’s clothing department.
There is a saleswoman a few feet away, and she whips her head over to the side, her eyes widening as she looks him up and down, slowly. So slowly in fact that it makes me feel instantly uncomfortable.
“How can I help you?” she asks. Her voice sounds almost like a purr. She’s trying to be sexy, and I don’t like it at all. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I stare at her.
“She needs a whole wardrobe. Everything,” Itch murmurs from beside me.
The saleswoman finally flicks her attention to me and gives me a fake sugary sweet smile before she speaks, and when she does, her voice is like pure syrup. “Hello, did you just move in with your daddy and need some new clothes for school?”
My head jerks back slightly. I don’t know much about the outside world. I’ve spent most of my life being completely isolated. Clearing my throat, I stay where I am, my feet planted, and tilt my head to the side as I stare at her.
“I’m moving in with my husband in two weeks after our wedding,” I say.
The woman’s gaze swings to Itch’s, then she flicks her eyes down to our joined hands and takes a step backward. Her eyes widen. She appears distraught at the sight of us, and I know it’s because of our age difference.
I have a bad feeling about this. Tugging on his hand, I try to gain his attention, but he’s staring right at her. She whimpers slightly, then her gaze travels to his chest. There is a patch on his cut, a patch that claims him as the Road Captain of the Devil’s Hellions, and things start clicking into place for her.
She’s no longer seeing the tall handsome man standing in front of her. Now she sees a whole different creature—an outlaw. I watch as she opens and closes her mouth a few times. No sound escapes. She clears her throat, schools her features, and plasters on a fake smile.
The woman no longer focuses on Itch but instead turns her attention toward me. “Come this way. We have a variety of clothes for young women. Are you looking for casual or dressy?” she asks.
Looking over my shoulder at Itch, I lift my brows. He shrugs his shoulders. “Casual,” he calls out. “We ride on my bike a lot.”
The woman makes a little whimpering noise in the back of her throat but doesn’t respond to Itch. Instead, she gives me a bigger fake smile and points out a wall that has stacked jeans folded in rows.
“We have a lot of jeans over here. The younger women tend to gravitate toward this line of clothing. These are all juniors clothes and more fashionable.”
I don’t tell her that I don’t know anything about fashion. She already looks really rattled, and I have a feeling if I said anything about my brothers, the way I grew up and living with Cyrus, she would probably pass out immediately.
She collects what feels like a million things for me to try on, and by the time I make it into the dressing room, I’m exhausted. I don’t even want to try all this stuff on, but I have to, because I have absolutely nothing.
Before I undress, I stick my head out of the door and look at Itch, who has found a chair and is looking down at his phone. When I call out his name, he lifts his head, his eyes find mine, and he raises his brows.
“Do you want to see everything?”
His lips twitch into a small smile, and he shakes his head firmly once. “Nah, babe. Whatever you like, it’s yours.”
Babe. Maybe I shouldn’t like the way he calls me that. I don’t know him very well still, and I’ve heard him say that to Thunder before, and any other woman, but it does something to me. It makes my entire body tingle… everywhere.
“Okay,” I reply, trying to hide hot cheeks that I know are turning redder by the second.
