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It sucked that some bitch was taking advantage of him.
Seeing some of the looks she was getting from the few available Doms scattered around the tables at the bar, Angel decided she should head right to one of the barstools near where Andrew was tending bar and wait for Adam there.
As soon as he saw her, Andrew shook his head. She grinned at him as she sat down.
“Are you looking to start a fight tonight, little girl?” he asked, leaning on the bar. There weren’t too many other people there yet, so he could pay the attention to her. “Adam’s going to flip his shit when he sees you wearing that.”
“Then he shouldn’t have run late tonight. Besides, he already saw me wearing it at the party,” she countered. “Not that he did anything about it then.”
“Ah. Yeah, things got kind of messed up on Friday. What do you want to drink?”
“Just a water. Adam should be here soon and I think we’re going to play.”
Andrew laughed. “Dressed like that, you’d better believe you’re going to play.”
The big Dom flipped a glass off of its stack and grabbed the soda hose. Angel admired the economical grace of his movements. It was something she’d noticed a lot of Adam’s friends had in common. They were large and in charge, but surprisingly graceful about it. Maybe it was the fact that most of them went to Liam’s dojo. Angel knew Adam went there most Wednesday nights and he said the other guys would show up on a regular basis as well.
“What’s doing, little girl?”
“I’m not exactly little, you know,” she pointed out.
Andrew raised his eyebrow at her, those dark chocolate eyes looking rather reproving. “You’d better not be running yourself down.”
She rolled her eyes and gestured to the leather straps crisscrossing her body. “Does it look like I’ve got body insecurities?” Okay, well that wasn’t entirely true, she had some, but for the most part she liked her curves and her body and she wasn’t afraid to wear something crazy. But it hadn’t been what she was talking about. “I meant that just because you’re a freaking giant, that doesn’t make me little.”
Staring at her for a moment, Andrew barked a laugh. He smiled, tilting his head as if he didn’t quite know what to make of her.
“Oops... that was disrespectful, wasn’t it?” She made a face as Andrew laughed again.
“You’re fine, little girl, I can tell you didn’t say it to be a brat. You aren’t the type.”
“Why do you make that sound like a bad thing?”
She’d surprised him, she could tell from the way his eyebrows jerked up when he looked at her before his gaze slid away. Then he smiled, a slow, hot, flirtatious smile and crossed his arms on the bar, leaning forward across the wood.
“Because I’m a sadist, little girl, and I like to hurt little brats.”
Wow... her pulse was racing and not because she was turned on. Nope, because she wanted to run.
“You’re kind of scary,” she blurted out, falling back on an old tactic—whenever she was uncomfortable she would say the first thing that came to her head, because she’d found it usually broke the tension.
And, as usual, she was right. Andrew laughed, a deep-throated, full-bodied laugh that suddenly seemed to take years off his face. She stared, absolutely fascinated. While she’d seen him laughing and joking with his friends, she’d never seen him laughing like this, with complete abandon. It changed his face completely and she suddenly realized how often he looked almost angry; it was that before she assumed it was the natural shape of his face.
Turned out, it wasn’t, and when he lost his air of tension, he looked a lot more approachable and open.
“So ah... what’s with this song?” Angel asked, waving her hand up in the air, when he finally stopped laughing, although he hadn’t lost the twinkle in his eye. The throbbing strange noises were kind of getting to her, she hadn’t heard anything quite like it before.
“It’s called ‘Timestretch’ by Bassnectar, why? Don’t you like it?”
“I don’t know... it kind of sounds like Transformers having sex.”
Andrew lost it again. Around the bar, Angel could see people’s conversations slowing or stopping as they stared at the big Dom. Good to know she wasn’t the only one surprised by his unusual enjoyment of her quips. Then again, she’d never had a one-on-one conversation with him before. But she hadn’t been trying to make him laugh, that was actually what it sounded like to her.
“Holy crap, Angel... no wonder Adam’s finally starting to loosen up,” Andrew said, grinning at her. “The shit that comes out of your mouth, you kind of remind me of...”
His voice trailed off and the joy leeched from his face so fast Angel almost wondered if she’d imagined it. Most people would let it go. Most people would realize it was something he didn’t want to talk about.
But Angel always liked to ask. Especially when she sensed the kind of pain she was feeling from Andrew right now. Sometimes talking about it helped.
