Page 4 of Locke

“He’ll show,” she assured me. “And he will be all over you because, damn, Kali, you are hot.”

I gave her a warm look, shaking my head. “Don’t tickle my ear.”

She gave me a crazy look. “You’re insane if you think I am.”

Fighting my blush, I glanced away. I’d spent my entire childhood thinking I was an ugly freak. Relentlessly teased in school for being too skinny, too poor, too smelly; constantly bullied at home by my cousins I had grown up with for my big eyes and slight frame, I never really learned to be comfortable in my skin. I didn’t dwell on it. I knew I wasn’t unfortunate, and I had an ass. Dear god, did I have an ass, and said ass was stuffed in a dress like a turkey on Thanksgiving.

“I think I see Aubrey from work,” I said just then, looking down the line at the brunette at the front.

“The bitch that laughed at your clothes in the office?”

I nodded. “That’s the one.”

“Want me to fuck her up?”

“Let’s not catch charges tonight, Syl.”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course not. We are in a posh area of Blackwater, so my claws are hidden, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be waiting for her rich ass to show up on our turf. I’ll rip her pretty extensions out with my teeth—”

“We’ll never see her near Hawthorne,” I cut in. “She’s too sheltered. Her dad is my creepy boss, and he shelters the shit out of her.”

“She’ll rebel, like they always do.”

Maybe.

I felt a hot wave of hurt wash over me when I thought of her cackling about my clothes when I first began work in the office. In Hawthorne, you never let that shit slide. And because I did nothing, I was sure I had emboldened her to keep the torment coming. These days when she came around, she snickered or gave me long drawn-out stares. If surviving wasn’t my priority, I’d have stood up for myself.

But Sylvia was right.

This wasn’t the place for either of us to lose our shit.

“Are you going to acknowledge her?” Sylvia asked next.

“No way,” I answered. “She’s not even eighteen and has a fake ID if they let her in, and if she sees me, she’ll want to have me fired for knowing that. She wouldn’t even recognize me in this dress anyway.”

“Or the nose piercing.” She was referring to my titanium septum piercing.

I fought back my huff. “You’re always going on about my nose piercing—”

“It doesn’t go with the dress is all.”

Just to shut her up, I flipped it up, hiding it. “Happy?”

She smiled. “Now I am.”

My stomach went tight when we finally got to the front of the line. I produced my ID, keeping a lookout for Eric. Meanwhile, Sylvia fluttered her fake eyelashes at the muscle at the door and he was more entranced by her tits than the actual IDs.

With a tilt of his head, he allowed us in.

Two

Locke

He noticed her first.

And that’s how the story began.

With a little prey who stared too much.

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