Page 51 of Body Tox

“Nah, cool it, lady. I’m gone,” I said, saluting the bitch, and started to walk past her.

“Oh my! Are you trying to touch me? Help! Someone…help! A pervert is exposing himself to my poor eyes.”

I cringed at her volume and backed away. People were looking over at us, and I tried to put some distance between our bodies.

“Shut up, you old hag. I wouldn’t touch you if you paid me!” I hissed at her.

“Oh heavens. It’s a gigolo. Guards. Police. Someone, anyone,help me!”

I facepalmed, slightly panicking from the crowd she was attracting. Some asshat kids were recording her dumbassoutburst, and I kept my head down, turning away from the phones and crowd.

Every mug shot I had acquired over my life somehow didn’t include public indecency or exposing my genitals to an elder.

“This is a place for families!” a stranger hollered.

“Yeah! Get lost, freak,” another said, hurling an insult at me from the crowd.

I backed up from the mob of holy assholes coming toward me, and my only option was an alley behind the building near me.

It looked like a vintage store with old-school records in the front glass window. The crowd was following me, and I turned around and took off running into that alley. The sounds of the angry shouting and insults died down the faster I ran. The more corners I took to get deeper into the back passages of the stores, the less I heard their taunts and threats.

“Son of a bitch.” I finally stopped and caught my breath, leaning forward and heaving from the exertion of the run.

When I was able to breathe again, I looked up.

There across from me, leaning on the stone wall, was a pale-skinned, snow-colored-haired goddess of wrath looking ever so pissed at me, but she also couldn’t hide her smile even as she tried to hold her pants up with her delicate hands.

“You say I leave a mess in my wake. Looks like you leave a hoard of angry women in yours.”

My smile came easy when it was for her.

“Spoken from experience?”

She glared at me, the blush on her cheeks and neck not quite gone from her arousal.

“You have no idea, Pretty Boy,” she replied, twisting and curling her pants to fit around her hips.

I snorted.

“You might wanna get some new pants,” I said.

She ignored me, huffing and continuing the flip, roll, tuck method.

“I wouldn’t need to if you had kept your hands to yourself,” she growled, blowing the hair from her face.

I moved closer to where she was against the wall, placing my arm over her head and leaning toward her leering, cautious gaze.

“Now, now…if you want me to finish what I started…” I teased, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “You better be nice to me.”

She took her hand and deliberately flipped out the strand I had tucked behind her ear in a dramatic flick. Now I glared, and she smiled in return. She ducked under my arm and walked away from me.

“You made the right choice by not running off, Pretty Boy,” she said over her shoulder. “So let’s not ruin it.”

She was dancing in front of me with her ridiculous rolled pants, and I sighed.

Echo was dead set on this damn mission to look into my past, and if I wanted to find out who the fuck she was after and why she worked for the Debt Collector, I needed to play nice…for now.

“I’m twenty-two!”

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