Page 14 of Overexposed

“Ignoring me, are we? Come on now, Stella, don’t be like that. You know you miss me.”

I just barely closed the trunk before he grabbed my hip, shoving me forward against the car and boxing me in. Fear rolled through me, but I clenched my jaw and refused to shrink away.

“Get your filthy hands off me, Dillon,” I snapped, spinning around and giving him a hard shove. He stumbled back a couple of steps, just enough to show that he wasn’t totally sober.Fuck. I’d have happily gone ten rounds with sober Dillon, but drunk Dillon was another matter entirely.

His eyes narrowed and his lips twisted in a sneer. “You think you’re too good for me now, Stella? Now that you’ve whored yourself out to the big-time action star? Huh? Yeah, I recognized you in those photos, you slut.”

“You’re drunk.” It was better to not confirm or deny. Keep the focus on him. One thing he liked was his ego being stroked, and he hated to look like a fool. Why the fuck he was drinking when he was supposed to be working was none of my business.

Instead of fumbling for a defense though, he closed the distance between us and gripped my throat. Fuck. One minute I was on my feet, the next, I was slamming into the trunk of my baby.

The angle made kicking him impossible. The pressure from his hand against my throat cut off my oxygen. I dug my nails into his forearms, but it was easy to forget that he worked out enough to build up muscle. He also had a solid seventy pounds on me, none of which was flab.

Mouth breathing the liquor fumes into my face, he glared at me. “Bet Daddy is real proud of his little whore spreading her legs to snap the story.”

The flat look in his eyes made them seem almost devoid of humanity. The twisted look on his face robbed it of all itsattractiveness. Of all people, you’d think I would recognize that, in this town, beauty really was just skin deep and not fallen for the tousle-haired bad boy with the striking eyes, chiseled jawline, and rugged appeal.

“Yeah, bet your daddy doesn’t know what a freak in the sheets you are.” He flexed his fingers on my throat as I tried to get a foot up and between us. “Maybe I should tell him?” He punctuated the last five words by banging my head against the trunk.

Each blow sent pain lancing into my skull. Even worse, my vision was going spotty. I had to breathe. The more he squeezed, the more difficult it became. Nothing I did had an effect on him. Nothing…

Suddenly, he yanked me upward and just as abruptly let me go. I sucked in a desperately needed breath and damn near choked on it. Coughing, I staggered toward the sidewalk. A series of grunts penetrated my oxygen-deprived brain and I half fell as I twisted to see two figures locked in a struggle a few feet away.

One was definitely Dillon, but I couldn’t make out the other. I sat abruptly, trying to focus. It was like I had a dirty lens and everything was smudgy. A series of hard blows rained down on Dillon.

Both men had dark hair. Dillon wasn’t in a full suit. The other guy was. I wanted to cheer when my knight in whatever the hell designer suit he was wearing landed an uppercut that clacked Dillon’s teeth together.

I was still trying to get enough air back into me. Between the blurry eyesight and the fight to breathe, it was hard to get a fix on what was happening. But then the guy in the suit literally leapt and slammed both of his feet into Dillon’s chest.

Holy shit.

I gaped as Dillon went down. He tried to get up, but the suit was already on his feet. With a pivot, he slammed his foot into the side of Dillon’s head and that was all she wrote for the slimy piece of shit I used to date.

Just a head wound, I thought almost bitterly. Maybe they’d find some screw loose in him. I blinked and the suit went from standing over Dillon to squatting right in front of me.

Oh, those were some pretty damn eyes. The light was hitting them and made the blue in them practically shimmer. No wonder he was getting more roles as a sexy romantic lead. Olivier Griffiths was a hell of a lot better looking up close.

Even the indistinct, hazy version of him. Kind of reminded me of when they would put Vaseline on a camera lens to give women a more ethereal look.

“Hey there,” the sexy bastard said in that sexy beast of a voice that sounded like a melodic growl. He could play all those hot-man-of-privilege roles or even the urbane, suave spy while still getting rough.

Perfect guy really.

“Hey there,” he repeated. “You still with me?”

“Hi,” I answered him belatedly. “You’re bleeding.”

The red on his shirt was not from wine. Wrong color. It was dripping from his nostril too. He swore and pulled a handkerchief out of his inner pocket and blotted at his face.

“Huh,” I said, kind of bemused. “Didn’t know people still carried those. Sorry that the dickwad got a couple of shots in.”

“Don’t worry about it. Dickwad is unconscious. Hopefully he wasn’t a boyfriend or something.”

I waved that off. “Ex. Very ex. I wish he were a thousand miles behind me ex.” Maybe that was going a bit far. The harder I tried to squint to look at Olivier, the more my head hurt. “I should get up.”

“Maybe not yet.” Olivier put a hand on my arm to keep me in place. My legs weren’t really cooperating anyway. “You okay? You look a little out of it?”

“Not drunk,” I told him and held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

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