Maybe I wasn’t being fair about his looks, seeing as my type was a bit louder in the way of appearances.
But, well, Frederick Lasso was about as appealing as an undercooked piece of toast.
Pale, almost pasty white skin with ruddy cheeks, a nose that was a little too long stationed between eyes that were a tad too wide apart, with a soft chin that sort of made his neck roll into said chin, giving him that double-chin look despite the fact that he was skinny as a garden rake.
Hell, maybe all of that worked for some women.
But me, I wouldn’t fuck him with someone else’s vagina.
Even if he paid.
And I bet he paid.
I’d worked in a lot of bad areas in my life. I could smell a John a mile away.
From the dads with their wallets full of pictures of their kids to the old widows, right to the successful businessmen who couldn’t get pussy any other way but to empty their wallet for it.
Frederick paid for coochie, mark my words.
“Toddlers?” he asked, brows pinching.
“Those puff things in your cart, those are for toddlers. They melt fast,” I added, though telling him that probably gave him more information about my past than I was willing to offer up normally.
I didn’t have kids.
But, yeah, there were parts of my past that involved being around a lot of them.
In some ways, thanks to dear old bent-dick Frederick.
I mean, I didn’t know he had a bent dick, but he gave off bent-dick-energy.
All ego, nothing good to back it up with.
“They’re for the birds,” he quickly recovered, jerking his chin up, proud of his quick thinking.
“The birds on the estate?” I clarified. “I thought processed shit was bad for them. But maybe that care guide I had to read was incorrect.”
He’d been the one to force me to read the fucking care guide, despite the fact that I had nothing to do with the peacock or swan care.
There was someone who handled that sort of thing. They even took out a hose and watered in the abundant droppings.
Yeah, that was the kind of rich the owner of the estate was.
“Listen to me, Theodora,” Frederick said, jumping in front of my cart, so I couldn’t move forward. And the godforsaken narrow aisles were making it impossible to just move past him like I wanted.
“You know, I don’t think she wants to listen to you,” a voice said at the same moment a heavy arm dropped down across my shoulders, yanking me into the side of a well-built, warm body.
A well-built, warm body with a leather cut on.
My gaze shot up, sure it was just a coincidence, that some other random biker had just chosen to step in when it clearly looked like I was being harassed.
Because I was.
Normally, I was not the kind of woman who let that stand.
But with this particular man, I had to bite my tongue, I had to swallow back the venom, letting it poison me instead of him.
“I don’t believe this is any of your business,” Frederick said, his snooty, old-money face moving over Dezi with the curled lip.
“And, yet, that’s not stopping me,” Dezi said, tone light, but there was something underneath it, something I knew when I heard it, but because of his privileged, protected upbringing, went right over Frederick’s head.
“Why don’t you just carry on with—“
Dezi didn’t let him finish.
“Why don’t you turn a heel on those ugly ass fucking shoes of yours,” he started, tone still deceptively cordial, “and leave my girl Theo here alone. Or I’m gonna stick my fingers up your nostrils and yank those creepy-ass, beady-ass eyes out through your nose.”
Again, I heard it.
The sincerity.
His willingness to follow through with his threat.
Maybe even a desire to do so.
That, mingled with the red stain on his shirt that was probably some sort of food, but could easily be mistaken for dried blood, had my gaze sliding in his direction.
“You listen here…” Frederick started.
But then Dezi’s arm was leaving my shoulders, and his other arm was grabbing the cart and moving it out of his way as he swaggered—yes, that was the only way to describe how he walked right then—toward Frederick.
Whose face immediately dropped before he turned and power-walked away.
Dezi followed at that same unhurried, but purposeful, pace for good measure before turning back and coming down the aisle toward me.
Where I stood.
Trying to reason with my own fucking libido that it would be completely inappropriate to fuck him in a bathroom stall at the goddamn grocery store.
“Look at this schmuck, leaving his cart for someone else to deal with,” he said, reaching into it, and grabbing the thing of puff treats. “These things are fucking banging.”
“They’re for toddlers,” I said, shaking my head at him as he tossed it into his overflowing cart.
“Yeah, I know. Bunch of the brothers have little crotch goblins. They always have these things.”