I'm too pissed at her condition to make eye contact. “Seatbelt,” I grumble, attention fixed on the windshield as I fire up the engine.
I don't have to look at her—I can almost feel the fire of her eyeroll as she glares at my head.
“Anywayyy..." she says deliberately. "Thanks for saving me." She wiggles around, getting comfortable in her seat before tugging the belt across her ample chest. "I was hoping to get a different kind of ride tonight, if you know what I mean." She sputters out her infamous drunk giggle. It's annoyingly high-pitched and hysterical and absolutely adorable.
"Wanna tell me what the hell happened back there?” I jut my chin toward the bar.
She leans forward to flip on the heater. Then her long, wandering fingers sneak up to the radio dial. "This sexy Jason Momoa guy was totally flirting with me, no lie.” She changes the tuner to a station playing throbbing pop music, scientifically-proven to be the most annoying sound in the world.
Penny is the only person who’d ever dare touch anything in my truck. If anyone else tried that shit, I’d rip their arm off and slap them with it.
Satisfied with her music selection, she flops back in her seat. “For a minute there, I really thought he and me were connecting, y'know. But unfortunately, my Aquaman ditched me when I chickened out of going home with him.” She kicks off her heels, tucking her painted toes under her in the passenger seat.
I throw her a sidelong glimpse as I put the truck in gear. “Aqua-who?”
“Y'know, Aquaman," she garbles eagerly. "Remember when we watched the movie together. Actually, I watched the movie. You spent the first ten minutes grumbling that it was just The Little Mermaid for grownups then you fell asleep and snored your way through the rest of the film.”
She continues her slurred rambling—with zero fucks to give for the grammar rules of the English language—and I can't even keep up. I really don’t know what she’s talking about, but my brain hones in on the fact that there was a guy at the bar she was interested in, one that she considered going home with. I don't like the territorial feeling that information sparks in me.
The idea of her going home with some loser makes my skin itch. No one in this rundown dump deserves a shot with Penny Merlini. Especially not a douchebag who’d turn her down in a trashy bar like this one.
In all the years I've known her, I've never seen Penny with a long-term boyfriend. She's dated a string of pretty boy gym-junkies but no one she's ever been serious about, as far as I can tell. Maybe she's not into that whole 'serious relationship' thing. Maybe she's happy playing the field. And even if she were looking for something stable, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be with a guy like me. Penn is drop-dead gorgeous, with glitter-red hair, eyes like emeralds and a soul-stealing smile. She treats fashion like a religion and she dresses like she's getting ready for a stroll down Hollywood Boulevard. Every where she goes, she turns heads. The idea of her in a relationship with a grimy, anti-social farmer like me is almost laughable.
She's out of my league.
Penny's my complete opposite in every way. She’s the soft, feminine touch to all my coarse roughness. It’s like she was created just to torture me. And she’s doing one hell of a job.
On top of being hot as fuck, she's just...nice. She's a good, kind-hearted person. The type of person who would literally give you half of her liver if you needed it.
She deserves a man who can appreciate everything she has to offer, and give her the world in return.
As we round out of the parking lot, she hastily slides down in her seat and shades her face with one hand. "Oh my god..."
"Why are you hiding?" I glimpse over at her and growl.
"It's him," she whisper-shrieks. "It's him."
Through the windshield, I spot a tall, hulking muscle-man with his hand down the back of some stumbling, drunk girl's skirt while they dry-hump and tongue-wrestle against the side of the building.
When we drive past, Penny twists around to gawk at him out the back window. "The asshole," she says incredulously. "He said he couldn't stay to talk 'cause he has an early dentist appointment. Now, look at him!"
I check out the sloppy make-out session in the rearview mirror. Looks like the dude's getting a pretty thorough mouth-cleaning to me. Gross!
My attention moves back to my peeved passenger. "Wait—you were about to go home with that guy? Are you kidding me?!"
"I was." Penny buries her face in her hands and groans, regret and shame in the sound. "Classy, I know."
Jesus Henry Christ. I have to clamp my mouth shut to keep from saying something I’ll regret.
My jaw goes hard, and I squeeze the wheel as I watch the scumbag.
Her embarrassed squeak fills the cabin. "What?"
I don’t speak to her. I can’t. I can’t tell her how much it pisses me off to see her fucking around with those idiot guys. This girl has no idea. She has no fucking idea.
She lays her hand on my bicep. "Why are you so pissed, Big Man?"
A rush of something moves through me when she touches me like that, calls me that nickname. Her touch and her fragrance go straight to my cock. And my brain is trying to comprehend how she's managing to smell so damn sweaty and mouthwatering at the same time.
Stopped at the red light at the highway on-ramp, I turn and look into those green eyes. Emerald green. Exactly the right shade. I brush back a lock of that messy hair. Exactly the right length. And this conversation suddenly feels very, very dangerous.
Against my better judgment, words spill out of my mouth. Words that sound rough like they've been dragged over gravel. "You can do so much better, P. You deserve so much better."
She expels a rough sigh. She thinks I'm patronizing her. I can see it in her expression. I need her to know how
