Page 12 of Cold Foot Revenge
A smile transformed her face, and she ducked her gaze, shook her head, and looked at him once again. “Roxy.”
“Not your stripper name.”
“Asshole, that’s my real name. And my dancer name.”
“I like it for both,” he said, ripping open the box of snacks.
“You don’t actually have to give me one of those.”
He took a few out and then shoved the bag of turkey meat in there and handed her the whole box. “When’s the last time you took your hard-earned dollar bills and splurged on something delicious?” he asked.
“My dollar bills? That sounds judgmental as hell.” She swiped the box out of his hand. “It’s gross packaging meat and sweets together,” she murmured, removing the turkey to toss it into the grocery bag on her passenger’s seat.
“Woman, I’m living in a hotel right now eating Hot Pockets and donuts, I’m not making any of the right decisions here. Go easy on me.”
“I don’t do that, you know.”
“Go easy on men? Noted.”
“No, I mean what that guy in there said about me. About me crawling with STDs. I don’t ever sleep with—”
“Roxy, you don’t have to explain any of this to anyone—”
“Just let me finish. Let me tell one person this.”
Dylan pursed his lips and nodded. “Okay then, say it.”
“I don’t sleep with anyone. I have a rule that I don’t take my panties off when I’m dancing. Not ever. The last person I slept with was my ex and we had been dating for a while before I was okay with that. I dance. I only dance.”
“Is it just the money?” he asked, curious.
“Money is the biggest part of it. Thirty places in this town have my resume at the bottom of a stack of resumes. It wasn’t like I didn’t try, but this…” She gestured to her face, and her unnatural glowing blue eyes. “The animal side of me is still pretty new, and I don’t have great control over her.”
Fuck. A dozen flashbacks of how out of control Garret was when he was first Turned rippled across his mind. He of all people understood how hard a shifter animal could be on a life. The person Roxy was before the animal is not the person Roxy was now.
He made a click sound behind his teeth and leaned onto the handle of the cart. “No one is allowed to judge you. Next time some asshole treats you like that guy did in there? Bite him.”
“Bite him,” she repeated softly. “A bite will Turn him, and I will never Turn anyone. Especially against their will. It doesn’t matter what they do to me. I would never. I would never.”
There was something there in her eyes. Something haunted. “Is that what happened to you?”
“Go back to Wreck’s Mountains, Dylan.”
“Roxy,” he said, his instincts buzzing. “Did someone Turn you against your will?”
She shut the door beside her and turned the car on.
“Hey, Roxy, just tell me that much. Did someone do this to you?” He had to know. He had to.
She waved out the tinted window and backed her car out of the parking spot and left him there gripping his hair in the back, his mind racing.
What the hell was happening in this town?
That happened to Garret. Dylan’s best guess was that Garret was injected with something that night. There had been no bite wounds. And now this wolf or bobcat or whatever she was had a similar story? Clearly, she didn’t want to talk about it, but he knew the answer. Someone had done to her what had been done to his brother.
And she was working at the same place Garret had been Turned.
There had to be a connection, right?
