Page 22 of The Shadow Prince's Ruin
He laughs, shrugging. “You’re funny. That your lunch and dinner?” he asks, pointing at my pretzels.
“Sadly. Everything is vastly more expensive than it should be.”
The stranger sighs, and his gaze slides down my chest. “My truck’s parked behind the building. If you need some cash, we can make that happen.”
That piques my interest. Finally. My luck changes. “That would actually be very helpful.”
His brows rise, and he clicks his tongue, stepping off the porch. “This way. You’re looking nice, by the way.”
As we walk together, I compliment his mustache in return, since a man who wants to give me money deserves that much.
Chapter 8
Hawk
Is this guy for real?
I planned to hide from Sylvan and make him miss me for a couple of minutes, but instead I overheard a conversation that had my jaw on the asphalt. The boy only gave his first blowjob last night, so either he was this greedy for more and didn’t yet get the memo that I claimed him, or he was so utterly ignorant about what he agreed to.
Anger burns in my chest as I watch Sylvan follow the trucker (quite a handsome guy, I gotta admit), but the moment they disappear from sight, I sneak behind the building and dash past the trash cans, toward the large truck, where they are both headed.
I hate that despite my frustration with Sylvan, he looks like an absolute snack in the cute top. Is it really so wrong that I tried to help him at the store? I wasn’t trying to poke at his fragile ego.
It’s hard to even consider that little spat though when the guy leading Sylvan opens the back of his truck andmy boy’seyebrows rise. I move a little closer, just enough to hear the exchange. A part of me wants to barge in there already, but I need to be smart about this. I need to know where I stand.
And maybe, just maybe, I’m a little pissed off about Sylvan claiming he can take care of himself, so I want to let him try.
“Inside?” he asks in that cute accent of his I can’t pinpoint.
“Inside sounds perfect,” the trucker says, and his hand makes a little circle over Sylvan’s ass.
“Excuse me! Please don’t do that,” he says and takes a step back.
That’s when it becomes painfully obvious that Sylvan didn’t come with this trucker to satisfy some desperate need to suck more dick, and my feet carry me from behind the bushes, straight into the bastard’s personal space.
“Hey, hands where I can fucking see them!”
The trucker’s gaze darts between me and Sylvan. “I… don’t know what this is about.”
“Sure you don’t. I heard everything!”
“Look, no court will ever convict me for solicitation, because we haven’t discussed anything like that,” the trucker says, wrapping his arms across his chest, all smug. I need to wipe that expression off his filthy face.
I slam my forehead against his so fast my sunglasses fall to the asphalt, and I drag my damp mask down to glare at Sylvan as the bastard falls over, holding onto his face.
“I thought you didn’t need my help,” I grumble.
He takes a step back, hugging that damn jar of pretzels as if it’s a shield. “What are you doing? What ‘solicitation’? He wanted to give me money! And in the position I am in, accepting charity cannot be beneath me.”
The trucker is still scrambling at our feet, so I focus on my social cue-challenged boyfriend. “‘Charity’? He didn’t want to just give you money. He wanted to pay you for getting him off!”
Sylvan licks his pretty pink lips, eyes wide as if I told him there’s a third ear growing on his forehead. “I am not a harlot,” he chokes out, but I can see that his world is crumbling.
“He thought you were, and you just walked off with him. What if I didn’t notice?” I growl, but as panic passes through Sylvan’s features, the trucker pulls himself up by grabbing the open door into the cab. He’s bleeding from his nose as he faces me, but I know I’m fucked when he freezes.
“You’re that escaped—”
I have never been a thinking man. But I unlearned it even more in prison. My fist collides with his face before I can think, and he collapses to the asphalt, knocked out cold.
