He stalked slowly toward my open window, his strut timed perfectly as if some invisible spaghetti Western soundtrack played in his head.
“Good afternoon, Miz Irons,” he drawled as he stopped in front of me and squared his hips to the window. He didn’t lean down, so I was forced to make eye contact with his groin and holstered weapons. It was a power move and a pathetic one at that.
“Good afternoon, Officer,” I greeted sunnily. “Is there something amiss with my car?”
I knew there wasn’t. My pimped out, pale pink Honda Civic was personally serviced by King at Hephaestus Auto every six months and drove better than a Honda had any right to.
“Might be,” he prevaricated, finally deigning to lean down, bracing an arm on my window ledge so that I was forced to back up farther into the car to get some personal space.
His eyes wandered down my body, noting with some surprise that I wasn’t decked out in biker bitch finery. Instead, I was wearing black jeans and a lace and silk blouse that showed only a shadow at the top of my breasts. He scowled at them as if offended I wasn’t showing more skin.
“What brings you out to this ritzy neck of our woods?” he asked suspiciously.
I ground my teeth. Back Bay Road was prime real estate in Entrance, a long ribbon of asphalt decorated with sweeping acreages and million-dollar homes. I’d bought Shamble Wood Cottage for a steal years ago because it had been a dilapidated dump, but I supposed Officer McDougal didn’t know that.
“I live out this way.” My smile forced my lips apart uncomfortably like a dental retractor.
“Hmph. With that felon? The Garro kid.”
I watched as he spit on my front tire and tried not to give in to the urge to throttle him.
“King isn’t a felon, but, yes, I live with him there.”
“Seems to me a woman like you shouldn’t be shacking up with a sort such as him,” he noted as his beady eyes once against lingered over my breasts. “If I were you, I’d get out while I could.”
“Oh? Do you know something I don’t, Officer?” I asked politely even though his breath reeked of onions, and he was leaning too close.
“Know a lot of things you don’t, Miz Irons. Just a friendly warning to you.”
“Thank you, but it’s unnecessary. Is that all?”
McDougal narrowed his eyes. “No, I don’t imagine it is. Why don’t you get out of the car for me?”
“Why?”
“Because I damn well told you to,” he snarled, moving back so he could wrench my door open and pull me out roughly by the arm.
I craned my head back to make eye contact with Ares who sat petrified in the passenger seat, trying to relay with my eyes that everything was going to be okay.
McDougal hauled me clear of the car and then used the arm he held as a lever to push my front up against the side of my vehicle. His booted feet kicked my legs apart and his other hand planted in my low back to pin me to the hot metal.
“Now, I’m checking you out ’cause the company you keep, I suspect you got drugs or weapons on your person.”
“That’s complete bullshit, and you know it,” I snapped, struggling out of his hold. “You pulled me over to start something.”
McDougal pressed his groin into my ass and ground into me, his weight crushing me against the car so that I couldn’t wriggle. I shivered in revulsion as his voice wafted damply over my ear. “You want me to start something, that can be arranged, biker whore. I know you’re just gagging for dick.”
Fuck this.
Letting anger and my training at the hands of Priest and King fuel me, I carefully lifted one foot off the ground and angled it at McDougal. The spiked heel rammed into the tender inside of his leather encased foot, and he cursed loudly in my ear before relinquishing his tight hold on me.
“You fucking bitch––” he started to holler, but Ares was suddenly there using his momentum as he burst out of the car to push the officer to his ass in the dirt.
“Get the hell away from her,” he growled, small chest heaving, fists clenched at his side.
McDougal lunged at him before I could move, shoving him brutally into the side mirror. I gasped as Ares fell to the ground with a quiet gasp of pain.
Before I could think, I was on him. Using all of my weight, I shoved the officer to the ground and straddled him, pining his arms to the ground with my knees so I could land a brutal punch to his right cheekbone.
Pain exploded in my knuckles, but I bore down on the yelling cop and prepared to make him pay for fucking with me and mine.