“Hey,” I snapped. “Eyes up here, Richard.”
Surprisingly, he did as I asked.
I set my hands on my hips. “You can’t just … go around telling people that. It’s not okay.”
“It’s a compliment.”
“First,” I said, voice deadly calm, “back up about six inches before I scream bloody murder.”
He rolled his eyes but complied.
“Second, all I wanted was some quiet, Dick.” I punched my finger into the air separating us. “Not some drunk stranger commenting on my chest.”
He swayed, and the valiant effort he gave to keeping his eyes on my face faltered at the mention of my chest. His eyes dropped, and the words came out on a rush. “I’ll give you a thousand dollars right now if you show me.”
My breath came out on a shocked exhale, and before I knew what I was doing, my fingers wrapped around the neck of the champagne bottle still resting on the bench next to me. It had heft, and I found myself liking that very, very much.
I wanted to knee him in the balls. I would have, too, but honestly … there was so much material on my skirt, I wasn’t sure it was possible.
“I’m going to walk away,” I told him. “You are not going to follow, and if you do, I will lodge your testicles up into your body with this bottle. Do you understand?”
He blinked, and I wasn’t sure if that was a yes or a no, or an “I’m too drunk to comprehend anything logical,” so I decided to take it as a yes.
Bottle gripped in my hand, I slid past him, breathing out a huge sigh of relief when I cleared the obstacle of the bench.
Just before I turned fully, I saw him walk around the corner. He was tall, his shoulders broad, his waist narrow, and his legs long. Because of the lighting in the room, I couldn’t tell what color his hair was, just that it was dark. His mask was simple, covering the top half of his face completely, highlighting the razor-sharp line of his jaw.
He was a mood too, right in the same alley that I resided in. Mysterious and almost unbearably sexy.
At the sight of him, something flickered behind my ribs.
Awareness. And heat.
Unfortunately, Dick the dick had to ruin this entrance too. His sweaty hand clamped on my arm, halting my progress.
“What is your problem?” I hissed, attempting to wrench my arm out of his grip. “Let me go.”
“What’s your name?” he said, sounding a lot drunk and a little desperate. Gawd, I was never wearing a push-up bra again. Those puppies were dangerous.
Mr. Mysterious and Sexy called out. “Hey, back off,” he growled.
But Dick, he didn’t do so well with simple instructions because his hand tightened on my arm.
That’s when I swung the bottle, in a beautiful underhand motion, and it caught Richard right in his precious jewels.
The sound of anguish that left his mouth was a thing of beauty, and he crumpled—like a wet paper doll—onto the floor of the museum.
“Huh.” I brandished the bottle, staring at it with appreciation under the lights of the room. “That worked even better than I thought.”
Dick curled into a ball, holding his junk and moaning.
Mr. Mysterious stood at my back. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
His voice was low, and even though I was taller than average at five nine, my feet clad in exceptional heels, he cleared my height by a solid four inches. A shiver slipped quietly down my spine.
Okay. This was new. Shivering at a stranger’s voice was not the norm for me, no matter how hot their jaws were.