Ask Me If I Care

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  Sensing that he really didn’t want to be on this subject, but he felt that he needed to keep me updated, I changed it back to his dad.

  “Was your dad in the military?” I asked curiously.

  He shook his head as he accelerated across the intersection into the restaurant’s parking lot.

  And, like all men, he overshot his parking spot, and then backed into it so expertly that I envied him.

  My dad and my brother could do that, too.

  Me? I had to back in, straighten up, then back in one more time.

  And that was if I was having a good day.

  “Not in the military,” he said once he was in his spot. “My dad is a criminal psychologist. And he pretty much freelances. We go where the crime is. Or we did. Me and him, when I was younger, anyway. When he met my step-mother, I stopped traveling around so much and got to have a normal childhood.”

  “That actually sounds like a lot of fun—at least from a kid’s perspective. When you think about it, it’s kind of terrifying from an adult’s. I mean, going where there is major crime enough that you need to call someone in like that?”

  He grinned and bailed out of the truck.

  Just as I got my door open, he was there.

  I was already on the downhill slide when he moved forward to help, his hands going to my hips to help me down. And, deliciously, I slid down every hard inch of his body until his hands held me aloft about a couple of inches off the ground.

  I was pinned between his hard body and his truck, and I couldn’t remember how to breathe. Let alone think.

  He stayed like that for so long, his hands clenched on my hips, that I forgot where we were.

  Didn’t think to do anything but attempt to breathe.

  His hands at my hips felt like a brand where he was touching bare skin, and when he finally took a step away, putting me down onto the asphalt, I wanted to scream.

  I wasn’t sure why I’d expected a kiss… but I’d wanted one.

  Badly.

  Hayes made me feel like a freakin’ teenager. All the butterflies that were swarming underneath my skin felt like I was high on something that only he could give me.

  I’d had boyfriends before.

  Ryan my most recent—his freakin’ brother that had a great body—but Hayes? Well, Ryan wasn’t even in Hayes’ league.

  It felt like something I never should have touched. Mostly because the further he stepped away, and the more distance he put between us, the more I wanted to bring him back into my hold.

  Hayes glanced over my head through his truck window and he sighed, pulling back even more until we weren’t touching at all.

  My shirt was hiked up around my belly, and I slowly tugged it back into place.

  The motion caught his attention, and his eyes lingered there on where my bare skin once was.

  “Yo, fucker. You comin’?”

  I licked my lips and glanced through the truck’s window, seeing one of the members that I didn’t know all that well. Nathan Cox.

  He’d also been a professional baseball player, which was really the only reason that I knew him at all.

  Ryan had admired him, and we’d always watched the games that Nathan had played in.

  “Yeah,” Hayes said, reaching for my hand. “We’re coming.”

  Nathan had seen me standing there, of course, but he’d studiously ignored me until Hayes closed the door and I was revealed.

  I blinked at him, grinning when I saw what he was wearing.

  Swim trunks.

  Why was he in swim trunks?

  My confusion must’ve shown on my face because he grinned.

  “Spilled coffee on my pants on the way here. Changed in the truck,” he said. “This was all I had.”

  I snickered, loving the bright pink floral design.

  “They’re cute,” I said.

  Someone caught his attention from across the parking lot, and Nathan called out, catching his attention, too.

  Sammy, aka Samuel Adams Spurlock.

  “Hey, thought you weren’t coming,” Sammy said as he caught up to us. I looked over to where Sammy was looking to see him eyeing me speculatively. “What are you doing here?”

  I opened my mouth to tell him who I’d come with when Hayes said, “None of your fuckin’ business.”

  My mouth fell open.

  “Hayes,” I reprimanded. “What the hell?”

  Sammy and Nathan burst out laughing.

  “Like that, is it?” Sammy’s eyes returned to mine. “He’s a good fit for you, girl.”

  I rolled my eyes and went to reach for the door handle, but Hayes pulled me back and Sammy knocked my hand away.

  I sighed. “Y’all are so archaic.”

  “Manly,” Nathan said. “I think you meant to say ‘manly.’”

  “Since when do you have a problem with a man opening the door for you?” Sammy asked, looking down at me curiously.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “I don’t,” I said. “I just think it’s funny that I reached for it and Hayes pulled me back while you knocked my hand out of the way.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Good. I’d hate to dislike you.”

  I snorted.

  “You couldn’t dislike me if you tried,” I countered.

  That was true.

  All of us SWAT kids grew up together. The kids of Luke, Nico, Michael, Foster, Miller, Bennett, James, John and my father were more like siblings at times than we were friends.

  “I feel like I’m not even in the same circle that y’all are in sometimes,” Nathan said as he walked up to the hostess stand, hands in his swim trunks pockets. “Like y’all talk on this level that the rest of us can’t even get to.”

  “Agreed,” Hayes said. “When they’re working together during training, it’s like they know what the other is thinking before it happens. Then I’m standing there with my thumb in my ass…”

  I snickered. “We spent hours and hours playing in the strip club, also known as the training facility. Trust me when I say, we’ve grown up close. I think it’s safe to say that we know each other well.”

  Hayes hooked me around the neck and pulled me into his body. “Not too well, I hope.”

  The hostess finally arrived, then guided us back to the room that they’d procured for the evening.

  “I don’t know any of them like that,” I whispered back, keeping my voice low so the others didn’t hear.

  Not that they were paying attention.

  They were looking at the hostess chick’s ass and being none too subtle about it.

  Hayes’ eyes, though?

  They were downcast and staring straight at me.

  I felt my face flush all over again.

  “I like that you wore your hair down,” he rumbled, making me swallow hard at the lust I heard in his voice.

  That was lust, right?

  Or was I just reading more into it than was there?

  When we arrived at the back room, I was very happy to find out that I wasn’t over or underdressed.

  The first person I saw was Booth and his son, both in sweatpants.

  “Were sweatpants a requirement?” I asked, grinning wickedly when Booth’s son saw me and ran at me like a little banshee.

  Booth looked over his shoulder and grinned, going back to his conversation with Louis in the next moment.

  Chapter 9

  Sometimes you just have to knock a motherfucker’s teeth out.

  -Hayes to Ares

  Hayes

  “Hey, darlin’,” Ares said as she scooped Booth’s son up into her arms.

  “My name’s not darlin’.” He narrowed his eyes.

  Booth’s son was named after Booth’s father, Nico. Nicolas Asa Pena. He went by Asa, but he wanted everyone to know that he was named after his grandpa, so he had two acceptable names. Nicolas or Asa. Never anything else, even if it was a term of endearment.

  Ar
es obviously knew this because she continued to grin wickedly at the small boy.

  Asa quickly dropped her like a hot potato the moment that Bourne came through the door soaking wet.

  “Uncle Bourne!” Asa yelled loudly. “You’re here!”

  Bourne swooped down and picked the kid up, burying his face into the kid’s neck and kissing him loudly.

  “I am, my man,” he said. “Where’s your daddy?”

  Asa pointed behind him to where Booth was now staring down at something that Louis was showing him.

  “He’s there. Looking at a gun safe. He says it’s so big that he and I could fit inside of it,” Asa declared.

  My lips twitched as I watched the two walk past where we were standing.

  “That kid loves his uncle,” she said softly.

  Bourne met up with Booth and handed Asa over so he could grab a seat on Louis’ other side.

  “You say that like it’s a surprise,” I said, pulling her toward the chair that was across the table from Louis, Bourne and Booth.

  Malachi walked in moments later, even more soaked than Bourne had been.

  “Wet out there?” Ares teased as he sat down.

  Malachi’s smile was swift. “No. Why would you say that?”

  I grinned at my friend.

  Though, just like him, my grin didn’t meet my eyes.

  He narrowed his eyes at me, seeing the same thing in my eyes that I saw in his.

  Yet, neither one of us called the other on it.

  Deny, deny, deny.

  See, a while ago, Malachi and I had been on the same damn team, along with another one of our friends, Luca, that had been ambushed and captured. We’d been prisoners of war for a very long time. A year at least. Hell, to be honest, the days were kind of hard to count since we never saw the outside of a jail cell in all that time.

  We had to rely on each other’s counting, and even then, sometimes that wasn’t accurate.

  Luca was no help since he’d suffered quite a few head injuries causing him to have permanent memory loss.

  Malachi, like me, had just been tortured.

  We didn’t forget what happened to us, though.

  Sadly.

  I remembered every goddamn excruciating detail and wished to hell for a brain swipe every time I closed my eyes to go to sleep.

  When neither one of us said anything, Ares cleared her throat.

  “You okay?” she asked curiously.

  I swallowed and looked away from her too-aware eyes, my gaze focusing on Booth and his son.

  “Little late for him to stay out, right?” I asked curiously.

  Our meetings usually lasted a couple of hours, and by the time we got out of here it’d be well past ten o’clock.

  And since Asa was in school, I highly doubted that he’d need to be out past ten on a school night.

  “Delanie is coming to get him,” Booth said, answering my question with a grin. “Had to order it now so it’d be ready when she got here.”

  Delanie was Booth’s baby mama. Dillan was the one that Booth had the hots for, though.

  “Mama!” Asa yelled, abandoning Booth.

  Delanie and Dillan came in moments later, and it was the most comical thing in the world.

  Where you would’ve expected Booth’s eyes to go to Delanie, they didn’t. They went to Dillan. And where you would’ve expected Delanie’s eyes to go to Booth, they went to Bourne.

  “They’re so screwed,” I muttered low under my breath.

  Ares laughed. “Welcome to their world. Both of them are so in love with the other person that they’re practically blind to it. And poor little Asa is confused right along with us. I think he sees more than they do sometimes.”

  I looked away from the train wreck in front of us to stare at the woman beside me.

  My hand on her upper thigh shifted when she did, getting perilously close to other, more non-acceptable places for a work meeting. But neither one of us moved to fix it.

  “There’s so much you need to learn, Hayes Romine.” She grinned wickedly. “You haven’t met my best friend yet, but Calloway is in love with Louis. Yet Louis doesn’t even see her. They used to date when we were younger. They broke up after about a year of dating, though. Louis is over her, Calloway is not. At least, he tries to act like he is.”

  I frowned.

  “And then Saint over there met my other friend, Caro, last year. Caro and Saint now dance around each other every time they see each other,” she continued. “Then there’s…”

  I didn’t let her finish. Instead, I placed my lips directly over hers and kissed her.

  She gasped, stilling completely underneath my hands.

  “Why do I have the feeling that you are trouble?” I asked when I pulled away.

  Her eyes were fever hot when they met mine, and there was no way in hell she could hide what she was feeling at that moment.

  She wanted me.

  Almost as much as I wanted her.

  I shifted in my seat to try to hide my erection, doing a piss poor job of it.

  Luckily, I had a linen napkin that did a pretty good job hiding it once I unrolled it and put it in my lap.

  Ares sat very still next to me, her mouth closed tight as her cheeks blazed.

  She was also receiving quite a few stares around the table. Yet none of them said a word.

  I didn’t know if that was because they didn’t want to embarrass her more, or because they thought I’d jump down their throats if they gave her shit.

  Probably both.

  “All right, let’s get our orders in,” Bourne announced as the last of our group arrived, soaked to the bone.

  Dax walked through the doors like he was on a mission. Rowen, his wife, followed him like he was nuts.

  “Swear to God, Dax,” Rowen said as she leaned her umbrella against the wall by the door. “You’re so annoying.”

  Dax did nothing but smile, and I had a feeling we’d missed half the story.

  Dax took his seat at the end of the table since that was the only place he could sit. But Rowen walked right up to Louis and tugged on his hair. “Move down there by Dax so I can talk to Ares.”

  “No. I’ve already ordered and gotten comfortable,” Louis denied. “And what if I wanted to talk to her?”

  “You’re not talking to her right now. You’re looking at some stupid safe and talking about how you’re gonna get it into your house without tearing out the walls,” she said to Louis. “Which, might I add, aren’t your walls. I wouldn’t buy a safe if I couldn’t get it into my house. And if I had to tear the house down first to even get it inside, I’d look for a smaller one. And if you’re mad about the size, just get two. Problem solved. Now will you move?”

  “Ugh,” Louis said. “Your man smells weird. I don’t want to sit next to him.”

  “I do not!” Dax barked, scaring the young woman that was putting hot sauce in front of him.

  Everybody laughed at Dax, but the poor girl thought that we were laughing at her and her inability to serve hot sauce, so she started to apologize.

  “It’s okay,” Dax soothed. “They’re just assholes. I apologize for scaring you.”

  The girl looked somewhat appeased and continued to pass out hot sauce.

  Sammy paid extra special attention to the girl and even turned his head when she leaned slightly to reach the other side of the table.

  The girl blushed all over again.

  “Hi, Rowen!”

  Rowen looked over at Asa, who’d come away from his mother to get his drink off the table.

  Booth and Bourne were standing up talking to them in low tones.

  “Hello, Mr. Asa.” Rowen held out her hand and he high-fived it. “How are you today?”

  “I’m well, thank you,” Asa said. “Did you know that I’ll be learning addition next week?”

  Rowen looked at him with wide eyes. “That’s so cool. Aren’t you a little
young for that, though?”

  Asa puffed up his little chest, looking exactly like his dad in that moment.

  “I most certainly am not!” he assured Rowen.

  Just then Nico walked in the door, and Rowen was all but forgotten.

  Asa ran to his grandfather.

  Nico caught the kid mid-jump, bringing him up to his face and smothering the kid in kisses.

  Asa giggled and laughed, only tolerating kisses from three people—at least from what I’d been able to tell—his grandfather, his uncle and his dad.

  “Hi, my name is Annie and I’ll be taking your order tonight. Can I start everyone off with some drinks?”

  We all turned away from the cuteness overload—seeing one of our big bad KPD instructors smothered in kisses from his adorable grandson—and toward the waitress and gave our drink orders.

  Rowen finally sat down and placed her order, as did Booth and Bourne who were all but forgotten thanks to Nico.

  The two women who’d come in for Asa waited by the door for the kid to be done. But both of them had small smiles on their faces.

  “And you, sir?” Waitress Annie asked.

  I looked down at my menu, really wanting a beer.

  Sadly, beer made my nightmares worse, so I chose sweet tea instead.

  She moved on, and I reached for a chip from the bowl that was now in the middle of the table.

  “How can you eat that without a drink?” Ares asked curiously.

  I popped the chip saturated in hot sauce into my mouth before answering.

  “Just like that,” I teased.

  She rolled her eyes and pinched me lightly on the thigh, and just that small touch was enough to have my dick going half hard again.

  “Hey, Rowen,” Ares said once she was finished, oblivious of my plight. “Where did you get that jacket? I love it. It looks so soft, too.”

  “I got it at Sam’s today,” she said. “It was on sale for fifteen dollars. And it is soft, feel.”

  Rowen extended her arm for Ares and Ares ran her fingers lightly over the fabric. “It’s like being hugged by a cloud.”

  “Want to feel?” Rowen asked, holding her hand out to me.

  I shook my head. “Not really sure that your man would be as accommodating if I felt you up as he is with Ares.”

  I looked down the table to see Dax more than aware of where his wife was and what she was doing.