by Jill Shalvis
Protecting him.
“So tonight at The Slippery Slope?” Mitch asked when he pulled up in front of Aidan’s place. “Ladies’ night, two for one.” Mitch waggled his brow. “I’m up for a two-for-one. How about you? And just to be clear, you’ll have to get your own two-for-one. I don’t plan on sharing.”
“Good to know,” Aidan said dryly.
“Meet you there?”
“Maybe. I’ve got some work to do at the office, Gray’s been there twenty-four seven. This summer season has been our busiest yet. I need to give him a break so he can go spend time with Penny.” Plus, Aidan needed to try to track down Hudson and … shit. That was another fight just waiting to happen.
“And you?” Mitch asked. “Don’t you want company?”
“I’ll be fine by myself.”
“You know you can go blind from doing that,” Mitch said.
Aidan rolled his eyes but as he opened the car door, they both saw the woman waiting there, watching their approach. Lily.
“Seems like you’ve got your company after all,” Mitch said, smiling. “You two make sense.”
“I have no idea what we’re doing,” Aidan admitted.
Mitch laughed ruefully. “Isn’t that always the case with us? All in control and on the ready for whatever our job brings. But when it comes to our personal lives and the women in it, we’re the ones who need rescuing.”
“Fuck you. I don’t need rescuing.”
Mitch laughed.
Aidan got out and shut the door.
Lily rose to her feet and stared at him uncertainly.
He felt no such uncertainty. Not a single lick. He dropped his pack, took the bag she was holding and set it on top of his pack, and then he backed her to the front door and kissed her.
Lily moaned against his mouth, hot and sweet, and he curled his hand around the back of her neck and took what he’d been thinking of for four-plus straight days. He kissed her until they both ran out of air and then as he pulled back, he tugged her lower lip between his teeth for a beat, unable to let go.
She let out another soft sound of arousal in her throat and if he hadn’t already been hard at just the sight of her, and then the taste, that would have done it.
So of course his phone went off with the tone of a five-alarm fire. “What the—” He pulled his phone from his pocket. The ID screen read: Mom. “I’m going to kill Mitch for constantly changing the ringtones on my phone,” he muttered before answering. “Mom, not a good time.”
“No? Well when would be a good time to call your mama and tell her you’re alive?”
Still holding Lily flush to the door, Aidan thunked his head to the wood a few times next to hers. “I’m alive and well,” he said, “and you know it because you called my captain—twice—and he told you so. And, by the way, he’s not real thrilled that you stole his contact info from my phone. He wants you to lose his number.”
“What? Are you kidding me? I used to babysit that man!” Char complained. “He wasn’t potty trained until he was five. He sucked his thumb until second grade. He can answer my damn calls—he owes me.”
“Mom.”
“Okay, whatever, I’ll ‘lose’ his number,” she said. “But that means that in the future, I get to hear you’re alive from you.”
“Duly noted,” Aidan said.
Lily snorted.
Aidan met her gaze. Clearly she could hear every word and just as clearly she was enjoying this. Her amusement—at his expense—looked great on her.
“Thank you,” his mom said, sounding slightly mollified. “Now, about your fight with Hudson.”
Oh, Christ. “Mom—”
“Don’t you ‘mom’ me. Tell me.”
“I didn’t have a fight with Hudson,” he said.
“He told Gray about it. So now you can tell me about it and also, while you’re at it, why you would lie to your mama?”
Aidan grated his teeth. Sometimes Gray was such an old lady. “Mom, I really have to go—”
“Fine. Soon as you tell me one thing—you get any good packages lately?”
At her oddly innocent tone—and she was far from innocent—Aidan lifted his head and met Lily’s eyes.
Her hands still fisted in his shirt, she bit her lower lip.
He sighed. “Mom, stop meddling.”
“I will if you will,” she said, and disconnected.
“So,” Lily said. “Old and feeble and not exactly with it?”
“Yes, well, I’m adding evil to her list.” Cupping Lily’s face, he leaned in, feeling human for the first time in days. She was warm and soft and smelled like heaven, and he couldn’t get enough of her. “So my mom’s the reason you’re here?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“Gray is,” Lily said.
Damn.
Lily felt Aidan go still and then he lifted his head and met her gaze.
“I ran into him outside the salon,” she said, hoping she sounded nonchalant. “He was on his way out with Penny and asked if I’d bring this to you.”
“And you said yes …” He rasped his thumb over her lower lip and she shivered. Maybe moaned. “Because you missed me,” he said huskily.
“I’m here because of the package,” she said firmly.
“Which you could have just left for me,” he pointed out.
Very true story. “Right,” she said, looking around. “But it didn’t seem super safe to just leave it out in the open, so …” She shrugged and tried to look like seeing him hadn’t been in her plans when it totally had. “Anyway, you have it now, so I should go.”
She’d barely gotten two steps when Aidan caught her arm. “You haven’t given me the package yet,” he said.
She picked it up off his dropped duffel bag and offered it to him.
“Sorry,” he told her. “My hands are full. Bring it in, could you?”
“I—”
But he’d grabbed his duffel bag and was unlocking his door. Then, leaving the door open, he walked inside, leaving her to follow or not.
And dammit. She had way too much curiosity not to. Which he damn well knew, because he didn’t even turn around to check. He’d known she’d follow him.
Hopefully he had no idea just how far she’d do so.
In truth, she had no idea, either, but she suspected it was to another zip code entirely. One she’d never been to.
Aidan dropped the bag from his shoulder and walked through his living room, down a hall to his bedroom, and out a sliding glass door to what was a private deck.
Which she knew because she was still following him like a lamb to the slaughter.
Aidan hit a button on the hot tub and the jets started up with a rumble. He pushed the cover aside and kicked off his shoes.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He still didn’t look back at her. Again, just as well, because she was pretty sure where this was going and her eyes—glued to him, naturally—would one hundred percent give her away.
“I’m going on four hours of sleep over the past few days and I’m sore as hell,” he said. “I’m getting into the hot tub.”
Yeah. That’s what she’d thought. “But—” She broke off when he pulled off his shirt and dropped it to the deck.
Gah. He was just so damn beautifully made. Like heart-stopping, drool-inducing, cut with lean muscles and smooth, tanned, sleek skin, beautifully made. She wanted to lick him from the base of his throat to the dangerously low and sinking lower by the second waistband of his pants. And then maybe she also wanted to bite his—
He unbuttoned his cargoes and she stopped breathing.
With his back still to her, he dropped the cargoes.
He was commando. And it was official. She definitely wanted to bite his—
He turned around to face her and caught her gaping. He smiled and gave her the finger crook. The universal “Come here.”
“Oh. Well …” His chest was hard, his abs were hard, his thighs were ha
rd … everything was hard, and she felt herself staring, unable to tear her eyes off the hardest thing of all, which was pretty much standing up and waving hello at her.
She swallowed hard. “Um— You’re—”
“Yeah, ignore him,” Aidan said. “He’s just happy to see you too.”
Oh boy. Her feet moved her over there and once again Aidan took the bag from her and set it aside. Then he pulled off her sweater.
“Um,” she said again, inanely.
He went brows up. “No?”
She hesitated, and he surprised her by backing right off. “It’s okay,” he said. “You can just watch if you want.”
And if that wasn’t an image that would fuel her fantasies for nights to come …
Unconcerned, he ambled over to the hot tub and got in, lowering his body into the hot water with a groan. Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back and let out a long breath.
“A rough one, huh?” she asked sympathetically. She could see a bruise across one of his shoulders and arm, and he rolled his neck like it ached.
“Yeah,” he said without opening his eyes. “And you’re still staring.”
Without even realizing it, she’d moved closer. Giving in, she kicked off her sandals and sat on the very edge of the hot tub, hiking her skirt up to her thighs to stick her feet into the water.
And then realized Aidan was now watching her, eyes glittering with things that made her thighs tremble. “What,” she said defensively. “You were making all those happy noises so I had to check it out. The water’s nice.”
“Happy noises?”
“Yeah, like when you—” She broke off as she felt her cheeks flame again and she clapped her hands to them when he tipped his head back and laughed.
“Stop it,” she said.
“No, I want to hear this,” he said. “I make the same happy noises when I what?”
“You know what.”
“Tell me,” he said, and pushed away from the edge he’d been leaning back on to wrap his arms around her calves and press his chest against her knees. With his face practically in her lap he smiled up at her. “Tell me a dirty story, Lily.”
With all those hard, warm, wet muscles leaning on her, he looked like something right off one of Jonathan’s favorite Tumblr pages.
“You’re bad,” she said, giving him a kick, which only made him laugh all the more.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Very, very bad.”
She leaned back to grab the bag she’d brought and handed it over to him. “Gray said you had to open this in front of me.”
“Nice subject change.”
She just thrust the bag beneath his nose.
He took it, looked inside, and blew out a breath. “Son of a bitch.” He said this almost conversationally.
“What is it?” she asked.
“You didn’t look?”
“No.”
He pulled out a pair of men’s briefs with little red hearts mixed with little red lips all over them.
She stared as Aidan dangled them from one finger. “Are those … yours?” she asked.
“No,” he said, sounding disgusted.
“Gray’s.”
“They’d better not be.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Yeah, because you don’t have any asshole brothers—a fact for which you should be eternally grateful.”
She blinked. “I still don’t get it.”
“I have to wear these tomorrow no matter what my day looks like, and if Gray or Hudson show up, I have to drop trou and prove I’m wearing them.”
She looked at him, horrified and yet trying not to laugh. “No matter what you’re doing at the time?”
“No matter what I’m doing,” he said grimly. “On Gray’s last turn, Hudson delivered him a man thong the night before a management meeting. It was pretty good,” he admitted reluctantly. “Especially when Gray had to do some exhibition mountain biking that same day. It was kinda fun watching him squirm past a wedgie all day long.”
“And when it was Hudson’s turn?”
He beamed with remembered pride. “That was my gig. I sent him a pair of women’s bikini panties. Pink. Satin.” He narrowed his eyes in on her as she burst out laughing. “You think this is funny?” he asked.
“I do.”
“Hmm,” he said, and before she could figure out what that hmm meant, he’d pulled her right into the water, clothes and all.
Chapter 22
Hauling Lily’s laughing ass into the water with him felt great, and since the past four days had been one shit show after another, Aidan needed this. Needed a good time.
His plan had been to hit the sack and sleep away as much of the adrenaline and exhaustion as he could. But then he’d found a present waiting for him, a present in the form of this sweet, sexy, perfect-for-him woman, all wet and warm and …
Sputtering with outrage.
“You dunked me!” She gasped, swiping the water from her face.
“Yeah.” He moved in closer. For years after she’d first left Cedar Ridge he’d felt an emptiness, and regrets. He’d wanted her, but she hadn’t wanted him back. He couldn’t have her and that was that.
He’d moved on.
He’d told himself so. He’d moved on and had done okay for himself in the women department, unlike his brothers, remaining mostly unscathed by love and unattached by choice.
Then Lily had driven back into town and blasted right through his brick walls in a way no one else had ever managed.
That she’d done it so effortlessly terrified him.
He liked to be in control. Needed to be in control. It’s how he and Gray had managed to keep it together, they’d stepped up to head of household, gathering in all the innocent pawns—their mom, Hudson and Jacob and their mom, and also Kenna—and they’d created a family. A fucked-up family, but blood nevertheless.
But being one of the two who’d held it together all these years also meant that the buck stopped with him and Gray. It meant staying tough, putting his own needs and feelings aside, and that was fine but also … lonely.
Gray had always had Penny.
But Aidan didn’t have that kind of a connection, and yeah, that’d been by choice, but he’d been wrong about that. He knew it now. He was sick of being alone, and if he was being honest, he’d felt that way for a while now. The part that was new was that he wanted to not be alone with … Lily.
The question was, had he convinced her yet that she might be starting to feel the same way? He hoped so. Taking a chance, he slid his arms around her, hauling her into him.
She looked down at herself in shock. “I’m all wet.”
