Aiden didn’t laugh, didn’t reply, only moved her until he cradled her like a baby, and stood with her in his arms.
She yipped, grappling onto his shoulders for balance. “What are you doing?”
“Well, I’m not taking you home, if that’s what you’re asking.” Aiden carried her through the house and kicked open a door.
In the streetlight shining through the window, she made out a pile of dark bedding and a hulking dresser in one corner. He plopped her onto the bed with a soft bounce, sat on a chair, and started untying his boots. “Do you like to have water on the nightstand while you sleep?”
Sadie pushed herself up on her elbows. “What?”
“Water. To drink.” He slipped off one boot, then another, tossing them into his closet. Before she could answer, he stood, unsnapped his jeans, and slid them down his legs. Sadie caught a glimpse of black briefs before wrenching her eyes away.
If she wasn’t embarrassed before, she was now. Look at him. But she couldn’t. She wanted to die—just a little—for her own prudish, prim behavior keeping her from peeling back that last layer of cotton and learning what Aiden had under there. She bit her lip. She deserved a lip bite. And to have her ears boxed. What woman in her right mind would stop now?
Aiden approached and reached for her skirt, pulling Sadie from her thoughts. Her eyes trickled down his bare chest to his underwear. She didn’t look away this time. In the same way she couldn’t look a second ago, now her attention was glued to a nearly naked Aiden and the impressive arousal straining the seams of his briefs.
“No laughing,” he growled, unbuttoning her skirt.
When she was able to lurch her eyes from his crotch to his face, she saw that he was teasing her, his eyes glinting with humor, even as a muscle ticked in his jaw. He shimmied her skirt down her legs, at the same time pulling the T-shirt over her thighs to hide her panties from view.
Sadie allowed him to undress her, her brain tripping over itself trying to figure out the new twist the evening had taken. This wasn’t a position she’d ever been in before. The times she recalled calling a stop to a heated make-out session, it had ended abruptly rather than continue at a steady pace. Until now, she thought men had only two settings: On and Off. Aiden seemed to be set on Cruise.
Once her skirt was off, Aiden tugged the blankets out from under her and covered her up, then rounded the bed and crawled in next to her. She slid down in the bed while he got comfortable. When he settled, he wrapped an arm around her waist, tucked her back against his torso, and her head under his chin. He blew out what sounded like a pleased sigh and Sadie forced herself to breathe.
After lying in his arms in the dark bedroom for she had no idea how long, Aiden’s deep voice cut into the silence. “Is this weird?”
“It’s…different.” And not in a bad way.
He pursed his lips and kissed her shoulder lightly. “I don’t want you to leave.” He took a steadying breath. “Unless you’re freaked out, then say the word, and I’ll take you home.”
She should be freaked out. Lying beneath the covers against Aiden’s solid body, the most solid part of him nudging her backside, was even more intimate than writhing on the sofa beneath him. But Sadie wasn’t freaked out. Everything about being here with him, in this quiet moment alone in the dark, felt good. Felt right. Which, frankly, was grounds to freak out right there.
“I don’t want to go home,” she whispered. It was the truth.
“Good.”
Aiden intertwined their fingers together over her middle, snuggling her against him tighter. Sadie repositioned her head on the pillow and closed her eyes, allowing sleep, and the peaceful perfect of being here with him, to tug her into the abyss.
Chapter 3
Sadie had been awake for a while. Lying on her side as sunshine peeked through the window over their heads. Aiden was on his stomach, hand under the pillow, blankets kicked off. She’d like to say she had the wherewithal to ignore the shape of his butt in those briefs, but she didn’t. She’d taken more than a few ganders of his perfect rear and thick, muscular thighs.
God bless runners.
But his amazing posterior wasn’t the only reason she’d kept her eyes glued to the area south of his waistband. Most of the reason was what she didn’t want to look at. The jagged scar running down his back: ugly and red.
She forced herself to look at it now, that angry line on his otherwise perfect flesh. A reminder he hadn’t escaped the accident, or his marriage, unscathed. Careful not to wake him, Sadie touched it gently with her fingertips, her heart ripping apart as she grazed the raised skin.
Seeing the evidence of the accident he spoke of last night reminded Sadie of the fragility of life. Of connection. She continued tracing the length of the scar, unreasonable fear overtaking her. Aiden could have died that night. Could have ended up cold and in a body bag instead of lying next to her, his skin warm and golden in the morning sunlight.
He still could, her masochistic brain insisted.
A very real sinking feeling, like she’d swallowed a hundred lug nuts, weighed her down. Sadie didn’t want to feel this kind of attachment to anyone. She didn’t want to worry whenever he was late, or whenever he was out on his bike and the weather turned. She didn’t want to care this much, dammit.
Aiden shifted, turning his head on the pillow and blinking sleepy eyes at her. “Hello, beautiful.” His voice was craggy and oddly deep, and so sexy it made the soles of her feet tingle.
She flattened her hand on his back. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I just wanted to feel it.”
“Feel what?” He turned his head and saw her arm, then, with a small smile, dropped his head back on the pillow. “Oh, that. I can’t feel it, anyway.”
She frowned. “You can’t feel my fingers here?”
“Kind of. Most of the scar is numb. Noticed it whenever I go to scratch my back. I can feel it here or there, but sections of it are dead.”
She pressed where the line started just under his shoulder blade. “Can you feel this?”
“Nope.”
She dragged her fingertips lower, to the middle of his back. “This?”
“Nope.”
Using all four of her fingers, she touched him almost at the waistband of his briefs. “This?”
Aiden gave her an impish smile. “A little lower.”
She drew back and swatted his ass. It was a completely improvised reaction and she was sure the look on her face mirrored the surprise on his.
“Oh really?” he asked rhetorically, grabbing onto her and hauling her against him. In one swift motion, she was beneath him, his firm length pressing into one of her thighs. “Ignore that,” he said, swallowing her laughter in a sweet, soft morning kiss.
Sadie’s palm curled around his biceps as she looked into his eyes. A thick fan of golden lashes ringed his oceanic eyes and his hair fell forward, tickling the side of her face. She moved a piece of it behind his ear, unable to resist running her fingers through it.
“I don’t know where to draw the line with you,” she whispered.
“I know what you mean.”
It wasn’t what she expected him to say. And she was beginning to realize Aiden never did or said what she expected. Including what he said next.
“Do you want to get a shower?”
Visions of naked Aiden in the shower, soap sliding down his muscled body, her hands following the path of the suds, assaulted her imagination. “Um…”
“You can even use my toothbrush. Which is kind of gross, but for some reason I don’t care.” He grinned down at her before pressing a hard kiss to her mouth. Then he crawled over her and off the bed and pulled on his jeans. “I’ll go get breakfast.”
Sadie was still reeling from the vision of Aiden in the shower when he pulled on a fresh T-shirt. So…he wasn’t offering to shower with her?
He grabbed a white ball cap off his dresser and put it on backward. “Chop-chop, lady. You have ten minutes.” He flashed her a
grin, and that damn dimple again. “You don’t want your food to get cold.”
Sadie was still blinking in disbelief when she heard the front door open and close behind him.
* * *
Aiden parked Sadie’s car in his driveway and balanced the large fast food bag and drink carrier on his arm as he got out of the car. At the door, he debated going around the block one more time just in case she’d taken her time getting ready. He’d gone the long, long way to get breakfast, giving Sadie ample opportunity to shower and dress before he got back. If he returned to hear the shower running, he wasn’t a hundred percent sure he could keep from joining her.
And keeping himself in check last night had fried the last of his gentlemanly tendencies. Not really, but it hadn’t exactly been easy sleeping next to her amazing body and listening to her soft breathing, smelling her hair…
Ah, hell. He adjusted his pants and blew out a harsh breath.
Her words before he left echoed in his head. I don’t know where to draw the line with you.
He couldn’t agree more. After a messy marriage, and a messier divorce, Aiden thought he was sure he knew what he wanted from his future. He’d been ready to go on a date, meaning a few hours of dinner, drinks, and a good night kiss or two. With Sadie, he’d sort of skipped from first date to almost-relationship and neither of them had any idea how it’d happened.
The attraction…hell, the connection between them was like a meteor hitting a nuclear power plant. And Aiden was glowing, radioactive from the blast.
In short, he had no clue what he was doing. So he just kept doing what felt the most right in the moment. And taking Sadie home after her assault of surprising modesty was not the right thing to do. No way would he drop her off at her place and leave her to feel guilty, or wonder how he felt about her. He’d been disappointed, sure, but it wasn’t a deal breaker. He was an adult. He could handle a hard-on without sulking. Speaking of, he adjusted his pants again, reciting motorcycle brands in his head until enough of the blood in his body returned to operate his brain.
To say Sadie, the one-date wonder, was skittish was an understatement. The last thing Aiden wanted to do was startle her into the brush. He let himself in and found Sadie walking into the living room, the ends of her wet blond hair curling against her bare shoulders. She’d put on the tank top and skirt from last night, and the high-heeled boots, which looked uncomfortable as hell. He couldn’t bring himself to suggest she take them off, though, since with them on she aligned perfectly with his lips. Any pair of shoes that brought her mouth closer to his, he was fully in support of.
“Find everything you need?” he croaked. Since when did he sound like he was sixteen again? He cleared his throat.
“I did,” she said, following him into the kitchen. “And I used your toothbrush.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Gross.” Then spared her a smile while unloading their breakfast onto the island.
She lifted a Styrofoam lid. “Pancakes, sausage, scrambled eggs, and hash browns?”
“And oatmeal, a fruit and yogurt thing, biscuits and gravy…” He unloaded the drink carrier next. “Coffee, orange juice, and a strawberry milkshake,” he announced, folding and flattening the bag. “I wasn’t sure what you liked for breakfast.”
“So you bought everything?”
She was flattered, he could see it in the way she raised her eyebrows and in the impish smile that curled her lips. His pants twitched and he thanked the sweet Lord he was standing on the opposite side of the island.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m impressed.”
Aiden pulled his shoulders back. It’d been a long time since he’d felt like he’d done right by a woman. Harmony hadn’t been the most appreciative of spouses, even when she wasn’t sleeping with his friends.
Sadie positioned a few cartons in front of her and palmed a plastic fork. She stabbed a piece of sausage before looking up at him. “What are you going to eat?” she asked earnestly.
Aiden laughed, the sound releasing the dab of tension that had crept in a second ago. It’d be so easy to fall for this woman. He focused on lifting the tab on his coffee cup. There was a thought that had snuck up on him.
“You drink black coffee?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Funny how they knew each other’s deep, dark secrets but had skipped over the casual things normally learned first. “You?”
“Cream. Lots of it,” she answered as she peeled open four mini containers and emptied them into her cup.
“And you use other people’s toothbrushes.”
“And razors.” Sadie propped a clean, smooth leg onto one of the high-backed stools, her denim mini riding high on her thigh.
God Almighty.
He gripped the counter with his free hand. Yeah, gonna be a while before he came out from behind this island. A grin split his face as he lifted his coffee to his lips.
“Hope you don’t mind.”
“You know,” he said, after he wet his throat with a scalding sip, “I can’t seem to make myself mind.”
* * *
“Where are we going?” Sadie asked again. Aiden hadn’t come clean in the car, or when he’d parked on the edge of the field.
“It’s a surprise.”
And apparently he wasn’t going to answer her now that he was dragging her by the hand through the high grass.
After Aiden left to pick up breakfast, Sadie called into work and took a personal day. Boy, did that cross her invisible boundary lines—taking off work to spend the day with Aiden—but she didn’t want the morning to end abruptly.
And you don’t want to be away from him.
He’d probably already worked that out when she confessed she’d taken the day off. Sure, she’d made some stupid excuse like she didn’t have any out-of-the-office appointments, so there wasn’t a lot to do in the office. But that last part wasn’t really true. In sales, there was always plenty to do. One could never have enough sales. Especially when rival salesman Perry Bradford worked around the clock to close as many accounts as possible.
While Aiden grabbed a shower, Sadie had stood in the kitchen staring at Crickitt’s name on her phone. She’d moved her finger over the Call button twice before hitting it. She tapped End a millisecond later. She wanted to tell her best friend about the amazing night she’d had, and maybe in the process get her head towed down from the clouds, but Sadie wasn’t sure she could explain things coherently yet. Who could understand the completely innocent way she’d ended up wearing Aiden’s shirt, sleeping next to him in her underwear, and feeding him bites of salty eggs in between coffee-fragranced kisses the next morning?
No one, that’s who.
So…she couldn’t explain it. A small voice reminded her that she didn’t want to start explaining it for fear she’d admit the emotion simmering in her veins when she’d drawn a line down his scarred back with her fingers. And on that note, maybe she shouldn’t think about it now, either.
A cluster of trees opened to a house in the distance, gardens surrounding the yard. Sadie stepped out of the high grass and onto a path, grateful Aiden had driven her back home and insisted she put on jeans and tennis shoes. Her new boots never would’ve survived this trek.
Aiden walked to a tree and unrolled a rope ladder leading to a good old-fashioned tree house. Sadie glanced at the house furtively. “Are we…trespassing?”
“It’s okay, my parents are old and have bad eyesight.”
Parents?
Sadie froze, craning her neck to look up at Aiden. He wore a cautious half-smile, his hair damp from the shower and slicked back off his face. How had she gotten herself into this mess?
“You first.”
She grasped a rung of the shaky ladder and with his “help,” which translated to his hands on her butt as she climbed, Sadie made it to the top and in through a small hole in the floor.
Dust danced in the sunlight filtering through the screenless window facing the house. The floor was dirty, the corners filled
with leaves, and the ceiling encrusted with cobwebs. Aiden’s head appeared through the floor and he maneuvered himself in to next to her.
“Is this going to hold us both?” she asked, eyeing the worn boards beneath her.
“Totally.” He shifted to close a door over the hole in the floor and sat on top of it. “My brothers and I had people in here all the time.”
She gave him a wry glance. “People?”
“Okay. Girls. But only later when we were horny teenagers. When Dad helped us build it, this tree house was strictly No Girls Allowed.”
“Bet your sister loved that.”
He grinned, a wicked, entirely too appealing grin that jumpstarted her pulse like a 1972 Shovelhead. “Why do you think we made that rule?”
“Boys are mean.”
“So are girls. She never invited me to one of her slumber parties.” He grasped his chest, pretending to be wounded. “Not once.”
She snorted and slugged him in the arm. Aiden caught her fist and kissed her knuckles. “I love when you snort.”
She tugged on her hand but he held fast. “I did not.”
“You did. You do it when you’re nervous and when you’re amused.” He stroked her knuckles with his thumb. “Which one are you? Amused or nervous?”
There went her heart again, stuttering like it needed new shocks. “Neither,” she breathed, but the word was lost on his lips when he bent to kiss her. He threaded his fingers through hers, his free hand stroking her spine, now oozing to the floor.
He pulled away from her mouth and groaned. “I could kiss you all day.”
She shook her head. “Then we wouldn’t get anything done.”
He cocked an eyebrow and opened his mouth, but whatever he was going to say was lost when he caught a flash of movement through the trees. “Hey, there she is.”
A woman exited the house in a yellow sundress, her short hair beneath a red bandana, a large basket in her arms. Sadie wasn’t close enough to see her face, and she wondered if the woman shared Aiden’s bright green eyes and full mouth. “Your mom,” she said.
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