Take Me On (Take Me Series Book 1)

by Summers, Stephanie

  “Doesn’t matter how long you’ve known each other. It’s just a matter of time before you’re boning each other.”

  My mouth dropped open rather dramatically. “I won’t be doing any such thing.”

  “Yeah, yeah… Well, I probably should get back. Are you going to the funeral tomorrow?”

  “That would be a no.”

  “Okay, how about we get together for that shoe shopping trip in a few days? I think it’s supposed to snow this weekend, but we can always go after that if it gets bad.”

  “Yuck. I hope it doesn’t snow. It’s too early for a bad storm. Maybe it won’t amount to much.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve got a bad feeling about it.” She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed. “See you in a few days. I’ll text you later.”

  CHAPTER 13 – LILA STEPHENS

  Tori had been right when she said it was supposed to snow. I really hoped there’d be a few flurries here and there since it was still a little early for a big storm to hit. Boy, was I being optimistic.

  The lights in my house flickered, finally dying after a few minutes as the storm strengthened. Wind whipped through the few trees that lined the sidewalks causing an eerie wailing sound to whistle through the branches. Little pieces of ice hit the roof and windows making a distinct tinking sound that sent shivers through my body as I listened.

  The furnace, along with pretty much everything else in the house, was useless. It was just beginning to get dark, and the air inside started to cool quickly. Just enough light peeped through the windows so I could see to collect a flashlight, blankets, some candles, and a good book to read.

  The blizzard came on fast with little warning. The only time I’d heard it mentioned is when Tori had brought it up briefly in conversation. Apparently, the forecast for the week had shown there was a slight chance of snow from a storm system that was supposed to hit well north of New York City. It wasn’t until later the night before that the warnings went out of severe cold, wind, snow, and ice from the blizzard that was now aimed right at us.

  It was early for this kind of storm since it wasn’t even technically winter yet. I was relieved I didn’t have to leave my house to go anywhere, though I had been mulling over whether or not to check on Ash before the storm hit. I honestly didn’t know if I was welcome or not, and I certainly didn’t want to face his brother again. A bad first impression was an understatement for sure. Whatever issues they had between them really didn’t concern me, and I kept reminding myself that the way he acted probably had very little to do with me personally.

  A rare crack of thunder caused me to jerk my body. Manny barked like that alone would scare the noise away. I began to tremble just a little, mainly due to being startled, but I was also slightly worried. Though I had plenty of food and water, I have to admit I was concerned about Manny and me freezing to death if the power didn’t come back on in a timely manner. I might have grown up in small town West Virginia, but I was no country girl by any definition of the word. I had no clue how to survive in any sort of disaster and silently hoped this one would pass uneventfully.

  My mind kept wandering back to a story I remembered from Junior High about a man who was about to freeze to death out in the wilderness somewhere with his dog. He killed the dog and stuck his hands inside its body for warmth, and ended up being rescued shortly after. I glanced at Manny and he looked up at me with those sad, puppy dog eyes like he knew exactly what I was thinking. I vowed right then that I would never do such a thing to him. If he went down, I was going with him. I patted his head, and he blinked his little brown eyes heavily.

  After I lit some candles, I grabbed the comforter and a quilt off my bed and wrapped myself, along with Manny, into a bundle on the couch. Just as we got settled into our blanket cocoon, a pounding came from the front door. My first thought was that someone had gotten stuck out in the weather and needed assistance. My second thought was, did I really want some weirdo in my house? To answer the door or not to answer the door? So I’m overly paranoid at times, but safety was a major concern of mine.

  I really couldn’t in good conscience leave a stranded person outside in the cold. I decided I’d just see who it was and what they wanted and if I could aid them without inviting them in. A blast of cold air and flurries of snow invaded the front room as I opened the door. To my surprise, Ash was the source of the knocking. My heart nearly stopped beating when I saw him standing there with flakes of snow coating his hair as it hung around his face.

  “Get in here before you freeze! What are you doing out in this shitstorm anyway?”

  “I came to see if your power was out, too,” he said, walking through the door and closing it behind him. He blew warm air into his fists, chin chattering just a little. “It’s too fucking cold out there.”

  “It just went out, but you shouldn’t have come out in this nasty weather for that.”

  He turned, scanning the area around the front door until he saw what he was looking for. Reaching for my coat, he picked it off the peg and turned back to me. “Get your coat on. Come home with me.”

  “Are you crazy? I don’t want to go out there, and what would I do with Manny? I can’t just leave him here to freeze by himself. We’re a team, and I won’t sacrifice him to keep warm,” I said matter-of-factly. I’d made a vow to my dog, damn it, and I was sticking to it.

  “Um, what?” He raised an eyebrow and flashed me a bewildered smile.

  “Yeah… Never mind, you’d laugh if I told you.”

  He shook his head and said, “People are going to shelters. It’s not safe for you here with no heat. I doubt the power is going to get fixed anytime soon. I have a fireplace. It doesn’t heat the whole house but it gets pretty toasty right in front of it. Get a towel or a blanket and wrap him up,” he said as he pointed at Manny. “I’ll carry him to the car. No need to break up the team.”

  “Okay.” What was there to do but agree? He was taking charge, and I was willing to let him. And if I’m being honest, I was eager to spend more time with him. A fireplace was not something I noticed when I’d dropped in on him earlier in the week. I wasn’t really trying to commit to memory everything I saw at his place, but I thought a fireplace might stand out, yet I couldn’t remember seeing one. Maybe he had a finished basement or another room I hadn’t seen and it was there.

  “We probably should hurry. The road is covered, and I slid a few times on the way here. It’s only going to get worse.”

  I gathered a small back pack of necessities while Ash wrapped Manny up. We were out the door in less than five minutes. I was a nervous wreck as the car purred to life and we took off. The snow was coming down so fast that I could barely make out the tire tracks his car left when he arrived only minutes before. Desperate to take my mind off of the road, I decided to make small talk, though I avoided any talk of his brother or the funeral I’d skipped. I felt awful for not going, like I’d let him down, so I wasn’t eager to bring it up.

  “How do you get wood?”

  He glanced at me with a sly grin barely creeping over his lips. A chuckle rumbled in his throat. “If I want wood, I only have to think of you in those heels you like to strut around in, my dear.”

  “Oh my God!” I shrieked, slapping my hand over my mouth.

  He erupted in laughter at my horror.

  “I meant firewood!”

  “Oh… You didn’t specify. The fireplace is gas, but I stand by my first answer.”

  I buried my face in my hands to hide my embarrassment. Just then, the back end of the car fish tailed, and I let out a yelp as I reached out, clinging to the door and the center console.

  He placed his hand on mine and said, “You’re okay. I’ve got this… We’re almost there.”

  We arrived safely to a dark house shortly after. The little bit of time I’d been without heat and out in the cold had chilled me to the bone. The heat in the car was turned on high, but it just didn’t warm me up all that much. Chattering teeth, shaking arms and han
ds, and wet clothes from the snow only added to my discomfort.

  He grabbed a flashlight off a shelf by the door as we entered the house and said, “I’m going to run upstairs and change. Go ahead and change down here if you want. I’ll give you a few minutes, just yell when you’re done.”

  I quickly rummaged through my backpack and found my pajama pants and a long sleeved t-shirt and proceeded to undress and dress faster than I think I ever have before in my life. Partly because I didn’t want him to see me half-naked and partly because I was so cold.

  “I’m good,” I yelled up the stairs.

  “Okay, come on up,” he yelled back.

  What the what? What did he mean? Come on up where?

  “Where?”

  “Top of the steps and on your right.”

  I cautiously made my way up the dark stairs. Please don’t be his bedroom. Please don’t be his bedroom. Please don’t be his bedroom. Maybe it was just another room like a living room only upstairs. Poking my head through the doorway, I took a deep breath. Definitely his bedroom.

  A huge bed, bigger than a king size if that’s even possible, sat with the head board against the middle of a wall in the large room. A couch, chair, some guitars, and a few amps decorated the room. There on the floor in front of a rather large fireplace sat Ash as he struck a match and turned a knob that controlled the gas. After a second of fiddling with the match and the fireplace, a fire began to blaze, illuminating the room with an eerie orange glow.

  I started to sit down on the couch when he spoke. “Hold on a sec. You can’t really feel the heat over there, we’ll have to sit on the floor closer to the fire.”

  I finally exhaled. At least he wasn’t trying to get me in his bed. I might have wanted to get to know him better, and the idea of being with him was one that didn’t freak me out quite so much, but I was nowhere near going down the path that led to sex just yet.

  It was amazing to me just how comfortable he made me feel at times, despite my reflexes fucking things up from time to time. Most men made me not care if I ever even conversed with another one again, but he was different somehow. And not just because he happened to be a rock god. The normal, everyday man that I was getting to know was so much more than that.

  Grabbing a couple of cushions off the couch, he tossed them on the floor. We both grabbed a blanket, wrapped up, and sat down. Manny, who had diligently followed me up the stairs, shuffled close to us. Ash covered him with a blanket, too.

  “Thank you for thinking of me. I really do appreciate you coming to rescue us,” I said, reaching out to scratch Manny behind the ears.

  “I had to keep being the knight in shining armor to your damsel in distress routine didn’t I?” He leaned over, bumping me with his shoulder as he chuckled. “I can’t even take you to my dad’s wake without sticking up for you.”

  “That might be true, but I’d already taken care of business when you showed up. It’s not like I was running around with my arms flailing everywhere, screaming like a lunatic.”

  “No, I guess you weren’t.”

  “I had it together.”

  “Yeah… I didn’t want you to be alone and cold… I kind of owed you one anyway for being there for me when you had no reason to be …” He dragged his hand through his dark hair and shifted his weight. “Do you want something to drink? Alcohol has a way of making you feel warm sometimes even when you’re not.”

  “No, thanks.” I didn’t really trust the situation enough to add alcohol to it. I didn’t want to face the next day with a big ass regret under my belt, so I played it safe. The last time I drank with a member of the opposite sex it didn’t turn out so well, and I found myself in a really bad place after that. I didn’t want to repeat the past.

  “Anything else you might want?” he asked as he stood up. The fire flickered, throwing dancing shadows across his body, illuminating the places where his T-shirt clung to him. I tried hard not to notice the subtle lick of his lips that occurred after the question, reinforcing to me that he was willing to give me anything I wanted.

  I shook my head and the image of his tongue gracing his lips out of my mind. “I have bottled water in my bag. That’ll be fine.”

  He left the room and returned with a beer for himself a couple minutes later. Standing just beside the fireplace, he twisted the cap off and threw it on the mantle before taking a swig and setting it down.

  “I’m really sorry about the way my brother acted toward you. He shouldn’t have judged you like that.”

  “Don’t even worry about it.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, he judges me all the time. Actually, him saying that about you was more of a judgment against me than you anyway.”

  “I figured that.”

  “Like I would pick up some random person I didn’t know and drag her to my father’s wake. He really doesn’t have a high opinion of me in case you didn’t notice.”

  I normally don’t pry into people’s personal lives. Though I had the feeling he wanted me to, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. He could tell me what, if anything, about the situation he wanted me to know.

  My body still shook almost violently as I tried to warm up. “I cannot get warm! I’d be even colder than I am now if I’d stayed home, so I guess your knight routine worked out pretty well.”

  Taking a few steps in my direction, he scooted the cushion he’d been sitting on behind me. He sat down, stretching his legs out on either side of mine, squeezing against them. He made a quick movement and something landed on the floor close to where we sat. Taking the blanket, he wrapped it around both of us.

  “Trust me when I say I’m not trying to make this a sexual thing, but take off your shirt.”

  “What?” How was I not to perceive that as something sexual? In my world, when a woman takes off her shirt in front of a man who isn’t her doctor, it’s because she wants him to see her ta-tas. "I don’t know you like that, and if you think…”

  “Leave your bra on if you want, but take off your shirt. I swear I won’t peek. I’ll be a gentleman, I promise.”

  “Why would I take off my shirt when I’m freezing to death?”

  “Body heat,” he said against my ear, sending a tingling sensation down the side of my body. “Fastest way to warm up.”

  I debated my options quickly. On the one hand, I was extremely shy when it came to my body, but on the other hand, he was right. I would warm up a hell of a lot faster, and there were worse things in the world than being skin to skin against Ash London’s naked torso. I slipped my shirt off and tossed it aside, though I still fought against my instinct to just say “fuck this” and leave.

  “Now lean back against me.”

  His muscles hardened against my back, and it took every ounce of control to keep from pulling away from him. The heat between us began to build instantaneously. His hands slid around my waist, causing my stomach to flutter, as his arms enveloped me. Resting my head against the front of his shoulder, my heart raced and the hairs on my skin prickled.

  “See. You’re warming up already.”

  “Uh huh.”

  I hadn’t been skin to skin with another person in so long I’d forgotten how good it could feel. The last time I was didn’t end so well, and I’d made it a top priority to not be in this type of situation again, yet there I was. My inner turmoil churned away as we sat there together. I reminded myself to take deep breaths so I wouldn’t come across like a nervous freak. Maybe he really did care about keeping me warm and safe and it had nothing to do with sex. Considering that his junk was right against my ass, and I didn’t feel anything that would indicate he was aroused, I decided I should just enjoy sitting with him and not think too much into it. Nothing to panic over. We were just two people—friends even—trying to keep warm with a blizzard raging on outside.

  The evening wore on, and, at some point, I drifted off to sleep from finally being warm and comfortable against him. He shifted, waking me up in the process.

  “
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” I said as I sat up, checking to make sure I hadn’t drooled on myself—or worse, him.

  “You’re fine. I just need to adjust. My back is getting stiff.” He stood up and stretched. I had to look away before I got caught staring, but I did manage to get a perfect glimpse of the sexiest body I’d seen to date. It only got better every time I saw it, and it didn’t matter if it was clothed or not.

  Instead of sitting, he walked over to the bed and pulled the covers back. I went to work cocooning myself with no intentions of joining him. He could relax on the bed all he wanted. I was the reason he was so uncomfortable in the first place, so why not let him go stretch out?

  “Hey. What are you doing down there?” He asked as he sat down on the bed. Patting the spot beside him, he smiled at me with his eyes only half open. Sleep looked like it might take him any second.

  “I thought you might want some room so I figured I’d just stay down here.”

  He moved his head from side to side as he glanced around the room. “Looks to me like the power is still off, and you’re going to get cold pretty fast if you don’t come up here with me.”

  I bit back a smile as I stood. Who was this person I was becoming? Why was I so trusting of a man I barely knew? He could do anything he wanted to me, and I’d never be able to stop him, yet here I was willingly getting ready to climb into bed with him.

  I couldn’t lose myself completely. No, I would try and set some sort of boundaries between us. “Um, before I get into that bed, I want you to know that I am not that girl…”

  “I’m well aware,” he said, his mouth turning up into a slight grin.

  I smiled and laid down on the other side as he lowered himself into the bed. His hand snaked around my body once more, pulling me close. One of his legs snuck between mine, prying them apart.

  “Lift your head for a sec.” I lifted, and he positioned his bent arm underneath my neck and pillow. So what if it was about sex? Just because I hadn’t been with anyone for a while, didn’t mean I could never have sex again, right?