Page 23

HAUNTING GREEN LIGHTS flicker through the reeds in Coyote pond.

The fireflies zip around the trees shedding leaves into the still waters.

Only the flicker cuts through the soft darkness that’s fallen across Loomis.

In the distance, I can make out the mountains from the haze of light that never dims. A sigh slips out as I take in the beautiful view.

“Are you cold?”

Aubry was quiet for most of our walk to digest and shake off all that wine. My head’s still buzzing an hour later. Or maybe it’s the man whose arm I’m holding like my personal bodyguard.

In a dreamy blur, I start to shake my head.

But he’s already unbuttoning his shirt.

The way he does each one with one hand sets my teeth to chattering. Like a gentleman he slides his shirt off, drapes it over my shoulder like a fancy cape, then takes my arm.

My brain shatters. The heat of his body runs down my back and over my shoulders. Even worse, he’s standing there in just a tank top. Exposing those arms in public is dangerous. Women are liable to faint. Men too.

“This is nice,” he calmly exclaims like I’m not suffering an existential crisis here.

I’ve blown so far past I can’t fuck him to I’m not sure how. I don’t even think I have fucked him before because a man this unfairly gorgeous and built can’t be real. And gallant. That’s the word, right? Like those knights with their horses and…

Oh, shit. I’m picturing Aubry Gene on a horse, hair streaming, white shirt tearing open as it billows in the wind.

“Eep!”

“Is something wrong?”

He gazes down at me with a mix of worry and also dead certainty that he knows he’s driving me mad horny. We’re alone, by a pond, at night. The chances of anyone spotting me straddling his cock as he rams me into a tree seem remote.

“Your…” I try to draw my finger down his bare arm, attempting to call him out on breaking the rule. But as I trace it, the vein twitches and my tongue turns to concrete.

“My what?” he asks, damn near laughing.

His what? His arms? His eyes? His smile? His ridiculously talented tongue that could be on my clit right now if I wasn’t being so stubborn?

“Tattoo?” I mumble, tracing over the black lines like I’m trying to draw it myself.

Aubry’s knowing smile dims. He pulls back on his shoulder to look at his ink.

“What is it?”

“A plant,” he says cryptically.

“I know that. But what kind? Does it mean something special? Or did you get really drunk in Vegas and show up with an old botany book in your hands?” My mouth runs away because I can tell he does not want to talk about the subject I just dredged up.

But the fact he doesn’t want to drives my curiosity even hotter.

Running his finger over the little spray of flowers at the top, he takes a shallow breath. “It’s a nightshade flower.”

“Like belladonna? Isn’t that poisonous?” My roommate’s obsession with true crime hits me hard.

Aubry chuckles. “It can be. It’s many things. Food to some. Family. A promise. A curse.”

“So…” A sudden cold wind cuts through me and I snuggle under his shirt. “You didn’t get it at random?”

“No.” That’s it, full sentence, no more explanation. Just no.

Mysterious man who appeared in my life when I needed him the most is making it real difficult for me to get to know him. Other than in the bed breaking sense. Is that all we are?

Is that all I want? What he wants?

Am I just a booty call for when he’s not “away on business?”

There better not be some second family or so help me…

“You’re not married,” I accuse and ask at once. “Right?”

He snickers. “No. I already told you. Why?”

“Cause a man’s never lied about having a wife and kids before.”

Taking in a deep breath, he nods. “Fair enough. But I haven’t lied to you.” He gives it a second before asking, “Why do you think I’d be married?”

“You’re ridiculously hot, save lives, fuck like a sex god, and have a house with a moat. Those types tend to get locked down before they’re twenty-five.” By supermodels not chubby photographers who sell fishing line to make rent.

“So I’m hot, am I?” he asks.

Oh, no. I’m not playing that game.

“Sorry ‘ridiculously hot.’” He slips his hand up my shoulder until his fingers dance over the side of my neck.

“You know you are,” I accuse, doing my best to not think about every inch of him. Those veins in his forearms, the thighs with muscles like a greek statue, that little mole by his navel that’s kinda shaped like an eggplant…

Bending down, Aubry’s hair falls into one eye as he whispers, “And what was that about a sex god?”

A single little squeal slips out. I can’t think. My brain’s running a loop of him, hand clamped around my whole ankle, pressing my leg back as he thrusts his throbbing cock into me over and over.

His palm moves, skirting up to run under my jaw. He catches my chin and lifts my head. Those eyes have peeled off every scrap of clothing I have on. I claw across my thigh to whip back the beast growling inside of me, but…

As his fingers dance around my cheek, my lips part.

Aubry leans in to seal my doom.

Sparks erupt, dazzling behind my closed eyes as I dive into his kiss. The taste of caramel lingers from dessert, but I find him below—soft, green, but not clean. No, he’s sinful as hell. My head buzzes more than from the wine, and he presses into the hollow under my ear.

I moan, and he plunges in with his tongue. Every dance is a reminder what that thing can do, and where it should be right now. All I have to do is give up.

Give in.

Be his sex acolyte. Worship at the foot of his bed.

Forget expecting texts, or dinners. Just be the body he can ravish every night.

Aubry snickers and pulls back. “Was that godly enough for you?”

I tap my lips, shocked to find them in one piece. A little sore, but aching for more. “Nothing about that was holy,” I confess.

He tips his head like I’ve hit a bullseye, but my body’s reeling. He was the one to slide away. He had me, willing and ready to do whatever he wanted. I’d have tossed every damn rule aside just for a piece of him. But he leaned back.

Why?

“Can I ask you something?” He gazes down at me, looking almost as shocked as I do that we aren’t going at it in the grass right now.

I lick the taste of him off my lips and nod.

“Did you really forget tonight, or was it all a game?”

“No. I did. Well, I didn’t forget the date.

” I had everything laid out and ready to go.

The red dress with the slit that was way too high on my tall legs.

The necklace with a pendant that happened to dangle right above my cleavage.

And I’d use some of Olivia’s makeup again.

“It’s more the time that I forgot about. ”

“You said seven.”

“I thought it was still five when you showed up,” I confess. “I will go into these time holes. Like, I can’t feel it passing. And if I don’t look at the clock, I can miss whole days.”

“Really?”

I shrug, used to my terrible time management skills. “Every year my parents would give me another clock hoping that’d keep me on track. It sort of works. If I set enough alarms…and hear them.”

It’s not exactly a secret, but it’s also not the most appealing thing to have a woman incapable of keeping to a schedule. I’m the least organized person who has a closet full of organizers.

“I’m sorry. I got into the zone with my photos and… That’s not an excuse. I should have checked the clock and been ready. Sorry.”

Aubry waves his hand. “If that’s your biggest flaw…”

“Well…I also have a habit of buying journals, putting them away, forgetting I already bought one, then buying a new one. And my inability to stop talking. All the time. Like right now.”

He chuckles at my machine gun verbiage and drapes his arm over me. “Then I’m a lucky man.”

My heart’s pounding. Does that mean that he…wants more? I should ask.

No. I should not.

Boxing it in will only freak him out.

“What about you?” I blurt out, realizing too late he was about to kiss me again.

“Hmm?”

“What’s your biggest flaw?” I mentally kick myself the second I ask. He doesn’t fling me away and flee into the night, but the walls come up again.

In a crackling voice, he whispers, “My unquestioning loyalty.”

Huh?

“Why don’t we take another loop around the pond?” he says, abandoning me to pick back up the path. Then he pauses and extends his hand. “Before I take you…”

Right here? Right now?

Tear my shirt off, rip my jeans, lay me in the back of your truck and—

“…home?”

Swallowing my body’s unending drumbeat for his cock, I take his hand instead. “Sounds perfect. Ridiculously perfect.”