Page 85 of Fire Fight

There was no other explanation, and while I knew it’d be difficult to confirm, I refused to believe the person who attacked me wasn’t also behind this.

“I want to see.”

“Aspen…”

“It’s my car, Crew. I deserve to see it.”

“Okay, but I’m warning you, it’s not pretty.”

Throwing the covers back, I crawled out of bed. I was on my feet before I remembered I wasn’t wearing pants, and even in the room only dimly lit by the light from the rising sun, I didn’t miss the way Crew’s eyes darkened.

“No pants?” he asked hoarsely.

“You’re just now realizing this?” I asked, awkwardly squeezing my thighs together and tugging on the hem of the oversized tee I favored for sleeping. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t plan on, you know…staying.”

“Never apologize for…this,” he said, gesturing at me. “My only regret is that I don’t have time to explore what’s underneath.”

A shiver of excitement raced down my spine, morphing into desire that pooled in my core. We’d been dancing around this thing between us for weeks, neither of us ballsy enough to cross that line and say what we’d both been thinking.

Until now.

“One day,” I replied boldly, though my voice was barely above a whisper.

One side of Crew’s mouth twitched up in that sexy little smirk I was coming to crave from him. “One day,” he agreed. Then he dipped into his closet, returning a moment later with a pair of sweatpants and hoodie I’d likely drown in. Still, I slipped the pants on and pulled the string as tight as it would go, rolling them several times at the waist before cocooning myself in the hoodie.

Crew shot me a sexy, crooked grin as he helped me roll the sleeves up.

“You’re cute.”

“I look like I’m playing dress up in my dad’s clothes,” I murmured.

“I’m not your father, Aspen,” he said softly, then leaned closer, his lips brushing the shell of my ear, “but I can definitely be your daddy.”

Choking on a laugh, I shoved him away.

“Let’s go assess the damage to my poor baby, you freak.”

“Oh, honey, you have no idea,” he chuckled as he gestured me out ahead of him.

Right when we stepped outside, a sleek black SUV pulled to a stop on the outskirts of the drive, giving a wide berth to my smoldering Suburban. Not far behind came another vehicle, this one I recognized as Lane’s.

Trey got out of his and ambled toward us.

“Got the alert,” he said. “Came as fast as I could.”

Crew must’ve caught my confused expression because he said, “Trey owns a private security company and is responsible for all the systems on all of our homes. So when something goes wrong here, or at the ranch?—”

Trey wiggled his phone. “I get an alert too.”

“That’s…handy.”

Trey snorted. “They frequently call me Big Brother, which isn’t the insult they think it is since I am, quite literally, their big brother.”

“You are also,quite literally, a pain in my ass,” Crew muttered.

“Takes one to know one.”

“Fight nice, children,” Lane said as he joined the group.