Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
A peel of thunder wakes me, launching me from sleep to high alert in a fraction of a second.
I’m on my feet by the time I register that it is already daylight, I’m in a strange place, and two people are staring at me.
Dammit. Not just two people.
My boss and his woman.
Gruff as a pissed off dog, I scowl at them. “You two should know better than to sneak up on someone like me.”
I drop my hands from a fighting stance to hang by my sides.
They both look past me with such looks of shock, I whirl around, expecting to find a mountain lion about to attack me.
But that would have been easy.
Instead, I find Aria on the floor wearing one of my favorite T-shirts, with sleep tangled hair and a blanket pooling around her lap.
Sitting where I just leapt off the ground from.
Holy fuck.
God.
Damn.
What have I done?
A flash of hot, then cold rushes over my skin. The scars on my legs tighten as the hair raises all over my body.
I point in the general direction of the front door of the small ass airport terminal. “Get. Out!”
Aria startles and scrambles to her knees, causing the blanket to drop away from her hips. Her bare thighs make an appearance causing my heart to leap out of my chest.
Oh no. No. No fucking way.
Behind me, Beast and Camile are making a hasty retreat, their footsteps loud on broken glass. The metal door slams closed, sending an echoed boom through the terminal.
From the looks of things, Aria’s about to take off with them too. “Not you!”
She slowly stands up, and when she does, something falls out from within the fold of the blanket and clunks on the ground.
Wide eyed, she freezes.
A taser. My taser.
A tremble shakes her slender shoulders beneath my T-shirt. The one that looks sexy as hell draping over her sweet feminine curves.
But the orange object on the ground is almost as alarming
If my muscles weren’t locked in place from disbelief, I’d scrub my hand over my eyes.
This cannot be real .
Reaching down, Aria snatches the blanket up and holds it to her chest like a shield. Her eyes skate to the taser and back to me fast as lightning.
“I know this looks bad.” She licks her lips, “It’s not what you think. And right now, I think you should take a few breaths to try to calm down.”
“I’m breathing. Can’t you hear me snorting like a wild animal?”
“That’s what I meant.” She cringes and waves her hand at my chest. “It’s not good for you to be so upset.”
“Upset?” I snap, “I burned the bridge to that particular emotion when I saw you don’t have any pants on. And that was before I saw a fucking taser hit the floor.”
Her brows go up as she bites her lip.
Blink. Blink.
Those doe eyes of hers never leave my face.
“I promise I didn’t shoot you with that thing. I don’t even know how.”
Her teeth return to her bottom lip, this time hard enough to blanch the color.
Sexy AF.
My blood surges and something short circuits in an already overloaded motherboard in my head.
I’m going to be smoking like that goddamned computer.
When I speak again, I sound like I’m on the crazy train, I’ve been snorting coke, and I’m channeling a heavy metal singer all at once. “I woke up with a woman sleeping next to me that might have tasered me, who has no pants on, and I have no memory of what fucking happened!”
The building’s metal walls are an echo chamber.
She puffs up her cheeks and blows out a slow breath. Color blooms around her neck and climbs up to rest on the curves of her face—sweet pink color like the inside of a woman’s thighs when your beard scrapes the tender skin.
I do a quick body scan of my muscles. Doesn’t feel like I’ve been tasered.
Ask me how I know…
But still.
I’m out of patience for whatever game is happening right now. “What happened, Aria?”
She’s treading carefully when she speaks. “You fell asleep.”
I chose this inopportune time to look down at my fly to make sure my pants are zipped.
Thank god they are, and my dick is safely locked inside, because not only is it a serious mind fuck not to remember why or how she’s sleeping next to me, if I had sex with her and fell asleep in the middle of that, I need to be put out to pasture.
“I’m sorry… God. I feel like I’m saying that all the time with you. I brought the taser inside because those men could have had friends.” She holds my gaze even though she’s nervous. “I didn’t know if I could… shoot someone with your pistol because I’m not a very good shot. But I really hope you’re not mad that I got a change of clothes out of your truck and that I got a blanket for…us.”
That last word croaks out of her.
Us.
Right. There is no us. Never will be. No matter how beautiful I think the woman is.
Looking down at her hands, she mutters something too low for me to hear. Then she tries to move past me.
“This conversation is not over.” I move to block her path, by inserting my six-five frame in her path. “I’m not mad that you got yourself into dry clothes and got a blanket. The rest of this is what’s freaking me out. I don’t like unknowns, so I need for you to explain exactly what happened. How did we…”
When she looks up at me, the deep brown warmth of her eyes sucks me right in, snatches the air out of my chest.
Drowns me and buoys me at once.
This is not happening.
This can’t be happening.
I can’t…
I cannot be with a woman that would expect things from me.
It’s impossible.
I’m not that man. I’ll never be.
A bitter taste slides down my throat, scorching a path to the marrow in all my bones. Every damned one of them.
“I need to know,” I say in a rough voice. “Aria, you need to explain what the hell happened between us right now.”