Chapter 8
QUINN
“Are you planning to get through this whole night without saying a word?” Ford asked, amusement clear in his tone.
Ignoring him for the moment, I stepped up to the tape, axe in hand, and cocked my arms back over my head before letting it fly toward the target.
It landed with a thwap dead center of the now-demolished photo of Ford.
I didn’t know if it was the picture he’d put up or beginner’s luck, but I was on fire tonight, landing all but three of my throws, many of which had been bull’s-eyes.
I smirked to myself as I retrieved the axe, then tossed his words back to him. “I figured you could use any leg up you could get, so I didn’t want to be a distraction.”
He stood by the tree stump at the border of our pit, one hand braced on the handle of his axe. He didn’t take his eyes off me as I strode toward him before swinging my axe into the stump next to his.
“Your mouth isn’t the only thing that’s distracting tonight, kitten. But I’m multitalented,” he said, swiping a thumb over his bottom lip as he eyed me. “Believe it or not, I can do a lot of things while my hands are busy.”
As if he hadn’t caused a shiver to race down my spine with his words, he grabbed his axe and got into position for his turn.
He probably hadn’t meant them to sound dirty or flirty—or, hell, maybe he had.
This was Ford after all—but combined with the look he shot me, his eyes molten as he gave me a slow once-over, I was feeling the heat.
If I was honest, I’d been feeling the heat the whole time we’d been here.
Hell, the entire night since he’d stepped up behind me in the clinic parking lot.
I had no idea what it was about him or why the chemistry between us crackled, but there was no denying it did.
No matter how desperately I wanted it not to.
We’d spent most of our time on opposite sides of the pit, but I could still feel the tension sizzling between us.
Could feel the heat of his gaze on me, following my every move, never straying from me even when faced with the not-so-subtle advances of several women here tonight.
Advances he ignored entirely in favor of watching me.
And I was valiantly ignoring how much I liked it.
It obviously wasn’t Ford who was doing this to me. I was clearly starved for any male attention at all since it’d been so long. That, and I hadn’t eaten in hours, so this Manhattan Ford had bought for me had gone to my head.
He threw his axe, landing a three-point shot on the board, but it still wasn’t enough to take over my lead in our race to twenty-one.
And that …that was exactly what I needed to focus on.
This ever-present competition between us—the one that had been there as long as I could remember.
It was comfortable and familiar, and I slid into it easily, shoving all the other feelings away.
“Still nothing to say?” He strolled toward me, all swagger and confidence, his eyes never leaving mine. “Fine, I’ll be the lube.”
Of course, I had chosen that moment to take a sip from my drink, and I choked and sputtered as soon as his words registered. After several moments of coughing, I croaked, “The what?”
“ Lube ,” he enunciated far too loudly, even considering the chaos around us. “Nothing to be ashamed of. Sometimes you just need it.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Mabel asked, popping her head around the corner.
I startled at her sudden appearance, nearly spilling my drink as I jolted backward. “God, Mabel, where did you come from?”
“You should know by now that my ears are attuned to anyone discussing toys or the tools that enhance their enjoyment of them.” She sniffed, and I swore she would have tossed her hair over her shoulder if it weren’t so short.
“It’s a gift. As for your little problem, I just so happened to order a variety pack of samples for my last party.
I’ll give you a few later at home, Quinn—strawberry’s my favorite.
” She shot us a wink before she scurried away, holding up her phone and focusing again on the Live she was apparently hosting for the soft launch.
“Oh my God.” I stared after her, mouth agape. “Please don’t tell me she was recording when she said that.”
Ford stepped up right next to me and lifted a single shoulder, the move causing his arm to brush against mine. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Ignoring the hum of awareness from where our skin touched, I said, “Well, that’s just great. Not only am I going to hear about it later from her, but now that conversation is going to be all over Starlight Cove by the end of the night. That’s exactly what I need.”
“Sounds like maybe you just need the right flavor lube, but no worries. She’ll hook you up.”
“You are the worst ,” I hissed. “Why the hell did you even bring it up in the first place?”
“Because it’s true. Tell me we don’t need social lube right now.”
I glared over at him. “You conveniently left out the social part.”
“I can’t help what a filthy mind you have. I love it, by the way. First, the orgasms to relieve tension, and now this…”
“It wasn’t just me! Mabel’s ready to—” I cut myself off, dropping my head back on a groan as I stared up at the ceiling, praying for a calm that never seemed to be within my grasp when I was in Ford’s presence.
“As the provider of social lube, I’m declaring that we play two truths and a lie,” he said.
I slid a glance at him out of the corner of my eye. “And if I don’t want to?”
“Then I’ll pull Mabel over here, and she can fill in the silence by ranking lube flavors.
Since you’ve been staying with her, you probably know better than I do how long she can discuss that.
And hey, maybe if we’re really lucky, she brought a sample of the toy she has on special this month to show us. ”
When I’d found her rental listing during my search, I’d remembered Mabel as a sweet old lady.
And while she was still sweet and old, her personality had…
blossomed in the years I’d been gone. I might not have been quite so quick to rent the room from her had I known she hosted pleasure parties and sold a plethora of adult toys out of her living room.
And her converted she-shed. And her trunk. And a booth down at the farmers market.
Which was all great. I loved that for her and for all the people she helped explore that side of themselves.
I had a collection of my own. But I did not want to discuss it in public, and I definitely didn’t want my business splashed over Facebook for everyone and their mother to see.
Which was exactly why I never bought anything from my landlord.
“You wouldn’t dare,” I said.
He shifted so he was leaning against the metal fencing, his ankles crossed and hands slid into his jeans pockets. The epitome of a laid-back, easygoing jackass. “I assure you, kitten, I would.”
I narrowed my eyes on him, trying to get a read if he was bluffing or not.
But no. He wasn’t. Absolutely nothing bothered this man, least of all a woman old enough to be our grandmother talking to us about sex toys.
But I’d seen enough of her demonstrations that I didn’t want to suffer through watching her place a toy in a bowl of water to showcase how powerful it would be on a woman’s clit.
“Fine,” I said through clenched teeth. “But you’re first.”
“Dying to know more about me, are you?” He rubbed his hands together and grinned. “Then I better make these good…”
I rolled my eyes. “Are we betting something? Or will you have lost enough for the night after I demolish you at twenty-one?”
A slow smile spread across his face, making him look a little too much like the cat who ate the canary. And I was the canary. “I’m always up for a bet. How about winner decides what we do after this?”
“ After ?”
“Yep.”
I nearly laughed. If I had it my way, there wouldn’t be an after. “And if I want to go home?”
Ford shrugged. “Then you go home. If you win.”
“And if you win? What am I setting myself up for here?”
“Already giving up? What happened to the feisty woman who’s always ready to fight to the death?”
“She wants to go home, get out of these clothes, and veg out in front of the TV before falling into an exhausted sleep.” I raised a brow when Ford’s only response was an intense stare down—one I could feel in all the places that should have been dormant in his presence.
Should have been, but most definitely were not. “Well?”
Ford’s eyes were dark, and though he cleared his throat, his voice still came out raspy. “Dinner.”
I blinked at him for several long moments before saying, “You want to extend this?”
“What I want is for my sister to get off my ass. You can’t tell me she hasn’t been harassing you, too. If I don’t have twenty missed texts from her and Everly by the time this night is over, it’ll be a goddamn miracle.”
Addison had been persistent, asking me every couple of days what my plans were and what I intended to do for this date that I’d paid way too much for. She’d even enlisted Everly to pester me, which had only made me feel worse about my original intentions to ignore it altogether.
“Fine. But when I win, we’re still telling them we went for dinner.”
“Deal.” He agreed so quickly, I barely had time to register it before he lifted his chin toward my axe. “Can you pay attention while you’re throwing, or do we need to have a time-out?”
I pulled my axe from the tree stump and got into position for my throw. “Don’t worry, I can listen and still kick your ass.”
While Ford stood out of my swinging range but still far too close for my liking, I lined up my shot and let the axe fly through the air toward the target.
It landed with a satisfying thump. No bull’s-eye, but I still snagged four points, and I couldn’t stop the grin from sweeping over my mouth.
What I was not prepared for was Ford’s matching one as I headed toward him.
“Why do you look so smug? I’m still beating you.”
“I’ve got my three.”
“Well, let’s hear them, then. I’m ready to be out of these jeans, and the faster I can make that happen, the better.”
“I’m very good at that, kitten. You should’ve asked sooner. I would’ve been happy to Netflix and chill instead of this.”
I rolled my eyes—as much for my sake as his because I refused to show or even acknowledge what his words did to me. Refused to admit the brief flicker that’d flashed through my mind of him doing just that.
His grin widened in response. It was as if he had a sixth sense for what got the biggest rise out of me, and he was not above exploiting it to his very last breath.
“Okay, two truths and a lie. I got my dick pierced after losing a bet with Levi, I’ve been to seven countries for Habitat for Humanity, and I never want to get married.”
I nearly laughed. He didn’t even try to make it a challenge.
I already knew the last one was a truth.
And I knew enough about Ford’s family to know that bets between them were a sport, so the piercing wasn’t too much of a stretch of the imagination—something I absolutely refused to allow my mind to run wild with.
I shut that down tighter than Fort Knox.
“You sure you don’t want to pick three different facts?”
He braced himself against the metal fencing again, his arms crossed over his chest. “Nope. I’m gonna stick with these.”
I laughed and shook my head. “Then this is going to be the easiest bet I’ve ever won. The lie is you traveling for Habitat for Humanity. Obviously.”
That smug grin of his only grew, and he shook his head slowly. “Sorry, kitten, that’s a truth.”
My mouth dropped open on a gasp, shocked that he’d somehow managed to trick me. Though I shouldn’t have been. This was Ford after all.
“So you don’t have your penis pierced?”
“No, I do.”
Up until this point, I’d held strong and hadn’t allowed my attention to drop to the front of his jeans, but I couldn’t help myself now.
Not after he’d confirmed it. My gaze snapped there as if it was drawn by a magnet, as if I’d be able to see the proof for myself if only I looked hard enough.
What kind was it? Had he gotten it strictly for his pleasure, or was it mostly for his partner?
“Eyes up here, kitten,” he said, his voice low and rough, sending a jolt of awareness through my body. “It’s an apadravya since you’re clearly transfixed on it. You can Google it when you get home.”
“I don’t care,” I said immediately, snapping myself out of whatever trance he’d put me in and hating that he’d caught me. “Wait, then that means…” I blinked up at him in shock. “You actually want to get married?”
“Sure. Someday. Eventually… When I meet the right woman.”
“But you… You’re just so… Well, I mean, you always—”
He raised a single brow. “Is that your polite way of saying I’m a bed-hopper?”
There was no point in trying to soften the blow. His history wasn’t exactly a secret. And though I hadn’t been able to confirm it since I’d been back because tales of his nighttime activities had been suspiciously quiet, I’d heard enough thinly veiled comments around town to bolster my suspicions.
“Pretty much.”
“Yeah, well.” He pinned me in place with his gaze, something I couldn’t quite place deep in its depths. “It’s actually been a while.”
Why did it feel like he was saying so much more with those handful of words than he’d shown on the surface? That couldn’t be right.
This was Ford. Like the auctioneer said, he was Starlight Cove’s favorite flirt and had the swagger of someone who got laid on the regular. That impression of him wasn’t incorrect. It couldn’t be.
But then again, I didn’t think he’d be the kind of man who traveled all over the world building houses for those less fortunate, either.
I couldn’t even count all the ways I’d changed in fourteen years, so why didn’t it occur to me that he could’ve changed, too?
“Your turn,” he said. “And you better make them good because your only saving grace would be if we both lose.”