Chapter 14
Aisling
Present day
For some reason, Tanner insisted on driving us tonight.
We’re all heading to the dive bar and Tanner’s our DD.
“You aren’t drinking?” Austin asks him in that deep rumbling voice of his, as he hunches down his broad shoulders and slides into the shotgun seat of Tanner’s G-wagon.
Tanner’s eyes slide down to meet mine, before he gives my outfit a prolonged once-over.
He ignores Austin’s question seeing as the answer is crystal clear and instead takes a few determined steps in my direction. The heated look in his eyes makes me think that he’s been doing a lot of contemplating about our little panty adventure this morning.
When he’s a good half millimetre away from me, he gives me a rough jerk of his chin – his silent self-assured caveman version of “hello”.
“Aisling.”
“Tanner.”
His gaze flicks momentarily down to my jeans, a muscle rolling in his jaw, but he doesn’t ask the question that’s burning in his irises.
Which ones are you wearing under there?
He lifts his right arm so that he can shove his fingers through his hair and a wave of his warmth washes over me.
I try not to wobble on my stilettos.
He clears his throat, eyes lingering on my chest. “You look… good.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Wow, you should write poetry.”
He grunts, still staring.
“You get what I shoved through your letterbox?” he asks gruffly.
How does he manage to make everything sound like the filthiest euphemism that I’ve ever heard?
I look innocently down at my nails. I probably shouldn’t tell him that I’ve already folded the soft grey shirt that he quietly slid through the front door of the lake house, and that it’s patiently waiting on my sleeping bag for me to snuggle into tonight.
When he told me that he’d give me more of his clothes to wear as pyjamas, he meant it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say vaguely, eyes sliding up to his when I feel his molten gaze burning into my cheeks.
His sun-kissed cheekbone twitches. Then he grimaces and nods.
After a couple beats of just watching me I let out a nervous laugh and ask, “Why are you still standing here?”
He frowns. “I’m waiting for you.”
I blink. “You’re waiting for me to what?”
“To get in the car.”
A laugh bubbles out of my throat as I give him a you’re obviously kidding arch of my eyebrows. “Yeah right, big shot. Why do you think I’m wearing my walking jeans?”
Tanner glances down at the blue denim on my thighs, jaw hardening as his gaze wanders down the line of my zipper.
“You’re ridin’ with me,” he says, just as the groan of one of the cabin doors behind me creaks open.
“Oh, Tanner,” I sigh, “it’s so cute that you think you can tell me what to do. I’m walking with Connell,” I correct him, turning to look over my shoulder at which of the guys are making their way over here.
I’m startled by a sudden warm press against my front and when my head whips back around Tanner is staring unyieldingly down at me – and his big chest muscles are pushing firmly against my breasts.
“In those shoes you’d be lucky if you could crawl your way to the bar. Get in the damn car.”
“Tanner, I would rather crawl than get in your ‘damn car’.”
He lets out a low humourless laugh and drawls, “Baby, that can be arranged. But if you don’t wanna cause a scene in front of your brother, walk that pretty ass over to my car and get the hell inside.”
In the next second I feel my feet lift straight off the ground as Connell scoops me up from behind, giving me a big brotherly bear hug. His football friends, along with Tristan, Hughes, and Shaw, continue their loud sports-related shooting-the-shit bro talk around him.
When he puts me back down I give Tanner a smug smile and then I turn to Connell with my cutest little sister expression.
“I’m walking with you guys,” I tell him, a happy blush spreading up my cheeks when his friends start to cheer.
Connell snickers, shoves one of his friends in a headlock, and then, with a two-hundred-pound teammate tucked under his bicep, he turns back to look down at me with an already-tipsy smile on his mouth.
“Ash, Tanner’s driving you.”
My smile instantly drops, eyes widening in shock.
“What? No . I want to walk with you.”
Connell smirks as his friend wrestles free, and then he throws an arm over my shoulder, giving me that intense twin-to-twin eye-contact.
“Ash,” he whispers, dropping his voice so that his friends can’t hear us, “we did a couple shots while you were over at the lake house getting ready. I don’t want to have to fight anyone while we’re walking because they can’t keep their eyes off of you, okay? Tanner already told me that he’s DDing and” – Connell shrugs – “I don’t know, I just think he’s fuckin’ solid. No nonsense. And he’s like – what? – six foot four? You’re in safe hands, Ash. I trust him to get you there.”
I frown up at my brother, a little hurt. I understand his rationale – he doesn’t want to be responsible for the one girl in a group that’s made up of almost his entire Carter U football team – but it’s very freaking unfortunate that instead I’m going to be at the mercy of the one guy who I love to hate.
“Fake brother,” I mutter, giving him a shove in his middle.
“Hey, now,” he laughs, squeezing me around my shoulders. “I’ll see you in there, Ash, and the guys are gonna wanna hang out with you all night, you know that.” Then he laughs a little deeper as he says, “And, come on, you don’t want to scuff those pretty shoes, right?”
I stab the heel of my stiletto nice and hard into his dirt-road boot.
“Jesus!” he howls, but he’s still laughing good-naturedly as I pull away and face him again. He drags me into another hug and says, quieter this time, “I didn’t realise that you and Tanner didn’t get along, okay? And I’m sorry, Ash, I swear. Next time I’ll check with you before I start drinkin’.”
I nod against his shoulder because I know that he means it. Connell has always been my biggest supporter ever since we were in school together. He DD’d for me countless times when we were at Carter U, and I know he would have done the same now if he’d realised that I didn’t want to ride with Tanner.
When he pulls back, signalling to his friends to give him one minute, he looks down at me with a tipsy smile, a curious head tilt to the side.
“You know, I actually, uh…” He lifts an arm so that he can scratch at the back of his neck and then looks over my head, jerking his chin at someone in the near distance. “I actually kind of thought that… that maybe Tanner would be, uh…”
My eyebrows rise slowly to my hairline. “Where the hell are you going with that sentence, Connell?”
He drops his gaze and shrugs his shoulders.
“Doesn’t matter, I guess. Just thought that he was kinda… not that you should, obviously, ’cause I know that fucker’s reputation but… just could’ve sworn that he was your type. Like, to a fuckin’ T.” He shakes his head at himself and mumbles, “Must be more drunk than I thought.”
After another bone-crushing hug he murmurs, “We’ll see you in twenty minutes, tops,” and then the guys are disappearing into the trees that border the head of the lake, the deep green canopy cloaking their departure.
I flick my eyes over to Tanner, who’s standing about five feet away from me, leaning his large shoulders against his car. His thick arms are folded and flexing over his chest.
I swallow weakly and, maybe possessed by the sheer heat radiating from Tanner’s giant biceps, I walk cautiously over to him, not stopping until I’m a couple of inches away from his forearms.
I suppose that sometimes it’s okay to just go with it, especially if it’s an instance like now – where even Connell thinks that I’d be better off riding with Tanner tonight.
But that doesn’t mean that I can’t toy with him a little bit first.
Tanner drops his eyes to regard the small inch of air between us, chest expanding deeper on his next inhale and successfully closing that gap.
My eyelashes flutter as his arm brushes over the curves of my breasts.
“I’m actually surprised that you didn’t want me to ride shotgun,” I tell him quietly – because if I’m affected by him , then it’s only right for him to be even more affected by me.
A smirk briefly tugs at his mouth, half-mast eyes lazily trailing over my breasts.
“I do want you to ride,” he rasps quietly, before grunting himself out of his haze and shoving a hand through his hair. “I mean” – he swallows hard – “I do want you to ride, uh, in my passenger seat. But it’s not a good idea.”
He pushes off the driver’s side door, making me stumble back a step as his bulk knocks against me, but he quickly wraps a forearm around my lower back as he steers me to the back door, clicking it open as I turn to face him.
“And why’s it not a good idea?” I ask him, the sweet laughter of Winter – his teammate’s adorable girlfriend – tinkling inside the car at something that Austin and Caden are murmuring about.
Tanner rakes his hand through his hair, pushing it back off his forehead. I concentrate very hard on not glancing at the large swells of his biceps.
“’Cause you look like trouble, and I need to keep my eyes on the road,” he rumbles gruffly, gaze refusing to meet mine as his hand hovers beside my waist. The palm that’s slapped on the roof of his car clenches into a fist as he leans barely a millimetre closer.
The heat pumping over me from his chest warms my neck and obliterates my filter.
“Why did Tristan walk with Connell’s friends tonight?” I ask, staring directly into his eyes.
The look he flashes me is smug. “Because he knew that it would be a career-ending move if he didn’t.”
At my jaw-dropped expression his handsome face actually grins.
“You gonna behave yourself tonight?” he asks, chuckling when I lean up to press the tip of my nose against his.
“You. Wish,” I whisper, excitement flaring in my eyes. Because I realise suddenly that, bodyguards aside, I can do whatever the hell I want, with whoever the hell I want, however the hell I want. I made a wild summer bucket list, damn it, and I will give myself a night to remember, so help me God.
Tanner smirks and slips two digits under the buckle of my belt, tugging me towards him until I’m plastered against his heaving chest.
“Actually,” he grunts, stubble scraping roughly against the side of my flushed cheek, “I don’t. ”
He gives the buckle another gruff tug and then slides into the driver’s seat without a word.