Nick took a flying leap and landed next to Riley, head resting on his hand, top leg bent at the knee, showing off the merchandise under the towel. “As I was saying. Come here often?”
“You arenottrying to have sex with me right now,” she said.
“Oh, but Iam.”
“Nick.”
“Thorn.”
“Don’t you need to process what happened tonight?”
He traced his fingers over the bare skin that peeked out above the waistband of her sleep shorts. “Nope.”
Riley batted his hand away. “Well,Ido.”
“Come on, baby. Can’t you just slide into my head, do some poking around, while I slide my hand into those shorts and do my own poking around?”
“As incredibly romantic as that sounds, no.”
He leaned toward her and nibbled at her neck. “What’s it going to take to convince you?”
“Nick, the woman you’ve been obsessed with finding just walked back into your life, lied about where she’s been this entire time, and then introduced you to her husband—who, by the way, didn’t abduct her and force her into servitude in his family’s business. Now you’re singing ‘Girl on Fire’ and trying to get me naked!”
He flopped onto his back. “I guess that means we’re talking first.”
Riley hit him in the face with a pillow. She was riding a second wave of adrenaline as words she hadn’t said for the past several weeks bubbled up. “No. It means we’re fighting first.”
“As long as sex is still on the list, I’m up for whatever foreplay you want.”
She scooted to the side of the bed, but before her feet could hit the floor, Nick hooked her around the waist with a strong, tattooed arm.
“What’s gotten into you, Thorn?”
“Me?Me?”
“There any other Thorns in this bed?”
“In the past forty-eight hours, I’ve been followed twice, confronted in the street, passed out and gotten abducted, bought not one buttwocrop tops, watched your ex-partner lose his damn mind over his sister’s betrayal, and worry that my boyfriend was going to abandon me for the woman in our guest room.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Wow. Jerk.”
“Two crop tops?”
Riley reared back. Her head connected with Nick’s face. “Ow! I already have one black eye. I don’t need a second one, Thorn,” he said, wrestling her onto her back.
“And another thing! You come home with a battered face and won’t even say what happened. How would you like it if I showed up with a black eye and refused to tell you where I got it?”
“Okay. Easy there, killer. I wasn’t aware you were a powder keg of anxiety. I didn’t mean to light your fuse.”
“How dare you be in such a good mood! I’ve been walking on eggshells for weeks around you.”
He frowned. “Why the hell would you do that?”
“Oh my God. Get off me so I can murder you.”
“I’m going to deny that request for now until you lose your freakish rage strength. Let’s start with the part about why you thought I was going to abandon you for the circus act in our guest room and then circle back to the eggshells.”
