“The past always comes back to bite us in the ass,” I told him, giving him a sympathetic kiss on the underside of his jaw.
He was quiet for a little while. I laid my head on his chest and listened to his heartbeat, enjoying the smell and the feel of him beside me. The man was solid. Not just his body, but his entire personality.
“I knew I shoulda gone back up there,” he said after a few minutes of quiet. “I thought about it after I patched in with the club. But, by then it had already been so long that I wasn’t sure if she’d want to see me.”
“And that would’ve been worse,” I replied softly.
“A million times worse,” he said. “A lot of shit happened before I left, and it felt like gettin’ out of there was my only option. Lookin’ back, seventeen-year-olds are fuckin’ stupid.”
I chuckled as his fingers started running languidly through the ends of my hair.
“All of it has been fuckin’ with my head a little.”
“Understandable,” I replied.
“It’s better when you’re here,” he said, tugging on my hair until I looked up at him again. “Hard to think about anythin’ but you.”
“I have that effect,” I joked.
“Especially when you’re wearin’ a thin little nightie and I can see your nipples.”
“Distraction was my main goal when I chose this particular sleepwear,” I replied with mock seriousness. “You’re welcome.”
He hummed in acknowledgment. “You’re good for me, Harp.”
“I could be even better for you,” I said questioningly, sliding my hand under the hem of his T-shirt.
“Not sure how that would be possible,” he said, his mouth descending on mine. “But I’m willing to let you give it a shot.”
Chapter 9
Sebastian
None of theother cars we loaned out to customers had anything wrong with them.
After a night losing myself in Harper and the best wake-up I’d ever had in my life, I’d headed into the garage and got started doing safety checks on the fleet. For the past twenty-four hours, I’d been building a checklist in the back of my head of things I wanted to look for that I wouldn’t normally. Every single car I went over was in full working order.
I was so thorough that it took me all day, even working through my lunch. The only breaks I took were to text Harper back. She’d been sending me sweet little messages all day, probably because she’d noticed that I’d been wound a little tightly since the moment I woke up.
Washing my hands in the sink, I thought about the way she’d rolled onto her belly, her face soft and sleepy, and raised her ass into the air. Her fingers had fisted the pillow beneath her head as I fucked her from behind, but the rest of her body had been languid and relaxed.
Fuck, I needed to stop thinking about that shit at work.
The muscles in my neck and back were screaming from the tension they’d been carrying all day. Between finding nothing wrong with the cars Harperhadn’tbeen driving and the looming appointment with the lawyer the next day, my body felt like one big knot. I knew that Harper’s loaner had probably been tampered with while she was out in town, so it wouldn’t have made sense that someone had snuck onto Aces property andfucked with the others, but a part of me had been hoping I’d find something.
If other cars had been tampered with, then it would’ve meant that Harper hadn’t been targeted directly. I was pissed that I hadn’t found anything that supported that theory.
I’d stayed later than most of the guys, so the forecourt was mostly empty as I walked toward the clubhouse. I liked it when things were quiet. One of the best things about the club was that there were always people around to hang with and talk to, but I liked it most when I stepped inside the clubhouse and there were only a few old-timers hanging at the bar. The best conversations happened when the music wasn’t loud enough to burst your eardrums and every seat wasn’t filled.
I found Casper inside going over some papers at one of the tables, and I made my way over to him.
“Done?” he asked, leaning back in his seat.
“There wasn’t even a low tire,” I replied.
“That’s what I thought you’d say.”
“Did you ever see the tapes from the businesses on that block?” I asked, sitting down across from him.
