She was thinking about Nick’s penis.Nick Malone’s penis.And she was interested. Intrigued, one might say.
Her face was so flushed, she felt like she’d stuck her head inside a boiler. Perhaps it was the fires of hell warning her she’d gone too far.Get thy mind out of the gutter while ye still can, Haseya Colton…
“Sassy?”
She finally yanked his pant legs free and almost fell back against the wall with the effort. “Hmph?”
Nick was watching her again with soft eyes. “Thanks for this.”
Don’t do that.She wanted to scream it at him. Instead, she extracted his wallet, keys and phone from his pockets and arranged them on the nightstand. She caught Rogue’s narrowed stare. The cat was now sitting on top of the dresser across the room, judging. “Don’t mention it,” she said.
“You’re my lifeboat.”
She was going to have to move the dog off the man to get him undressed. Neither of them were going to be happy about it. She was also going to have to get on the bed to do either of those things. Fisting her hands around his pajamas, she wished for strength over this unforeseen need to be wicked with him.So very wicked.“A whole boat?”
His hands paused in their caressing of Riot’s coat. “That came out wrong, didn’t it?”
“No,” she argued, because she’d always felt the same way about him. He was the one she turned to in a storm, too. “It was sweet.”
“I tried unbuttoning my shirt.” He shrugged, eyes knit closed now. There was a dreamy expression on his face. Riot was already snoring soundly, his brick head nestled comfortably against Nick’s shoulder. “Didn’t work.”
She scooted the dog over. He woke enough to whine in protest before nestling close in the warm space against Nick’s side, under his arm. Sassy quickly undid the buttons of Nick’s work shirt. Underneath, he wore nothing. She saw the dark arrow of hair over his tight stomach, the knots of his shoulders, his rosy half-dollar man nipples, and bit the inside of her cheek because, again,dayum. By the time she’d gotten him out of the shirt, she was a fermenting brew of impossible wants and needs.
He curled around Riot on top of the quilt, his hair tousled, his expression slack.
She contemplated the firm line of his back. He had dimples at the base of his spine, right above the line of his boxer briefs. How had she never noticed that before?
She wasn’t going to get him on the pillow. Or under the quilt. He was down for the count, and she knew how heavy he was. She sat back on her heels, dropped her face into her hands and scrubbed, feeling tired and defeated and frustrated in more ways than she could ever say out loud to anyone. “What are you doing?” she chided herself.
Twenty years of friendship. Twenty years. Was she going to flush that all away—their whole history—because she hadn’t dealt with her own needs properly of late? Because they’d gone hankering after the closest available object of her affection?
You can’t have him, she told them, tracing the profile of his sleeping face with her gaze.I can’t have him. Not like that.
She found another blanket in the closet and arranged it over his and Riot’s forms. Then she turned out the lamp, gathered Rogue in her arms and left them to their repose.
* * *
Running across Haseya Colton in town had been accidental.
Driving by her house at 2:00 a.m. wasn’t. He couldn’t kid himself. He’d looked up her address. He’d navigated the street view of the cookie-cutter house with its shabby-looking gingerbread trim and sagging front porch on Google Maps. Before he knew it, he’d grabbed his keys and gloves and was out the door.
Her neighborhood wasn’t gated, but it was pincushion quiet. The sound of dogs barking in the distance was the only thing he heard when he parked down the street from her house and shut off his engine. No light touched the windows from within. She didn’t have a garage or carport, and there was no vehicle in the driveway.
If she wasn’t home, where was she?
The thought that she might be warming the covers of someone else’s bed made him grip the steering wheel until the leather creaked under his palms.
It wasn’t his decision to get out of the nondescript rental car he’d obtained that afternoon after the sidewalk debacle. Like jerking the truck wheel in her direction this morning or leaving his house tonight, his body went into motion. He fumbled for the pin light in his pocket, chastising himself every step of the way. What was he doing? If he walked away now, he’d stay under the radar. If he went forward, he’d get caught before he could complete the job that would set him up for life.
Finally, he’d have the security he craved—that he deserved. He hadn’t gone through what he’d gone through or lost everything he had along the way to get picked up outside Haseya Colton’s house by the cops.
He didn’t see any activity behind the closed blinds of her neighbors’ houses. The neighborhood had turned a blind eye to the street.
In his pocket, he felt the hard, cold edge of the silver-and-turquoise cuff he’d swiped off her desk. He tightened his fist around it as he walked right up to the window of her home.
There were no curtains, no blinds. He saw a dining room table, chairs and patterned black-and-white walls in the dim light from the street corner.
A single plate had been left on the table and a pair of fur-lined boots had been left haphazardly near the archway to the next room.
