Make sure you let us know if you need anything today.
DAD
We can bring you over some lunch if you want, but just get some rest.
ME
I will. I promise.
I tell them both I love them. I know they’re probably worried after waking up to me telling them about my scare. Setting my phone down, I notice the sun is fully up now and beating through Asher’s French doors, so I decide to take my coffee out to the house’s wide covered deck. From the kitchen window, I spy a rather comfortable-looking sectional sofa that faces Sugarland Mountain. Duke trots alongside me as I head for the door. I know Asher lets him have free rein of the property so I pull the door back and let him out first, expecting him to take off into the yard. But he doesn’t. Instead, he just turns to look at me with a cocked head that seems to say,Let’s go, lady, I don’t have all day.
I make it outside, balancing my coffee, a warm muffin, and my phone as Duke heads out into the flat of the yard to do his thing. I’m so intent on not spilling my coffee that I don’t notice the massive aluminum tub on the other side of the deck, or the almost naked beast of a man sitting inside it. My stomach drops and my mouth almost waters after the dream I just had as my gaze lands on the sculpted, inked arms—dripping and glistening—outstretched over the sides. My eyes trail up to Asher’s dark, wet hair that is brushed back off his forehead. His own are closed, as if my arrival into what I assume is an early morning ritual does not faze him in the slightest.
“Is thatice?” I ask, shivering just looking at him as I take a seat on the sturdy outdoor sofa.
He smirks, eyes still shut. “Good morning to you too. And yes.”
“Why?” I ask, my voice sounding appropriately horrified, which makes Asher chuckle.
“Because, after I work out, I bathe in ice. It’s good for circulation and blood flow.”
“You enjoy self-torture?” I query, taking a sip of my coffee.
This makes him open his steely eyes, and a shiver runs through me as he turns to face me.Fuck me.The sheer beauty of this man stuns me as I watch him raise a muscled arm and run a hand through his wet hair.
“A little pain is never a bad thing, Livi,” he says in that deep timbre, and I’m damned if that sentence doesn’t turn me right back on. “Helps remind us we’re alive.”
I decide to steer our conversation toward something that doesn’t remind me how close to naked he is ten feet away from me.
“Would you be able to give me a ride back to Silver Pines to get my car this morning, please? I have to be at the shop at eight.”
“Your car is here. I had Haden pick me up this morning and take me to the ranch. I drove it back. Keys are in the basket on the island.”
“This morning? As in what? Four a.m.?”
“Four-thirty.” He says it like it’s nothing, and I have to force myself to pull my eyes from him as I will my brain out of the deepest depths of the gutter that is his glorious fucking self.
“Pumpkin … muffins,” I blurt out of nowhere.
“Pardon?” he asks, genuine concern lining his face. I take a breath and hold my muffin up.
“I baked. Pumpkin spice, you had everything.”
He leans back and closes his eyes again. “You used the pumpkin in the fridge?”
“I hope that’s okay. I just wanted to bake you something for being … so great.”
His lips tug up. “Dick’s gonna be pissed you used his pumpkin.”
He fed his “not my cat” pumpkin? Before I have a chance to tell him how sweet that is, Asher’s phone starts to beep with a timer and he rises like Poseidon from the sea, and my brain descends right back into that gutter as water slinks slowly down the crevices of his chest and abs like tiny rivers running downhill to meet the band of his black swim trunks. Swim trunks that are stuck to him and outline his cock perfectly. My mouth turns as dry as the desert as I watch him.
“You’re staring,” Asher says with a grin, his accent thick as he wraps a towel around his narrow hips. Slowly, my brain cells start to rebuild, and I’m able to look away.
“Sorry, I … just …Damn dream.” I whisper the last part under my breath so he doesn’t hear.
“What dream now?” he asks, not missing a beat.Fucking hell.
“Do you have supersonic hearing?” Fuck it. I decide to just be real with him. “Youmustknow how you look right now.”
