Regan tucked Sienna’s keys into her pocket and stepped between us like a woman who knew exactly how close dry brush had gotten to flame. “Okay. Before the two of you burn down my spa weekend with sexual hostility, Mason, go get your bike ready. Sienna, helmet. Sunscreen. Water. And for the love of all things holy, both of you behave.”
Sienna and I answered at the same time.
“No promises.”
Regan stared at us.
Amber started laughing again.
And me?
I walked toward my bike with Sienna’s bag in one hand and a bad feeling in my gut.
Not danger.
Worse.
Want.
CHAPTER 7
SIENNA
I had madeseveral questionable decisions in my life.
Feeding a feral cat deli turkey until he emotionally blackmailed me into relocating him across state lines. Believing a professor who used phrases like complicated timing and professional boundaries while actively violating both. Driving a dying truck through the desert with one eye on the temperature gauge and the other on Google Maps like optimism was a fuel source.
But standing beside Mason’s motorcycle with a backpack on my shoulder, a borrowed helmet in my hands, and my nipples already staging a betrayal because the man had said the word hot in a voice designed by Satan’s own acoustics department?
That felt like a new category.
The bike sat in the dirt beside the carport, black and chrome and unapologetically masculine in the least subtle way possible. It looked less like transportation and more like a threat with handlebars. Sunlight flashed off the metal. Leather bags were strapped to the sides. The engine still held a faint warmth from wherever he’d moved it earlier, and the whole machine had a coiled, waiting quality, like it knew I had no business getting on it and was smug about that.
Mason stood beside it, now wearing the grease-stained Henley again, which should have helped.
It did not.
The shirt clung damply to his chest where sweat had darkened the fabric, and because I had already seen what was underneath—tan skin, cut muscle, ink, scars, and the kind of abdomen that made intelligent women forget policy language—I could not unsee it. My brain had stored the image with alarming efficiency. Probably in long-term memory. Against my will.
He held out his hand. “Bag.”
“I can carry it.”
“You can barely tolerate accepting oxygen from the atmosphere without arguing.”
“That’s because the atmosphere doesn’t look smug while offering.”
His mouth twitched. “Bag, Sienna.”
My name in his voice should not have felt like fingers dragging over bare skin. It was two syllables. Basic phonetics. Air moving through vocal cords. Nothing mystical. Nothing romantic. Certainly nothing worth the low, irritating pull in my stomach.
I handed him the backpack.
He took it without gloating, which was almost worse, because I had prepared a whole internal speech about male ego and unnecessary dominance. Instead, he turned, secured the bag in one of the saddlebags, then checked the strap with a firm tug. Efficient. Competent. Silent.
Very annoying.
Regan came down the porch steps carrying a water bottle, a travel-size sunscreen, and the expression of a woman trying not to look too pleased with herself. “Helmet first.”
