her calves and press his chest against her knees. With his face practically in her lap he smiled up at her. “Tell me a dirty story, Lily.”
With all those hard, warm, wet muscles leaning on her, he looked like something right off one of Jonathan’s favorite Tumblr pages.
“You’re bad,” she said, giving him a kick, which only made him laugh all the more.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Very, very bad.”
She leaned back to grab the bag she’d brought and handed it over to him. “Gray said you had to open this in front of me.”
“Nice subject change.”
She just thrust the bag beneath his nose.
He took it, looked inside, and blew out a breath. “Son of a bitch.” He said this almost conversationally.
“What is it?” she asked.
“You didn’t look?”
“No.”
He pulled out a pair of men’s briefs with little red hearts mixed with little red lips all over them.
She stared as Aidan dangled them from one finger. “Are those … yours?” she asked.
“No,” he said, sounding disgusted.
“Gray’s.”
“They’d better not be.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Yeah, because you don’t have any asshole brothers—a fact for which you should be eternally grateful.”
She blinked. “I still don’t get it.”
“I have to wear these tomorrow no matter what my day looks like, and if Gray or Hudson show up, I have to drop trou and prove I’m wearing them.”
She looked at him, horrified and yet trying not to laugh. “No matter what you’re doing at the time?”
“No matter what I’m doing,” he said grimly. “On Gray’s last turn, Hudson delivered him a man thong the night before a management meeting. It was pretty good,” he admitted reluctantly. “Especially when Gray had to do some exhibition mountain biking that same day. It was kinda fun watching him squirm past a wedgie all day long.”
“And when it was Hudson’s turn?”
He beamed with remembered pride. “That was my gig. I sent him a pair of women’s bikini panties. Pink. Satin.” He narrowed his eyes in on her as she burst out laughing. “You think this is funny?” he asked.
“I do.”
“Hmm,” he said, and before she could figure out what that hmm meant, he’d pulled her right into the water, clothes and all.
Chapter 22
Hauling Lily’s laughing ass into the water with him felt great, and since the past four days had been one shit show after another, Aidan needed this. Needed a good time.
His plan had been to hit the sack and sleep away as much of the adrenaline and exhaustion as he could. But then he’d found a present waiting for him, a present in the form of this sweet, sexy, perfect-for-him woman, all wet and warm and …
Sputtering with outrage.
“You dunked me!” She gasped, swiping the water from her face.
“Yeah.” He moved in closer. For years after she’d first left Cedar Ridge he’d felt an emptiness, and regrets. He’d wanted her, but she hadn’t wanted him back. He couldn’t have her and that was that.
He’d moved on.
He’d told himself so. He’d moved on and had done okay for himself in the women department, unlike his brothers, remaining mostly unscathed by love and unattached by choice.
Then Lily had driven back into town and blasted right through his brick walls in a way no one else had ever managed.
That she’d done it so effortlessly terrified him.
He liked to be in control. Needed to be in control. It’s how he and Gray had managed to keep it together, they’d stepped up to head of household, gathering in all the innocent pawns—their mom, Hudson and Jacob and their mom, and also Kenna—and they’d created a family. A fucked-up family, but blood nevertheless.
But being one of the two who’d held it together all these years also meant that the buck stopped with him and Gray. It meant staying tough, putting his own needs and feelings aside, and that was fine but also … lonely.
Gray had always had Penny.
But Aidan didn’t have that kind of a connection, and yeah, that’d been by choice, but he’d been wrong about that. He knew it now. He was sick of being alone, and if he was being honest, he’d felt that way for a while now. The part that was new was that he wanted to not be alone with … Lily.
The question was, had he convinced her yet that she might be starting to feel the same way? He hoped so. Taking a chance, he slid his arms around her, hauling her into him.
She looked down at herself in shock. “I’m all wet.”
“Just the way I like you.”
With steam