up now, heart. It’s super bad timing.
Aiden’s sitting, his back against the wall as I nestle between his long, powerful legs. My back rests against his chest and my head lies on his hard shoulder.
It’s weird how such a hard muscle can be so comforting.
“Maybe he won’t come back for us,” I whisper into the silence. “Maybe he decided it’s better if I’m out of the way?”
“He will.”
“How do you know that? What if he has an accident and dies and no one will come for us?”
“Now you’re being dramatic, sweetheart.”
“It’s a possibility.”
I lift my head and watch him closely; his neutral expression and undisturbed eyes. How can he be so calm about this? While I’ve been losing hope, shaking, and pacing, he’s been sitting here as if we’re on a picnic or something.
Granted, he’s more cool-headed than me, but this is a life or death situation. My head’s crowding with horrific images about how they’ll find our corpses months from now, decayed and stinking.
Tears fill my eyes. I don’t want to die. Not now.
Not when I’m ready to overcome my trauma. Not when I’m finally getting control over my life.
“Hey.” Aiden’s lean fingers cradle my face and stroke my trembling chin.
“I can’t stop thinking about dying.”
“Then let’s occupy that head of yours with something else.” He grins, and my aching heart flutters with sparks.
“Like what?”
“Since you’re a curious little kitten, I’ll let you ask me any question you like.”
My eyes widen. “Any question?”
He nods.
Whoa. That’s some commitment for the devil.
I straighten so my back is propped up against his bent knee. “And you’ll answer them all.”
We need to get that straight, because ‘you can ask me any question’ in Aiden’s manipulative words can also mean he’ll choose not to answer.
His grin widens as if he can read my mind. “And I’ll answer them on one condition.”
Of course.
I huff. “What?”
“You’ll remove a piece of clothing for every question I answer.”
“Hey! That’s not fair.”
He lifts a shoulder. “Take it or leave it.”
I should’ve known the deal would end up playing in his favour.
My jacket lies on his lap. I try to retrieve it. I need all the clothes I can get.
Aiden snatches it away. “This was already off. It doesn’t count.”
Dickhead.
Since my underwear is already somewhere in his pocket from the earlier sixty-nine, that only leaves me with three pieces of clothing; my shirt, my skirt, and my bra.
Three items, three questions.
I glare at him.
The arsehole must’ve thought this through.
Still, I’ll play. He’s right. I need to get my head off the dark thoughts swirling inside it.
My mind crowds with all the questions I wanted to ask, but he always deflected his way out of them. The first one is easy.
“Do you miss Alicia?” I ask.
He appears deep in thought for a second. “Sometimes, I walk inside the house and wonder how it would feel if she was there, but then I recall she’d still be married to Jonathan because she was so helplessly in love with him, and I stop wondering.”
That’s interesting.
Aiden’s lack of empathy is like being in a logical, emotionless state of mind twenty-four seven. That state of mind even forbids him from missing his mother properly because he thinks she would’ve suffered if she lived her life as Jonathan’s wife.
“Take the shirt off,” he orders in that delicious deep tone. “And make it sexy.”
With a sigh, I unbutton my shirt. I don’t really know how to make it sexy, so I just do it without rush, slowly revealing the swell of my breasts covered by the simple cotton bra.
Aiden watches me the entire time with a dark, predatory gleam. His head tilts to the side to get a better view.
My nipples harden under his scrutiny, throbbing for attention.
Not now.
I let the shirt fall to the floor, ready for the next question. I’ve been burning to ask it since the time I heard about it.
“Who was the girl you and Cole had a threesome with?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Let me guess, Astor said he walked in on our ‘kinky shit’.”
I frown. “You know.”
“Typical Astor running his mouth about something he saw when high. Nash and I never had a threesome. Neither of us is the sharing type.”
“But Ronan said he saw you.”
“The fucker was so high that he got her hair colour wrong. Astor saw me fiddle with the ropes and he thought I was binding her when I was actually unbinding her and saving her from Nash’s crazy kink. See? I can be a gentleman when I