“Thing is, how can I know you for a long time and not get the least bit sick of you?” He reached over and twirled a lock of her hair around his finger. “How come you wear short skirts all the time, but I never get tired of seeing those legs? How come I’ve seen you naked over and over again and yet it’s the only thing I can think about the second my son’s head hits the pillow?”
She lifted and dropped one shoulder. She didn’t have an answer to those questions either, but she felt the same around him. He was still as sexy as the first time she’d laid eyes on him. And when he was this close, his dark eyes on her, those long lashes casting shadows on his cheeks, she wanted to touch him and kiss him. And do a whole host of other fun and dirty things.
“You’re gonna get sick of me long before I get sick of you, Sarge,” Ash said this with a sad note to his voice. One that bent her eyebrows and made her smile fall.
“I’m not as sick of you as I should be,” she said quietly.
“Excellent news.” He put tension on the piece of hair he had wrapped around his fingers. Then he put his lips on hers so gently, she sort of melted into him, leaning closer and almost falling into his lap. He kept her in place by lifting his other hand to her jaw as he tasted her lips, tilting his head and raking her face with his stubble, erasing her worries when he pushed his tongue into her mouth.
A soft moan sounded between them, and Gloria was half alarmed to find out it was her making that sound.
Asher’s lips left hers abruptly. “We were going to talk.”
She shook her head. “No, no talking.” She kissed him again, and he let her, but he tugged away first, still holding her face in his hands.
“There’s more coming your way tonight, gorgeous. But since making dinner and eating dinner and watching Mr. McGregor’s Menagerie Emporium”—his eyes went big and he gave her a look that pretty much summed up the way they both felt about the poorly drawn, poorly written children’s show—“didn’t allow us to catch up, I figure we should catch up. So we’re talking. And when we’re done talking, we’re going to go to bed and fuck as quietly and as long as we possibly can before Hawk interrupts.”
Her face went warm at that prospect. She liked the way that sounded. Every last bit of it.
“Okay,” she breathed.
“I think you’re right. You’re not sick of me.” He let her go, but his grin endured, and it was positively shit-eating.
She rolled her eyes.
He leaned back, arms splayed across the couch, eyes on her. “I don’t think Jordan can handle things like an adult.”
Gloria felt her head nod. “I would agree with that.”
“She gets overwhelmed, and I think it’s because Emily has coddled her to the point of uselessness.” He shook his head, his eyes unfocused on the windows. “I didn’t know her. I still don’t.”
“She brought Hawk to you.”
Asher looked over, his brow creasing.
“Not Emily. You.” That was the important part. “She needed help with him and brought Hawk to his father. That wouldn’t have happened a year ago.” Gloria smiled softly. “You’re a great dad.”
“That means a lot,” he said, and she could tell by the quirk of his lips and the way his eyes briefly went to his lap that he was flattered. Humbled. Humility wasn’t an emotion Asher Knight often showed.
“Hawk needs to know someone is going to be on his side no matter what. That’s you. That’s huge.” That’s what I didn’t have, she thought, but didn’t say. What she would have given to know her mother or her father would have turned their lives upside down to be there for her. Her grandmother was there for her as long as she could have been, but even that wasn’t the same.
“Come here, Sarge.” He flicked his fingers and when she moved to him, he closed an arm around her. His lips hit the top of her head. “Never could have done any of this without you.”
“Sure you could’ve,” she said, feeling slightly uncomfortable.
“You kept me even. I needed you.”
Needed her. Her heart clutched.
“Hawk looked good nestled against you in his room earlier.”
Clearly, he was trying to give her cardiac arrest. She stayed silent.
“You look good with a toddler, Sarge.” Lips against her hair, he changed subjects yet again, giving her no time to catch up. “How do you feel about seeing more of me?”
She pulled back and trained her eyes on his dark, earnest ones. “I’m not sure how I could see any more of you than I have already,” she joked. “I’ve seen every last inch.”
“All nine,” he joked back, but his smile wasn’t as cocky as she would have liked. Then it clicked. He didn’t mean that she would see more of his body. He meant she’d see more of him.
Him here.
“Oh,” she said. Her hand curled into his T-shirt, beneath which she felt a strong and steady heartbeat.
“Yeah.”
“What about…what about your place in California?”
He pulled in a deep breath. “I’ll have my stuff shipped here and list the house under market so it sells fast.”
“What about Knight Time?”
“Well, Ricky is going to find himself unemployed here, soon.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“Him and Jordan.”
She gasped. “No.”