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Rya
They’d been driving all day. She hadn’t brought up their conversation in the motel room or his mother. It seemed as if they’d both mutually agreed those two issues were off the table for conversation. She spent most of the car ride sitting in stony silence, leaving him alone with his thoughts—a dangerous place to be. Whether her silence was brought on by the lasting effects of a hellacious hangover or her still being miffed over his comment to his mom, he couldn’t know.
True to her promise, she’d answered his questions about her involvement with Vincent Moralli, and he’d needed to bite back a foul curse more than once. Rya
Seventy-five grand wasn’t anything to him, but it was a way for him to get his hooks into a beautiful young woman. If Aiden were to venture a guess, he’d wager Moralli wanted her for something a hell of a lot more distasteful than paying off her father’s debt. He knew how the bastard thought, he’d been forced to work with him for enough years, seen enough manipulative, underhanded dealings to know he wasn’t going to let Rya
She was convinced that after she collected her paycheck from his mother and she paid her father’s debt, that’d be the end of it and fuck him, he hadn’t had the heart to dash her hopes. Time would tell. They’d play it her way and see how it rolled out, but Aiden couldn’t shake the feeling that returning was a mistake, and New York was about to deal them each a life-altering hand.
Aiden hissed a curse and abruptly spun around, giving Rya
“Oh . . . umm . . . you can just leave it on the table. Thanks.”
He set the keycard down and had to give his legs a firm command to get their ass moving, all the while his dick pitched a fit like a two-year-old who’d gotten his favorite toy taken from him. “Good night, Rya
“Good night, Aiden.”
Something in her voice made him pause. Hesitancy? Disappointment? Who the hell knows. All he knew was that this was killing him, being this close to her and wanting to get closer. But he’d done casual enough times to know that with Rya
How many times had he stepped into the cage and faced an opponent without giving it a second thought? And now here he was, backing down from a midge half his size, because she made him afraid of his feelings? Fucking embarrassing was what this was. If Easton was here, he would have been demanding Aiden’s man card. With a self-damning curse, he shut the adjoining door with more force than necessary and beelined it to the shower to try and take the edge off.
You’re effing kidding me! Rya
With a frustrated groan, she lifted her pillow and glanced at the alarm clock—three a.m. They’d been going at it for almost two hours. Was that even possible? Who in their right mind could want to do it that long and that many times? Unbidden, an image of Aiden popped into her mind and she answered her own question.
Her pulse quickened at just the thought of him, and the symphony of pleasure playing out in the room next door heated her blood. She couldn’t get comfortable. Her skin felt too tight, the bedsheets too rough. Every one of her nerve endings seemed to tingle with awareness—awareness of the man one adjoining door away. She’d thought he would have tried to come over, but sadly that fighter had a will of steel. In the last two days, something had changed between them. Gone was the arrogant Disco Kruze who seemed to have a mind for one thing and one thing only, and in his place was a complex man who, if she didn’t know better, she’d swear was avoiding her.
This was ridiculous. Here she was, lying here and listening to this while a man who would rock her world, and undoubtedly put those two to shame, was no more than twenty feet away from her. Maybe he thought he was doing the honorable thing by keeping his distance. Maybe she’d scared the ever-loving hell out of him with her drunken confession. It didn’t matter. Tomorrow they’d be going their separate ways, and she was not going to pass up her last chance to be with him. Maybe he’d send her packing, but she’d never know unless she tried—what did she have to lose?
Throwing back the covers, her feet hit the floor just as the woman in the other room agreed with her.
“Yes . . . ! Yes . . . !”
Rya
She was weighing her options when his voice startled her.
“What are you doing, Rya
“Aiden, you scared me,” she whispered, nervously shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “Did I wake you?”
“No. I haven’t been able to sleep.”
“Me neither. The couple next door is keeping me up.”
“You want me to go say something to them?”
“No, they’re umm . . . enjoying themselves. I was wondering if I could, you know, maybe sleep in here? With you?” Her courage started to waver when he didn’t respond right away.
“Rya
“Why not?”
“Because it’s killing me to do the right thing here, and if you get into this bed, I’m not going to be able to stop.”
“I wasn’t suggesting you do.”
“If you think you’re going to be able to have sex with me and then just walk away tomorrow like it didn’t happen, you’re either naïve or you’re lying to yourself.”