Jessica Lemmon - Hard to Handle

She switched from a wet paper towel to dry. “You were busy,” she bit out.

Aiden kept his head down so she couldn’t see the curve of his lips. So he hadn’t imagined her reaction. Her overreaction. How interesting.

He heard the tear of paper, saw the movement out of the corner of his eye, and waited for her to lay the bandage over his cut and give it a pound with one fist. Instead, she laid it on his shoulder and used gentle pressure to secure it at the edges.

He turned his head slightly, weighing his next words. “Sonya’s married. That was her husband’s phone number she gave me so I could call him about a special order.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“Sadie…” But her fingers moving away from the bandage to draw a long, slow line down his back made him forget what he was going to say. She was following the trail of his scar, he guessed. Most of it was numb from the nerve damage, but then, she knew that already.

She’d touched him like this before, the morning he’d woken next to her. The morning he left to pick up breakfast to keep himself from begging her to make love to him. He didn’t think he’d ever wanted someone as badly as he wanted Sadie.

He still wanted her.

Her fingertips veered to his side, probably tracing one of the thorny branches of the tattoo wrapping around to his back.

“When did you get this?” she asked quietly.

“A couple of months ago.”

Her fingers continued down his ribs. “Can I see it?” She sounded pained to ask.

“Sure.”

He stood and lifted his arm, giving her a view of the ink running the length of his flank. After Mom died, the subject of his first tat was a no-brainer. A red rose bursting from a tangle of thorny vines. The thorns signified hardship, the red rose his mother.

Sadie traced the flower, and Aiden swallowed hard. He missed her touch. His fist closed around the shirt in his hand as he gritted his teeth.

She stroked his skin, having no idea she was turning him inside out. “Your mom’s roses.”

God, how this woman got him. “Yeah,” he said, swallowing around a lump in his throat. “A heart with the word MOM in it seemed a little cliché.”

He heard her blow air from her nose, an attempt at a laugh that didn’t quite make it.

She laid her palm flat over the rose and the warmth expanded from his belly to chest where it wrapped around his heart. He lowered his arm, trapping her hand against him. The expression on her face, a mixture of sorrow and longing, nearly dropped him like a sack of grain.

He closed the distance between them, bringing up a hand to cup her chin as he thumbed her bottom lip. He had so many things to say. Like how sorry he was, how he’d do anything to take back the day he’d lost her for good. How he wanted her with an intensity time and space hadn’t been able to lessen.

And God knew how he’d tried to stop.

“You should put on a clean shirt,” she whispered, not speaking the words he read so easily in her eyes.

“You should kiss me,” he murmured.

Her eyes sank closed as her hand gripped him tighter. Aiden kept hold of her face, lowering his head to her glossed lips. The sweet scent of strawberry rolled off her mouth, and he wondered if her waiting tongue tasted as sweet…

“Everything okay back here?” a voice bellowed through the warehouse.

Sadie’s eyes snapped open.

Aiden stood over her, debating whether or not to kiss her even though Axle’s head would appear in the doorway in a second.

She pulled away from him before he could and busied herself by cleaning up the paper towels and washing her hands.

Axle poked his head in, his face an Easter Island statue. He took in Sadie’s flushed cheeks and Aiden’s state of undress and his eyes widened a fraction. “Lose your shirt?”

“Nope, he’s got it right here,” Sadie lifted Aiden’s hand holding his soiled shirt and pressed it over his bare chest. He could still see the heat in her eyes. Heat he’d put there.

Aiden glanced at Axle. He couldn’t have given me five more seconds? Sadie licked her bottom lip. The lip Aiden had nearly had between his teeth a moment ago. Okay, ten more seconds.

Sadie stepped away from him. “We had a minor accident. I had to patch him up,” she told Axle, her voice forcibly casual. Aiden considered dropping a kiss onto her lips just to see what she’d do, but Axle’s surly presence was sort of ruining the mood.

Aiden walked for the door and Axle backed out of the doorway to let him by. “Thanks for the first aid,” he said to Sadie.

“Thanks for saving me,” she said, her lips twitching into a smile. “I had it.”

Instead of arguing, he decided not to let an opportunity as ripe as this one pass them by. “I never gave you an answer,” he said.

Her eyebrows pinched over her nose in the cutest look of confusion.

“I’d love to go to lunch with you.” He grinned at her as he backed away from the bathroom. “I’m going to change.”

Sadie pressed her tongue against the back of her teeth to keep from responding.

She wasn’t about to argue in front of Axle. Aiden had used her own trick against her, roping her into lunch. Sadie was torn between being upset and impressed. She probably deserved it after the way she’d forced Aiden into signing the contract.

Axle either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care. Sadie didn’t know how. The small bathroom where he’d discovered his manager and parts supplier standing way too close to each other, one of them missing their shirt, snapped with sexual energy.

Sadie paced through the warehouse to the overturned box and scattered parts. Axle lowered to his haunches to help her clean up, but Sadie waved him off. “I got it, really.”

With a scowl that said he’d rather help her than not, he stood. “Sure?”

“I’m sure.” She smiled. Axle may not look the gentlemanly type, but he was. “I need to arrange them in a certain order,” she lied. What she needed was a moment alone. Some time to calm the jittery shake radiating through her limbs.

With one last glare at the mess at her feet, Axle stalked off.

Sadie turned the box over and started piling parts into it. When she’d instructed Aiden to take his shirt off, she knew what to expect. Golden flesh, fair hair covering his pecs and leading down to firm abs, a scar bisecting his otherwise perfect back.

The scar was less angry now. The red had faded to pink, the edges white. Until she traced it with her fingers, Sadie had been sure that like the scar on his back, she was healing, too. That she’d grown numb where Aiden was concerned.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

From the moment he embraced her to keep a fifty-pound box from emptying onto her head, to the way he looked into her eyes and demanded she kiss him, Sadie had been nowhere near numb.

And spotting that point of black-blue ink peeking out from his side, realizing what it represented…the pain of losing Aiden washed over her as fresh as if it’d happened a minute ago instead of a year ago.

The tattoo. Thorns and vines crisscrossed down his side, from the top of his ribs, and disappeared into the waistline of his pants. Thorns signifying pain. Struggle. Loss. Then the bright spot of color, the red of his mother’s roses, a symbol of her beautiful if not brief life. And Aiden’s gorgeous body a worthy canvas for the artwork.

She couldn’t keep from touching him. As if she could ease the pain the thorny expanse represented with her palm. Her hand on his skin invited the heat of his gaze on her lips and the look in his eyes brought reality crashing down around her.

He still cared about her.

She didn’t know how that made her feel. Hopeful, maybe? And fearful. Definitely some of both.

Being in his arms again, feeling his thumb brush her lip, reminded Sadie that once upon a time, she’d had it good. For a few isolated days last summer, she’d had more understanding, undeniable attraction, and connection than she would have dared pray for.

Enough.

Sadie dropped the last oil filter into the box and stood, dusting her hands on the back of her pants. Last year didn’t matter. Now mattered. And right now, Aiden was her coworker—albeit her very attractive, tattooed coworker—who had goaded her into lunch.

If Sadie was smart, and she was, she’d redirect her thoughts before sitting with him for an hour. The last thing she needed was for Aiden to see the ripples of attraction she felt when she was near him.

Part of her wanted to psychoanalyze the way she’d clutched on to Aiden, had shut her eyes, had so willingly waited for his lips on hers. Or maybe she just wanted to imagine they hadn’t been interrupted. That he had kissed her. That she’d kissed him back, right there in a cramped warehouse bathroom, her hands on his bare skin, the feel of his hot mouth turning her inside out…

But that wouldn’t be smart.

Giving her hectic thoughts one final shove out of her head, she walked down the hall in search of Aiden to remind him he was buying.

And he’d better not cheap out.

*  *  *

Sadie pushed her partially eaten salad aside, and Aiden plucked a piece of chicken off the top and ate it. As he chewed, he considered that he hadn’t asked and Sadie hadn’t argued. She’d been pretty agreeable all around, considering he’d conned her into going to lunch in the first place.

“Think you’re pretty clever, don’t you?” she’d asked him as they found an unoccupied table in the gourmet deli. She’d tried to sound scathed, but he’d seen the flicker of appreciation in her eye. He’d played her own game against her and Sadie, on some level, liked it.