He paused, thinking. “So you wouldn’t freak if I told you about the bare-knuckles fight league Duke and I are in? I guess Mick now too. Which needs to happen because he’s better than all of us.”

“God, I think you just got the same look you do when you see my boobs. I’m going to get a complex. Maybe I need to start punching people. Do you need a moment alone to think about your team’s extra-special new knuckles?”

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected from her when she’d opened the door earlier. Generally, unanswered texts said, Leave me the fuck alone, I’ll let you know when I’m ready to talk to you. Or she could have been asleep and that’s why she hadn’t texted him back. But the truth was, he’d figured it was the former instead of the latter.

He’d come anyway because he’d let himself want sleeping next to her and it had been yanked away from him. And because her temper was so fucking hot he couldn’t help but poke at her a little.

She’d listened to what he’d said about Mick and had been kind. Asa knew Mick well enough to be sure his friend would be one of PJ’s biggest fans inside a month. Oh sure, she’d make him pay a little, especially if Mick didn’t give it enough grovel. But that would only make him like PJ more.

And then she’d let him come into her bedroom and hadn’t even flinched when she’d brought up that brawl he’d been in. Duke had broken his ring finger on his left hand and Asa’d had bruised ribs and a black eye for a few days.

“Did you think I’d run off screaming and crying? Do you really believe I’m so fragile that I didn’t understand what sort of man you were before I let you in between my thighs? Or did you think I just was so hot for your cock I didn’t care? I was hot for your cock, by the way. Still am. But it doesn’t surprise me you’d willingly let someone punch you in the face. Please tell me you at least take your piercing out of your nose first.”

He caught her hand, bringing it to his mouth to kiss her palm. “I don’t know what I expect from you sometimes. You’re something entirely new to me.”

Her smile softened. “I may not have done everything you have, but I’m not fragile. If everyone in your fight group is there willingly and you all get something from it, I don’t care. It’s not like you’re rampaging through Seattle beating up passersby.”

Ah. “I don’t think you’re fragile. At first, yes, because you’re so pretty and blond and young – and I already apologized for that, so don’t frown – but anyone who’s been around you for longer than ten minutes wouldn’t think you were fragile.”

She waved a lazy hand. “I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to be the person my father would finally see. Finally listen to. I dressed like I was expected to. Did what I was expected to. And then I just… I dropped out of college.” She snorted a laugh. “I dropped out of college and you’d have thought I burned someone’s house down. Anyway. I wanted to prove myself on the job. I didn’t want to go to college. I wanted to learn things differently and so I tried to be the best I could at Colman.

“I’ve been working so hard to prove myself their way. But they never considered me capable. I can sell lots of tires. I was top-notch at it, and they’ll miss that, probably. But I can guarantee my uncle and my father haven’t even considered how shitty and paternalistic it was to tell me I was only allowed to make my mark at Colman in a way they defined for me up front. They think I’m fragile and useless and silly. And I’ve spent years trying to change that. So. Yes, I have a button about it, and that’s why.”

He pushed up to sit in the middle of the bed. “Panties off and get in my lap.

She complied quickly and Asa sighed happily as she wrapped her legs around his waist and settled on his lap as he started the story.

“In high school I had a job at a florist. I worked in the mornings when they got their flower shipment. Up at five, and then I could work a few hours before my first class. I learned then that a lot of roses we used in arrangements were pretty and all, but they barely had a smell. But there was this climbing rosebush near the bus stop. In an empty lot, so it was something that drew your eye. The blooms were bright pink and they didn’t just open up, they seemed to explode outward with scent. They weren’t perfect like those faintly scented ones we sold for sixty bucks a dozen on Valentine’s Day. They were wild and heady and a thousand times better.”

She watched him. Vulnerable. He brushed his thumb over her bottom lip.

“You’re that wild rose, PJ. So pretty at first glance, but the longer I look, the more beautiful you are. Unique. You’re vibrant and sensual. There are a lot of words I’d use to describe you, but fragile isn’t one of them.”

“I was going to make a joke. And then I thought how rude it would be of me to do that instead of thanking you for such a beautiful compliment. So thank you.”

He kissed her chin.

She tipped her head back, arching her spine, her pussy hot and wet as it grazed his cock.

He yanked her shirt off, caressing all over her upper body, taking extra time with her nipples and the rings in them.

“I missed you on me.” Her whispered words a plea.

She shredded him.

Without even knowing it, she took him apart. He shifted forward a little to kiss her chest, between her breasts.

She held his head, bringing him to her body as they both just soaked each other in.

“I missed being on you too. I had plans for you at my house. You need to come over tomorrow.”

Thursdays were the one day he tended not to go in to work. He wanted to spend the day in his bedroom with her, and he wanted to punch Mick all over again for ruining that.

“Maybe.”

He heard the laughter in her response and he nipped her skin and then over to her ribs. She shifted, laughing until he’d rolled on top of her again.

“Yield.” He’d meant it to sound teasing but ended up feeling and sounding far more serious about it.

Yes, that’s what he wanted right then.

She looked up at him with those big, beautiful blue eyes. Waiting.

She stole his senses. He found himself opening up with her in ways he hadn’t planned. But she listened. It wasn’t like he’d been lonely before PJ. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know women looked at him. But PJ didn’t just check out the outside and appreciate it. PJ focused on all of him. Gave him her full attention, and it made him feel ten feet tall.

And he knew she’d think it was a small thing, but it was everything.

She rolled him over and scrambled atop his body. She kissed him, tasting with sweet kisses, followed by slow sips. It seemed impossible to be turned on and totally relaxed all at once, but there it was.

She kissed down his neck, over to each ear, and then paused at his nipples.

“I love that you’re so sensitive here. It makes me so hot to lick over the bars.” She did just that and they both moaned.

The flare of her hips as she shimmied down his body called to him, made his mouth water.

“More,” he growled, and she drew a deep breath as she got into place on her knees between his thighs. She scored her nails up the sensitive skin of his thighs and over his balls.

She held his gaze, but he couldn’t stop himself from moving from her eyes down to her hands on him, to her tits.

Dipping her head, she gave hot, openmouthed kisses to his hip bone and to his cock at long last.

She played with the piercing over and over until he was so hard he throbbed. And then she swallowed the head of his cock. One. Two. Three times and then all the way to the root and back up.

He cursed as that last move dragged him to the edge, since he had no plans to come just yet. He liked watching her suck him off. Liked the way it felt even more.

Asa had plans for PJ, and they included fucking her hard and fast while he held her hair in his fist.