Page 17 of Filthy Rich Santas

I may have… moaned a little while describing it. But in my defense, it reallyisthat good.

Ryder clears his throat, and I realize I’m still groping him. Or resting a friendly hand on his arm, at least.

I snatch it back, embarrassed. “Um, anyway, what are your favorite holiday foods?”

“Pretty sure it’s sweet potato casserole now,” he tells me, giving me a heated look that makes me want to squirm in my seat.

Then he blinks, clearing his throat again, and looks away. “We over the state line yet, Beckett?”

I bite back a smile. It sounds an awful lot like the grown-up version of “are we there yet.”

Beckett just grunts in response, then suddenly veers onto an off ramp, the momentum flinging me against Ryder’s body.

“Gotta gas up,” he says, his eyes flicking back to us just once as Ryder helps me right myself.

Tristan raises his eyebrows. “We did that on the way to Lana’s house. We can’t have burned through more than a quarter of the tank yet.”

“We’re taking a break,” Beckett says gruffly. “I think we all need to get out of this fucking car for a second and quit thinking about fucking casseroles, okay?”

My cheeks burn with embarrassment again, but Tristan just chuckles, shaking his head. “Ah, gotcha. Yeah. Let’s do that. I’m sure the fresh air will do all of us some good right now.”

I hope he’s right, because we’ve still got alotof miles to go to get to New Hampshire.

5

BECKETT

I pullinto the first gas station I see off the highway, and I have the door open and one foot on the asphalt before the engine stops ticking.

I surreptitiously adjust myself in my jeans, biting back a groan. Fucking hell. Listening to Lana make those noises about a damn casserole was driving me crazy.

“You actually gonna fill the tank up?” Tristan asks, smirking at me over the hood of my SUV. “The whole, what, half gallon of gas we burned?”

I flip him off, and he laughs, then pats the hood and turns to head into the convenience store attached to the gas station.

“I’ll grab some beef jerky,” he calls over his shoulder.

Tristan’s not wrong that we don’t really need gas, but I stick the nozzle into the SUV anyway, gritting my teeth as I try to get my cock to go back down.

Ever since the night she came to the club, I’ve been having a hard time getting thoughts of Lana out of my head, and it’s starting to become a problem. The kind of problem that’s making it difficult to remember she’s Caleb’s little sister.

“Do you want any snacks, Beckett?” she calls out from the other side of SUV, walking backward toward the convenience store with a wide smile on her face that brings out the tiny dimple in her left cheek.

I shake my head, waving her off, and next to her, Ryder laughs.

“He’s lying,” I hear him tell Lana as she turns back around and follows him into the store. “He’ll be jonesing for some beef jerky in ten miles.”

I grunt. He’s got me there, but beef jerky isn’t the problem when it comes to jonesing for things.

Lana was just so fucking sexy the night she came into Radiance, all wide-eyed and breathless. It caught me off guard, and I fucking hate being caught off guard.

But not as much as I hated seeing that man put his hands on her.

Thatshit sent the kind of fury racing through me that I haven’t felt since my teens. And when I had her boxed in against the wall, trying to get her to leave, it took all of my self-control not to do something very, very stupid. She was gazing up at me through her lashes, and the look on her face…fuck.

It was far too easy to picture that same look, but with her on her knees for me.

The gas pump clicks, my tank full, and I shake off the image in my head. She’d be fucking gorgeous like that, but it doesn’t matter. She’s still as off limits as she’s always been.

---