Page 70 of Walking Red Flag

“Hamper?” he asked when it was off and he was taking the shirt and rolling it into a ball.

I licked my lips and tried, but failed, to make my brain comprehend the question he’d just asked me.

It didn’t work, though.

Because…tattoos.

Lots of them.

As in, all over his body, from mid bicep to right under his collarbone, to just under his diaphragm.

I opened my mouth, intending to tell him about the hamper maybe, but instead said, “What the fuck?”

He laughed. “That’s what everyone says.”

“Well, maybe if you weren’t hiding all of that…” I said, gesturing to his upper torso. “Why don’t you have any visible tattoos?”

“Because I’m already a biker. Professionals need to look professional, in my honest opinion. I don’t need to be adding to the tics on the upper crust of Dallas as they see me pull up to a job site. They’re already wary when I get off a bike. If I get off covered in tattoos, too, they’ll pass on me and go to someone else. And, to be quite honest, I’m not too proud to admit that I could really use the money. I’ll gladly act like I’m respectable as long as they pay me what I’m asking for,” he expounded. “Hamper?”

I jumped and moved, opening a cabinet where the laundry chute was located.

When Shasha had this house built, the entire freakin’ place was custom built. Even the laundry chute in the bathroom.

“This fancy schmancy thingie is a vacuum. You put the clothes,” I reached for his shirt and he handed it to me, “right up against it, and it sucks them through this ducting system into the laundry room where it’ll spit it out into the hamper.”

His brows rose. “I feel like I just entered the Twilight Zone.”

“Wait until you see the safe room Shasha had built for me.” I rolled my eyes. “This place is like a fortress. With the high gates, the alarm system, and then the safe room, I could logically withstand a siege.”

His head tilted as he started unbuttoning his pants.

I turned slightly away to give him privacy, and he laughed.

“I’ll just tell you now that being in the military has completely cured me of my shyness,” he said as he took his pants off. “Plus, you saw me in this yesterday.”

I bit my lip, and he studied me, freezing.

“Is this…”

I knew what he was asking.

Was it too much.

I shook my head. “I’m…that part of me…I…”

I searched for the words, and he let me, watching me carefully as he completely unloaded his pants pockets onto the counter.

His phone. Wallet. Keys. Cash. Change. A pocket knife. His third pencil he’d lost for the day. A chalk stick. And a…gun. A tiny one. One that was so small I’d never suspected he’d even had it in the first place.

“That part of my issues…that’s really a non-issue now. I can have sex. I can be with a man in any sexual manner. I’ve worked that out with a therapist a while ago,” I explained quickly, the words coming so quickly that they were like ants pouring out of a disturbed hill. “My issues stem from other places now. I can trust with my body, but not with my heart anymore.”

I hoped he got what I meant by that.

I was very…standoffish.

If I was being honest, with Asher, I’d not been the girlfriend he deserved.

I was there, and present, but I wasn’t actually there.

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