Page 88 of Irresistibly Risky

“Maybe I shouldn’t have asked if I could, but you don’t seem like the type of woman who does surprises well.”

She stares warily at me. “Not typically, no.”

“I got you something.”

Her head tilts. “So, you went from asking if you could buy me something to telling me you already did?”

I slide my phone out of my pocket, unlock it with my face, pull up the picture of the car, and then flip my phone around so she can see it.

She studies the image for a moment and then trains her surprised gaze back to mine. “What’s this?”

“Safety.”

“Asher—”

“I have so much money,” I quickly interject before she can mount her argument. “Too much money. If you’d let me, I’d buy you and Mason the world. You have no idea how badly I want to spoil you both. But I can’t handle either of you in your car for another second. This one received top safety ratings, it’s all-wheel drive, which you will need in Boston when winter comes, and it’s pretty and luxurious, which are both things my woman deserves.”

“You already bought this,” she states. “That is in the garage downstairs.”

“Yep.”

She bobs her head absently, her eyes trained on the picture again as the seconds tick by like an eternity.

“It’s silver.”

Nervousness starts to swell in me. “Is that a problem? Did you want a different color?”

“I won gold.”

I chuckle at her aghast expression. “That wasn’t an option.”

“That’s criminal,” she asserts in feigned outrage.

My lips twitch. “Perhaps.”

I get a shake of her head, and then she’s staring at the picture once more. “Hmmm. I guess I could live with silver if it can’t be gold.”

“Yeah?” Hope surges through me like a geyser.

Her fingers trickle along my jaw. “Yeah.” Her lips glide against mine, and a soft smile plays on her lips. “Thank you.” Another kiss. “It’s more than generous, and extremely sweet and thoughtful. My instinct is to argue this, but I won’t. Your heart, Asher Reyes, is quite possibly the most impressive and beautiful thing about you, and I adore you for it.

Adore me? That’s like a hop, skip, and a jump from love. This makes my heart go thump, thump, thump.

“I adore you. All of you. Just as you are.” I drag her lips back to mine and kiss her, and all the worry from today, everything I overheard Joe say about me, starts to dissolve. At least for a little while.

25

Asher has been on edge all week leading up to today. It’s Sunday. One p.m. First game of the season for the Boston Rebels, and he’s not playing in it. Much like me, he’s forced to the sideline, wearing a Rebels T-shirt and track pants and an anxious look. It’s killing him. I know it is.

This is his team. His heart.

And while I don’t care about football necessarily, I do care about him. And my guy is visibly hurting. I want to hug him. I want to hold his hand. But I am forced back into that realm of indifferent acquaintance. No one here knows our truth.

No one knows that this Asher Reyes, the football god, is actually mine.

That he wakes me up at all hours with his mouth between my thighs and his fingers inside of me. That he stares deep into my eyes every time he enters me for the first time. That he is so unlike the man he works for, I can only hope our son is more like his father and nothing like his biological grandfather.

In the two weeks since the ice skating rink, things between us have found their rhythm. I’ve talked Asher away from confronting Joe—it won’t help me and it will only hurt him—and I’ve sort of moved into his bedroom. I’m fully aware that I’m irrevocably lost to this man because he’s hot and sweet and loves our boy with his entire heart and is on a boundless mission to find all the ways to make me come.

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