Erik (Arizona Vengeance 2)

“You look cute in my T-shirt,” he says as he takes me in.

“I didn’t think you’d mind.” I’d nosily poked around his dresser drawers for one while he snored away the earliest of the early-morning hours.

“Of course not,” he says with a playful smile and then trails a finger across my thigh. “I like you better out of clothes, though.”

God, I like him better out of clothes too. Last night was amazing.

I’m still not quite sure how to reconcile in my mind how fast things have moved between us. Just a few weeks ago, I couldn’t stand him and now I sort of want to crawl onto his lap and just snuggle in for the long haul. Erik has definitely done all the right things and there’s no doubt in my mind he’s not the same man I briefly knew all those years ago.

“You look tired,” Erik says, drawing me out of my musings. His finger slides gently along the skin under one eye, perhaps tracing a dark circle there. “You should sleep some more.”

“I can’t,” I tell him with a laugh. “I’m one of those people that once I’m up, I’m up.”

“Want some coffee?”

“Sure,” I say and put my hands to the pavers to push myself up. His hand clasps warm on my thigh to stop me. “Relax. I’ll get it. How do you take it?”

“Black.”

He puts his hand over the center of his chest and shoots me an adoring look. “A woman after my own heart.”

I watch Erik until he disappears into the house, smiling on both the inside and out. I’m not quite sure what I did to deserve what’s going on between us right now. In fact, sometimes I still get stuck in the mind-set that I don’t deserve something this good. Not after I’d abandoned my family for riches and fame in LA.

It’s an old guilt that just won’t seem to go away.

Erik returns a few minutes later with two steaming cups of fragrant black coffee. He hands me a cup and then carefully sits back down beside me with his own. I inhale before taking a tiny sip of the hot liquid. “Wow, that’s good.”

Erik smiles and nods. “So we didn’t get a chance to talk much the last few days…how was the trip to Chicago?”

I wrinkle my nose. “It’s twenty-four hours I’d rather forget. A bunch of rich old men who liked to pat my ass every time I walked by.”

“What the fuck?” Erik growls so fiercely I jerk back with wide eyes. “They touched you?”

“It’s part of the territory doing these private charters for men so rich, they can do whatever they want.”

“No, fuck they can’t,” he says angrily. “Does that happen all the time?”

“Not all the time,” I admit slowly, but it happens often enough.

“You can’t work at a job like that,” he says adamantly.

“Well, unless I can find something else that pays that well as a part-time job, I’m afraid I will work at a job like that.” I keep my tone pleasant, though, because I can see this is upsetting him. I lean over and give him a playful nudge on the shoulder. “Look…if they did anything more than that, I’d slap ’em hard. I wouldn’t ever let anyone cross a wider line than that.”

“I don’t like it,” he mutters.

“You’re cute when you’re jealous,” I tease him with another nudge to his shoulder.

“That’s not jealousy, Blue,” he corrects as he leans his face in close to me. “That’s protecting what’s mine.”

“Oh,” I murmur, the possessiveness in his tone hitting me right between the legs. We stare at each other a moment, and I consider what it would be like to have sex in his pool.

Erik finally leans back into his space and says, “I met the flamingo lady.”

I blink at him repetitively, trying to get my brain to move from pool sex to flamingos. “What?” I ask in confusion.

“The woman who put the flamingos out Halloween night at Legend’s,” he clarifies.

“Oh, yeah…right,” I say with a laugh as it comes back to me. “And?”

“She is a serious freaking trip,” he replies and then goes on to tell me about how kooky and fun she seems to be, and how much Legend was really annoyed by her. Based on what he describes, I like her a lot already but then again, anyone that can dance around to Cindi Lauper has got to be a blast to hang around.

“He likes her,” I tell Erik when he finishes.

“Legend?” he asks with surprise.

I nod my head. “It’s the classic pulling on the girl’s pigtails, not because you don’t like her, but because he wants her to notice him.”

“No way,” Erik says with a shake of his head. “Legend was like turning red he was so annoyed with her.”

“Mark my words,” I say wagging a finger at him playfully.