But…she gritted her teeth. Held on. Dragged herself out of that memory.
Mostly because Ash’s hand was so hot it was almost scalding, and the searing embers of his touch coated her skin, threatening to alight. To burn her. To reduce her to ash. She wasn’t cold, not right then. But she couldn’t allow herself to feel his heat either.
He wasn’t for her.
“Let go,” she whispered.
He didn’t.
“Let. Go.” Stronger then.
“Good,” he said, nodding approvingly. “It’s good to see you with some fight.” Infuriating, presumptuous words. But they were also accompanied by his hand falling away before he moved toward the house so she didn’t lose her hold on her temper, didn’t demand even more loudly for him to let her go.
She just…watched him walk away.
She tore her gaze away from that sight, focused on her hands, the scar on the back of one a forever memory of that night.
Fear wanted to bubble up.
But she forced her breathing to even out.
“Mel?”
She jerked at Ash’s voice, refused to look back at him.
“I’m not a liar.”
A breath in. An exhale. Still, she kept quiet.
“But the only thing I ever lied to you about?” he asked, his voice intimate, soft, gentle.
She didn’t respond. Couldn’t respond. Not with her heart pounding so hard it was practically in her throat.
And he didn’t wait for her to answer, anyway.
“The only thing I ever lied about is that I didn’t want you.”
Four
Asher
He sat in his car outside Mel’s apartment and ground his teeth together.
And considering that he’d been doing the same for the last couple of hours, the action sent a bolt of pain through his jaw.
He’d need dental surgery if he continued on like this.
But the lights were still on.
They’d gone off, stayed off long enough he’d almost returned home, had actually jabbed at the button to start up his car, but then he’d looked up at her apartment window and the lights were back on. Shadows moving behind the curtains, a flickering, blue-tinged light indicating the TV joining the party.
That had been hours ago.
Hours.
“Fuck,” he whispered, knowing the decision had been made for him months before, and grabbed his cell from the cupholder, popped his door, and unfolded out of his car.
Phone in his pocket.
Temper held in check by more teeth grinding and the subsequent burst of pain in his jaw, Ash made his way across the parking lot, walked up the interior staircase, and stopped in front of Mel’s door.
The smart thing would be to turn around, get his ass in his car, and go the fuck home.
But he could hear the soft hum of the TV.
So, he knocked on Mel’s door, anyway.
The TV went silent, but he didn’t sense movements—or alternately, he didn’t hear footsteps coming to answer the knock.
Smart woman.
Except for the fact that she wasn’t getting help for the whole not sleeping thing.
Ash rapped his knuckles against the door again, knew the sound would carry across her apartment. Mostly because it was silent, but also because Mel’s place wasn’t that big.
One bedroom. One bath. A small living room and kitchen, open concept.
Maybe nine hundred square feet.
It was a fucking miracle the architect had managed to squeeze in a closet that held her washer and dryer.
They didn’t gather here often—his brothers and their women, his sister, Cora, and her man. Mostly because they threatened to fill the space to bursting. With bodies. With noise. With chaos. But they’d all been there often enough for him to know that Mel swapped out the cases for the throw pillows on her couch for the various holidays and seasons—Valentine’s Day, Easter, Christmas, St. Patrick’s Day, Fourth of July, Summer and Spring, Winter and Fall, Thanksgiving, and Halloween.
Those were the ones he’d seen.
Along with her normal cases—a purple floral pattern—that made various appearances in between.
And a little wooden sign on a shelf that declared, “Hoppy Spring!” or “Love” or “Luck of the Irish” or some cutesy shit that correlated with whatever holiday she was acknowledging.
Normally, that was the kind of shit he couldn’t stand.
He was one of seven.
Growing up, his life had been messy—full of nine (then eight after his dad had died) people’s shit. He didn’t do clutter or complication or cutesy little signs that were emblazoned with pithy seasonal sayings.
With Mel?
He didn’t give a shit.
It fit her. It was her.
And someone had tried to destroy that.
“Fuck,” he whispered, shoving that down. Which he succeeded in doing mostly because he knocked on Mel’s door again.
It was three-thirty in the morning.
She was awake.
He needed to do something about that.
The third knock at least had footsteps moving in his direction, footsteps that grew louder, then paused—she was using the peephole, thank fuck.
Ash waited, staring at the hole covered by that small half-sphere of convex glass.
Click.
The lock went, doorknob rattling slightly, and then she was there, standing in the opening, looking gorgeous and rumpled and sexy as fuck.
In a baggy tee and short shorts.
Long legs, their skin gone faintly golden, were on display; a glimpse of paler white skin above mid-thigh before that flesh untouched by the sun disappeared under the lacy pink ruffle of those barely-there shorts.
His dick twitched.
The hem of her light purple T-shirt nearly covered those tiny shorts, and it was baggy, but Melody had curves for days. A loose-ass tee didn’t do shit to hide what she was packing. The material clung to her breasts, smoothed over her waist, accentuated hips that topped an ass he dreamed of—so often he wanted her to turn around so he could drop to his knees and pay homage to it.
“What’s wrong?”
That was when he realized there was fear in her eyes.
No terror.
Fuck.
Realizing his mistake, he nudged her backward, following her into the apartment so he could close and lock the door behind them.
“Nothing’s wrong, sweets,” he said quickly.
“I—” Her gaze jerked to the clock that hung in the hall (an analog clock with a purple floral background and framed in gold) then back to him. “It’s three forty-six in the morning.” Her eyes flashed with annoyance. “You showing up in the middle of the night isn’t just showing up for a cup of sugar.”
A cup of sugar?
Fuck, this woman made him want to laugh.
But considering she looked ready to throttle him, he held that in.
“No,” he said. “It isn’t.”
And, apparently, the woman had psychic powers, because the irritation in her expression faded and he watched the indent appear in her cheek, knew she was biting back her words.
He’d seen her do that more than a handful of times since her sister had started dating his brother. At Game Nights. At group dinners. When she’d hung at his brother’s place. It was something he’d noted the first time he’d met her, and it was a piece of information he kept close.