Excerpt 1
“We waiting until we get back to eat?” I asked, overwhelmed with the scent of our dinner in the small cab.

“Fuck no. I’m starving,” he said, cranking up the air conditioning, which barely spewed tepid air, and turning the radio dial until it was on a classic rock station.

AC/DC burst into song when he settled on the station, and it made me smile. Dad always loved classic rock, and it was just another thing that Ashton did that felt like home.

“Gimme gimme,” he said, doing little grabby motions with his hands while he sat there impatiently.

“We’re going to make a mess,” I said with a laugh, looking for his butter chicken.

Once the styrofoam container was in his hands, he dug into the spiced rice and golden chicken gravy with a ragged moan.

“Fuck yeah…” His words were strained, and for half a second, I wondered if that was his orgasm voice.

 “I’m a little worried with how intimate you’re getting with that chicken,” I teased, ripping into the naan before dipping it into his container.

“You’re riding one fine fucking line, stealing my food like that,” he told me, eyeing me like a predator.

“Chill, I’ll share mine,” I assured, taking another dip.

His hand shot out like a viper and gripped my wrist, holding it between us with the curry about to drip onto the upholstery.

Pulling a little, he moved my hand, still holding that naan, and brought it to his lips where he took a massive bite, making sure to include every bit of his butter curry.

My breath hitched in my throat as his sharp eyes met mine.

“You need to stop provoking me, Frey,” he murmured, his tongue flicking out to get a tiny bit of the sauce off my fingertip before he dropped my arm completely and went back to his dinner like nothing happened.

My heart was stuttering, breath trapped in my lungs, feeling like they were about to burst as heat infused every cell in my body.

Finally, a jagged inhale of air finally filled me as he slurped up a rather big piece of chicken.

“Can I have the other naan?” he asked, as if he hadn’t just changed everything with the tip of his tongue.

I got it and handed it over, then brought my fingers to my lips, unable to stop myself from licking that same spot he’d put his mouth on.

He dipped his flatbread into the sauce, but looked up long enough to see that fingertip in my mouth, my insatiable self sucking on it like a savory lollipop that tasted oh so vaguely like…well, like him.

I saw the sharp inhale he took, but other than that he didn’t let anything show as he wrenched his eyes away from me and focused on his food. God, I just couldn’t tell anything with him. Did he want me, too? Even just the tiniest little bit? Oh, what I’d do just to have his hand slapping my ass again, or maybe even another smack to my vag. Hell, I didn’t even need that. I was already throbbing with need just from that tiny little lick of my finger.

To distract myself from my thoughts, I opened my own container and got hit with a punch of spicy cardamom and turmeric, and my mouth watered. Even still, he tasted better.

I managed a couple of bites before he reached over and dipped his own bread into my container.

“What the hell?” I barked as he stuffed it quickly into his mouth with a grin on his lips.

“Karma,” he said, licking his own fingers.

“The only karma I need in this life is my Goddamn mother,” I growled at him, staring at his fingers, coated in granules of salt and garlic from the naan.

He chuckled, and the smirk on his lips was infuriatingly sexy.

I thought about gripping his wrist the way he had mine, knowing he’d let me do it because revenge was fair to a guy like him…but I was too much of a coward.

We got through our meals without any more suggestive moments, then headed back to his place while I smashed all our trash back into one of the restaurant’s takeaway bags. After pulling up to his house, we stopped on the side of the street in the same place I had parked yesterday. He took the takeaway bags from my hand and clicked the button to open the garage door. Now, time to get back to working on that Firebird.

 

Excerpt 2
“Sorry,” Freya said from…yep, the kitchen. “Mom’s been into that stuff ever since I can remember. She thinks that good thoughts and crystals can heal just about everything.”

“You don’t buy it?” I asked her.

She just blinked at me.

“She once tried healing my broken arm with obsidian and selenite. It took me two hours to convince my mom that a couple of pretty rocks weren’t going to reset my bones.”

I whistled.

“How old were you?”

“Eight. Eight and a half, I think.”

Holy shit.

“Where was Tommy? Your dad, I mean.”

“Working. In Afghanistan, I think. He’d been gone for months before it happened. Mom always got super sucked into that stuff when he was away for a while.”

“I’m sorry, kid,” I told her, which made her bristle.

“I’m not a kid, you know that, don’t you, Ashton?”

Oh, I fucking knew it. I remembered the feel of her very grown-up breasts pressing against my chest while I was having a full on mental breakdown in the employee bathroom at work.

She’d never brought it up though. After Tommy had led me away, Freya never mentioned the incident again. Maybe she just wanted to forget the traumatizing moment, and I could respect that. I’d taken full advantage of her sympathetic and loving heart, and I knew it.

But I digress.

I didn’t remember things being so bad. Tommy had mentioned that he’d needed to leave the Marines to be with his wife and daughter, but he’d never mentioned how bad it had evidently gotten. Had Freya been dealing with being the grown-up in the house ever since she was a kid? Maybe our pasts were more similar than I ever realized.

“You look like you’re thinking too hard,” Freya said as she dipped to look into the fridge for something.

Damn, that ass…

“I’m afraid that maybe your head will explode or something,” she mused.

I barked a rusty laugh, just as she stood and graced me with a grin over her shoulder.

“You’re insane,” was the only comeback I had, because maybe she was right.

I was thinking way too hard about her and that peachy ass when I should’ve been focused on other things. “Is Tommy still at the dealership?”

She nodded, then slid over a beer to me.

“You know him. Workaholic.”

Yes, I did, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. He had such an amazing life to come home to, why would he choose work over this?

I grunted instead of answering, but took the beer happily.

“So?” she asked after a minute. “You took the day to go to the base. How’d it go?”

I didn’t fucking answer. I didn’t want to.

Funny though, as it turned out, I didn’t need to.

“Oh…Ash…” she moaned, sadness and sympathy coloring her cheeks.

“Guess my nickname Citizen really matches now,” I grunted out, thinking it would be funny, but my voice cracked like a prepubescent boy, showing my emotions.

Freya came right around the counter and took me into her arms, beer and all where she squeezed me harder than anybody had ever hugged me before.

“You’ll be ok,” she muffled a whisper with her face in the crook of my neck and shoulder. “You’ve got us, and we’ll be your team.”

An unwelcome tear started slipping out of my eye, and I quickly tried sucking it back up before she could notice. But funny that, tears don’t suck back up like snot.

When she let me go, Freya looked into my face and lifted her hand, sweeping the trail of that singular tear away.

“You’ve got us,” she said, looking me right in the eyes. “If you need a wingman, I’m your girl. I’ll help get you laid and help you find a place when you’re ready. I’ll even watch sports with you, even though I hate everything other than hockey and MMA.”

I snorted a laugh, which made her sad lips turn into a small smile.

“I appreciate that,” I told her, pressing my palm to her cheek now. “But I’m ok. I don’t need a wingman. I can get laid all by myself. As for sports, what other real sports are there other than hockey and MMA?”

She snorted a laugh, legit making snot burst out of her nose, which made her cheeks flame with embarrassment.

I laughed too while she hurried away to the bathroom to get away from me.

That girl was too much.

And fucking everything.