Page 65 of To Hold and Protect

“And now she turns up here?” Tristan said.

“Oh, that wasn’t the last of her there. My fellow fire chiefs didn’t mention anything about the incident, so it was awkward. I couldn’t decide if I should try to explain, but what could I say? I slept with a stranger, and now she was stalking me? Then, not five minutes into the afternoon workshop, Crystal slips in the door and sits at one of the tables. She smiled and fluttered her fingers at me as if nothing had happened. It was bizarre.”

“And I thought I had some wild hookup stories,” Kade muttered.

Harper thumped his head. “We do not want to hear about you hooking up with anyone but me, buster.”

“Duly noted, snuggle bunny.”

It was so weird to hear his hardcore warrior brother come up with those silly names for Harper. He’d also never thought to see Kade ever fall head over heels for a woman, but he had. Tristan had fallen hard for Skylar, too. After the past six years of telling himself he was happy being single, Parker now admitted he wasn’t. He wanted what they had, and he wanted it with Willow.

“What’d you do?” Willow asked.

It was a relief that she was taking all this in stride and not looking at him as if he was a disgusting male. “My first reaction was to tell her she couldn’t stay, but she’d proven that she had no problem causing a scene, and there were twenty-five participants at the workshop. There were three other fire chiefs who could carry on without me, so I called for a short coffee break. I told the other instructors that I didn’t know the woman other than her first name, but that it would probably be best if I removed myself. Let them think what they wanted, but I’m sure they figured it out. They agreed, and I slipped out the back of the room, went upstairs, packed my bag, and came home. End of story. Or so I thought.”

“And now she’s here,” Tristan said.

“Seems so. My full name, along with the other fire chiefs’, was on a whiteboard at the front of the room, as was the name of each of our firehouses. She didn’t even have to do any research to learn my last name and where I lived.” He picked up the sketch he’d done and handed it to Tristan. “She’s a blonde, so the black hair is definitely a wig. Who knows what other color wigs she might use, so I’ll do another drawing of her with both blond and brunette hair.” That was all of it, and he was exhausted. It had been a long day and telling his embarrassing story had drained him.

Willow, sitting between Skylar and Harper, linked her hands through theirs and pulled them up with her. “You guys have all you need for now, right?”

She understood he needed them gone, and he gave her a grateful smile. Apparently his family also understood that Willow was what he needed right now, and they filed out after the girls gave him a hug and his brothers squeezed his shoulder.

When it was just him and Willow, she pulled him down to the daybed with her. “That was hard, wasn’t it?”

He slid his fingers around hers. “I’m sorry you had to hear all that.” Did she think less of him?

She tsked. “Stop it. You were single. There shouldn’t have been a damn thing wrong with hooking up when you were a single man and never expecting it to be with a wack-a-doodle.”

He laughed, which was rather amazing after how embarrassed he’d just felt. “Wack-a-doodle, huh?”

“You have a better description?” She pulled the bottom of her dress up her thighs, then swung her leg over his legs and straddled him.

“Nothing even close to that.” He stared into eyes that he wanted to look into for the rest of his life. “Hey, you.”

She smiled as she stared back at him. “Hey. Here’s the plan. For tonight, I’m in charge, and I’m going to make you forget all about wack-a-doodle. You good with that?”

“As Everly would say, I couldn’t be more gooder.” He reached for the remote and dimmed the lights.

“Such a way with words,” she said, then kissed him. “Now hush.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Willow was going to make her guy forget all about that woman. She kept her eyes locked on Parker’s as she unbuttoned his shirt. When he tried to help her, she brushed his hands away. “What part of ‘I’m in charge’ do you not understand?”

“My bad.”

Oh, that sexy grin of his. Made a girl all hot and bothered. “Off,” she said after the last button was undone. She leaned away so he could remove his shirt. Her gaze roamed over his chest. The view was spectacular, and she licked her lips as she considered where her mouth should go first.

“Here.” She nipped at the skin below his ear, then sucked his earlobe between her teeth, smiling to herself when a shiver traveled through him.

She then moved to his chest, and when she swirled her tongue around his nipple, he groaned. When he lifted his hands to her hips, she pushed them away again. “Your job is just to sit there and enjoy.”

“Trust me, I’m enjoying.”

While she explored his chest with her tongue, she slid her hands down his stomach to his belt, and when that was unbuckled, she lowered the zipper on his pants. His boxer briefs were tented, and she slipped her hand inside and wrapped her fingers around his erection. “You feel like velvet.”

“What I feel like is a cannon that’s about to go boom.”

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