Page 47 of For Always
Gabriella wanted the full story and she wanted it now. She also wanted to forego another Dessie tongue-lashing so she picked up her burger as well and took a bite.
When Tyler smiled and said, “Good girl,” she could do nothing else but smile at him in return.
She was getting in deeper with him. Funny how that thought was beginning to cause just as much fear in her as the thought of Austin turning up in Hobbs Creek.
He stood over her, watching as she performed her fourth and last set of fifteen chest presses. Tyler touched her knees lightly to make sure she was keeping them tightly pressed together, feet up as she lay on the bench.
“This is going to improve your upper body strength,” he said.
“Or give you a better view of my breasts,” she snapped.
He kept a straight face and leaned forward, looking directly into her eyes as she pushed for the last three reps.
“I’ve had a great view of your breasts already,” he said when she sighed heavily and let the ten pound weights fall to the floor.
It was a sight Tyler knew he’d never grow tired of and for the last week he’d seen all of her, frequently. He found himself enjoying that part about returning to Hobbs Creek above all else.
“You’re getting better,” he said after touching her bicep. “That’s enough for today. You can shower and we can go somewhere to get a nice dinner.”
“You’re getting bossier,” she told him as she sat up.
“Who me?” He feigned innocence. “I’ve never received that complaint from any of my prior clients.”
“That’s because the majority of your clients were probably women and they most likely wanted to jump into bed with you.”
She’d stood up by then, just in time for him to snag her by the waist and turn her around. Tyler sat on the bench, pulling Gabriella down onto his lap.
“I don’t sleep with clients. It’s my fast and staunch rule that I make very clear on the first meeting,” he told her.
She wrapped her legs around him and settled down so that her crotch—covered only by the spandex of her shorts and a sexy little royal blue thong—rubbed teasingly over his already growing arousal.
“That’s a good rule to have,” she replied. “Does that mean you never have girlfriends?”
His hands were on the tight cheeks of her bottom and—this time—he had been staring down at her breasts. With that question, Tyler looked up at her slowly.
“Are you asking if I have a girlfriend now?”
“No. I assume you don’t because you were quick to tell me that when you’re sleeping with one woman you don’t sleep with any others. I believe that about you,” she said. “But lately I’ve been wondering why such a handsome and relatively normal guy like you doesn’t have a girlfriend. Or a wife.”
“Relatively normal?”
She rolled her eyes. “Those smoothies you’ve been introducing me to are not normal. I don’t care what you say. The one this morning tasted like medicine. A very awful, foul colored, medicine.”
The way she scrunched her face when she said those words caused him to laugh and want to cuddle her close. That’s how she made him feel lately. If he walked by a room in the house that she was working on, he had to stop by and touch her in some way and say something to her just to hear her voice. If she was working at the employee residences or the resort, he made a point of stopping by, even if just to get a glimpse of her. And at night, she was still staying at the house, in his room, as if they were…
“I’ve had girlfriends,” he told her. “They come and they go.”
“They leave or you send them away?”
She was running her fingers through his hair, her nails scraping along his scalp. That was the equivalent of her reaching into his pants and stroking his dick. It turned him on instantly.
“It’s usually mutual once we discover that I’m incapable of giving them what they need or want at the moment.”
“Oh, and what’s that?”
He was just about to lean in and lick the line that separated her sports bra from her cleavage, when he paused. She was asking a lot of questions which could not be good. Tyler paused and looked at her. She was staring back at him expectantly, her brown eyes warm and accepting. They’d been having a good time this past week. Even with Jagger still hanging around the house under the guise of overseeing the re-design and the sheriff still trying to find evidence to link Brooke to the shooting and the vandalism on the ranch—in addition to the crimes he’d already charged her with.
Truth be told, Tyler wasn’t completely clueless. Every night he held Gabriella in his arms he knew they were growing closer. He knew and he ignored it, because that’s what he preferred to do. Now, for the first time in his adult life, he might have to explain that preference.
