“You didn’t ask.” Carver reached his hand back, then lifted his shirt from his body. Men like him shouldn’t ever be clothed, though as much as I wanted to fuck him, I had a feeling that wasn’t why he was removing his shirt. “These need work.” He pointed to a few of his tattoos, pulling my eyes from the thick ridges of muscles that lined his stomach. “Some touch-up. Grant is a tattoo artist. He did most of mine.”
I turned the shower off and tilted my head to the side, wringing out my long hair. “I’m not gonna ask why you won’t just go to a shop and get that done because it seems you prefer the work to come to you.” He smiled like the devil he was. “So can you tell me what I’m supposed to wear with your friend here? I’d hate to see his pretty grey eyes get yanked out.”
Carver’s jaw worked and I teasingly pushed his chest with my fingers as I walked by him to exit the shower. But before my toes hit the floor, I was scooped up and tossed over Car’s shoulder.
“Hey!” I shouted as he stormed through our room to the closet. “Put me down, you caveman.”
He smacked my ass, making me yelp. “I only have Grant and Hayes, and I’d prefer not to murder them because you find some part of them attractive.” He set me back down on the floor and quickly wrapped a towel around my still-dripping body, then left me in the closet. I was about to holler for him when he stepped back inside, lifting a bag between us. “Got this for you.”
I took it and peeked inside. “Where’d you get more dresses?”
He scratched the back of his head, making too many veins along his arms pop. That bed over his shoulder wassoclose. Too close. “Grant has a sister, so I asked if she had a few things you could borrow. Y’all are about the same size.”
I shook my head to clear it and pulled a dress out. “This still has tags on it.” Peeking inside again and jostling the bag, more tags came into view.
“Grant’s parents try to make her dress up and I guess she prefers not to.”
“She a child?” I held the dress up to my body and arched a brow. “A large child?”
He scratched his stubbled jaw. “Nah. She’s a few years younger. Twenty, I think?”
“You didn’t sleep with her, did you?”
His hand fell to his side as his jaw worked furiously. “Fuck no.”
“So, she’s a blonde, then?”
“Red-head,” he corrected, narrowing his eyes on me. “And Tallie, which is her name, is my best friend’s little sister.” Something happened as he looked at me, making his angry features fall. “I’ll see if she can come by sometime. You two would actually get along real good, I think.”
“Tallie?”
“Tallulah. But only Grant calls her that.”
I gave a longhmm. “If I didn’t know any better, it sounds like you’re trying to set me up with a friend.”
He smiled and tucked a few strands of wet hair behind my ear. “Friends are good. Besides, she likes fucking shit up, too. You two could bond over that.”
“You know, your truckhasbeen calling my name.”
He smirked. “I bet it has. But, maybe next time I piss you off, you can go spend a few grand on clothes to call your own. Use and abuse that card I gave you.”
I lifted a navy blue linen dress from the bag and ripped the tag off. “Don’t want to fuck me in your best friend’s sister’s clothes?”
“I’d fuck you in a potato sack, I don’t give a damn about that. I just want to make you happy.” He wrapped his arms around me, forcing the towel to fall from my breasts and over his forearms. His eyes turned near-black as he pressed his body into mine. “Now, Mrs. Roland, I have an appointment out there in the living room that I’d love for you to be a part of. So why don’t you get this hot little ass of yours dressed and covered before I tell Grant we’re rescheduling so I can fuck my wife all day long?”
I swallowed thickly and nodded.
“Good girl.” Carver pressed a kiss to my forehead, and seconds later, he was gone, leaving me with a dress in my hand and my legs nothing more than limp noodles beneath me.
The last time I’d seen Grant was the night Carver and I signed the contract. I’d flirted with Grant, but only because I knew it would piss Carver off. But hearing him and Hayes were, once again, all he had left, made my stomach twist and anxiety turn into nerves that made my hands shake.
I snapped out of it and dressed as quickly as I could, then ran into the bathroom to brush my hair out, scrunching the ends though I knew the humidity wouldn’t allow many waves to stay.
A soft buzzing sound filled the hallway as I left our bedroom, and as I neared the living room, it grew louder. Carver was straddling a fold-out chair, his muscular frame hunched over the back while Grant sat behind him with a tattoo gun in hand.
Carver’s blue eyes swept over my body as I got closer. He murmured something over his shoulder to Grant, whose eyes flashed up to me instantly. The buzzing stopped, and Grant straightened in his chair.
“Well, well. Nice to see you again, Lyra. Or, should I be callin’ you Mrs. Roland?”
