“I wasn’t trying to change you.”
“I needed to change, Liv. Desperately. Inside and out. For myself. So don’t ever think what I done—gettin’ rid of the belly and all that, the tats, cutting the beard, a new job with Ram…none of it wasforyou, orbecause ofyou. It was for me, because I wanted to be a better person.”
“Lucas, I…” She swallowed hard. “You were already a good person. An amazing person.”
I snorted. “The fuck I was. Getting sober was nothin’ but survival. I’d have died if I didn’t quit. And starting to lose weight was the same thing—I’d have had another heart attack if I didn’t, and the next one woulda been fatal. A doctor flat out told me as much. The real work I been doing is what’s made me a better person.”
“Like what?”
I pulled my truck into a parking spot and shut off the engine. “Come outside.”
“What?”
“I’m in your parking lot. I drove here while we was talking.”
“Oh. Okay…um. Give me a minute to change into something appropriate.”
“Liv?” I spoke without thinking—without letting myself think. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Change. Just come out here like you are.” My next words tumbled out unbidden: “Unless you’re naked.”
“I’m not naked, Lucas.” A beat of silence. “You wish.”
I barked a laugh. “Damn right I do.”
Silence then, as we both realized what had just been exchanged between us. “Lucas…” A hint of disapproval tinged her voice.
“You know what, I ain’t gonna take it back, and I ain’t gonna apologize. You are a goddamn beautiful woman, and I ain’t gonna sit here and pretend I ain’t crazy fuckin’ attracted to you. Yes, Olivia Goode, Idowish I could see you naked. And a whole lot more than that, but I won’t shock you with the details.”
The silence from Olivia then made me wonder if I’d gone too far.
“I’ll be right down,” she whispered.
“I can’t wait.”
Click.
The wait was interminable, even though it couldn’t have been more than a minute. When I saw her, my heart stopped, and my lungs seized, and things got almighty tight between my legs. She was coming down the steps and trotting barefoot across the sidewalk, and she was dressed, if you could call it that, in little more than a wisp of white silk that was clinging to her breasts and hips, the hem at mid-thigh. Her hair was messy, sticking up in a million directions and that, almost as much as the silk nightie, turned me on so hard the frantic pace of my heartbeat worried me.
I made sure my doors were unlocked, and then she was in the cab with me, and her scent filled the truck and made me dizzy with its heady femininity. No perfume or lotions, just the natural scent of a woman.
She slid onto the seat, closed the door, and sat utterly still, staring at me. “Hi.”
I let my gaze rake over her—the nightie was thin, the silk pressing against her skin—her nipples poked against the shimmery white material and fabric gathered at the apex of her thighs, which were bare to a point of mouthwatering tease, and only the fact that she had them pressed together prevented me from seeing anything.
“Good goddamn, Olivia,” I breathed. “I didn’t think it was possible for me to want you any more than I already did, but now…” I had to swallow hard past the lump in my throat. “You’re so fuckin’ beautiful you make it hard to breathe.”
Her inky black hair slipped in front of her eyes, but she didn’t seem to notice—her eyes were glued to my torso, which was when I realized I’d forgotten a shirt. I’d lost quite a lot of fat in the last few months, so my chest and upper abdomen were taut and well-defined, and pretty muscular. My gut, just above my natural beltline, however, still needed some work but, according to Baxter, that was the most difficult place to lose fat, because it was the natural depository location for visceral fat and the stuff would hang on as long as possible, no matter what I did. Only lots of hard, consistent work, clean eating, and fasting would ever get rid of it, and only then well after the rest of me was taut and defined. I was proud of my work, though—proud of the body I’d carved out of the blubbery mess I’d been.
Her gaze raking eagerly and hungrily over me in that moment made every skipped meal and every bland salad, every barbell clean, deadlift, kettlebell snatch, every mile run, every wind sprint, barbell squat, burpee, and Turkish getup worth it.
“You have really worked hard, haven’t you?” she breathed. “You lookamazing.”
“Considering where I came from, physically speaking, I’d say I’ve made decent progress,” I said.
Her hand lifted, reached across the console, traced the tribal design on my bicep, and then her fingertips skated down to my forearm, to the first tattoo Rem had done.
