In me.

  On me.

  Making that dream of mine become a cold, hard reality.

  I cough to hide the shock of my own immediate thoughts.

  “What do you mean, where do I want you?”

  He flashes a grin that could create world peace. “I’m sleeping here.”

  And right as he says it, as if on cue, a cheer goes up in his flat next door.

  “You can’t. You have a house full of people.”

  “And?”

  “And you just can’t leave them.”

  He glances over his shoulder to my closed front door and shrugs. “Yeah, I can. Easy.” He dusts his hands as if to reinforce what he says. “Besides, my mates throw parties there all the time when I’m gone. They’re potty trained and they know how to lock up when they’re done.” His laugh borders on a giggle.

  All I can do is shake my head. “But . . .”

  “Sounds to me like they’re getting along just fine over there. Doesn’t seem like I’m needed. Besides, last party like this, I went to bed and a woman was there. In my bed,” he exclaims, eyes wide like a five-year-old seeing Santa on Christmas morning.

  “You poor baby. I’m sure you wanted nothing to do with her.”

  His chuckle is pure suggestion. “I mean . . . if you bring a horse to water.”

  I snort. “So that’s why you’re here? To avoid women in your bed?” I put a hand on my hip and give him the look all while hating the thought of anyone in bed with him.

  Guess the jealousy thing goes both ways, now, doesn’t it?

  “Nope.” He mimics my posture and straightens his shoulders as if he’s mocking me. “I’m here because one”—he holds a finger up—“I’m not interested and two”—another exaggerated motion of two fingers out—“you didn’t want to be there and I didn’t want you to be alone . . . so?” He shrugs like what he just said is nothing. He just rocked the world beneath my feet.

  “I don’t—I don’t understand.” I stand there blinking as if that’s going to help me comprehend that this arrogant, self-absorbed man left his own party because he was worried about me.

  And just about when my heart melts and I’m turned into a pile of goo, he yanks his shorts down—his underwear with them—and gives me an eyeful of a perfectly well-endowed man.

  “Oh my God.”

  “What?” He grins. “Haven’t you ever seen a dick before?”

  “No. I mean yes. I mean . . .” Not one that looks like that. Good lord. Good freaking lord. Definitely better than the dream. “Pull your pants up.” I startle. Maybe I take a second to do that because I’m busy staring, but I do startle. It’s more because I realize what I’m doing and not what he did. I hold my hands up to block any view of his pelvic region.

  The one with a very defined V of muscles, sculpted thighs, and happy trail that leads down to his cock.

  His laugh rings out, his grin wide. “It’s good, huh?” He looks down at himself and purses his lips. “I can’t decide if I’m a shower and not a grower or a grower even with all this already showing. There’s been much debate about it.”

  I fight my laugh. The seriousness with which he’s contemplating this while standing drunk and naked in my family room is too much to bear.

  So is my body’s visceral reaction to him.

  Yep, the ache is still there.

  “You debate this often?” I ask through the laugh.

  He puts his hands back on his hips again, eyes still angled downward. “I mean, not often. But sometimes. Hmm.” He concentrates. “I’m gonna go with this is what I’ve got to show but there’s definitely more when it grows.” He looks up at me and grins. “Do you agree?”

  “I—uh—Riggs—uh . . .” I just lift my hands up and shrug, refusing to give an answer or sneak another peek at the male perfection in front of me.

  He smacks his hands together. “Now that that’s settled, let’s get to bed.” He turns and stumbles as he hadn’t stepped out of his shorts pooled around his ankles. He laughs again.

  “You’re not sleeping on my couch naked.”

  “But I always sleep naked.”

  “Not here you don’t.”

  “Your bed then?” He starts walking down the short hallway, my groan following him. Then I see his ass and back. Is there anything on this man that’s not perfect?

  Jesus.

  He turns to look over his shoulder and catches me ogling. “Relax. I may be drunk, Gasket, but I also know how to joke.”

  I pick up his boxer briefs and shove them at him. “Underwear. First.” I point to the couch. “Then sleep.”

  He salutes me and the stern face he gives me is adorable. “Yes. Ma’am.” But he does as I say and puts his underwear on. “You’re no fun.”

  “I’m lots of fun. All the fun in the world. But I don’t want your bare ass on my couch.”

  His sigh is dramatic as he throws his shorts in the same pile as his shirt. Sure he’s dressed now, but I can still picture what that bulge is like beneath the dark blue boxer briefs.

  There’s another cheer from his flat, no doubt a late arrival. “Wow. You should really tell that guy next door to quiet down. His party is way too loud.”

  “Funny.”

  “I know. You forgot the handsome, sexy, and hung part.”

  “You’re going to hate yourself in the morning when you remember everything you’ve said.”

  “No, I won’t. I mean, yes, about the remembering, but no, about hating myself.”

  “You are a handful.”

  He laughs and adjusts his package so I have no excuse to mistake what his next words mean. “I’ve been told that a time or two.”

  “You. Couch.” I put my hands on his back and push him toward it. “Blanket’s right there.”

  “Don’t blame me if I get hot and when you wake up and I’m naked,” he slurs.

  “Then take the blanket off. Not your shorts.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Good idea.” He unceremoniously plops down on the couch and then makes a funny face the same time I hear the crinkle of my magazine. He pulls it out from beneath him and narrows his eyes at the Cosmopolitan folded in half to save the page I was reading last.

  Please make him be drunk enough that he doesn’t care.

  But his humph says he’s already noticed.

  Fuck.

  “How to own one’s sexuality.” He reads the title of the article out loud and lifts a lone eyebrow as he meets my eyes. My cheeks flush and damn if my nipples don’t harden at the look alone. “Will you look at that,” he murmurs. “First changing up the clothes tonight. Now this.” He holds the magazine up.

  “It’s just an article.”

  “It’s what the article says that I’m interested in.” He tosses it on the table and leans back and studies me. “I can teach you the same thing this article can, but my lessons are free. And hands-on.”

  Before I can respond, he lies down and pulls the blanket over him. He stares at the ceiling as I move about the room, turning lights off. It’s not until the room is bathed in darkness and I’m just about to walk down the hall that he speaks again.

  “This is the part where you can thank me, Camilla. Where you can get it off your chest before you fall asleep.”

  “Thank you for what?” I laugh the question out.

  “That no one was none the wiser over what you were wearing—or really, weren’t wearing—or commented on it.”

  “I had a stain on my sweatshirt,” I say.

  “I told you. Curves are sexy. And yours?” He kisses his fingers. “Are chef’s kiss hot.” He groans. “Fucking loved having my hands on you.”

  “Oh . . .” I don’t know what to say but by the time I do, Riggs’s gentle snoring fills the room.

  I stare at him through the darkness. He thinks my curves are sexy? That my body is hot?

  Do I want him to think about me that way when I’ve spent so long not wanting that kind of attention from anybody?

  Yes. I do want that. Very much so. But . . .

  I can teach you the same thing this article can, but my lessons are free. And hands-on.

  I know he’s drunk but as I drift off to sleep, the offer is as present in my mind as the taste of his kiss and the feel of his lips. Of the dream that I can’t shake from my mind.

  I want his hands on me. Again.

  More than I’ve wanted anything in a long time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Riggs

  I groan.

  My mouth tastes like the arse of a dead rhinoceros. Jesus.

  What kind of poison did Wills give me last night?

  Definitely not enough if . . . wait. This is not my flat.

  My eyes are wide open now as I scrub a hand over my face and through my hair. I mean, why does it look like my place?

  Did Chip and Joanna Gaines rob me while I slept?

  Not robbed, you dumb shit.

  Made over.

  Why do I even know who that is?

  Because this place looks like mine, but it’s different. Browns and neutrals and . . . I shift to a seated position, the blanket falling off my legs and onto the floor. I look around, disoriented and discombobulated, but if the status of my cock is any indication—horny as fuck.

  Pieces of last night come back to me. Celebrating another strong finish—in the points once again. Secretly happy that I—the number two—finished higher than Andrew, the number one.

  The welcome home party—my one cheat night for the month—with shots all around.

  Camilla.

  Kissing her.

  Noticing her—the clothes, the panic, the fucking incredible body wearing both.

  And there goes my cock getting even harder.

  My cock.

  It seems to be a recurring theme here. Front and fucking center.

  “Down boy,” I mutter.

  “What?” Camilla asks as she walks into the family room from the kitchen area. I had no idea she was there, and for my cock’s sake, it’s probably better that I didn’t.

  While her sweatshirt might be baggy again, her legs are bare. Like the long, shapely, and tan type of bare that begs me to stare.

  “Do you need something?” she asks as she stops in the middle of the room and studies me. “Water? Nurofen?”

  “No,” I grumble, voice gravelly and fuzzy head slowly clearing. “I said down boy.”

  Her eyes slide down automatically to my hard-on. It’s not like I can hide it. And she swallows forcibly.

  Another flashback hits me. I like to sleep naked.

  My pants off.

  Her eyes wide.

  Her smile fucking incredible.

  My chuckle is a low rumble. She meets my eyes again, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip. She knows I remember what happened. The whole nine yards.

  Or should I say the whole ten inches?

  “It’s not something I can help, you know,” I say, looking down at my lap and then back up with an unapologetic smile. “I just wake up and it’s there, doing its own thing, like it has a mind of its own.”

  “I know basic anatomy.” She’s flustered, and it’s freaking adorable.

  “And yet you stared last night.”

  She opens her mouth and closes it, caught in between acknowledging her wandering eyes and ignoring my comment altogether. “When you’re standing naked in my living room, I didn’t really have a choice.”

  “You’re supposed to say, it’s not like I could miss it. I mean, the least you could do is give the ego a little stroke.”

  “I think you’ve got that handled all on your own.” She moves toward the kitchen. “Coffee’s on if you want any.”

  Owning your sexuality. Another flashback.

  I look to the table where I tossed the magazine. Gone.

  With a grunt, I rise and follow her. The kitchen is the same layout as mine. Hers is just more put together in most aspects.

  “You’re more than welcome to help yourself,” she says motioning to the coffee, the milk, sugar, and mug out on the counter. “I have to get ready for work.”

  She walks out and as much as I want to follow her, coffee calls my name like a siren.

  That first sip is like heaven. The second has my head clearing. The third has me feeling like a new man.

  I walk out of the kitchen with thoughts of getting my shorts on but stop when I hear her fingernails clicking on a keyboard. She’s to the right of me at a desk of some sort with those long legs crossed beneath it.

  “I thought you had to get ready for work.” I rest my hip on the edge of the table next to her without asking and pick up what looks like a paperweight. I study it and then set it back down.

  “I have to do a couple of things first.” She moves the paperweight back to where I picked it up from.

  “Like?” I move the pen beside her laptop, click the top a few times so the ink goes in and out, and then set it back down on a different place on her desk.

  “Stuff.” She picks up the pen and moves it back to where it was.

  “So, in other words, you’re avoiding me again.” I pick up her Post-it notes, fan through the pad, and then set it down behind me.

  Are you going to reach around me to get it?

  “Not avoiding you.” She goes to reach out on instinct and then realizes she’s either going to have to touch me or go through me. She huffs and gives a frustrated shake of her head.

  “No? Then why won’t you look at me?” I move the paperweight again back to where I moved it the first time.

  “Will you stop?” she snaps but finally looks at me.

  “There she finally is,” I murmur above the rim of my mug. “Good morning, Camilla.”

  What the fuck are you doing, Riggs?

  Her face softens. An expression glances through her eyes that I can’t quite interpret. “Good morning. You’re on my desk, Riggs.”

  “I am?” I make a show of looking around. “Wow. Am I the arsehole or what?” I waggle my eyebrows.

  “Witty.”

  “I know.” I grin as she shifts her chair, which turns her to face me, and those legs of hers, one crossed over the other, are front and center. “First, last night and now this morning. All this skin. Should I be worried that you’re not feeling well?”

  She shrugs but I can see the set of her jaw. Clearly this is a big deal to her for reasons unbeknownst to me. “Maybe you proved something to me last night.”

  “Like?”

  “Like I can trust you.”

  I don’t know why her words cause a funny pressure in my chest, but they do. I never set out to make Camilla Moretti like me, let alone trust me, but the sap in me, who rears his pathetic head like once or twice a year, thinks it feels pretty damn good.

  “If a man has to prove why you can’t wear what you want, he’s not the type of man you should be wasting your time, let alone a thought on.”

  “Don’t you have a flat to go clean up?” she asks, clearly suggesting the discussion is over.

  I decide to play along. Grin. Reach out to tug on a piece of her hair. “Are you asking me to do the walk of shame? That’s kind of hard to do when nothing happened.”

  I rise from my perch and am not immune to her darted glance at my package.

  “Like you would remember if it did or didn’t,” she says, leaning back in her chair and meeting my eyes.

  I lean down, put my hands on both sides of her chair, and meet her eyes. “I’d remember all right. Especially when it comes to you.” I pause. “I have a feeling you’re the kind of woman who leaves a mark.”

  “A mark?” Her eyes narrow and her head tilts. She’s having a hard time not letting her eyes wander.

  Perfect. Let’s help her along with that. I scratch an imaginary itch on my pec. Then another right at the top of my thigh. I may grunt a little too at an itch being satisfied.

  And fuck do I have one that needs to be satisfied.

  “Yes. A mark,” I say, catching her eyes as they snap up from my hand on my thigh.

  “Is that a good or bad thing?” she whispers.

  “I haven’t quite figured that out yet.” I stand to my full height—my junk so very close to her eye level. Pause. Chuckle. Then collect my shirt and shorts from last night before heading to the door.

  Another flashback hits me.

  I can teach you the same thing this article can, but my lessons are free. And hands-on.

  “Hey, Moretti?”

  She looks over the lid of her laptop at me. With the sun streaming in through the window, it looks like there’s a halo around her head. Her hair is messy and her face is naked.

  Fucking hell. She’s something else. More than something else. Beauty and brains.

  “Hmm?”

  “The offer still stands,” I say. I walk out the door, without turning back, and head to my flat and the disaster I’m no doubt walking into.

  I’d say it was worth it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Camilla

  “It’s good.”

  My mom’s warm laughter fills the line. “Good? That’s equivalent to fine. Have you been butting heads with Dad again?”

  “A few times, but nothing serious.”

  I stare out at the starting grid to the left of me. This particular track has the hospitality suite above the garage, so it affords me a wonderful people-watching vantage point of the pits below.

  Crew members talking shit to one another. A possible secret rendezvous between one of our pit crew members and one of Bickman’s PR minders, if the little disappearance behind a trailer is to be believed.

  And then there’s Riggs. Holy hell is there Riggs. He decided rather than just walk the track with Hank the one time, he was going to jog it again for part of his cardio.

  Shirtless.

  And now he’s standing down below me, his sweat-misted skin glistening in the bright sun, his red Moretti track shorts with a dark red stain from his sweat, and his hair in a messy disarray, talking to Ari about who knows what.

  But I’m not complaining.

  Not in the least.

  “What was that, Mom?” I ask, trying to un-distract myself.

  “I said, between you, me, and the fence post, he comes home every night bragging about how incredible you are. Your ideas. The way you see things. How well you articulate.”