Lover Enraptured: Thieves of Aurion, Book 2 (7 page)

Probably. Though not until she was upstairs later and out of sight of prying eyes. There was also a better-than-decent chance she’d polish off the remaining bottles of Larry’s.

Aw, damn it. She already did that last night. Hence the pounding headache that’d refused to grant her a moment’s peace all day. Another disturbing but not entirely unpleasant side effect from the alcohol was the dream she’d had about Jerrick. Recalling it, she frowned and leaned her hip against the display of handcrafted bath salts.

Odd that she’d dreamed of Jerrick the night before he crashed back into her life. Then again, she
had
spotted him at the Twisted Thorn. No doubt it’d played a huge part in her spinning nocturnal fantasies about him. Not that she didn’t already do that on an aggravating basis. But this dream had been particularly vivid, though not overtly sexual like the others. Despite that, her lips tingled at the memory of his phantom kiss.

For the second time that day, she pressed shaky fingers to her mouth. A loud tap rattled the door behind her, and she jumped. Pulse revving, she ground her teeth. So the bastard had decided to make an appearance after all. Sucking in a deep, steadying breath, she pivoted.

As predicted, a familiar face waited on the other side of the front door, but it wasn’t the one she’d expected. Blinking, she stared at Thane Pearce. He raised his hand and waggled his fingers in greeting.

Oh crap, was their date for
tonight
? She racked her brain, trying to remember. Damn Larry the Fairy and his intoxicating wiliness. Biting the bullet, she hurried to the entrance and slid the bolt free. “Uh, hello.”

“I was passing by and noticed your light on. I’m not interrupting your work, I hope?”

Apparently their date wasn’t this evening. She fizzled a silent breath of relief. “No, not at all.” Imagine that, a guy who actually gave a rat’s ass about her plans. How quaint and refreshing. “Come in.”

He stepped past the threshold, and their arms brushed. She waited for the shivers of excitement to leap across her skin the way they always did at Jerrick’s smallest touch.

Nothing.

It was ridiculous and unfair. Thane was an exceptionally handsome man. There should be a spark there, damn it.

His gaze unabashedly curious, Thane surveyed his surroundings. It dawned on her then that she hadn’t invited him in last night. Apparently Jerrick wasn’t the only insufferably rude jerk in the equation. “Would you like a tour?”

“Only if you have time.”

That she had plenty of. Refusing to mope over the pathetic reality, she guided him through the store, attempting to keep her enthusiasm to a minimum when he questioned her on the various stock artfully arranged throughout the shop. If given full rein, she could ramble on obnoxiously about her business, particularly if some poor, unsuspecting soul started her on a roll.

She risked a peek at Thane and noted that his eyes hadn’t turned glassy. Yet. “Any luck with the storefront search?”

“My real estate broker showed me a couple promising leads today. Nothing I’m prone to jump at and make an immediate offer on though.”

“You’re better to take your time. It took four months for this place to land on the market. I’m glad I didn’t settle for less than what I wanted.”

“True. I’m a firm believer in going after what you truly want.”

Did she imagine it, or did his eyes glow a tad more intensely after that statement? Swallowing against the uncomfortable lump lodged in her throat, she broke their locked gazes.

“I’m really happy you invited me to dinner, Avily.”

She rubbed the nape of her neck and resisted the urge to squirm. “Speaking of that—”

“I’m looking forward to getting to know you better.”

“There isn’t much more to discover about me. I’m an open book.”
I’m a filthy liar.

“I highly doubt that. In fact, I find you extremely intriguing.”

“You don’t get around much, do you?”

He chuckled. “Why do you find it unbelievable that I could be immensely attracted to you?”

“Whoa. You didn’t mention anything about immense attraction.”

“I did.”

She tossed up her arms. “Yeah, a
second
ago.”

His mouth quirked at one corner. “But I’ve been thinking it since the moment I met you.”

I should be swooning right now. What the hell is wrong with me?
If it had been Jerrick telling her this heady, heart-pounding stuff, she’d be putty at his feet.

Furious at that knowledge, she rubbed her arms and restlessly paced in front of the end rack of sachets. The lavender and chamomile bundles were doing a crappy job of soothing her stress.

“Did I say something wrong?”

She glanced in Thane’s direction and took in the worried uncertainty pinching his brow. A heavy blanket of guilt and weariness settled over her. He’d been nothing but charming and attentive in the short span she’d known him. For gods’ sake, he’d tackled a thief in order to get her coin purse for her. He was the nicest man on the planet, and he professed to be attracted to
her
? She was the queen of idiots for not jumping his bones before he regained his senses.

Hell, maybe that’s exactly what she should do. There was always the chance she wasn’t feeling any earthshaking chemistry between them because she was too blinded by her stupid unrequited love for Jerrick. She needed to prove to herself she was putting him behind her. That he no longer held her captive beneath his spell. She would
not
resign herself to a lifetime of sexy dreams that left her unfulfilled and a tightly held faded memory of a kiss that’d rocked her world.

Why settle for those measly offerings when her days could be filled with real world-rocking kisses…starting right this instant.

Her focus set determinedly on Thane’s full, masculine lips, she advanced on him.

He offered her a wary look. “Should I be worried right now?”

“Not at all.”

“Are you sure? Because your expression is rather fierce—” The remainder of his words broke off with a grunt as she stood on tiptoe and pressed her mouth to his. His eyes remained wide and unblinking for a long moment before drifting shut. A low groan rumbling through his chest, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, drawing her closer. His lips parted beneath hers, and the sweep of his tongue invited her to open to his gentle coaxing. She met his tongue in a tentative glide.

Okay, this wasn’t horrible. In fact, far as damn good kissers went, Thane deserved a gold star. He stroked a hand through her hair and tilted her head, deepening the kiss in the process.

A gruff clearing of a throat to the right of them broke through the temporary haze of pleasantness. Jerking out of Thane’s hold, she glanced in the direction of the noise.

Her gaze locked with Jerrick’s. His features were set in an emotionless stone mask. Despite that, she swore she detected a glimmer of pissiness in his cold stare.

Good gods, was he
jealous
? Before her tiny niggle of giddiness could take root, Jerrick opened his mouth and effectively killed her momentary delusion.

“You forgot to order our dinner.”

Chapter Seven

“
Excuse me?
” Avi’s demand straddled the line of becoming a full-fledged fulminous roar.

Jerrick tried his damnedest to tune out the overwhelming desire to smash his fist into the nose of her kissing partner and instead focused on Avi’s livid expression.

What the devil did she have to be bloody angry about? She wasn’t the one who’d spent the longest three hours in history stuck in gridlocked traffic. She also didn’t waste another forty-five minutes going restaurant to restaurant in an attempt to track down one that
hadn’t
run out of food for the night, since the deli where he was supposed to pick up their meals insisted they’d never received an order. And to top it all off, she hadn’t been the one to walk in on the slobberfest going on in the middle of her goddamn store.

“You have a lot of nerve preaching to me about forgetting, Jerrick Hunter!”

“Why the hell are you shouting at me? I didn’t forget shit.”

“No? What happened to seven p.m.?”

“The drive back here took longer than I expected.”

She slammed her hands on her hips. “And what? Your fingers fell off, making it impossible for you to pick up a micro com and call me?”

Damn sassy woman. “We’ll discuss this later, Avi.”

“We have nothing to discuss. Period.”

The stranger who’d been groping Avily coughed into his fist. “Perhaps it’s best if I go.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Avily said between clenched teeth.

“Yes, he does,” Jerrick countered in an equally firm voice.

Deciding to heed Jerrick rather than Avily, the man leaned down and bussed her cheek before granting Jerrick a wary eye and walking toward the entrance.

Her steely glare pinned to Jerrick’s face, Avily called after the departing stranger. “I’ll see you this weekend, Thane. We said Saturday for our date, right?”

Thane slid a hesitant look in Jerrick’s direction before nodding. “See you then.”

Jerrick waited for the door to close behind the man and then returned his focus to Avily. “What the fuck kind of name is
Thane
?”

Steam threatened to erupt from Avily’s ears. “Where do you get off thinking you can mosey in here and boss around me
and
my dates?”

“First of all, I don’t bloody
mosey
. Secondly, you damn well knew I was coming tonight.”

“Almost an hour late.”

He growled. For shit’s sake, you’d think they were married with the way she carried on. There was a terrifying thought. His days filled with endless nagging and bickering.

Followed by hot, sweaty sex every night when they made up. Jerrick quickly snipped that intoxicating image from his mind. “Would you like me to grovel at your feet? Or can we move onto something more productive—like focusing our heads on developing our cover for Club Rapture?” His thoughts veered to the garment and goodie bags he’d left on her checkout desk, and a hot wash of desire swamped him.

At least he wouldn’t have to fake horniness where Avi was concerned. If anything, keeping his raging lust for her in check would be the challenging aspect of this job.

Then again, she seemed to have no shortage of males desperate to get in her pants these days. “How many damn men do you have on the string, anyway?”

She blinked, apparently taken off-guard by his swift, surly change of topic. Fast as it’d appeared, her confusion vanished and morphed into a renewed surge of outrage. “That’s none of your damn business.”

He tamped down the primal alpha residing deep within him that wanted to beat his chest right before tugging Avi into his arms and showing her precisely how wrong she was.

Fuck and damnation, where was this possessive bullshit coming from? Certainly not from the part of his brain where reason and intelligence resided. “Everything that impacts you is my business.” That much at least was true. And completely undeniable. He’d undertaken his role as her mentor and guardian too many years ago to count, much less disregard. If there was one thing he didn’t do, it was shirk his responsibilities.

Avi snorted. “I’m not a kid anymore, Jer. You can stop treating me like one.”

If only he did view her as a child. His life would be immensely easier, and he wouldn’t be walking around with a perpetual hard-on. “I swore to your mother I’d watch over you. I’m not going back on my word, no matter how much you’d like me to.”

“You really need to stop taking it as your duty to watch over every damn person on the planet.”

Shit, ain’t that the truth.

A calculating gleam entered Avi’s eyes. “You had no problem disappearing off the face of Aurion for five years. If not for Dash coming back in the picture, I doubt you and I would even be speaking right now.”

“Just because you didn’t see me didn’t mean I wasn’t around.”

She stacked her arms in front of her, framing her mouthwatering cleavage. “You are such a freakin’ stalker.”

He smothered a chuckle at her sulky glare. “There’s a world of difference between surveillance and stalking.”

“They both start with an S and reek of BS.” She jabbed a finger in the direction of his chest. “Just like you.”

“Don’t push my buttons, Avi. I’m not in the mood for it.” Witnessing some shmuck kissing the living daylights out of her tended to make him grouchy. “How long have you been seeing Thane?” He made sure to shovel plenty of hostility on the man’s name.

“I told you, my personal life is none of your concern. Besides, I’m sure you probably already know, since you’ve been ‘
surveilling
’ me all this time.”

Her insistence on tagging finger quotes onto the word surveilling chapped his ass, but he kept the stream of swear words that wanted to escape caged behind his teeth. “I’ve never seen him before tonight. Hence my curiosity.”

“Oh, is that what we’re calling it these days? Curiosity?”

If he was a little more brain dead, he would have given in to the urge to kiss the smirk from her luscious mouth. “I don’t think you should see him anymore.”