“You’re not kicking me out the door?”

She sat, confused. “Why? Do you think I expected you to punch Mick or something?”

Asa snorted. “He’s got the hardest fucking head I’ve ever punched. It really would have hurt, so I’m glad he saw reason.”

“You’ve already punched him? In the past? Was it about me?”

Asa sat and she exhaled hard at the sight of his abdominal muscles bunching as he did. And of course the cock. And the bar.

He stole a hard, fast kiss. “When you look at me like that I want to fuck you and cuddle you all at once. It’s confusing. Anyway. It wasn’t about you. Some guys need to be punched in the face from time to time. He’s one of them. I’m probably one of them too. But I wasn’t asking if you wanted me to leave because I didn’t punch Mick. You just admitted you know I’ve brawled around. You’re not the going-out-with-a-brawler type. Aren’t you turned off by that?”

“You’re not the first person to say I’m confusing. It’s a flaw.” She laughed when he stole another kiss. “I know who you are to me. And that’s what counts. If you used all that to threaten or harm me it’d be different. But you don’t. You like to punch people who appear to be okay with punching and being punched, and while I admit to being totally confused by it, it’s who you are. I like the Asa I’ve come to know over the last seven months.”

He paused, thinking. “So you wouldn’t freak if I told you about the bare-knuckles fight league Duke and I are in? I guess Mick now too. Which needs to happen because he’s better than all of us.”

“God, I think you just got the same look you do when you see my boobs. I’m going to get a complex. Maybe I need to start punching people. Do you need a moment alone to think about your team’s extra-special new knuckles?”

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected from her when she’d opened the door earlier. Generally, unanswered texts said, Leave me the fuck alone, I’ll let you know when I’m ready to talk to you. Or she could have been asleep and that’s why she hadn’t texted him back. But the truth was, he’d figured it was the former instead of the latter.

He’d come anyway because he’d let himself want sleeping next to her and it had been yanked away from him. And because her temper was so fucking hot he couldn’t help but poke at her a little.

She’d listened to what he’d said about Mick and had been kind. Asa knew Mick well enough to be sure his friend would be one of PJ’s biggest fans inside a month. Oh sure, she’d make him pay a little, especially if Mick didn’t give it enough grovel. But that would only make him like PJ more.

And then she’d let him come into her bedroom and hadn’t even flinched when she’d brought up that brawl he’d been in. Duke had broken his ring finger on his left hand and Asa’d had bruised ribs and a black eye for a few days.

“Did you think I’d run off screaming and crying? Do you really believe I’m so fragile that I didn’t understand what sort of man you were before I let you in between my thighs? Or did you think I just was so hot for your cock I didn’t care? I was hot for your cock, by the way. Still am. But it doesn’t surprise me you’d willingly let someone punch you in the face. Please tell me you at least take your piercing out of your nose first.”

He caught her hand, bringing it to his mouth to kiss her palm. “I don’t know what I expect from you sometimes. You’re something entirely new to me.”

Her smile softened. “I may not have done everything you have, but I’m not fragile. If everyone in your fight group is there willingly and you all get something from it, I don’t care. It’s not like you’re rampaging through Seattle beating up passersby.”

Ah. “I don’t think you’re fragile. At first, yes, because you’re so pretty and blond and young – and I already apologized for that, so don’t frown – but anyone who’s been around you for longer than ten minutes wouldn’t think you were fragile.”

She waved a lazy hand. “I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to be the person my father would finally see. Finally listen to. I dressed like I was expected to. Did what I was expected to. And then I just… I dropped out of college.” She snorted a laugh. “I dropped out of college and you’d have thought I burned someone’s house down. Anyway. I wanted to prove myself on the job. I didn’t want to go to college. I wanted to learn things differently and so I tried to be the best I could at Colman.

“I’ve been working so hard to prove myself their way. But they never considered me capable. I can sell lots of tires. I was top-notch at it, and they’ll miss that, probably. But I can guarantee my uncle and my father haven’t even considered how shitty and paternalistic it was to tell me I was only allowed to make my mark at Colman in a way they defined for me up front. They think I’m fragile and useless and silly. And I’ve spent years trying to change that. So. Yes, I have a button about it, and that’s why.”

He pushed up to sit in the middle of the bed. “Panties off and get in my lap.

She complied quickly and Asa sighed happily as she wrapped her legs around his waist and settled on his lap as he started the story.

“In high school I had a job at a florist. I worked in the mornings when they got their flower shipment. Up at five, and then I could work a few hours before my first class. I learned then that a lot of roses we used in arrangements were pretty and all, but they barely had a smell. But there was this climbing rosebush near the bus stop. In an empty lot, so it was something that drew your eye. The blooms were bright pink and they didn’t just open up, they seemed to explode outward with scent. They weren’t perfect like those faintly scented ones we sold for sixty bucks a dozen on Valentine’s Day. They were wild and heady and a thousand times better.”