Wild Hyacinthe (Crimson Romance) by Nola Sarina, Emily Faith

you for
you.
“And now there’s a homeless girl on your couch.”
    He frowned, surprised. “A homeless girl who has been stubbornly refusing my advances,” he reminded me.
    My heart pounded. Refusing his advances. So he really
did
want me. “I didn’t want you to think I was after your money. And I don’t know, I don’t exactly roll in your circle.”
    “I don’t have a circle,” he snapped with a hint of bitterness. “What circle do you roll in?”
    I snorted. “Uh . . . the circle of homeless people who park in campsites and hit deer while daydreaming about hot men whose advances they’re trying to stubbornly refuse?”
    Asher blinked, and then it was his turn to burst into laughter. “You can’t expect me to believe you hit the damn deer because you were distracted by
me.
”
    I summoned courage from that burn between my legs that Asher was making worse with each of his warm breaths washing over my skin. “I hit the damn deer while distracted by thoughts about you
naked.
”
    His eyes widened with shock, and I was sure mine did, too. Did I just say that? “I’m sorry,” I said. “I seriously have no edit button between what I think and what I say.”
    Asher broke into a grin so bright it was as if the sun were streaming across the couch. “Well, I’m thrilled for that. No one else gives it to me straight except Gypsy.”
    Oh. I never thought of my careless mouth as a good thing. But I supposed to a man who had everyone trying to please him all the time, it might be a refreshing change of pace.
    Asher Chain really liked me. I could hardly believe it, and my heart pounded harder.
    “I want to kiss you right now,” he said.
    “Then kiss me.” How I wanted it, too.
    He pulled an inch away. “Nope. I’m going to make the best impression on you I can, and right now I’ve got killer morning breath.”
    Ha! I smirked at him. I wasn’t the only one without an edit button. “I didn’t notice.”
    He slid away and stretched once he was on his feet, and I couldn’t help but gape, slack-jawed, at the morning hard-on protruding through his pants as he strolled to the bathroom. Holy. Fuck.
    “Make yourself at home,” he called over his shoulder, ruffling his short hair with one hand.
    As soon as the door to the bathroom clicked closed, I scrambled to my purse, dug out my toothbrush, and cleaned up over the kitchen sink. The cool water couldn’t subdue my screaming desire as I heard him start the shower. I admired the spacious kitchen, the black marble countertops.
    His whole lifestyle screamed elegance and class, with a darker edge to it—the Lamborghini, the black décor in an otherwise white space, and his bizarre tattoo. Even the stainless steel fixtures in the bathroom highlighted his masculinity, and I struggled not to picture him washing in the shower. Shirtless. I knew what he looked like in all his bare-muscled glory I’d seen so many times on the covers of fitness magazines in convenience stores, grinning with his knuckles wrapped in boxing tape, sunglasses on his face. To feel the archetypal man in the flesh, slick and hot from the shower . . . I pressed my lips together to stifle a sigh of desire. He
wanted
me.
    Coffee. I needed to make coffee. I flicked through cabinets until I found the filters and beans, ground them up and got it started.
    As the coffee maker trickled into the pot, I drummed my fingertips on the counter. He might want me now, but he’d offered his couch to me out of pity when he learned I had no place to call home. I couldn’t let myself think he wanted more than to do the right thing, with me. He was just that good of a guy, I figured: willing to offer up his space to someone who needed it.
    Such a total, complete package of a man. His masculinity was natural, not forced; a part of who he was, rather than a mask he wore to attract women. Nothing like the herds of testosterone in the bars.
    The shower shut off and I jumped, finding coffee cups and the cream from the