A SOFT GIGGLE FOLLOWED BY cursing causes me to stir. My eyes crack open and I find myself alone in an enormous bed with bright daylight pouring in on me. This is definitely a first. My past experiences with women have included me ducking out before they woke up to avoid any awkward encounters.
Everything is different with Vi.
I chuckle, amused by how I must look wrapped in her duvet. Honestly, who has crushed velvet anymore? I throw my legs over the edge of the bed and stretch while ruffling my hair. Fuck, I slept well. That’s quite different for me as well. I grab my jeans up off the floor and slide them on as I pad barefoot into the attached bathroom that I never even got around to seeing last night.
I’m stunned by the sight of a huge soaker tub resting in front of yet another floor-to-ceiling window. It faces north over the city, and a surge of possessiveness rushes over me as I envision Vi’s naked body covered in bubbles, bathing out in the open for all of London Bloody England to see. Surely she doesn’t use this bathroom. How the fuck does she think this is a good idea? I make a mental note to have a proper talk with her about window fixtures.
Fuck, Hayden. You need to put a pin in your brooding caveman.
A large, glass, walk-in shower with two stainless steel waterfall showerheads sits on the opposite wall. Straight ahead is a modern black and white double vanity sink.
“Bloody hell,” I say, marvelling a bit over all things Vi. Her style and her personality are all over this flat. Minimalist and strikingly beautiful, with an edge of surprise around every corner.
I relieve myself and head over to the sink to wash my hands. She obviously is not hard up. Truthfully, as far as money goes, we are similar. My father’s furniture distribution centre made us very comfortable growing up. My mother was able to stay home with us when we were kids, so we had a traditional English upbringing.
But Vi being raised solely by a former professional footballer turned manager had to be different. I know from news articles that her brother Gareth makes millions a year. It’s not even the money that impresses me, or the fame. It’s the lifestyle. I wonder what Vi does for fun outside of her brothers’ very public lifestyles?
It appears she’s trying to gain some independence from her family, whereas I’m relying on mine more than ever. Last night with her was definitely unexpected. I was trying to convince myself I had to leave her be and avoid her at all costs, but seeing her at the club with Ethan pushed me over the edge. I realised in that moment that if it isn’t Ethan, it will be somebody else. That’s when I knew just how tightly Vi has me in her grips. Possessiveness isn’t a trait I’m familiar with, but fuck I feel it when it comes to her.
Vi is refreshing. She’s beautiful and warm, a bit quirky, and a mess in some of the most adorable ways. And she’s so fucking charming that I can hardly stand being away from her, even right now. I pop a new tip on her electric toothbrush, brush my teeth, wash my face, and then quickly head out to find her. My body actually aches to touch her again. Sleeping with her all night was oddly calming.
I used to sleep with Reyna occasionally during our dark and twisted time together. She’d have these horrid reoccurring dreams, and I was her anchor to help bring her back down to reality. I rarely fell asleep at her flat because all I could do was stew about the fact that I was falling for her and could never bring myself to tell her.
Now, after only one week with Vi, I’m laying everything out on the table. Fucking therapy has ruined my alpha bloke status.
The large glass patio door in the living room is wide open and I see Vi outside, walking carefully with a large dog bowl full of water. Suddenly, Bruce bounds toward her from the other side of the deck. She cries out for him to stop, but it’s too late. His momentum is out of control. He clobbers into her, and the bowl and Vi both go flying into a slopping heap on the ground.
“Bugger…Fuck a duck, Bruce!” she cries as he pounces on top of her until she’s forced back on her arms. He laps happily at her face, shoving his nose against her neck. “You vile monster! I’m getting you in classes. I mean it. You’ve pushed me for the last time!”
I chuckle quietly, crossing my arms and leaning against the doorway to watch her. She’s dressed in a tiny pair of black spandex shorts and a loose white tank. My dick stirs when she stands up and turns and I get a full-frontal glimpse of her. A crystal clear outline of a pair of pert pink nipples shows through the wet front of her tank.
She starts giggling as Bruce licks water off her leg. “Stop buttering me up, beast. It won’t work.”
My eyes twinkle at her with an affection I feel everywhere in my body. “You know you’re not fooling anyone,” I say from the doorway.
She jumps and her blue eyes fly up to me in surprise. “What do you mean?” She awkwardly tugs her wet top away from her breasts. Her blonde locks are hastily scraped up into a high ponytail in that “I just rolled out of bed” way.
“You can call him all the ghastly names in the book, but it doesn’t take a mind reader to know how much that beast means to you.”
“Well, don’t tell him.” She covers his ears and whispers, “If he thinks I like him, he’ll be even more of an arse.”
I smile and stride out onto the patio, dropping down on one of the white lounger chairs, absently realising this is the most comfortable I’ve ever felt around a woman the morning after sleeping together. Or not sleeping together I guess you’d say.
“Where did you get Bruce?” I ask, propping my hands behind my head and squinting up at her. “I’d envision you as more of a Cavalier King Charles spaniel type of bird. Or maybe a pug.”
Vi’s eyes trail from my face, to my bare chest, to my unbuttoned trousers where my white Calvin Klein boxer briefs are revealed. Finally, she looks up at me, shaking her head and answers, “Sort of a favour to an old neighbour. She passed away last year. The family couldn’t take care of him, so I offered. She was a huge Batman fanatic, so technically his full name is Bruce Wayne.”
I half smile. “What a great name for a dog. Does he have super powers? Aside from the ferocious tackling and licking?”
“If by super powers you’re referring to giant-sized craps, then yes, he is powerful.” She huffs out a laugh and drops down on the seat next to me, mindlessly pulling her shirt away from her to dry.
I scrunch my nose up. “Oh, Bunny. You always manage to surprise me.”
“What on earth is with the bunny nickname?” She pauses her action to place her hands on her hips. “Is it a term of endearment? Or shall I start calling you the schoolyard bully?”
“It’s a compliment,” I smirk. “You like to stamp your foot when you’re frustrated, like a bunny. And I find it sexy as fuck.”
She raises her eyebrows with excitement. “I can’t decide if I find that creepy or charming.”
I chuckle good-naturedly. “I do my best to walk the line in all things creepy and charming. Like right now, I’m not even staring at your sexy nipples that are showing off clear as day through your tank top. Never mind, I lied. Now I am.”
Her eyes turn to saucers and she crosses her arms over her chest. “Shit, I had forgotten.”
“No need to be shy now. I became well acquainted with your nipples last night if you recall.” I waggle my eyebrows at her suggestively.
Her eyes narrow. “Are you this cheeky with all your girls?”
I cock my head at her in surprise. “Are you my girl?” I’m not asking because I’m shocked. I’m asking out of genuine curiosity. I want her to be my girl with every fibre in my body. But there’s a layer of me that wants to repel away from her and everything she represents to me.
She swallows hard. “I didn’t mean…Of course I wasn’t inferring…We’ve just started—”
“Look, Vi. I’ll stop you right there,” I start, twisting so my feet are on the ground and we’re facing knee-to-knee. “I need to talk to you before we go any further with whatever this is between us. I’d rather be open and honest about my past, which, surprisingly, comes rather natural for me when I’m talking to you.”
“Surprisingly?” she asks just as Bruce trots over to her for a fondle. She mindlessly pets him while looking intently at me.
“I don’t know if it’s therapy that’s changed me or you, but I never liked sharing things about myself. I never did it, as a matter of fact. Ever. I just kept things bottled up. Even with Reyna, whom I considered my best friend back then. She knew relatively nothing about me.”
“What is the story with you and her? What kind of friends were you if you didn’t share things with one another?” she asks, her eyes tightening around the edges.
“The physical kind,” I reply honestly, watching her reaction carefully and feeling slightly annoyed that I don’t see the green-eyed jealousy I was hoping for. “Rey and I always had this way of mucking through life together. Like a soldier on the battlefield, it’s all a lot less scary when you have someone standing right beside you on the front lines. But out of nowhere, or at least it felt that way to me, Rey wanted out of the dark place we’d found each other in. She started pulling away from me.”
“Reyna fell in love with Liam.”
I shrug my shoulders and shake my head at the fact that Vi is completely oblivious to the pain those two names together caused me while I was in rehab. “Yes. That’s exactly what happened. I wasn’t even aware that Rey and Liam had a history of some sort. Did you know Liam used to date my sister, Marisa, back at Oxford?”
“I had no idea.”
“Well he did. I don’t know the details…It’s probably a story that could fill an entire book. Regardless, it is funny we’re talking about Rey right now, considering she’s a large part of day one on my countdown.”
Vi’s eyes widen. “Your final countdown day? How so?”
I sigh heavily, feeling the familiar aching in my chest that I feel every time I transport myself back to that night.
This is it, Hayden. This is the final day of your Countdown Challenge. You’re strong enough for this. Don’t hold back now.
“The night of the gala, I was completely wasted. As you know from the other days I described, things had been going from bad to worse for me. I’d been drinking most of the day because I had it in my head that I was going to do it that night. I was going to kill myself.” I pause, swallowing hard. Damn, those last two words are still hard to say. “But I started having second thoughts. Namely because of Reyna and how awful we’d last left things. So I thought maybe if I saw her just one last time, something would click. Something would make sense again. She’d see me differently, or I’d see myself differently, and I could get out of that place in my mind.”
“But it didn’t work,” Vi says softly. Her eyes are trained on my cuff-covered wrists.
“No. Our conversation was painful, horrid, awful shit.” I shrug helplessly. “I fell in love with her. It’s that simple. And she was in love with Liam. And Theo was in love with Leslie, and it just seemed like everybody around me was getting on with their lives except me.”
Vi nods thoughtfully. “How are you with Rey now?” Her blue eyes watch me with a deep sympathy that I feel in my heart.
“Doc labels Rey as a trigger for me. He says it’s best not to engage with her any more than casual acquaintances.” I pause for a moment before I admit, “I have actually revealed more personal information to you in one week than I ever did in three years of friendship with Rey.”
Vi inhales sharply. “How is that possible, Hayden?”
I shake my head. “Rey was a huge part of my life for so many years, but it was mostly our grief that maintained our friendship. Not our true selves.”
“I’m so sorry, Hayden.”
“That’s why I have to protect myself, Vi. From alcohol, from pills, from depression—”
“From me?” she finishes my sentence.
I shake my head earnestly as I take her hand in mine, twining our fingers together. I note the difference in skin tones, from her creamy complexion to my olive tone, and silently marvel at this simple gesture. Feeling her soft hand in mine is a sense of life I might never have experienced.
“I don’t want to protect myself from you,” I whisper in answer to her question. “But caring for someone more than myself terrifies me. I can’t slip back into the darkness, Vi. There are too many people here that I want to live for. Marisa, my family…you.”
She looks up through her low, dark lashes. “But we’ve just met.”
“I know, but I feel something when I’m around you that I have never felt in all my life, Vi. I want to dive in with you and figure it out. I want us to be something. But I don’t want to fall into another Reyna situation where I use you as a crutch. You’ve heard my countdown. I’ve completed my challenge. I don’t want to be seen as damaged anymore.”
“I don’t see you that way!” she exclaims and stands up. She moves over to me and pushes me back in my chair, straddling me so I can look straight into her ocean blue eyes. “I don’t think you’re damaged. I think you’re beautiful.”
I smile—genuinely smile—for what feels like the first time in years. “I think that’s my new favourite thing about you. Mostly because it’s about me.”
She laughs and swats me across the chest while mumbling something about me being a narcissist.
I grab her hand before she can move off of me and stare deeply into her eyes. “My list of favourite things about you grows every time I’m with you.”
Her head tilts to the side as she looks at me thoughtfully. “But what about your plant? And your dog?” Anxiety fleets over her face.
“Maybe I can just help you with yours.”
She smiles. A soft, sexy, secretive smile. The kind of smile where she’s not celebrating a win, but encouraging the removal of a loss. Her cheeks flush a rose hue that makes her look like she’s just returned from a jog. I can’t contain myself another second. I pull her lips to mine and push all of my feelings into this one simple act. All the feelings I’ve been hiding from the world. All the secrets. All the pain. All the loss…
…and I let it go.
And I realise with delirious happiness, that kissing Vi is different. Every. Single. Time.
As I walk Hayden to my lift, there’s a small part of me that fears he’ll change his mind about us as soon as he walks out the door. He’ll decide I’m not worth the risk and that he doesn’t want to pursue a relationship with me, if that’s even what he’d call it. He sees himself as damaged, and I see him as beautiful. His soul speaks to mine on some deep, unnerving level and I crave him. I crave his presence, his mood, his smirk. Everything.
Instead of pushing the down arrow button, Hayden turns on his heel and pulls me into him, resting his back against the wall and holding me close.
“Are you close to your brothers?” he asks, his eyes scanning my neck as he begins dropping soft kisses on my shoulder.
My body tenses a bit, and I pull back to eye him warily. “Why do you ask?”
He shrugs halfheartedly. “Just curious. You said you go to your dad’s with all of them for a Sunday dinner every week, and that seems like something a close family would do.”
The curious look in his eyes makes me feel more comfortable about opening up about my family. I don’t get the impression he’s curious about my brothers. More so, he’s curious about what our family dynamic is like to compare to his own.
“Well, it’s best you know now that I am annoyingly close to my brothers. Like I said, I still see them every Sunday. Not to mention they like to pop over here whenever they feel like being little sods and want to torment me or need a mediator for one of their stupid fights.”
He chuckles softly. “Do you have a favourite?”
I squint as I consider his question. “Not really a favourite. Rather, I appreciate them all for different reasons. I like Booker when I need someone to confide in; I like Cam and Tanner when I need a laugh; and I like Gareth when I need help.”
“What do you mean by help?”
I shrug my shoulders. “He’s my big brother. He’s protective, and I know he will do anything for me at any time. Last year, I was in a crap situation with my ex, and Gareth nearly went to jail defending me. He could have ruined his career reacting the way he did. It was dangerous and scary, but it’s touching to know he’d risk anything for me.”
Hayden’s eyes harden and he tightens his grip around me. “What happened?”
“Oh, God, nothing all that original. Pierce was this guy I had been dating for a while and he started cheating on me. The affair was all over Chigwell because the woman was the wife of a famous footballer. And, no, I will not tell you which one.”
“Wasn’t even going to ask,” he replies, his eyes trained on me, silently urging me to continue.
His reaction gives me a secret thrill, knowing that what he cared about most in the story had everything to do with me and nothing to do with football.
“It was one of those ‘everyone in town knew but me’ situations, which made me feel like the biggest loser.”
“Why would that make you feel like a loser? He’s the prat in this scenario.”
I shrug, feeling a tad too transparent. “It’s nothing.”
Hayden frowns and his eyes grow scarily serious. “Tell me, Vi.”
Sighing, I look down at his chest and play with the buttons on his shirt as I reply, “It’s a daft fear I have. My dad and brothers have always been great at showing me how much they love me…They didn’t give me a complex or anything.”
“But…”
“But growing up, I always felt a bit invisible.”
“How is that even possible?” Hayden’s eyes pierce me with an intensity I feel everywhere, but I can’t look back at him as I continue my explanation. He sees me too well. I’m too exposed and this admission is too mortifying. But for some reason, I still want to share it. I need to share it. He’s shared so much with me. This is something I need to give him.
“My brothers’ friends would barely even look at me, let alone acknowledge my presence in a room. I sort of got it in my head that I was uninteresting. Generic, perhaps. I was content to live in their shadows and take care of things at home, so I just never felt it’d be easy for me to find someone to care about me. And the blokes I did date never had that special spark. I can’t help but think, ‘What is life if you don’t have anyone extraordinary to share your wine gums with?’” I laugh to lighten the tone a bit, but my brain refuses to slow down. “That’s why I was kind of happy to be lumped with Bruce. The little sod has become my best friend, and he notices everything I do. He’s around to test my latest food experiment or pounce on me when I’ve tripped. Bruce Hugs are quite good, really.”
I look up to see Hayden’s severe expression and immediately wish I could gobble up all the words and stuff them back in my mouth. An annoying sting of tears pricks in my eyes. Christ, I need to pull myself together. I sink my teeth into my lower lip and do my best to stave off my emotions.
“Oh, God, I make myself sound like a sad, desperate cow. I’m sorry. I was just rambling away with the fairies or something. Ignore me. You better get going anyway because I’m going to be late—”
My words are snuffed out by Hayden’s hard and urgent lips. He twirls us around so I’m up against the wall as he presses every determined inch of his body to mine with a force that he wants me to feel everywhere. His tongue tastes like man, and goodness, and desire all wrapped into the most perfect Hayden flavour.
The kiss is broken all too suddenly when Hayden pulls back and murmurs against my lips, “Remind me to send a thank you card to your brothers.”
“What on earth do you mean?” I ask, out of breath from his assault on my blabbing mouth.
“Vi,” Hayden replies seriously as he pulls back enough so I can see his whole face, “you are any man’s fucking fantasy. The only reason you felt invisible is because your brothers probably threatened bodily harm to anyone who dared to look at you.”
I scoff and roll my eyes. “They are certainly overprotective, but I promise you that even they can’t scare away every man in existence.”
Hayden purses his lips skeptically. “Tell me, did that Pierce prat know your brothers? Was he a mate of theirs?”
“Not at all! He was a slimy DJ who worked at a club in Chigwell. He ran in a completely different circle.” I blanch at my embarrassingly poor choice in a man, especially when I’m staring into the eyes of Hayden.
He chuckles. “I bet your brothers were big fans of him.”
“Oh yeah, they’re proper mates now. They go paintballing together every Tuesday,” I giggle.
Hayden begins kissing me like it’s a reflex. Like the sound of my laughter forces him to attack. But the attack is most welcome and quickly turning into a kiss that’s going to end with clothing shed.
I lift my leg to wrap around his hip, but he pulls away. He swallows and punches the button to the lift. It opens instantly and he steps inside with a tortured, heated look on his face.
“I’ll call you,” he states, his voice gruff with arousal.
I nod stupidly. What else can I do with this mysterious, dark, sexy man of mine?