“Want to go for a swim before the food gets here?” Aero asked.

  I set my drink on the table between Dove and me. “Watch my drink for me?”

  She lowered her sunglasses and smiled. “By watching it, you mean drink it, then yes, I will watch your drink.”

  Aero reached his hand out to me, and I put my hand in his. “Behave while I’m gone, Dove,” I scolded.

  She pushed her sunglasses over her eyes and laughed lightly. “I’m pretty sure I am the one who should be saying that to you two. Have fun, kids.”

  Aero led me into the water, and we waded in until the water was up to our waists.

  “This is nice,” I sighed. I loved living in the South, but man, it could get freaking hot.

  “It’s good, babe.”

  I skimmed my hands over the water and looked up at him. “Can we play twenty questions?” I asked.

  He smirked and shook his head. “Is this a cute way to get more personal information from me?”

  “I mean, yeah. You weren’t supposed to catch on, though.”

  “What’s your first question, babe?”

  “How many tattoos do you have?” I asked.

  He smirked and shook his head. “I don’t know. You’re going to have to count them for yourself.”

  Hmm, I could do that. “Let’s just say you have a lot.” Aero’s chest, arms, and back were covered in tattoos.

  I like them.

  A lot.

  “Do I get to ask you one now?”

  I shrugged and flitted my hands over the top of the water. “Sure.”

  “How many tattoos do you have?”

  I looked down at my body and pursed my lips. “Well, two, and you can obviously see them.” I had a stack of books on my right calf and one of my favorite book quotes on my shoulder.

  “Sure there aren’t any hiding under your suit?”

  “Negative. What you see is what you get.”

  “Oh,” he laughed. “I’m going to get it.”

  “Question two,” I interrupted. I was still getting used to Aero flirting with me, so it was better if I just moved right along. “How old are you?” It was something I should already know, but I obviously didn’t.

  “Thirty.”

  Oh.

  OH.

  “I know I’m not supposed to ask a woman her age, but you know I gotta know how old you are.”

  “What is age but a number?” I tittered.

  “Babe,” he laughed. “It’s a number I am interested in.”

  “Uh, well.”

  “Higher or lower?” he asked.

  “Higher or lower to what?” I asked.

  “To thirty,” he clarified.

  I winced and squinted up at him. “Higher.”

  “Thirty-one.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Do you think I would be making you guess if I was only a year older than you?” I grumbled.

  “I don’t know, babe, because you could tell me you were sixty years old, and I wouldn’t give a fuck.”

  “Right,” I drawled. I highly doubted that. “I’m sure you’re all about dating women in their sixties.”

  “Lower or higher than sixty?” Aero smirked.

  “Now you’re just playing with me,” I whined.

  He shrugged and trailed his finger up my arm. “I don’t care how old you are, Sloane, but you obviously do care. Rip the band-aid off and tell me.”

  “Thirty-four,” I whispered.

  “That’s it?” he asked. He shook his head and grabbed my hand. “Babe, if that is the biggest worry between us, then I think we are going to be just fine.”

  “That’s four years, Aero. When I was a senior in high school, you were only a freshman.”

  Aero winced. “Or in eighth grade.”

  “Oh my lord,” I wheezed. “I’m ancient.”

  Aero chuckled and shook his head. “Not even close, babe. Just a damn number.”

  “When do you turn thirty-one?” I asked.

  “Is this question number three?”

  I shook my head. “No, this is the question that will hopefully help me from going crazy.”

  He took off his sunglasses and stepped closer. “You’re not going to drive our age between us, Sloane.”

  “When is your birthday?” I insisted.

  “Last month,” he growled.

  Oh boy. I was hoping he was going to say next month or something so he would then be thirty-one, but instead he was a very new thirty. “I’m an old thirty-four,” I whispered. I was going to be thirty-five in July.

  “Fucking hell,” Aero growled.

  “I’m going to be thirty-five, and you’re still going to be thirty.” I was spiraling, and I wasn’t able to stop. “You were probably in the seventh grade when I was a senior in high school.”

  “Sloane,” Aero called.

  “Nineteen eighty-nine,” I mumbled. I looked up at Aero and did the math in my head. “Nineteen ninety-three,” I gasped. “You were born in the nineties.”

  He put his sunglasses back on.

  I pressed my hand to my forehead and once again wished for a hole to appear and swallow me whole.

  “Are you really stressing over this?” Aero asked.

  “I am five years older than you, Aero. That’s kind of a big deal?”

  He shook his head. “Would it be a big deal if I was five years older than you?”

  I quirked my eyebrow. “Uh, well.” It wouldn’t have mattered. I was already struggling with accepting the fact that Aero wanted me, but add on the fact that I was much older than him, and I was never going to understand what Aero saw in me.

  Aero grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the pool. “Yo,” Aero called.

  Dice was standing by Dove and tipped his chin to Aero. “What’s up, brother?” he asked.

  We walked out of the water, and Aero grabbed a towel. “We’re going to my room. Have them send some lunch up to us.” He patted down his legs with the towel, and then grabbed his wallet and room key off the table.

  Dice nodded. “Sounds good.”

  “Wait, what?” I gasped. “Why are we going to your room? We were talking.”

  “Yeah,” Aero grunted, “and we are going to keep talking in my room.”

  “Have fun,” Dove chirped.

  “Have fun?” I gasped. “He’s kidnapping me, and you’re telling me to have fun.” What on earth was going on? One minute Aero and I were in the pool while I had a breakdown over our age difference, and now we were going to his room. And Dove was okay with it? “What the heck happened to the girl code?” I asked her.

  Dove flitted her fingers at me. “There is no girl code when a sexy biker is kidnapping you to have his way with you. Go, and enjoy it, girlfriend.”

  “Hey, Sloane!”

  I whirled around and saw Winter Travers at the swim-up bar. “Uh, hey,” I called.

  “We just got out here and wondered if you wanted to have a drink with us,” Winter called.

  “We were leaving,” Aero called.

  “She’s heading to the room for a nap,” Dove called.

  “What?” I gasped. “I’m not doing either of those things,” I called back. Having a drink with Winter was safer than going back to Aero’s room.

  “Raincheck then,” Winter hollered. “Shoot me a message sometime. I’d love to chat with you.”

  And now I had entered the twilight zone.

  Aero wanted to take me back to his room.

  I was five years older than him.

  Dove was pretty much handing me over to him with a bow on my head.

  And. AND! Winter Travers wanted to chat with me.

  Yeah, I must have stepped into some weird dimension where nothing made sense.

  “Don’t worry,” Dove sighed. “I’ll go see what Winter wants, okay? I know she’s one of your favorites.”

  Winter Travers was one of my favorites, but I didn’t know if sending Dove over to talk to her was the best idea.

  “Make sure they send lunch to our room,” Aero reminded Dice.

  Aero draped a towel over my shoulders and crouched in front of me. He ran a towel over my wet legs and tossed it on my empty chair. “Let’s go, babe.”

  He threaded his fingers through mine and pulled me through the maze of loungers and people.

  “You good?” Aero asked over his shoulder.

  Was I good? No, not in the least. “Uh, no?” We made it to the doors of the hotel, and he held the door open.

  “You’re not good right now?” he asked.

  I shook my head and stood in front of him.

  “You will be in a little bit.” He pressed his hand to the small of my back and urged me through the door.

  We rode the elevator up to the seventh floor in silence because no matter what I said, he wasn’t listening.

  I just told him I wasn’t good, and he pretty much said just wait, and maybe I will be later.

  What?!

  “Why are we going to your room, Aero?” I asked.

  He led me down the hallway, and we stopped in front of his room. He swiped his key and pushed open the door.

  “Are you not talking to me now?”

  He stepped to the side and held the door open for me.

  I folded my arms over my chest and shook my head. “Not until you tell me why we had to come to your room and not stay by the pool.”

  “We can go back down to the pool, but I’m pretty sure you’re going to want this conversation to happen up here.”

  “Why?” I demanded. Whatever he had to say to me, he could say it in front of everyone. It was probably going to be along the lines of it was fun flirting with me, but it was time to hit the road. A drop of water ran down my leg, and I frowned. “I would like to change, and I don’t have a key to my room. Let me go get my key, and then we can talk. I can’t talk when I’m dripping wet.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Sloane,” he growled. “Because the type of talking we’re going to do doesn’t involve clothes. So the sooner you get your butt in here, the sooner you’ll be out of those clothes.”

  My mouth dropped open and my feet felt like they were cemented to the floor. “I, uh…” It was like yesterday when I first met Aero. The woman was too stunned to speak.

  Aero threw his hands up in the air and lunged toward me. He planted his shoulder in my stomach and hefted me over his shoulder. “You’re free to go whenever you want, babe, but right now I’m hauling your ass into my room so we can stop having this conversation in the hallway.”

  He kicked the door shut behind him and set me in front of the bed.

  “What are we going to talk about?” I whispered. If we were even going to talk.

  Aero opened the mini fridge and grabbed two bottles of water. “You and me.”

  “Well, I kind of figured that,” I huffed.

  “We’re gonna lay all of our shit out, Sloane. You think being older than me is a deal breaker and I couldn’t give a fuck how old you are.”

  “You will when you realize you want to be with someone younger than you,” I countered. Sure, right now it might not seem like a big deal, but when I got old and shriveled, he was going to care. Though I might be jumping the gun seeing how we had just met yesterday.

  “I’m going to say this one time, Sloane. I don’t give a flying fuck how old you are. You could be twenty-five or forty-five, and I would not care. I like what I see. I like your personality. I like your sense of humor. I fucking love the way you look in a bathing suit. I liked all of that before I found out how old you are, and I still like all of that after. You mention your age one more time, and I am going to physically show you just what you do to me.”

  “It’s just that it’s four years right now, but soon it is going to be five, and the–.”

  My words were cut short, and Aero grabbed my wrists. He backed me into the wall, and his lips devoured mine. He lifted my arms over my head and pinned me to the wall with his body. What a pleasant sense of déjà vu from last night.

  I moaned into his mouth, and he loosened his hold on my wrists. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and enjoyed the feel of Aero’s lips on mine.

  “Good girl,” Aero whispered.

  My body relaxed under his touch, and I delved my fingers into his hair.

  “I want you, Sloane,” he mumbled against my lips, “and nothing you say is going to change that.”

  “Okay,” I sighed. I had slipped under a fog of bliss and pleasure. “Can you please kiss me again?” It obviously didn’t take much to make me forget about the age gap between Aero and me.

  Aero growled, and his lips claimed mine again.

  His fingers grabbed the straps of my suit and pulled them down my arms.

  This was fast, but it felt right.

  This whole thing with Aero had been fast, but I didn’t want it to slow down. Not yet. Or maybe even ever.

  He moved us to the bed, and my calves hit the side. “Oh,” I gasped.

  Aero pressed his weight into me, and we tumbled onto the bed. “You did say you wanted to get out of your wet suit, right?” he asked softly.

  I nodded and bit my bottom lip between my teeth.

  “Then let’s get you out of this,” he drawled. He shifted back on his knees and worked the suit down my body. He tossed it over his shoulder, and his eyes roamed over my body. “Going swimming was the best idea you had, babe.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I laughed. I covered my breasts with my arms and shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. This was not my first rodeo, but it had been a while since I had a run around the pasture. Or whatever the saying was.

  “All I had to do was take off one piece of clothing, and you were naked.” He wiggled his eyebrows and trailed his hand up my leg.

  “I think you have too many clothes on now.”

  His trunks were off in seconds and laying in a heap next to my swimsuit. “Better?” he growled.

  It was a definite improvement. “You’ve got my stamp of approval.”

  He shook his head and grinned. “Right back at you, babe.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to fight back all the reasons why I should cover up and hightail it out of there.

  This was not something that happened to me unless I was reading it in a book. The biker and the book nerd were a trope, not my everyday life, right?

  “Sloane,” Aero called.

  “Uh, yeah?”

  He moved up my body and planted his hands on either side of my head. “What the hell is going on inside that head of yours?”

  “Oh, you know,” I laughed, “the usual.” My eyes darted to the side, and I started to count backward from ten.

  “Whatever the usual is, knock it off. You look like you’re about to cry.”

  Yeah, I felt like it.

  “Fucking hell,” he growled. He gathered me in his arms and rolled till he was on his back, and I was on top of him.

  “What are you doing?” I gasped. I struggled to lift my weight off of him, but he held me to his chest.

  “What are you thinking?” he demanded.

  I pushed against his chest, but he didn’t budge. “I’m thinking that you’re really strong,” I grunted.

  “I am, but that shouldn’t make you want to cry.”

  It didn’t. It was all the other thoughts that made me want to cry. “I’m not going to cry. I just had something in my eye.”

  “Babe,” he growled.

  “What?” I grumbled.

  “Tell me what is going on in your head,” he demanded.

  I stopped struggling to get out of his hold and collapsed on top of him. I had tried to save him from suffocating, but he wasn’t having it. “Where do you want me to start?” I whispered.

  “Wherever the hell you want.”

  I sighed and closed my eyes. “I’m going to give you the cliff notes version, yeah?”

  He grunted but didn’t say anything.

  I took a deep breath and dived right into all of my insecurities and what was rattling around in my head. “I’m overweight. My nose is too big for my face. My right boob is slightly bigger than my left. I’m five years older than you. You are hot as hell. My life is not a book, but these past two days have felt exactly like a book. As soon as I leave here, I’m going back to my life of working and reading, and it’s not going to be good enough because this right here is better than anything I’ve ever read before.” I tipped back my head, and my eyes connected with his. “And that’s what really scares me and makes me want to cry because I never once didn’t love my life. I was happy with reading and working. It was what I loved. I’m scared this is just a fun couple of days, and I’m never going to see you again.” That was the big one right there. I was feeling some pretty strong feelings for Aero, and it literally had been twenty-four hours since I had met him.

  Twenty. Four. Hours.

  “Let’s work through this, okay?” He rubbed his hand up and down my back and tucked his other arm behind his head. “Those first three things, bullshit. You’re hot as fuck, your nose is perfect, and I’ll be the judge of your boobs in a minute, okay? But even if one is bigger than the other, I’m good with it.”

  Of course, he would be.

  “Our age difference? Also bullshit, Sloane. I get that it bothers you, but not me at all. You’ll get over it eventually. I’m glad you like the way I look. We sure as hell wouldn’t be here if you thought I was ugly.”

  “Ugly,” I scoffed. “As if.”

  “Hush, babe. This is my turn to talk.”

  I rolled my eyes but managed to keep my mouth shut.

  “I get you love to read, and books are a huge part of your life which is cool, but this sure as hell is not a book,” he laughed. “You and I are both alive and breathing.”

  “I’m pretty sure, but there sure are parts that feel like a book,” I grumbled. Like all of it.

  “Take out the blue aliens and shifters you read, and you’re pretty much just reading about real life. There are motorcycle clubs, cowboys, and whatever else you said you read in real life, so why can’t it be your real life?”

  “Because…” I closed my mouth and sighed. “I guess I don’t really know why I can’t have the fairytale.” He was right. Sure, there were some books that could never happen, but the common theme in pretty much everything I read I could have. Love.

  “And I don’t know why you think you’ll never see me again. We live an hour apart, Sloane, not across the country. And even if it was across the country, there are lots of ways we could see each other. We live in the twenty-first century, babe.”

 

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