WORTH THE RISK

She wasn’t blind. It was just that he was Tyler. And normally, when she saw women leaving him, she only saw the women looking starry-eyed. She’d never seen an actual action scene before.

The kiss went on and on. Tyler's hand, which Lexi had never noticed was so big or quite so strong looking, was on the woman’s ass, holding her in the perfect place for him to—

But surely that was breaking the bonds of friendship. Surely she shouldn’t imagine what he was doing with that part of his body. Particularly not what was making them both make those sounds. And Lexi felt as if she’d been cast in stone and made into a statue of foolish astonishment, right there outside his house. Because she couldn’t move. She couldn’t pick up her bag and slink off in shame to hide off around the corner, at the very least, until this ended. One way or another.

The embarrassment was so great that she felt her entire body heat up, and a melting sort of sensation sink through the center of her, seeming to pool down low.

She told herself it had to be shame. Because what else could make her cheeks so hot?

He murmured something into the woman’s ear that Lexi couldn’t hear. It made the woman sigh a little, then nod. The leg she had hooked over his hip slid to the ground, and Lexi watched as Tyler kept a hand on her body, steadying her.

“All right, then?” he asked.

“All right,” the woman said softly, then smiled in a way that made something curl around and around inside Lexi. All that heat and the melting, too, until she wasn’t sure she could breathe.

Then they both turned, and of course, Lexi was still standing right there. Her cheeks so crisp and bright they hurt.

But that didn’t hold her attention. What did was the way Tyler was looking at her.

Because for a moment, she didn’t recognize him. There was something in that green gaze of his that she had never seen before. Something fierce. Hot and dark and dangerous, when Tyler was the least dangerous man she’d ever met. His face changed, too. He seemed bigger, harder, wilder— And as long as that kiss had gone on, this moment stretched out even longer.

Lexi had the strangest notion that she had lost something. That something had shifted, permanently. It was that seismic. It was that terrifying. Nothing will ever be the same, a voice in her whispered. But he blinked. Then he smiled, and was Tyler again.

“Christ, Lexi,” he said, his voice filled with laughter and charm and above all, safety. The way it usually was. “What the bloody hell are you doing in Olkfield?”

__________

Tyler Connelly was used to this dream.

He’d had it enough, though usually when he dreamed of Lexi appearing before him she was wearing a whole lot less.

“I should have told you I was coming,” she was saying, and that was another clue that he wasn’t dreaming this.

Because his fantasies weren’t about Lexi sounding apologetic. Or tired. They were far more energetic. Athletic, even.

And Tyler was only dimly aware of the woman he’d been kissing moments before. The eager Rose, who had woken him up with her mouth on his cock, and who, if he was completely honest, he’d closed his eyes and imagined was Lexi at several points last night. Because that was how fucked-up he was. He’d been telling himself he was at a place of peace with how twisted he was, but that had been more convincing when the real Lexi wasn’t…right here.

He shot Rose a smile, turning while he did it so he could help usher her out of his door, because he’d never been a gentleman, had he?

“You really do have a queue, don’t you?” Rose asked.

But she sounded good-natured, not jealous or upset. Tyler did pride himself on that. He liked them to leave happy, satisfied and under no illusions about the possibility of any feelings cropping up.

“Oh, I’m not in any queue,” Lexi said, in that posh voice of hers that had haunted him for years now. Though it sounded a bit more frantic than usual. “To be clear. We’re just friends. Old friends, that’s all.”

“Steady, love,” Rose murmured, with a bawdy little laugh. She gave Tyler a wink, then stepped around Lexi and started down the street on the astonishingly high heels they’d made use of last night, in a variety of ways.

Tyler forgot her in the next breath.

Because Lexi was here. Here. And that probably meant something bad was happening to her or around her, but he would care about that in a minute. Right now, there was the fact of her outside his door. Lexi in the winter light, with a breeze blowing in from the sea. You’re pathetic, he told himself, but that wasn’t a shock.

“I really am sorry to bust up your morning,” Lexi was saying, worriedly, with that little frown between her eyes that Tyler had dedicated whole years of his life to erasing.

“No worries at all,” he told her, which had the benefit of being true. “She was leaving anyway. There was nothing to bust up.”

He reached over and wrapped her in a hug. And nothing ever changed. There was always that kick in him, deep and hard. His chest tight, his cock so hard it ached and that same old reaction to her he always had like a full-on wildfire, sweeping over him. But if it was only that, he would have done something about it years ago and moved on. It was the other part that got to him even more. The sense that the world snapped back into place when he held her. Holding Lexi was like coming home, that was the curse of it.

If Tyler knew anything in this life, it was that getting what you wanted was unlikely at best, and if it came to you, it was never in the form you wanted it. His friendship with Lexi was a prime example of that principle and he didn’t care, because there was this.

Lexi snuck her arms around his waist, let out that little sound of contentment the way she always did and squeezed him back, hard. And there it was, that moment that had haunted him almost from the moment he’d met her, and led to so many of his twisted, fucked-up nights with other women that were never her.