conversation, whenever anyone asked about his life, he just said he didn’t have much family and changed the subject.
He thought of Lily Darlington and the way she touched Pippen. The way she looked into his eyes and touched his cheek and told him she loved him bigger than the stars. Tucker was sure his grandmother had loved him, but he was equally sure she’d never threatened to kick ass on his behalf. He’d had to kick ass on his own behalf. He’d always had to take care of himself.
He was a man now—thirty years old—and he was the man he was because of the life he’d been dealt. He knew a lot of guys who’d come back from Iraq or Afghanistan and had a hard time adjusting to life outside of the military. Not Tucker. At least not as much. He’d learned long ago how to deal with shit thrown at him. How to cope with trauma and how to let it go. Oh, he had some really dark memories, but he didn’t live with them. He’d worked them out and moved on.
He stripped to his gray boxers and climbed into bed. Everything he had, he’d earned. No one had given him anything and he was a content man. He fell asleep within minutes of his head hitting the pillow, and at some point, when he was warm and comfy and deep into REM, Lily Darlington entered his dreams. She wore red silk and her hands touched his face and neck. She looked into his eyes and smiled as she cupped his cheek. “You’re cold, Tucker,” she said. “You need to warm up.” The dream started nice and innocent but quickly turned hot and dirty. Her hands slid across his chest as she lowered her mouth to the side of his neck, and the things she whispered against his throat weren’t in the least innocent.
“I want you,” she whispered as her palm moved over his chest, down the side of his waist, then back up again. “Do you want me?” Her touch was soft and slow, frustrating, sliding back and forth and driving him mad.
“Yes. God, yes.” He ran his fingers through her hair, bunching it in his hands as she kissed his neck and inched her hot palm lower—lower, down his stomach and belly until her fingernails scraped his skin just above the elastic of his underwear.
Her fingers slide beneath the elastic waistband and she wrapped her soft warm hand around his extremely tight erection. “You’re a good boy with dirty hands.”
His heart pounded in his chest as he shoved her against the wall and into her. All caveman aggression and hunger. In his dream she loved every second of it. She met every hard plunge of his hard dick with insatiable greed, shoving her hips into his, begging for more and moaning his name. “Tucker!” she screamed in his head—and his eyes flew open. He sat up in bed, his lungs pulling oxygen into his chest and his pulse pounding in his ears.
A sliver of light sneaked beneath his blackout blinds and streaked across the dark room. The sound of his heavy breathing filled the space around him. He’d just had a wild sex dream about Lily Darlington. Obviously he’d gone without for too long, and he’d lost his mind. He didn’t know her. She was a single mother. He felt like a pervert.
A pervert who needed to get laid before he lost his mind again.
C HAPTER T HREE
T rue to his word, that Sunday afternoon at around four P.M., Deputy Tucker Matthews knocked on Lily’s front door. She opened it and stood in stunned silence, like she’d suffered a blow to the head.
“Is Pippen around?” He had a new basketball tucked under one arm and a pair of silver aviators covered his eyes—eyes that were a warm brown and creased at the corners when he was amused, like when she’d threated to shoot him the other morning.
Lily was so shocked stupid that he’d kept his word that all she could utter was “Ahhh, yeah.” Her shock couldn’t have anything to do with him looking so good. She’d seen him yesterday, knew he was good-looking. A scar creased his forehead from the middle of his right brow to the line of his short