Chapter 2
Lily was intensely aware that she was alone in the woods with a naked man.
The biggest naked man she’d ever seen.
The biggest man she’d ever seen, naked or not.
Connor Reid was lethal. A person would have to be blind not to see it. And she wasn’t talking about his physical endowments. No, Connor wore strength like it was bespoke.
A man like that could crush her without even trying. She’d heard from Kelly that he used to be in the military.
It fit.
The honed body. The aura of tamped danger. And Lily avoided danger at all costs. At least she used to, before she agreed to work for him.
She still didn’t quite understand how that happened. One minute, Conner’s brother Ryan—whom everyone called Bear—was asking Lily and Seren if they wanted to waitress at his bar. The next minute, Connor’s gruff voice cut across his brother and offered Lily a job. He was opening a new branch of Reid Construction in Rosewood and needed someone to work in the office, he’d said. Two job prospects in the space of as many minutes was a lot for a girl who never even graduated from high school.
Lily had been so startled that she’d forgotten she wasn’t comfortable looking men in the eyes and had peeped up at him through her bangs. Unsure of what to make of the offer, she’d looked at Seren, who, typically, just shrugged.
It had been on the tip of Lily’s tongue to refuse. But some remnant of spirit had begged her to wait. Rosewood was a fresh start for them. A chance to escape the city that had been slicing away their souls. It was a last-ditch effort on Seren’s part to save Lily, Lily suspected, something Seren had been doing from the day they met. Otherwise, Lily doubted her best friend would have come to Rosewood, even if it meant saving herself.
But they had.
Lily had come to this town.
She had survived.
And she desperately wanted to find those pieces that had been cut away. To try to rebuild them or reassemble them or just stick them back together any which way she could.
So she said yes to Connor’s job offer.
Or at least, she’d timidly nodded.
Until moments ago, when she’d whispered his name, Lily had never actually said a word to Connor Reid. Not that he had spoken to her since he offered her the job. Mostly, communications passed from Connor to Bear to Kelly to Lily—like something out of high school.
Once, Kelly had tried to use Seren as an intermediary, but that hadn’t gone well.
Given the naked-Connor situation, there was nothing for it but to summon some goddamn courage. Lily opened her mouth, willing words to come.
As Connor stared down at Lily, her pale pink lips parted as if to speak. But there was only silence, save the birds and the bee hums and the trickle of water from a nearby stream.
The tip of Lily’s tongue slipped out to moisten her lower lip, and Connor stifled a groan. She opened her mouth to try again, with no more luck than before. He was hung up on those lips, on imagining what he’d like to do with them, which didn’t help the situation down south at all.
Frustrated, Connor growled, only to hear Lily’s breath catch. Then he felt like an asshole. He should say something. Mentally, he considered his options.
Sorry I made you think I was gonna eat you. Yeah, he probably shouldn’t apologize for something he lived in hope of.
Sorry about the cockstand. Suave. Real suave.
Sorry I can’t stop staring at your legs. Oh-for-fuck’s-sake.
He went with the one thing his options all had in common. “I’m sorry.”
Arctic blue eyes flicked up to his. Lily hesitated then spoke softly. “You’re sorry?”
He nodded. “I didn’t mean . . .” he paused, struggling for words, “. . . to scare you.”
She looked down. “It’s okay.” Then she took a deep breath. “You didn’t mean to.”
Silence again.
“Do you . . . need help up?” Connor asked.
“Up?” Lily repeated, as though it was a foreign word.
The conversation lacked confidence. It didn’t know where it was going, much less how to get there. It just stumbled along blindly.
“To stand.”
“Um, no?” She said it like it was a question.
“No?”
“Yes,” she confirmed.
“Yes?” Connor repeated, taking that for assent as he strode forward.
Lily shrank into the grass. “Um, what?”
Connor paused. “You want help up.”
“I do?”
“You said so.”
“I did?”
He nodded, a single chin tilt that was sharp but somehow earnest.
“Oh, I, no. I’m . . . fine.” As if to prove it, Lily buried her hands in the grass and pushed up. She wasn’t even halfway standing when she gasped and shifted to take the weight off her left ankle. Then she began to topple forward.
Lily never saw him move.
He was just there.
Connor’s big hands encircled her waist, steadying her. Lily instinctively clutched his forearms as her vision was filled with bronze skin an inch from her nose. Her warm breath skittered against Connor’s chest.
He was so close.
Once more she froze, as though utter stillness could keep her safe.
A tiny whimper escaped her throat.
“Won’t hurt you. Swear it.” The words were torn from Connor, like the idea that Lily thought he would do her harm was killing him. There was something in those words, in his voice that tugged at her.
She concentrated on the white crescents her nails clawed deep in his forearms. It had to hurt, but he didn’t flinch. He was still. Every atom. Waiting on Lily.
It took several minutes, but slowly her fear receded until she could lift her eyes to his. Lily swallowed. When she spoke, it was the softest whisper, but Connor heard it all the same.
“I know.”
Lily tried to ignore all the hard maleness holding her upright. She may as well have asked the sun to stop shining. It was impossible, and the emotions that rioted through her body left her utterly confused. On the one hand, there was the fear. But it wasn’t the kind she was used to.
It tasted different. Cast a different shadow.
As though it might not be entirely unwelcome. But that didn’t make sense.
The other emotion was foreign. It was soft and trembled, but it wasn’t fear. It felt like someone was trailing tiny feathers along her skin, softly, softly.
It felt nice, even as it made her want . . . something.
Was this . . . desire?
Lily wasn’t certain, but she thought it might be. She looked up at the man who had inspired the emotion and swallowed.
No. No. No.
He was altogether too big, too strong, too dangerous. Far more than she could handle. She had a difficult enough task ahead, reclaiming herself, to ever contemplate what Connor Reid made her feel in those rare moments when she was strong enough to set aside the fear.
He was not for her.
It was utterly impossible.
Lily pushed against Connor. His hands tightened infinitesimally then let her go.
When Lily tried once more to put weight on her ankle, she hissed in pain and began to teeter. This time, Connor simply swung her up in his arms. Lily instinctively wrapped her own around his neck. She clung to him tightly as Connor started walking.
“What are you doing?” The words escaped, startled.
He didn’t reply. So Lily asked him again.
Finally, he answered, “Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not to me.”
“I’m carryin’ you.”
“You can’t.”
Connor ignored the words that all women seemed to feel obliged to say to men who were carrying them and strode back the way Lily came. She and Seren had a cabin about two miles away. That fact may even be the reason he was in this neck of the woods. Marking territory, making sure it was safe.
“But you’re . . . you’re . . . you’re . . .”
“I’m . . .”
She pointedly looked over his shoulder at the forest behind them as one hand left his nape, and she flicked her wrist, gesturing at him.
At all of him.
An inexplicable urge overcame Connor’s normal reticence, and his eyes narrowed. “Say it.”
Fear temporarily forgotten, Lily’s voice emerged like that of a scandalized nun: “Naked.”
“I’m a shifter.” He said it like that explained everything. It kind of did. Clothing and shifting did not mix.
“I don’t want you to carry me.”
That brought Connor up short, and he looked down, regarding Lily steadily. “Only one other option.”
He was silent until she was forced to turn her head and meet his gaze.
“You can ride me.”
