Home > Asher (Wolves of Winter's Edge #3)(14)

Asher (Wolves of Winter's Edge #3)(14)
Author: T.S. Joyce

Asher ran his hand through his hair and looked furious as he glared at Jack’s. “You aren’t supposed to say no!”

“No,” she said primly, gripping the steering wheel. She arched her eyebrow at him. “Get. In.”

Asher slammed the door, and then muttered to himself as he stomped around the front of the truck. And then he yanked open the passenger side door, folded himself inside, buckled up, and rested his elbow on the window, biting his thumbnail.

“Where to?” she asked, highly amused by his mantrum.

“You wanted to drive!”

“Whoo, you’re letting me plan our first date.”

“It’s not a date.”

“Keys, boyfriend.”

Asher shook his head for a long time before he reached into his back pocket and slapped a pair of keys onto her palm. They were black with no keychain at all. Why was she not surprised?

“Want to see my keychain?”

“No.”

She pulled hers out. There were approximately two dozen brightly-colored keychains, bottle openers, and miniature stuffed animals on hers.

Asher looked disgusted. “How do you even find your keys on that thing.”

“I like searching. I get to see all this stuff that makes me happy every time I turn my car on or let myself into my apartment.”

“I didn’t mean to jizz on your back. I just meant to take care of you, but you smell good, and your hair is pretty, and you felt good against my dick.”

She smiled brightly. “Did you just call me beautiful?”

Asher turned up the radio, so she pitched her voice louder as she continued. “Because I think you’re beautiful, too! In that slightly psychotic, terrifying, he-might-or-might-not-be-a-serial-killer type of way. You have nice eyes. Well, actually, you have super-mean eyes, but they are a nice color. Do you like creamy peanut butter or crunchy?”

“What?” he asked, his voice tainted with irritation.

Ashlyn turned the steering wheel with one hand and turned down the rock music with the other. “Creamy or crunchy, and don’t be flippant about your answer, Striker. This could be a deal breaker for me.”

“Mother fucker.” Asher heaved a sigh. “Creamy.”

“Thank goodness.” Ashlyn wiped pretend sweat from her brow and grinned at him. “I thought we were done before we started there for a second.”

His lip almost, almost twitched into a smile. Good, she was on the right track with him.

“Ideal date?”

“Pass, Sparkles.”

“Whoa, a nickname? You must really like me. Fine, I will tell you mine. I want some hot cabana boy to feed me grapes and seduce me and spend all day in bed with me making me feel like a goddess. Age?”

Asher cracked his knuckles. “I don’t like talking about personal stuff.”

“Oh my gosh, stop being weird. How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven.”

She made a disappointed click sound behind her teeth. “I’m thirty. Probably way too old and mature for you. You’re making me feel like a cougar right now.”

Asher cleared his throat and carefully said, “Because you find me attractive?”

“Hot-as-fuck attractive. Yes. I mean, you probably work out like eight hours a day and are most likely super-conceited about your body, but you have tattoos and a beard and pretty eyes, and I dig blonds, apparently, so take my panties already, Striker.”

Asher snorted and looked out his window, hiding his face. She could see the curve of his cheek, though. He was smiling. “Perverted old lady.”

She scoffed and turned left onto the main drag in Rangeley. “I’m never letting you dry hump my back again.”

“Stop,” he said, but his voice wasn’t mad anymore. It was amused.

He’d arranged his face into a bored mask by the time he turned toward her again. He gestured to her one-handed turning of the wheel. “Where did you learn to drive a big truck?”

“I learned on an old Dodge Ram my grandpa gave me for my sixteenth birthday. He told me if I could learn to drive that old thing, I would be able to drive anything. It had ten tricks just to get it started.”

“What color?”

“Cream and red and rust. Lots of rust,” she said, casting him a quick grin. “There was a hole in the floorboard I would get my heel stuck in sometimes. My grandpa taught me how to drive it.” Ashlyn frowned as she considered telling him the deep, not-so-happy part of the story.

“Say it,” Asher said, as if he could read her hesitation.

Ashlyn inhaled deeply and parked the truck right in front of a coffee shop with a wood-burning stove out on the sprawling side-porch. “My grandpa passed away a year after he gave me the truck. I drove that thing into the ground until I couldn’t fix it any more. It was my favorite car ever because…”

“Because it was his.”

“Yeah.”

Asher pulled something out from under the neck of his shirt. It was a thin strip of leather, and on the end of the necklace was a carved wooden wolf.

Ashlyn turned off the truck and asked, “Can I touch it?”

After only a moment of hesitation, Asher dipped his chin once.

She held the wolf gently and rubbed her finger over the polished wood. “Was it your dad’s?”

Another dip of his chin.

She had to know, because this felt big. “Have you ever shown this to anyone?”

“No,” Asher said in that sexy, deep timbre of his. “Things were complicated with my father. My feelings about him…well, they’re complicated, too.”

   
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