Truth be told, I was a little worried about this. Worried Charlene would get used to the extra help and then Creed would go to Arizona and there’d be no one to fix her car or mow her lawn.

If I admitted it to myself, which I didn’t, I also worried about the fact that I really liked working with him and more, I liked having him around. And, needless to say, I freaking hated mowing my lawn so I liked not having to do that.

I missed Ron. I didn’t mind working jobs alone but there was no denying it was better to work them with someone else. It wasn’t the additional brainpower and firepower, it was the company. Knowing you weren’t in it alone even when you were separated. I missed that. I’d been alone a long time and the only times since Creed left I didn’t feel alone had been when I was working with Ron or spending time with Knight or Charlene. It was cool to wake up knowing your day would include someone else in a way that was integral to life.

Creed read all my open case files, sat down with me, made suggestions, we planned and we worked my shit together as well as Knight’s. Work got done and it shifted easily from me on my own to us working together. Life fell naturally into an order that was solid, comfortable. It was good. Too good.

Last, it was also good getting it steady and abundantly and it was better since that “it” was so f**king great.

I liked sex once it was about what I wanted and not what someone was taking from me. I lost myself in it. I was able to move total concentration to the good shit my body was feeling which meant I had no space to concentrate on the bad shit that was always at the edge of my mind.

It was better with Creed.

I couldn’t get enough of him. He couldn’t get enough of me. We jumped each other frequently, sometimes to f**k, sometimes to grope, sometimes just to kiss… and hard. He didn’t leave my presence, not even the room, without hooking me behind my neck, pulling my mouth to his and kissing me deep. I returned the favor. We’d done it on the couch in the back room (again), on the floor of the hall, in the shower and in my bed.

It was wild but not abandoned. This was because I sensed him letting me guide it. I didn’t explore the boundaries of this power he was willing to give me by making him do something he didn’t like, not again. He’d demonstrated he’d do that for me once, it touched me in a place I was denying so I didn’t push it because I was unwilling to go there again. That didn’t mean I didn’t feel him handing the reins over to me.

He took, absolutely. He flipped me when he wanted the top, he adjusted us when he was ready for a new position, he took my mouth when he wanted it. But there was always an underlying alertness and if I gave the barest indication something wasn’t working for me, he backed off and did something else.

It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t making love. It was f**king.

But, because of what Creed gave me, it was more. It skimmed the edge of making love because f**king was f**king but when you gave even a hint of more, which he did every time, it was something else.

And it was dangerous.

I knew it but I was powerless to stop it. This was not because it was Tucker Creed (or I was telling myself that). This was how I’d lived my life when I got free. I played with fire. I didn’t mind getting burned. It was a reminder that I was alive and it was a way to bury shit that, if it surfaced, would destroy me.

So as the days passed, I was finding it harder to hold him distant. I was finding it harder to convince myself he didn’t mean anything to me. I was finding it harder to deny that the new Tucker Creed wasn’t getting to me.

Right then, that tattoo nearly all I could see, my sleepy brain filled with all I’d experienced with him recently and waking up for the first time in my life beside him, I lost hold on all that. I lost control of my ability to separate the Creed that used to be from the Creed that was sleeping beside me. I lost the stranglehold I had on me.

I had my head on the pillow but my body was close to his, my side brushing his, my eyes level to his shoulder. His head was turned away from me.

We were both on our stomachs, his leg crooked, my leg crooked with his, the inside of my thigh resting on top of the back of his other leg which was straight. I had my arm curled around his back.

Yes, me cuddling Creed (kind of).

The sheets were over our legs and when I lifted my head slightly and looked down, I saw they were mostly over Creed’s ass but I could see the top of it wasn’t covered. None of mine was.

My eyes moved up, my arm shifting and I caught the flowered “Sylvie” in the dent of his lower spine.

Seeing my name inked in that vulnerable dent in his spine, a vulnerability surrounded by the power of his defined muscles, the beauty of the image of our place, my body moved before I told it to do so. My mouth hit his back at the lake then it glided down. His body twitched, shifted and I put my hands to him, one between his shoulders, one at his ass and pressed down lightly.

“Sylvie.” It came out as a sleepy growl and went straight between my legs.

My lips kept moving down his back, over his waist, soaking in the tat, soaking in our place, soaking in us. Then my lips moved up the curve of his ass. Pushing the sheet down, I bared my teeth and nipped his flesh.

“Fuck,” he whispered, his big, powerful body shifting again.

Against his skin, I murmured, “Stay still, baby.”

“Fuck,” he whispered again and I shoved my hand between his legs, curled it up and found his cock.

It was hard.

Yes. I loved that. I wanted it. Needed it. Already.

My mouth drifted up and there I was.

Sylvie.

In flowers.

On our pier.

Slow, so f**king slow, taking my time, my hand wrapped tight around his hard cock, I traced my flowered letters with my tongue.

I got to the “i” and Creed was done.

He rolled, disengaging me, knifed up, grabbed me, pulled me over him, his hand at his cock. He slammed me down, impaling me.

My head shot back.

Yes. Just what I needed.

Exactly what I needed.

His hands slid up my back, his fingers curling around my shoulders holding me down as his forearms pressed deep, holding me to him.

He felt good, hard, big, filling me.

I was gone. Seriously gone. Already close. I had to move.

I righted my head and looked at him. “Gotta move, Creed,” I whispered.

“What’d he take from you?” he whispered back.

His tattoo in my head, our place still on my lips, my name in his skin on my tongue, all I was learning that was him filling my head, his c**k inside me, I worked against those odds and tried to bury it.