And that would be bad. Very, very bad. She jumped up and straightened her dress before whirling to Finn. He’d pulled up his jeans, but hadn’t fastened them. Nor had he put on his shirt, which meant he sat there in nothing but Levi’s, literally, his hair completely tousled from her fingers—bad fingers!—an unmistakable just-got-laid sated expression all over his face.

Not moving.

She waved her hands at him. “What are you doing? Get dressed!”

“Working on it.” He stretched lazily, slowly, like he had all the fricking time in the fracking world.

Jake knocked again, annoyance reverberating through the wood. Jake had many good qualities but patience wasn’t one of them. “Pru, what the hell are you doing in there—and it’d better not be Finn,” he said.

She’d just sent her hands on Finn’s chest to give him a little hurry-up nudge, so she had a front-row view of his brows shooting up.

Well, crap.

Then, from outside her door, came the unmistakable sounds of keys rattling, which reminded her of the unfortunate time on moving day when she’d given Jake her damn key. What had she been thinking? “You’ve got to hide!” she whispered frantically to Finn.

“What the hell for?”

With a sound of exasperation she whirled around and eyeballed potential hiding places.

She had little to no furniture.

“Dammit!” Then she focused on the dumbwaiter. Perfect. “Here,” she said, opening it and then pushing him toward it. “I need you to get in here for just a minute—”

Finn, solid and steady, didn’t move when she’d pushed him. What was it with her and big, badass alphas who only could be budged when they wanted to be budged?

He looked down into her face and seemed to take in her clear panic because he gave a slight head shake. “You’ve lost it.”

“Yes, now you fully understand! I’ve completely lost it, but to be honest, I lost it a long time ago!”

“I meant me, babe,” he said. “I’ve lost it to even be melted by those eyes of yours, enough that I’ll do just about anything for you.”

“Good,” she said quickly. “Go with that. Please, I can’t explain right now, but I need you to hide, for just a minute, I promise.”

He shook his head again, muttered some more, something that sounded like “you’re a complete dumbass, O’Riley,” but then God bless him, he folded up his rangy form in the dumbwaiter.

“Just for a minute,” she repeated and slammed the door shut on his gorgeous but annoyed face and turned back to the kitchen—where Finn’s shirt and shoes were lying scattered on the floor. Shit! She snagged everything up, ran back to the dumbwaiter, opened the door and shoved them at Finn and then slammed the door.

Just as Jake rolled into her kitchen.

Finn sat there in the dumbwaiter, somewhere between pissed off and bemused. And maybe a little turned on, which showed just how messed up in the head he really was.

No one handled him. Ever. And yet Pru just had, like a pro.

Which meant he sat here squished into the dumbwaiter in only his unbuttoned jeans, his shirt in one hand, his shoes in his other, wondering—What. The. Fuck.

He tried to come up with a single reason why, if Pru and Jake were not a thing, that he had to be a dirty little secret. But he couldn’t.

And his amusement faded.

Because that’s exactly what he was at the moment. Pru’s dirty little secret, and while the thought of that might have appealed in fantasy, it absolutely did not hold up in reality.

Not even close.

Leaning in, he tried to catch whatever was going on in Pru’s kitchen.

“Why are you breathing like a lunatic?” Jake asked. “And you’re all flushed. You sick?”

Try as he might, Finn couldn’t catch Pru’s response.

But he had no problem catching Jake’s next line. “Why is there a pair of men’s socks on your floor?”

And that’s when the dumbwaiter jerked and went on the move, taking Finn southward.

Chapter 22

#SillyRabbit

“Shit!” Finn had no choice but to hold on as the dumbwaiter began to move, taking him past the second floor, and then the first . . . all the way to the basement. It was a bad flashback to the last time this had happened.

Before he could catch his breath, the dumbwaiter door opened, and yep, he was in the basement. He had an audience too. Luis the janitor, Trudy the head of building cleaning services, Old Guy Eddie, Elle, Spence, and Spence’s two buddies Joe and Caleb all sat around a poker table smoking cigars and playing what looked like five-card stud.