“I know, man. I’ve got several alternatives if you’d like to stay elsewhere. A penthouse or two. All with great views. A few more houses. Hotels. What do you want? Merrill is on his way. He was in Maryland so he’s already en route.” Merrill was one of the guards Adrian had used on the last tour.

“Good. She doesn’t want to move unless we have to. Gavin says this place is secure. I don’t want to scare her or Miles.”

“The area you’re in is pretty good. We can have a bodyguard on routine front-gate duty to chase off squatters. Jeremy also told me to tell you the label would send a helicopter tomorrow to get you to Reg’s place. You’re pretty big news, I guess.” Cope’s snort made Adrian laugh and relax a bit. “Gavin says you’ve got a secure situation and plenty of room. Miles is with you, as is Gillian. You can’t just move around like you normally do. Why don’t you give it another day to see? If you wake up to a street full of dipshits with cameras tomorrow, f**k it. Get out and we’ll handle it all. I’ll come out myself, if need be.”

Adrian hung up and spoke with Gavin, who reassured him all was well.

He checked on Miles, noting the door had been left open so clearly Gillian had checked too. He smiled, on his way to her.

When he found her, she was in bed, blankets tucked around her, reading a book on her digital book reader, those sexy glasses perched on the bridge of her nose.

“Everything all right?” she asked when he closed the door behind him.

“For now, yes. We’ll open the door again when we decide to go to sleep. Gavin has moved to the living room at the end of the hall here and there’s another guard coming that I’ve hired before. He’ll be here in several hours.”

She nodded. “All right.” She patted the bed. “Come here. Let me give you a massage. You’re stressed enough as it is. You have a big day tomorrow. Don’t let one idiot with a camera ruin that.”

For a little woman, she had great, powerful hands. Probably the years of piano playing. But she straddled his ass and began to work her fingers and the heels of her hands into the knotted muscles of his back. And he let it all go as she worked through all the stress and bunched-up muscles, leaving him relaxed, warm and mad to have her.

“Do you know what I noticed when I first saw this room?”

“I’m sure there’s something sex related in this story,” she murmured, kissing his shoulder before rolling off and landing next to him on the mattress.

“You know me so well.” Slow but total need coursed through him as he reached out to draw his fingertips down the pale, smooth line of her neck, between her br**sts and then down over her belly.

He doubted he’d said anything more true than that in a very long time.

“I need you in me. Lose yourself in my skin. I want your hands, your teeth and lips. Definitely your cock.”

“There you go, English, with your filthy mouth, undoing me.”

“You’re not naked. You still have pants and underpants on. This isn’t a reasonable stance to take.”

She said it prim and proper, and his c**k went from seven to twelve on the hardness scale as he managed to get his muscles working enough to get his clothes off.

“Your pupils just got so big. And you bared your teeth at me.” She blew out a breath and then swallowed hard. The breath stuttered from him as he plunged into this moment with her. Let it take over.

And his mouth feasted at her throat as he slowly slid the buttons from their holes, spreading the front of her pajama top open to revel those magnificent tits. Leaning back, he took her in fully as he got to his knees.

She looked up at him through f**k-drunk eyes, her lips parted, tongue darting out.

“I can’t figure out how to look at your face with those lips and big brown eyes and those br**sts at the same time.”

The corner of her mouth slid up enough to bring out her dimple and he fell in love with her all over again.

It was good here. This place the two of them had stumbled into, each of them fighting it here and there but always coming back for more until they gave up and let themselves have a relationship.

She was his family. The mother of his son. And it meant so much that he’d have loved her just for that. But there was more because she was his. That’s all he could say to himself that felt most true. He’d looked at her and his entire being had gone taut and he’d thought, Mine.

So she was his mate. Something he’d craved after watching his friends and family find their love and make their own families.

“Out of those pants. I want you on me.”

Her gaze roved over his body, pausing to look at his tattoos, at the piercings and the muscle, the softness of that hair and that gorgeous face of his.

“You are every single filthy bad-boy fantasy rolled up into one, and I’m quite aflutter with it.”

He grinned up at her when she straddled his body.

“I am?”

“Oh yes. You are the motorcycle-riding, tattooed, pierced, bad-boy rock star. You’re as alpha as they come and you manage to do it all smooth-like so half the time I’m so befuddled by how absurdly attractive you are, and your voice does that thing and it makes me wet. Because you are that bad boy but you’re not when it comes to me.”

She kissed him, slow and deep, her hands braced on his shoulders. His hands played over her thighs and back, over her ass and up into her hair.

And then lower, the edge of that scruffy beard when she shifted to the hollow below his ear and then up the row of hoops.