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She swallowed hard.
The muscles of his arms were corded, and while she hadn’t appreciated them beneath the sleeves of his shirt, now that they were on full display, Abby couldn’t get enough. And the sculpted plains of his chest weren’t anything to scoff at, either.
Michael had a six-pack. Abby had been convinced they only existed in movies.
Movies and for-hire construction workers, she decided. Men who worked with their hands for a living had to be toned like that.
And God, was he gorgeous.
It wasn’t the summer’s heat that slicked the sensitive folds between Abby’s legs. Michael did that all on his own.
He looked down at her and considered it for a second, running his arm across his forehead to wipe away the sweat.
“Thanks, but no thanks. If I take a break I’m not going to want to go back to work. You know how it is, right? If I need to call it, I’ll come down and we can relax together.”
The way Michael mentioned them together so casually only made her hotter. The sun beat down on her, but she barely noticed.
It was wrong, that Michael meant so much to her already, but Abby couldn’t explain it away. Even if she tried, it wouldn’t change how she felt.
So she embraced it. Love was different for everyone, and she couldn’t discount it just because it was happening to her in a sudden, striking way.
Wasn’t that how all the best romances started out?
Flushed and only getting hotter, Abby waved him back to work and retreated back into the house. Keeping the glass of ice water for herself, she sat back in front of her computer and started a new chapter.
The kiss they’d shared that morning and the sight of Michael’s sweating, muscular body spurred her onward. She rubbed her thighs together and bit down on her bottom lip as she worked.
Knowing that Michael was working a short distance above her made it even more naughty, and she couldn’t help herself.
Michael had helped her out of one problem and into a new one—Abby was too into what she was writing, and if it kept up like that, she wasn’t going to get any work done, either.
Chapter Eight
Every morning after that, she sat outside on the lawn while Michael worked. At first he’d been concerned that the heat would be too much for her—if it wasn’t for his alter-beast, Michael knew that he would have succumbed to the heat long ago. Being so physical under the summer sun wasn’t healthy, but for a human it could be deadly.
But Abby made sure to sit in the shade, and she sipped on ice water regularly.
It didn’t stop Michael’s tiger from worrying. Really, the only thing that appeased it was the fact that, from the roof, he could look down and see Abby from above. And those days she’d taken to wearing shirts with revealing necklines.
It was a guilty pleasure, but Michael couldn’t stop himself from looking at those soft, supple curves. He was drawn to Abby like a moth to a flame, and he knew that an attraction so strong would never go away.
Abby was his mate. There was no denying it. What he felt for her would never change.
She just didn’t know it yet.
A week passed, and bit by bit the roof came together. Once it was done, Michael started repairs on the inside of the house, and to his delight, Abby followed him in and worked from the living room. The tiger was happy, and so Michael was happy. Their goals were common—to keep their mate safe—and Michael felt much better to have her out of the sun.
And at night, when the tiger roused from its usual slumber and infused itself through Michael’s mind, Michael took to the woods to wander, hunt, and prowl.
Night after night, they returned to the woods near Abby’s cabin, often remaining just out of sight while they watched through the same set of eyes as the lights in the windows went out one by one.
There’d been a time when Michael couldn’t bear to bring himself back to the woods he’d explored with Carlson, but circumstances were different now. He’d met his mate, and the healing process had begun.
Michael liked to think that the old man would be thrilled that Abby was Michael’s mate.
“She needs someone to keep her head on right,” Carlson had always told him. “That girl will dream herself into trouble if she’s not careful, and I don’t trust that Tyler boy she’s dating to keep her on the right path.”
Michael wasn’t sure what had happened to Tyler, and frankly, he wasn’t concerned. The fact was, Abby had been at the speed-dating event as a participant, and now she was his mate. What history she had with other men didn’t concern him—what Michael cared about was her future.
