Free Midnight Lily (Signs of Love) by Mia Sheridan

around here?"
    I nodded, stepping over a fallen branch. "About a mile from here there's a stream."
    "What type of fish?"
    "Trout."
    "Where's your fishing pole?"
    "I leave it there if I know I'll be back in a day or two. There are only a handful of days left to fish."
    As we stepped into a clearing, the sight of something moving caught my eye and I looked across the open space to see a male elk—a bull—mounted on a female. I'd seen animals mating plenty of times before, but for some reason standing there watching it with Holden felt . . . strange. It made my skin tingle and my nipples harden and it made me intensely aware of him beside me. It made me intensely aware of his maleness.
    Suddenly the day seemed overly bright, the sun very warm upon my skin. I looked up into Holden's face and saw him looking in the same direction . . . and his cheekbones were flushed. He caught my eye and then raised his eyebrows and laughed in that self-conscious way he sometimes did. I found it incredibly appealing. He had called himself a god among men, and yet his expressions spoke of a man who was self-conscious, almost shy. I wasn't sure who the real Holden was just yet. I wondered if he even knew himself.
    "I think we might be intruding."
    I let out a breath. "I think you're right. Here, let's go this way." He followed me as I took an alternate route, and we walked in silence for a while, both of us lost in our own thoughts, me trying to regain the relaxed feeling I'd had only moments ago.
    I remembered back to him yelling on his deck about how lusted after he was, how he could start pimping himself out. I suddenly wondered exactly what that meant. I hadn't caught every word of what he'd been saying as there'd been a lot of slurring, but I thought I understood the gist of it: women wanted him, and he rarely said no. Women. Plural. Whatever life Holden Scott came from, there were lots of women waiting for him. I stopped suddenly, causing Holden to come up short, and I turned toward him. He had been right on my heels and now we were face to face. I cleared my throat. "I . . ."
    "What is it?" he asked, concern in his expression.
    I pressed my lips together, not knowing how to ask him the questions I wanted to ask, not knowing how to get the reassurance I needed. What exactly did I need to be reassured of? I wanted to know if he thought about kissing me as much as I thought about kissing him. I wanted to tell him that I'd never kissed a man before. "I heard what you said, on your deck, most of it anyway, about the women . . . you . . . well—"
    "Christ," he interrupted me, putting his hands in his pockets. "I really made an ass of myself that night, didn't I?"
    "Um, I—"
    "You don't have to answer that. It was rhetorical." He paused, a frown creasing the skin between his brows as he glanced around the forest. "I did. I made an utter ass out of myself. The truth is I've been making an ass out of myself for a really long time. But I want to stop doing that." He looked back at me. "What I meant earlier, and the reasons I'll have to stay away from you for a little while, is that I'm going to stop doing things that lead me to acting like the ass I was that night. I'm sorry you had to be a witness to any of it. I'm ashamed of that because that's not who I want to be."
    I shook my head and put my hand on his arm. "No, you don't need to apologize about that night. You thought you were alone. I'm the one who should be apologizing for spying on you. I just . . . I did hear that," I licked my lips and Holden's gaze moved to my mouth, his eyes seeming to darken to a deeper blue, as if a summer storm was coming, "about the women, I mean, and so I'm just wondering if . . ." I stopped again.
    Why had I brought this up? I needed time to consider what I was even trying to ask him. I needed time to get my thoughts in order before bringing any of this up with Holden. Or maybe it shouldn't be brought up at all. We barely knew each other. I resisted the urge to