"Umm…" he purred, snuggling closer and rocking his hips against hers suggestively.
Aidan and Lyssa's mouths fell open.
Stacey winced and smacked at Connor's hand. "Stop that!" she hissed. "They're home."
She could tell moment the information sunk in. He stiffened against her, then muttered a barely audible curse. Lifting his head, he looked over her shoulder and said, "Cross."
"Bruce," Aidan returned tightly.
Wincing, Stacey rolled out of Connor's now lax embrace and landed unceremoniously on her hands and knees on the floor between the coffee table and the couch. Connor straightened into a seated position.
"You guys are back early," she said with mock cheerfulness as Connor rose and pulled her up with him. "How was your trip?" Breeze on through the storm, she thought. It usually worked, at least temporarily.
"I was stabbed in the leg," Aidan muttered.
"I helped bury some freak of nature." Lyssa shuddered.
It was Stacey's turn to gape. Her eyes dropped to the thick white bandage that peeked out from the bottom of Aidan's nearly knee-length shorts.
"Oh my god," she said, rushing around the coffee table before her lack of a bra penetrated her consciousness. Her face heated, and she wrapped her arms across her chest. A heartbeat later the chenille throw that decorated Lyssa's couch was being draped around her shoulders. She glanced up at Connor gratefully.
He offered her a grim smile. "Go upstairs and change," he said, looking over her head at Aidan.
"I'll go with you," Lyssa said quickly. "I need a shower something fierce."
Stacey looked at her boss and frowned, noting the pale skin and the dark circles under brown eyes. Lyssa hadn't looked so tired since before Aidan came into her life.
"Sure thing, Doc." Stacey waited for her friend to join her before heading toward the staircase. Connor remained where he was, standing tall and proud despite his own state of undress. His gaze never left Aidan's.
Lyssa barely made it to the upstairs landing before whispering, "You sleptwith him? Already?"
Wincing, Stacey said, "What makes you think that?"
An arched brow was Lyssa's reply.
"Okay, okay." Stacey pulled Lyssa into the master bedroom and shut the door.
"That's so not like you, Stace!"
"I know. It just… happened."
Lyssa plopped down on the edge of the mattress and glanced around the room. "Where's Justin?"
"Not in here," Stacey muttered, running a hand through her rat's nest hairdo. She always looked like crap in the morning. Just how she'd want the hottest guy she had ever seen to see her.
"Obviously," Lyssa said dryly.
Once, the room had been decorated in varying shades of blue in an effort to help Lyssa sleep. Now it was decorated Oriental-style, with a massive standing shoji screen placed before the sliding glass door to the left of the bed and black towels with gold embroidered kanji characters on them in the open bathroom on the right. A bright red satin dragon comforter covered the bed, and the mattress was framed in intricately carved wood and topped with a lacquered multi-paneled painting on the wall.
It was an exotic and unique bedroom, sensual and seductive. Very different from the soft taupe that decorated the rest of the condo, or the Victorian-era theme of the veterinary clinic. Prior to meeting Aidan, Stacey would never have imagined her friend in such surroundings, but it suited the woman Lyssa had become. As Caucasian as she was-and Lyssa was about as Barbie perfect as a girl could get with dark, almond-shaped eyes-the international flavor of the room spoke to an adventurous side Stacey hadn't known about.
"Tommy came into some money," Stacey said. "He picked up Justin and took him to Big Bear for the weekend."
Lyssa blinked. "Oh, wow!"
"Yeah, that was my reaction, too."
"When was the last time they saw each other?"
"Five years ago." Stacey dropped into the wooden-backed chair by the door. "So how was your mini-vacation?"
Shaking her head, Lyssa said, "Oh no, you're not changing the subject that easily."
"Hey, you had a funeral for a freak of nature!" Stacey protested. "That's way more interesting than my sex life."
"It wasn't a funeral; it was roadkill," Lyssa muttered, toeing off her mud stained white Vans and stretching lengthwise across the end of the bed with her head propped on her hand. "We couldn't leave it there. It was… gross."
The horror in Lyssa's voice roused exasperation in Stacey. Too much was too much.
"I know you love animals and all, Doc, but pulling over to bury roadkill is just nasty."
"Let's get back to the topic of you doingthe nasty," Lyssa said with undisguised eagerness.
Stacey laughed. "This is so high school."
"Isn't it? So what happened?"
Blowing out an exasperated breath, Stacey gave up trying to be evasive and began to explain what she didn't quite understand.
"Man," Aidan muttered, scowling. "Your night with Stacey is going to come back and bite me in the ass."
Connor's jaw tightened and his arms crossed his chest. No way in hell was he getting chastised for his private business. "I hate to tell you this, Cross, but my sex life has nothing to do with you."
Cursing under his breath, Aidan cleared a spot amid Stacey's textbooks on the dining table and set a black duffle bag down. "When your sex life includes Lyssa's best friend, it does."
"Oh? How so?"
Aidan shot him an arch glance over his shoulder. "Here's how it will go: You're going to piss Stacey off for one reason or another. She's going to complain to Lyssa. Lyssa will complain to me. I'll say, 'Leave me out of it.' And she's going to say, 'You're sleeping on the couch.'"
"You're leaping to conclusions."
"Conclusions based on historical knowledge," Aidan said, unzipping the bag and withdrawing the contents one by one. "That's why I stopped double-dating with you, remember? One of us would fuck up and we'd both end up paying."
"This is different."
"Yeah, it's worse. I've got Lyssa for the long haul, Lyssa's got Stacey for the long haul, and Stacey has good reason not to trust men. She's got a taste for guys like you."
"What is that supposed to mean, dickhead?" Connor growled.
"Lyssa told me Stacey has a history of hooking up with men who don't stick around." Aidan pulled a metal cup out of the duffle and set it gingerly on the table. Considering the thing looked the worse for wear, Connor understood it was important.
He stepped closer to check it out.
"When I first got here," Aidan continued, still emptying the bag, "Stacey was so wary of Lyssa getting hurt, she lent her a pepper spray pen. Told her to shoot me with it if I turned out to be an alien or something weird."
"Huh?" Connor picked up the cup and examined it. "She knew you were an alien?"
"No." Holding up a data chip, Aidan asked, "Did you bring a reader with you?" At Connor's negative head shake, he cursed and dropped it on the polished wood surface.
"What's up with the alien reference then?" Connor was confused.
"It was a joke. Stacey's got a twisted sense of humor."
"Oh." Connor grinned and put the cup back.
"The point is, she armedLyssa against me, because she was worried I'd hurt her somehow. She's tough."