“For what?” she asked, for some reason feeling the need to clutch the towel more tightly to her breast.
“To get dressed before I come in there and do what we both want me to do.”
Rowan’s heart punched up into her tight throat again. Damn it, she’d never met a man who flustered her so quickly and easily.
She toyed with the idea of letting fate take over. Of keeping her feet in place and dropping the towel to the floor.
What got her moving was Aslin’s growling, “And I won’t be gentle.”
She all but ran for the suite’s bedroom and her overnight bag.
Five minutes later, dressed in cut-off denim shorts, a retro Bruce Lee T-shirt and her favourite cowboy boots, her heart far too fast, her expression as calm as she could force it to be, she walked back into the suite’s living room.
Aslin still stood on the balcony, his back to her. He was talking on a phone, his voice nothing but a low rumble of indecipherable sounds rolling with that sexy British accent of his. Rowan couldn’t make out the words, but she could tell from his body language he wasn’t happy. At all.
“Okay,” he suddenly said, louder. He turned to toward her, the rising sun casting him in silhouetting shadows that hid his face from her. “I’ve got to go. Let me know what you find out.”
He didn’t seem to wait for whomever he was talking with to answer. Sliding his cell phone into his back pocket, he crossed the balcony threshold and strode over to her, his expression unreadable.
“You’re really going to wear shorts on the back of a motorbike?”
Rowan tilted her chin. “You want me to take them off?”
A dark fire flickered in his eyes. “I want to rip them off, Rowan.” His matter-of-fact response made her pulse thump fast and her palms prickle. “Along with the rest of your clothes. I want you naked and coated in sweat as I bring you to the wildest orgasm of your life. But your brother is waiting, and he refuses to start filming until you’re on set.”
At the mention of Chris’s name, Rowan’s heart slammed into her throat. Oh God, here she was flirting with a man that left her utterly discombobulated and her brother was still in hospital?
She swallowed, guilt and shame heating her cheeks. “How do we pick him up on your bike? Isn’t that going to be a physical impossibility?”
Aslin scooped up his helmet from where she’d left it on the coffee table the night before and handed it to her. “He was discharged at six this morning and Nigel asked if I would collect him. I dropped him off at the barracks before coming here.”
A finger of irritation stroked down Rowan’s spine. Aslin had collected her brother? Aslin? A man Chris had known for less than a day?
She narrowed her eyes. “Of course you did. That being your purpose in life and all. To look after celebrities and be at their beck and call?”
The moment the insult was past her lips Rowan regretted it. It was petulant and childish.
Aslin’s stare never left her face. Nor did his ambiguous expression change. “Rowan, at this point in time, my purpose in life is to get you to the set of Dead Even. But if you insist on standing here trying to antagonize me, it will very quickly become to teach you a lesson.” He bent at the waist—just enough to make her shift her feet to maintain her glare on his face. “And trust me, I have no problems telling Nigel McQueen and your brother filming was delayed because you provoked me into throwing you on the bed and fucking you senseless. Is that what you’re hoping to achieve?”
His calmly delivered words slammed into her like a fist. Her breath caught in her throat and her pussy squeezed tight with urgent need. She drew in a steadying breath, wishing her nipples would stop pinching into hard peaks. He was correct of course. She was antagonizing him. He’d thrown her carefully controlled world into chaos since the second she’d met him, and she had no freaking clue how to deal with that.
She either wanted to fuck him or beat the shit out of him. Sometimes both at the same time.
It was messing with her head.
Wrapping her fingers around his helmet where he still held it out between them, she all but snatched it from his grip. “I’m not changing out of my shorts,” she muttered.
The edges of Aslin’s lips curled. A little. “I didn’t think you would.”
She stared at him, wishing she could think of something to say. Something smart and full of sass. Hell, even something funny. But Chris had got all the funny in their family. She had got the…
What? Ability to beat someone in a fight?
It was a bleak thought, one she couldn’t deny. Since her parents’ murder, she’d honed herself into a fighting machine. She didn’t need sass or wit. She had her fists and her feet. She made her living being the best fighter on the circuits. On the mat, in a dojo, there was no need for snappy comebacks or droll comments. On the mat there was just punishing pain and victory.