Relief relaxed her muscles, but she lightly whacked Tasha’s leg anyway. “You scared me. I think you’re ready.”
“I’m sorry. You looked so sure someone was going to yell at you, I thought I’d get it over with.”
Tasha always understood. Always. Even when she didn’t. “So, you don’t think its madness?”
“Oh, no, it’s absolutely madness. I mean, are you kidding? But how lucky does it feel to be you right now? Trick is all bad on the outside, with good gooey filling. Although making you wait is cruel and unusual, it’s also kind of romantic when you think about it. And this professor sounds enough like the opposite of Trick to be intriguing. Nerdy, repressed men can be some of the dirtiest lovers. And they’re a couple? Both bisexual?”
Jen nodded. “On and off, but when they’re on? Very intense.”
“So what you’re telling me is gorgeous, well-hung, bisexual Irish bookends want to make you the filling in their sandwich and pleasure you senseless? Oh yeah, your life is so hard.”
“I didn’t tell you they were well-hung.”
“Am I wrong?”
Jen smiled in answer. “Do you think I should do it?”
“Will you drop out of school and lose yourself in an orgiastic haze until you end up being arrested again?”
“No.”
“Will you let the dirty Professor Hot Lips give you a passing grade for your favors?”
Jen made a face. “Definitely not.”
“Are you still on the pill and taking precautions?”
“Yes, Natasha.”
“And are you still planning on using that beautiful heart of yours to help people in pain and save the world? As Finns do?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Then who am I to tell you what you can or can’t do with your body?”
Her body wasn’t the problem. “I’m not the best judge of a man’s character.”
“Prison changed you.” When Jen rolled her eyes, Tasha laughed. “But I’m being serious. You’re a different person now than you were with Scott. More confident. What we’ve been through in the last year or so? Everyone’s different, but I think you’ve grown the most—if you don’t count stomach girth. And you’ve done it while we were all too caught up in our own crazy romances and insecurities to notice.”
Jen smiled, loving that she could call this woman her sister. “You noticed.”
“Because I love you the most, but don’t tell your brothers.” She chewed on her lip for a moment. “And because I love you, I should tell you this won’t be as easy a sell as Owen and Jeremy, or Stephen and I, for that matter. As a one-time couple experience, sure. As a relationship…”
Jen forced a snort. “I’m not bringing them to the Finn Again. This is sex. It’s not serious. I mean it’s intense, but… Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Are you sure it’s not serious?” Tasha looked doubtful. “Trick and Stephen go way back.”
“I know. They hung out in the same—”
“They did more than hang out. They took turns saving each other’s lives.”
“The chips?”
“The what?”
“Trick said they each had chips to call in. That I was one of Stephen’s.”
“I know Stephen helped Trick get out of his house one night before his brother killed him. He was drunk and he’d beaten Trick pretty badly, and somehow your brother knocked out his, packed a bag and got Trick safely to a friend’s. They were young enough that, if he’d called the police, Trick would have been taken from his home and put in child services, which he didn’t want.”
Her heart ached for Trick. “That’s one hell of a chip.”
Tasha nodded. “But he’s earned his fair share, Jen. Stephen told me that a few years later Trick took the fall for him. Just him. A whole group of young hoodlums, all of them swearing loyalty to each other, disappeared on Stephen as soon as they heard sirens. Trick stayed. He hid him and got taken to jail for something he’d warned everyone not to do.”
Jen didn’t understand. “Stephen never committed an actual crime.”
“He came close, but Trick made sure no one knew how close. And he never asked for or accepted anything in return.”
“He really did that? Took the blame for my brother?”
Tasha nodded. “It was just stealing, not drugs or murder. But it went on his permanent record.”
And now her brother was a sitting senator and Trick found lost dogs and cheating wives. When he wasn’t breaking into her bedroom.
“He seems to make it a habit,” Tasha continued. “Helping people, I mean. Ken told me Trick recently helped relocate some people who were close to him. He made sure no one would ever find them, so they’d be safe. Ken said he’d owe him for life.”
“Does Brady know about that? Because he doesn’t like Trick at all.”
“Probably because he suspects his intentions for you. And that’s what I’m trying to tell you. He appears willing to put his good relations with a man who could destroy his life with one line of code, and a state senator who still owes him a favor, at risk to spend time with you. Not to mention incurring the ire of a Marine, his police chief brother and every other alpha male in your family. Do you think he did that—broke into your room and spent months seducing you—because he had some nights free? So he could get his old lover to have a one-time ménage?”