His to Cherish by Stacey Lynn Page A

man lost it in front of me, I was going with him. I knew it. I couldn’t see him cry.
    His nose twitched as if he was fighting back the tears and his voice was scratchy when he said, “Last week was really bad.” His hand tightened on my wrist. I didn’t move. Or speak. Or breathe. “I didn’t want you to see me like that. I don’t even know why, I just didn’t, but I could have told you that instead of being an asshole.”
    He had been, but maybe I’d expected more than he could give me.
    “I’m so fucking tired of being alone in that house. The silence chokes me, and everywhere I turn, I see him. Sometimes I swear to God I hear him laugh like he’s on his phone in his room, but when I get there, it’s empty.”
    “Aidan.” I reached up, pressed my palm to his cheek, and felt the wetness now slowly falling. “If I could take away that pain for you, I would.”
    Truth. So much damn truth in that sentence. I’d do anything not to see him broken and hurting, looking like he could collapse against me in exhaustion at any second.
    I finally saw it. Truly saw him and the bags under his eyes, the wrinkles at the edges, the tightness everywhere.
    With the fire behind us, the sun almost fully set, and us bathed in light from the solar lamps sprinkled throughout my backyard, I saw a completely different side of him.
    My hand dropped from his cheek and I left him in the yard, staring at me with a funny look on his face. I grabbed the hose and brought it back, handing it to him. “Can you put the fire out?”
    He frowned at my question, but as I bent to pick up the wine and glasses, he did as he was told, and when the fire was out, I reached for his hand.
    “Come with me.”
    He stared at my hand and reached out, taking it hesitantly into his.
    “Where are we going?”
    “You’ll see,” I said, keeping my eyes and my focus forward. It was dark and I didn’t want to trip, but I also didn’t want to lose my nerve. I couldn’t spend time thinking anymore about the fact that I was taking him to my house…
    And to my bed.
    He needed to relax. He needed to sleep.
    And I had the perfect way to help him do both.

Chapter 8
    “Don’t get the wrong idea,” I said as we reached the doorway to my room, “but I want you to take off your shoes and shirt, and lie facedown on my bed.”
    I wrung my hands and looked away from him. I wanted him to relax, but I could have been making a huge mistake.
    Aidan glanced at me. A smirk, one I didn’t normally see on him, hit his lips. Without saying anything, he walked to my bed and I ducked into my bathroom.
    I quickly dug through my linen closet and found my bottle of massage oil. I pumped a small amount into my hand to ensure it was still fresh and inhaled the scent of bergamot. It wasn’t the most relaxing oil, meant mostly for energizing, but the orange scent was more masculine than the lavender I used on myself.
    “Good enough,” I muttered, and headed back to the bedroom.
    When I opened the door, I stopped midstep and reached out to steady myself on the doorframe.
    Aidan had listened. He lay on my bed, arms bent and tucked under my pillow, his head turned to face me. He was absolutely breathtaking, all that male, muscled skin splayed over my bed, his size dwarfing my queen-size bed.
    Reminding myself that all of this was innocent, that I was just helping him relax, that this wasn’t some seduction to get a man like him in my bed, I forced my feet to start moving again.
    “This how you wanted me?” I detected amusement in his tone, breaking the crackling tension. And the way he looked at me, that lopsided smirk, all that muscle and skin and
man,
sent my mind and body into a tailspin of desire.
    I glanced at my far wall to see if there was a fire in the fireplace. Then I blinked and remembered I didn’t
have
a fireplace. With the sudden heat boiling in my veins, I figured one might have magically appeared.
    “Um-hmm.” I couldn’t form words as I reached the side of