His words from the other night replayed in her mind. No, he wasn’t rushing them, but the end goal remained the same, and the longer the timeline extended, the more pressure she put on him.
She looked at him crashed across the sofa with his e
yes closed, and his wide, superhero chest slowly rising and falling. Her heart contracted. Doing a few loads of laundry and preparing some meals made her feel less burdensome, but those deeds didn’t magically lighten the weight of responsibility on Hunter’s shoulders. Spending time in his arms, sharing laughs, and kisses, and amazing orgasms might mean their feelings for each other had grown beyond protective, on his part, and grateful, on hers, but it didn’t change the underlying reality. You are a burden as long as you’re here. The only way to change that is to get out.
Chapter Thirteen
Hunter woke up in his bed, alone, with sunlight streaming through the slit in the curtains. He vaguely remembered Madison walking him from the sofa to the bedroom after Joy’s three a.m. feeding, and he thought she’d snuggled in next to him, but considering the shape he’d arrived home in last night that might be wishful thinking. At any rate—he lifted his head from the pillow and looked around—she wasn’t there now. He flopped back onto the pillow and stared at the ceiling. He had some groveling to do, to apologize to her for coming home at all hours, puking-his-guts-out wasted, and letting Beau turn the living room into a Hangover Heaven—although he had to admit, the IV had helped.
What time was it? He turned to stare at the clock on his nightstand. Nine twenty. Crap. He hadn’t slept so late since…? Christmas, when he’d helped Beau numb the pain of a colossal fuckup in his relationship with Savannah.
Huh. Heartache and hangovers. He sensed a pattern.
But in his case he couldn’t even legitimately own the heartache. Madison would be back on the job next week. He should be happy, because that had always been the plan. It brought her and Joy one step closer to moving out—also the plan—and the best one for all of them. Madison needed her independence, and so did he.
Something unfamiliar on the nightstand caught his eye. He pushed his clock out of the way and closed his hand around a plastic cylinder. He brought the pump-top container closer and turned the bottle until he could see the labeling.
Liquid Silk.
Where had it come from?
Well, Einstein, either Madison put it there or you had a visit from the lube fairy last night.
His pulse quickened, and his morning hard-on got serious. A piece of their conversation last night replayed in his mind.
Don’t worry. I couldn’t do anything with it right now, even if you could.
What I can do with it is a whole ’nother topic of conversation.
He sat up and looked at the nightstand. Now he spotted the rectangular box of thirty-six ultra-thin, lubricated condoms. Had he really spent last night drinking himself into oblivion with four sweaty guys when he could have been home, in this bed, doing things to Madison he’d been fantasizing about for weeks?
If that wasn’t a public service message for drinking responsibly, he didn’t know what was. And yeah, he definitely had some groveling to do, considering she’d obviously had plans for them last night, and he’d been a no-show. Hell, she might have decided she’d dodged a bullet, and approaching her first thing this morning with his eager cock tenting his shorts, still stinking of all his poor decisions from the night before, struck him as an unlikely way to change her mind. Nobody was that persuasive.
He needed a shower first, followed by a long, drawn-out apology delivered with her legs over his shoulders, and his tongue getting properly acquainted with all the territory from which her doctor had removed the metaphorical yellow “Do Not Cross” tape. Sounded like a plan.
He stood, pulled off the wad of cotton taped to the inside of his arm, and winced at the golf ball-sized bruise Beau had left to remind him he had shit for brains. Nice.
The house sounded quiet, which surprised him, because around this time of the morning, Joy liked to get her groove on and Madison usually turned on the pop-country channel and threw them a little dance party. She sang along to Miranda Lambert, or Florida Georgia Line, or whatever, and two-stepped Joy around the living room. Damn. Something disturbingly close to disappointment settled in his gut. His girls put on a hell of a show, and he liked to catch it on his days off.
Hold up. They’re not your girls.
Okay, maybe not, he admitted as he pulled a pair of jeans from the stack of clean clothes on his dresser, but they were there for now, and he was honest enough with himself to admit the arrangement had perks—perks that had nothing to do with clean, folded laundry…or the possibilities presented by thirty-six ultra-thin condoms and a jumbo tube of Liquid Silk. How cuddling a grumpy infant at three in the morning had become a perk, he didn’t know, but he liked watching those big blue owl-eyes blink up at him as he talked nonsense in a low voice and lulled her back to sleep. He liked coming home to find Madison puttering in the kitchen or entertaining Joy in the living room, and he sure as hell liked feeling Madison’s sexy little body pressed up against his in the middle of the night. In that regard, the last couple of weeks had been an exercise in creative torture. He hadn’t spent this much time at third base since high school, and he prayed to God he hadn’t blown his chance to take her all the way home.
The short trek to the bathroom confirmed his initial impression—the girls weren’t around. While he pissed away the last of a thousand milliliters of IV medium, he glanced behind him. He remembered leaving his dirty clothes in a pile on the bathmat last night. Of course they were nowhere to be found this morning. He rolled his eyes and turned on the shower. Maid Madison had struck again. That perk he wouldn’t miss. And this morning, particularly, knowing she’d tidied up after him added another weight to his load of guilt. He stepped under the spray, closed his eyes, and let the water beat down on him.
The muffled slam of the front door had him opening his eyes. He washed up, pulled on the jeans, and skipped the shave. He liked the way she squirmed and squealed when he scraped his scruffy jaw over the ticklish spots on her neck and breasts. Maybe she had other ticklish spots he could scratch for her?
He opened the bathroom door and then stepped into the hall to find her standing in the living room, shrugging out of her black hoodie. She wore a pair of broken-in red cowboy boots, a denim skirt that hit mid-thigh, a long, fuzzy red sweater, and a startled expression. She’d expected him to be down for the count.
“How’re you feeling?” Her question contained all sorts of caution. She tipped her head and her dark hair streamed over her shoulder.
“Like a dick.” Literally. The sight of her, the cinnamon-honey scent of her skin, and the husky sound of her voice had him so hard he could barely think. “Where’s Joy?”
“I just dropped her at Nelle’s for a few hours”—her lips twisted into a faint smile and his cock drilled into the top button of his fly—“’cause I figured you could use some peace and quiet.”
He crossed his arms and leaned against the archway leading from the hall to the living room, liking the way her eyes roamed all over him. “How ’bout you, Madison? What could you use?”
She blinked and crossed her arms over her chest, unconsciously mimicking him. “Me? Nothing. I’m good. Do you feel up to some breakfast?”