The alarm went off promptly at five in the morning, and I squinted my eyes at the clock to make sure that my mind wasn’t playing games.
“Nooo,” I groaned and rolled over, my hands automatically going to the bed beside me to feel for the man that hadn’t slept anywhere but at my side for the last few weeks.
It was not only empty, but it was cold and still made, as if the man hadn’t ever come to bed.
I came up onto an elbow, instantly awake now.
“Hunt?” I called.
No answer.
I got up and walked to the bathroom, taking care of business and washing my hands before brushing my teeth and hair.
I picked up a hair tie and walked to the closet for my scrubs, coming out five minutes later fully dressed in my pants, long-sleeved top because the hospital liked to keep it just this side of frozen hell, and my scrub top.
After filling up my pockets with the essentials—pen light, cell phone, stethoscope, Snickers bar and twenty dollars in cash I pilfered from Hunt’s wallet on the nightstand—I headed out to the main part of the house to look for my man.
I found him in his office, his gaze on his computer screen, his hair a mess as if he’d been running his fingers through it for the last couple of hours, and his glasses slightly tilted on his face.
One hand was on the computer mouse while the other was on the keyboard.
His bicep jumped with each move he made.
And I couldn’t help but smile.
“Hunt,” I called softly.
His gaze snapped up to the doorway, and the dogs all but freaked out upon seeing me, jumping up and wagging their excited puppy butts.
“You want to go outside?” I asked them, turning around before getting acknowledgment from my husband and heading in the direction of the back door.
Once I let them out, I went to the kitchen counter and started on coffee and their breakfasts, as well as mine.
After allowing them back in, I went back to Hunt and found him once again hard at work, fresh cup of coffee in my hand for each of us.
“Is this business or pleasure?” I asked, walking into the room.
His eyes went to the coffee in my hand and not to me.
“Neither. Well, possibly pleasure.” He paused. “Your aunt.”
I scrunched up my nose.
“You didn’t go to sleep last night because you were working on crap for my aunt?” I asked, placing the coffee cup in his hand when he reached out to take it from me.
“Yes.” He paused. “Though not for her. More like against her if I was being honest.”
I nodded and took a hesitant sip of my coffee, then turned to stare at the computer screen.
I wasn’t sure what I expected, to be honest. But a bunch of zeros and ones wasn’t it.
I turned back and looked at him.
“Why no other numbers?” I asked curiously.
He took a sip of his own coffee before answering me.
“Computers operate in binary, meaning they store data and perform calculations using zeros and ones only. A single binary digit can only represent true—one—or false—two.” He then went off on a tangent about why they did and didn’t work, and he lost me at ‘complex functions.’
At least, mostly he did.
His words lost me.
His voice, however, didn’t lose me.
He sounded rough, gritty and sleepy.
Three very sexy combinations that had me wanting to lean forward and run my tongue along the part in his lips.
“Are you even listening to me?” he asked as I placed my coffee cup down on the edge of his desk. “Because you…”
I was, but I wasn’t.
I looked down at my clothes, thinking about how hard it would be to get redressed if I were to climb him like a tree.
Then I looked at my watch, realizing that I had less than fifteen minutes before I needed to leave.
I reached for my hair tie and pulled it off of my wrist before dropping down to my knees between Hunt’s splayed thighs.
His voice trailed off as I started to put my hair up.
“I don’t have time to do anything else,” I said as I finished tying my hair up in a messy bun on the top of my head.
“Your hair reminds me of a pineapple,” he murmured softly. “You’re a fineapple.”
I snickered and reached for his sweatpants.
The same damn sweatpants that I’d purchased for him the first day he’d gotten out of prison.
The same ones that were just a hair too tight and showed off just a bit too much.
If he were to ever wear these out in public, I might very well cry.
Not because he didn’t look good in them, but because he looked too good.
“We need to buy you more clothes,” I said, placing my hands on the tops of his thighs as I rubbed my palms upward.