by Unknown
He lay on top of her, pinning her to the bed as aftershocks beat through them both, making him want to stay right here, in this moment, forever.
“We need to go home,” she muttered after a long period of silence.
“We’re moving into the Pig’s Belly. Welcome home, baby.”
She snorted with laughter that made her tighten around his cock. As if he hadn’t just come like a madman, he felt himself begin to harden again. Was it possible to break your cock from too much sex?
“No way! Out with you! We’re not doing it again. I’ll be crippled.”
Laughing, he kissed his way down her back as he withdrew from her, ending with a gentle bite to each of her delicious cheeks that made her squeal. He went into the bathroom to deal with the condom and ran a washcloth under warm water. Before leaving the bathroom, he turned on the bathtub faucet, pouring in some of the bubble bath the Pig had been good enough to provide. Hunter left the bathroom and found her right where he’d left her, facedown on the bed, eyes closed, lips red and puffy from hours of kissing.
He caressed her back and bottom. After the night they’d spent together, he was officially addicted to her ass as well as a few other important parts of her. “Turn over, honey.”
“Don’t wanna move.”
“You’ll like this.”
“No more.”
“I heard you. I think my penis is sprained anyway.”
That made her laugh as she turned over, her eyes meeting his in the bright light of day for the first time. Her cheeks flushed with what might’ve been embarrassment, but she never looked away.
“Good morning,” he said, leaning in to kiss her.
“Morning.”
With his hand on her inner thigh, he said, “Open up.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Just do it. You’ll be glad you did.”
“That’s what you said after the fourth time.”
He laughed and shook his head at her saucy comeback. He’d expected her to be hot in bed—in fact, he’d spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about what she might be like in bed only to discover the real thing was far better than anything he could’ve imagined. But her humor had been unexpected and amazingly refreshing.
Without breaking the intense gaze, she let her legs fall open.
Hunter tried to remember that this was about caretaking and not about sex, but damn was it hard to keep from drooling at the sight of her swollen pink flesh, still slick with the remnants of her release. Swallowing hard, he pressed the warm washcloth into her cleft and held it against her sensitive tissue.
Megan’s eyes closed, and she moaned with pleasure. “That feels so good.”
“I’ve got something that would feel even better.”
She opened one blue eye, and the way she looked at him let him know he’d better not be thinking what she thought he was thinking.
“Not that, you sex-crazed nympho.”
“Me. Right. If I’m a sex-crazed nympho, what does that make you?”
“A Megan-crazed nympho.”
His reply drew a big smile from her. “You’re very cute in the morning.” She reached up to run her fingers over the stubble on his jaw. “I like you this way.”
Having her look at him that way and say such things made him light-headed and incredibly hopeful that they’d started something in this room that might turn out to be far more than a fantasy for both of them. “What way?”
“Unshaven, uncombed, un-put-together. I’ve never seen you like that.”
He turned his face into her hand and pressed a kiss to the palm. “I’ll have to let myself go more often.”
“That’d be fine with me.”
Sliding his arms under her shoulders and knees, he lifted her from the bed.
She let out a squeak of surprise. “Seriously? What’re you doing? You’re going to sprain something else carrying me around.”
“You’re light as a feather for a tough guy like me.”
“Sure I am. Where’re you taking me?”
“Since we’re both bare-ass naked, not far.”
“That’s a relief.”
He carried her into the bathroom and deposited her into the bubbles that now reached the halfway point of the deep claw-footed tub. When he would’ve stood to leave her to soak, she grabbed hold of his hand. “Plenty of room for two.”
“Scoot forward.” Hunter got in behind her, sinking into the warm, fragrant water with a sigh of pleasure. “That feels so good.”
“Sure does.”
He shut the water off and put his arms around her.
She took his hands and linked their fingers. “Hunter?”
“Hmm?”
“What happens after we leave here and go back to our real lives?”
“This is our real life now.”
“It’s not just a fantasy?”
“Not for me it isn’t. For me it’s the best reality I’ve ever had.”
“I still can’t believe you feel that way about me.”
“You’d better start believing it because I have no intention of not feeling this way about you.” He pushed her damp hair aside, kissing her neck and along the tendon that led to her shoulder. “I want us to go home and be together as much as we can.”
“So it wasn’t just about what happened last night and this morning for you?”
The question hit him like a fist to the gut. Did she really think that?
She rested her head on his shoulder and looked up at him. “Hunter?”
“No, it wasn’t about the sex, even if it was the best sex I’ve ever had in my life. It was about you and being with you and getting to know you and finding out—finally—that all my instincts where you’re concerned were spot on. The sex was awesome, amazing, life-changing. But if all we’d done was talk and sleep in the same bed, I’d feel exactly the same way I do now.”
“And how do you feel?”
“Captivated. Enthralled. Devastated.”
“Why devastated?”
“Because I didn’t act on my attraction to you ages ago. Because I was too damned afraid that you’d shoot me down. I should’ve done something about it sooner.”
“You were right last night when you said I wouldn’t have been ready.”
“Do you feel ready now?”
“I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know?”
“I’m still afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of letting myself feel all these things for you and then having something happen to you or to us …”
“Nothing’s going to happen.”
“You can’t possibly know that.”
“I know that wild horses and a team of mules couldn’t drag me away from you after spending an incredible night with you. There’s nothing in this world that would make me not want to be with you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do know that.”
“What if …” She bit her lip, trying to think of how to say what she wanted to ask him.
“What if what?”
“What if ‘your Cameron’ comes crashing into town, and you take one look at her and realize she’s the one you’re meant to be with?”
“Megan,” he said, sighing, “I’ve already met the one I’m meant to be with. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Didn’t I do a good enough job of showing you how ruined I’d be if you told me this was a one-night stand?”
“I don’t want it to be a one-night stand.”
“Thank goodness.” With their hands still joined, he crossed one arm over the other and wrapped them around her. “I detect a note of hesitancy, however.”
“I’m not hesitant about you. It’s just that I have no idea what’s going to happen now that Nina is leaving, with the diner and everything.”
“Nothing has to be decided today or tomorrow or even next week, right?”
“Right.”
“So try to relax and chill. It�
�ll work itself out.”
“Is that what you would do in my situation? Relax and chill?”
Hunter laughed at the insightful comment. “Probably not.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“How is it that you already know me so well?”
“I suppose I’ve been getting to know you for a while now. Do you realize you come in at the exact same time every morning and every afternoon?”
“I do?”
“Yep. And you always order the same thing—a tall coffee with cream and two sugars and a grilled corn muffin at seven fifteen every morning. Just the coffee at one forty in the afternoon.”
“I do like my coffee.”
“Right at one forty every weekday without fail.”
“Because you close at two.”
“You sell coffee in your own store.”
“So? Yours is better and plus, you’re not the one doling it out in our store, although you could if you wanted to. If you decide you’re done with the diner and waitressing, we’ll find a job for you at the store. If you want to work there, that is.”
“That’s very sweet of you, but wouldn’t your family find it a bit bizarre if we go out on one date and then suddenly I’m working there?”
“We’ll be going out on far more than one date, and we created an entire department for Will’s girlfriend. I doubt anyone would say too much about hiring mine.”
“Your girlfriend … You’re already giving me a promotion, and I’m not even on the payroll yet.”
The comment was flippant, but he knew she had to be reeling from him using that word to describe her. “I want you to be my girlfriend, Megan. I haven’t had one—an official girlfriend—since college. I know it’s a stupid term right out of high school, but call it whatever you want to—girlfriend, significant other, lover—”
She let out a shriek. “No! Not lover. I hate when people call each other that. We get it already. You’re sleeping together and feel the need to broadcast it to the world. ‘Oh, he’s my lover.’ Gag.”
Hunter rocked with silent laughter. “Tell me how you really feel. You don’t have to call me your lover as long as you’re willing to be my lover.”
“Ewww.” She pulled her hands free and put them over her ears. “Stop using that word. It’s like panties and moist and ointment and congealed and excrete.” She shuddered. “Horrible words.”
“I’ve never met anyone who had word phobias.”
“Now you have. Do not use those words around me.”
“So what you’re saying is I can never tell you that my lover’s moist panties congealed—”
Her hand over his mouth ended the sentence prematurely. “Do not.”
He nibbled playfully on her fingers. “I can’t believe you didn’t want to hear the rest of my sentence, and how did we get from me calling you my girlfriend to congealed ointment?”
“Hunter! I’m serious! Those words gross me out.”
“How about these words?” He whispered every filthy, sexy word he could think of in her ear. “Are they allowed?”
“Those are fine,” she said primly.
“Your system is screwed up. You know that, don’t you?”
“My system, my rules.”
“What other rules do you have?”
“You’ll have to wait and see.”
“I can’t wait. I want to know everything there is to know about you.”
“You make me sound so complicated, when I’m anything but.”
“I wouldn’t say that. Since we left home last night, I found out you’re a writer, you’re funny, you hate the word lover and you got into Middlebury. I found out that you have a very sexy mole right here.” He pointed to the spot to the right of her belly button. “I found out what makes you come—I love watching you come, by the way—and I found out you snore.”
“What? I do not snore!”
“Yes, you do. Little tiny snores. Very cute.”
“You’re making that up.”
“Okay, then. If that’s what you want to believe …”
She crossed her arms. “I’m never sleeping with you again.”
“Yes, you are. Tonight, in fact. I want you in my bed.”
“Not if you’re going to tell me I snore!”
“Then I won’t tell you. I’ll enjoy it in silence.”
“I may need to reconsider this whole thing in light of these revelations.”
“Please don’t do that.” Hunter pushed her arms aside and cupped her breasts, teasing her nipples gently.
She arched into him, wincing.
“Hurts?”
“Little bit. They got one hell of a workout last night.” She turned over to face him.
Hunter put his arms around her and looked down at her lovely, rosy skin, made even more so by the heat of the bath.
“I had a really great time,” she said. “Thank you.”
Touched by her sincerity, he said, “Thank you.”
“We should probably get going. Nina is leaving in a couple of days, and I want to spend as much time with her as I can.”
And just that quickly, the bubble they’d been in all night burst. Hunter felt her withdrawal keenly. If he’d had his way, they would’ve stayed here all day or at least until the Pig kicked them out of its belly.
Megan stood to get out of the tub, and Hunter offered his hand to guide her and then followed. He released her hand only to give her a towel and to wrap one around his waist. Then he reached for her again. “This is only the beginning, Megan.”
She smiled up at him, but she didn’t reply.
He could only hope she felt the same way.
CHAPTER 16
Hours later, Hunter pored over the information Nina had provided that outlined the diner’s financial situation. No matter how he spun the data, however, the results were always the same—the diner was operating in the red. Brett and Nina had bought the building at the peak of the real estate market and were carrying a hefty mortgage. That, coupled with the high cost of food and the relatively low prices Nina charged her customers, made for a less-than-profitable picture.
In addition to the financial news, the inspection performed that afternoon by his cousin Noah, a contractor, had yielded a number of costly upgrades that needed to be done to bring the building up to code. Nina and Brett were lucky they hadn’t been subjected to a fire department inspection in the last year. According to Noah, the hood over the grill had to be replaced immediately. Noah had told him it would be nearly impossible to insure the building without that upgrade.
Hunter took his role as the family’s fiduciary steward seriously. Regardless of his personal desire to keep Megan close by, he couldn’t, in good conscience, encourage his grandfather to invest his hard-earned money in the diner, knowing what he did now about the financial picture.
Running his fingers through his hair until it stood on end, Hunter tried to find a way to make the numbers work. He needed this to work. If it didn’t, what reason would Megan have to stay in town?
The thought of her leaving after the night they’d spent together made him feel sick and sweaty, as if he had some sort of flu or something. With tremendous reluctance, he picked up the phone to call his grandfather.
“Hey, it’s Hunter,” he said when Elmer answered.
“Ah, just the man I was hoping to hear from. What’s the good word?”
“I’m afraid there isn’t one.”
“What do you mean?”
“The numbers don’t add up, Gramps.”
“Speak to me.”
Hunter launched into a detailed explanation as to why it didn’t make financial sense for his grandfather to sink his money into the diner.
“Are these challenges you speak of insurmountable?”
The night without sleep suddenly caught up to him, and Hunter was exhausted at the thought of what needed to be done to turn things around at the diner. “Not completely, but normally when you invest in a business you do so because you feel it
will be beneficial to you financially. I can’t promise that’ll be the case here. In fact, it could be the exact opposite of beneficial.”
Elmer was quiet long enough that Hunter wondered if he was still there. “Gramps?”
“I’m here. Just thinking.” After another long pause, Elmer said, “Have you ever heard the story of how my father came to open the store?”
Hunter pinched the top of his nose, trying to ward off an exhaustion-fueled headache he felt coming on. He loved his grandfather beyond all reason, but he didn’t have the patience at the moment for one of his stories. All he wanted was to see Megan again, but since she’d asked for a few hours with her sister, he was giving her some space. Hunter sat back in his desk chair, prepared to settle in for a few minutes. “Yes, I’ve heard it.”
“I don’t think you’ve heard the whole thing.” Elmer loved nothing more than to spin a yarn, and now was no different. “You know the store opened during the Depression when things were hard—really hard. Nothing you imagine can do justice to how bad it was. My first memories were of my mother crying over the fact that she couldn’t buy meat. ‘How am I to feed my babies if I can’t buy meat?’ I heard her ask my father one night. It didn’t register to me at the time that things were that bad. I figured it out much later, as an adult, when I had a family of my own to feed. I tell you this to give you context of what kind of moxie it took for my father, in that environment, to say, hey, let’s open a business that requires a significant investment in inventory.”
Despite his exhaustion, despite his desire to move the clock forward to when he could be with Megan again, Hunter was riveted by his grandfather’s story.
“My mother was vehemently opposed. They argued about it, and they didn’t often argue, especially in front of us. But they argued about the store. My father’s position was that he could fill a need for people in the Northeast Kingdom.”
“She didn’t agree?”
“She agreed it was a good idea. What she couldn’t handle was that opening the doors would take every dime they had along with some they didn’t. She was afraid of what would become of us if the store failed.”
“I’ve never heard all this.”
“It’s not something my father liked to talk about. He was crazy about my mother, and the fact that they disagreed so profoundly over this was hard on him.”