Chapter 15
Hunter
Before dawn, I wake to find her thigh draped over my hip and the soft weight of her hand resting so low on my stomach it’s not-quite touching my cock. I inhale sharply. Citrus and warm skin fill my head. I have to fight every instinct I have not to rock against her just to feel more.
Her breath is warm against my neck. One of her legs is hooked over my hip like she’s claiming territory. My dick is hard, of course it is, and I lie stone-still with my heart hammering, unsure if moving would make things better or worse.
She stirs against me, making a soft sound that goes straight to my groin. “Hm?”
My mouth goes dry. I’m dying to answer her with a soft kiss. I would do anything that she asked at this moment.
Looking down at her lips, lipstick smudged and rubbed off, I bite my lower lip.
What the fuck is wrong with me all the sudden? Why can’t I tear my eyes away from Juliet’s mouth?
“Mmph... what the...”
Her eyes snap open. She takes a few moments to figure out where she is and who she’s touching. The second she realizes our position, she bolts upright like someone set her on fire.
“Shit!”
I look over at her, still groggy but definitely amused by her panic. “Morning, Monroe. Sleep okay? You seemed comfortable.”
She scrambles backward, dragging the comforter with her and leaving me exposed to the cool morning air. “You didn’t... I mean, we didn’t...”
“Nah. You just crawled over here on your own and used me like a body pillow.”
Her face flames red. “I did not.”
“Pretty sure your leg was over mine. And your hand? Yeah. That was adventurous.”
She makes a strangled noise that’s somewhere between embarrassment and outrage, then dives off the bed, grabbing for her jeans like the cottage is on fire.
“Relax,” I say, stretching deliberately so she gets a good look at what she was just pressed against. “I won’t tell anybody that you had a moment of weakness.”
“What?!” She launches a pillow at me, her cheeks still glowing pink. “You’re the worst, Huxley. The. Worst.”
I can’t help but laugh.
“You keep saying that, but here you are... still thinking about my abs.”
“I’m thinking about how fast I can get out of this cottage before you say something else that makes me want to drown myself.”
I stretch again with a smirk, hands behind my head. “Race you to breakfast?”
She huffs and disappears into the bathroom, slamming the door harder than necessary.
I lie back, still smiling. “Still got it,” I mutter to myself.
When she emerges, she’s back in full armor. Jeans, a cream sweater, makeup perfectly applied. But I notice she’s switched lipsticks from the deep red she wore last night to something lighter. And her eyes keep darting to my mouth when she thinks I’m not looking.
I want her. Of course I do. I’ve wanted her since college, if I’m being honest with myself.
The second I laid eyes on Juliet Monroe, my brain got rewired in some essential way. I’ve never thought that she was anything less than a perfect ten.
But it’s more than that.
That’s what makes this dangerous. Because want is one thing. I can handle want. It’s straightforward, manageable. It’s the need that messes me up. And lately, when she’s not in the room, it feels like something’s missing.
She hurries out of the room, leaving me to shower and get changed alone.
Morning chaos greets me when I finally make it to the main lodge.
Someone’s burning bacon in the chef’s kitchen, filling the air with smoke and the sound of fire alarms. Moose is outside barefoot, punting a football across the lawn in what I assume is his version of a morning workout.
Jessa’s in the kitchen mixing hangover smoothies that are the color of algae and probably taste worse.
No way am I getting talked into tasting one of those.
I see Juliet looking sadly at a coffee urn. When I sidle up next to her, I look at the empty mug in her hands.
“No luck, huh?”
“No.” She looks at me, her brows descending in a pout. “The chef said she was making more.”
Oh. She usually has a pot of coffee brewing anytime she’s at the house. She probably relies on the kick of caffeine to get her engine started. It’s making a lot of sense right now.
Plucking the mug from her hands, I pick up the handle to the urn. “I’m going to go check on that. Hold on, Monroe.”
She gives me a not-too-grateful glare, which makes me chuckle. She’s a little surly this morning and I can’t say that I dislike it.
I stride into the kitchen, where I find the chef frying bacon and cooking eggs. She spots the urn in my hands and shoots me an apologetic smile.
“Sorry. I have my hands full. If you could just wait, I can refill the coffee in a few minutes.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I walk over to the industrial-size coffee machine. It’s a familiar model, one that I remember from my days bussing tables at a steakhouse. “I’ve done this a million times before.”
I pull out the basket, dump the coffee grounds, and replace the damp filter with a fresh one from a stack on top of the machine. The chef is watching, so I ask her for directions how much coffee I should pour in. Then I hit brew.
A minute later, the coffee maker is pumping out dark, fragrant liquid. I let it brew straight into the cup in my hands before setting up the urn with its lid open. Lifting the cup at the chef, I head back to Juliet.
She’s standing in the dining room, looking mournful.
I corral her, hand her the fresh-brewed cup, and watch her eyes light up.
“You got coffee!” she says, voice sounding breathy. As if I’d conjured a miracle.
“I did.”
I point to the several cream and sugar options and she falls all over herself to add plenty of oat milk and raw sugar to her coffee. Then she stirs it and takes a sip.
“Mmm. It’s actually good.”
“Anything for you, honey.”
Juliet gives me side-eye as she has another sip. “Thanks, baby.”
I like the teasing we’ve got going on. Wandering over to her, I slip an arm around her waist before I can overthink it. She doesn’t pull away.
“Hm. Maybe the Chainsaw has a gentle setting after all.” Her voice is soft, just like her skin under my hands.
“You are a Firecracker, aren’t you?”
She rolls her eyes, but the smile stays. Until the chef announces that breakfast is served, she allows me to hold her for a few minutes. She sets up plates of eggs, scrambled tofu, bacon, hash browns, and fruit salad. I finally get a cup of coffee, a pile of eggs, and fruit.
No one is sitting at the dining room table. Everyone lounges in their own space, if they’re here at all. Silas, Grayson, and Ivy haven’t appeared at all yet.
I head out to the deck overlooking the rugged shore leading into the Salish Sea. Juliet is sitting outside on a deck chair and I grab the seat beside hers. For a minute we just eat and sip coffee; I put my eggs away in a very short amount of time and then look at Juliet.
“You switched lipsticks,” I observe.
“So?” She brings a paper napkin to her lips. “I can wear different lipsticks. I change them all the time.”
She’s always a tiger on the attack. I smirk.
“Just surprised. I liked the one you had on in bed.”
Her eyes sparkle, and she flicks her hair out of her face.
“I think you like whatever color my lips are, no matter what. You’re basically captivated by them.” She pauses, tilting her head. “Are you obsessed with me, Huxley?”
Isn’t that obvious? I cough, covering my reaction with a low laugh. “You know, you talk a big game, Firecracker, but you were real cozy this morning.”
She spears a strawberry and points it at me. “I was asleep.”
“Yeah. Real peacefully. Right on top of me. You snore, by the way.”
Her eyes narrow to slits. “I do not.”
“You definitely do. It’s kinda cute, though.”
“Do you wake up every morning this annoying or is this a special treat?”
I grin and lean in just a little, close enough to catch a whiff of the expensive perfume she wears. “Only for you, sweetheart.”
Her breath catches, just for a second. Then she turns on her heel, muttering something I can’t quite catch, and walks away. I watch her go, satisfied with myself.
I’m winning. Whatever game this is between us, I’m definitely winning.
The rest of the day slides into something warmer, slower, more intimate than either of us meant for it to be.
Around noon, we get dragged to the massage cabin by Ivy and Jessa, who claim it’s a team bonding requirement. I scoff, saying there’s no way I’m getting oiled up by some stranger, but Juliet smirks and calls me a coward.
That earns her a challenge I refuse to back down from.
“Fine,” I say. “But if this is weird, I’m blaming you.”
“Everything’s weird with you,” she shoots back.
Tucked in the trees is the cozy massage cabin. Juliet ends up on the table next to mine, separated by a gauzy curtain that doesn’t quite reach the floor. When the massage therapist works on her, she lets out a groan so sinful it makes my fists clench.
“Jesus, Monroe. Those sounds,” I mutter through the partition. “Are you trying to get me arrested?”
She hums, voice lazy and content. “You’re the one who insisted on being here.”
“I didn’t insist. You challenged me.”
“Same thing.”
For the next hour, I have to listen to her make sounds that should be illegal while someone works knots out of muscles I didn’t know I had. By the time we’re done, I’m wound tighter than when we started.
Afterward, we both look thoroughly worked over. Hair mussed, faces flushed, clothes slightly rumpled. When we get back to the main cabin, everyone teases us about the afterglow. I nearly deck Silas when he makes a stupid comment about couple’s activities.
Later, we wander back to the media room where a few players and some of the staff are playing cards. Shane pulls Juliet into a game of poker, declaring her his lucky charm. She leans over my shoulder during my hand, whispering strategy tips that are both terrible and probably meant to mess with me.
“You should fold,” she murmurs in my ear. Her breath is warm against my neck and I can feel her body heat through the cream cashmere sweater she’s wearing.
Down, boy. No letting my thoughts wander there. “I’ve got a good hand,” I proclaim.
Juliet’s eyes sparkle and she shakes her head at me like I’m a petulant two-year-old who won’t listen.
“You’ve got nothing,” she purrs. “Trust me, honey.”
I know she’s doing it on purpose. I also don’t care. Having her this close, feeling the heat of her body pressed against my back, is worth losing a few hands of poker.
At one point, she laughs too hard at something Moose says. She loses her balance, throwing her arms around my neck to catch herself. The hug should be brief, but... It isn’t. My hands come up instinctively, one at her waist, one on her back, anchoring her there.
Neither of us says anything. The room continues around us, but we’re in our own bubble. She drags herself away, eyes flicking to mine, cheeks pink.
“Sorry,” she whispers. She bites that lush pink lip, sinking her teeth into it.
Would she like it if I kissed her right now? Would she moan?
“Don’t be,” I husk out.
Eventually, the card game fizzles out. People drift toward the fire pits or the hot tubs for the evening wind-down. We stay behind, alone in the quiet media room.
I stand behind her at the window, watching the sun drop lower over the water. The view is incredible, all gold light and lavender sky, but I’m more interested in watching her reflection in the glass.
“It’s so beautiful here.” She crosses her arms, gazing out with me. “I don’t want to go back to real life.”
Neither do I. Tomorrow we’ll return to Seattle. Here, in this bubble we’ve created, things feel simple. Real.
Well, more real than they have been anyway.
I say nothing. Just slide my hand to the small of her back and leave it there, letting the warmth soak in. She doesn’t pull away, doesn’t tense up. Just leans back slightly into the contact.
We stand like that for a long time, watching the light change over the water. The silence isn’t awkward or charged with the usual tension. It’s peaceful in a way I’m not used to.
“This place is like a different world,” she breathes.
“Yeah.”
“No cameras. No reporters. There won’t even be any stupid exes making statements to the press.”
“No fake smiles or staged photos.”
She turns slightly, still within the circle of my arms. “Is this what normal people feel like?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been normal.”
That gets a small smile. “Me neither.”
I study her profile in the golden light. She looks younger here, softer. Less like the polished professional who can command a room full of executives and more like just Juliet. The woman who builds pillow walls and snores in her sleep and makes sounds during massages that drive me crazy.
“Do we have to go back?” she asks. “Can’t we live here? Just move here?”
If I’m reading the room correctly, I think she’s asking a loaded question. What happens to this thing between us when we return to our fake relationship and our real lives? What happens when the cameras are rolling again and every touch has to be calculated for maximum PR impact?
“It sounds nice,” I admit. “But I don’t know. I think the owners will probably come back eventually.”
She smiles softly as she looks down at the shore below us.
I don’t know what we are or what this is becoming. I only know that this part, the peace and the weight of her against me and the quiet way she breathes, is the kind of thing I shouldn’t get used to.
Because it’s going to end. In a few months, our contract will expire, and she’ll move on to whatever comes next in her carefully planned career.
And I’ll go back to being the Chainsaw, the guy who fights more than he scores, the walking PR disaster who can’t keep his mother from selling him out to the press.
But standing here with her in the fading light, I let myself pretend for a little while longer that maybe this could be real. Maybe someone like Juliet could actually want someone like me for more than just a business arrangement.
Even if I know better.
Even if I know I’ll probably ruin it like I ruin everything else.
For now, at this moment, it’s enough to just hold her and watch the sunset over the water and pretend that tomorrow doesn’t exist.