Chapter 14
Hunter
Icame down for coffee, and I walked into the dirty dream to end all dirty dreams.
I stop rubbing the sleep from my eyes and stare at Maisie’s sexy, rounded ass.
The kitchen smells of baking. There’s sugar, a hint of spice, and something fruity. More sharp than sweet. I thought Knox was making Pop-Tarts in the oven again instead of the toaster. I’d been ready to yell at him not to wander off and forget it again and burn the house down with Maisie inside it.
But this isn’t Knox, and halfway down the stairs, I should’ve known no strawberry Pop-Tart—his favorite—could ever smell half as good as this baking does.
Sleep forgotten and coffee a distant memory, my eyes track Maisie, wearing a pair of slightly too short, too tight gray shorts and a white tank that reveals a tempting strip of tummy.
She has her strawberry-blonde hair in a messy knot at the top of her head. Flour dusts her pink cheeks; her skin is slightly sweaty from the hot kitchen, and her nipples are pebbled, the result of the window I just watched her lean up to push open.
I adjust myself in my pants.
She’s humming under her breath and bobbing her head as she moves a dirty container with a wooden spoon and a spatula to the counter beside the sink.
Smiling as I cross my arms, I rest my head against the doorframe and just enjoy watching her.
Some guys go to a strip club to watch a woman dance for them. Not me. This right here—a barely dressed sexy woman in a kitchen—is my secret pleasure.
I swallow hard when she pulls on oven mitts and bends over right in front of me.
Damn.
I’d adjust myself in my pants again, but there’s no point. No amount of rearranging is going to create a space that doesn’t exist.
Far too soon, she straightens and sets a pie with a golden woven top on a baking rack.
It’s like the pies on the front of a baking magazine in the store.
If she didn’t look so good in those shorts, I’d be busy salivating over the pie and not her.
She pulls off the oven mitts and uses the back of her forearm to push clinging strands of blonde hair off her forehead when she must feel me watching.
Her gaze darts to me, away, and snaps back to me. Her eyes widen. “Hunter?”
“Hey,” I say softly, uncrossing my arms.
“I came down for coffee, but I didn’t want to interrupt you,” I say, fighting the urge to cover myself with my hands. I’m in briefs, but this thin bit of cotton can’t possibly conceal how turned on I am.
Her eyes dart down, briefly linger on my bare chest before settling on my briefs. Her cheeks darken, and she drags her gaze away. She gestures toward the dirty container beside the sink. “Um, sorry for taking over your kitchen.”
My eyes drop to her white tank top. I hadn’t intended to look, but her tank is as thin as my cotton briefs, and her nipples are hardening as my cock throbs.
If I don’t walk out of this kitchen, I’m going to bend her over something and fuck her.
I drag my gaze from her dusky nipples, barely visible through her thin t-shirt. “No worries. I’ll leave you to it.” I turn to leave.
A loud crash stops me in my tracks. Maisie hisses, and I whip around to find her face scrunched up in pain.
My thoughts rapidly shift from what the fuck I’m going to do about my erection to concern for Maisie. “What happened? Are you okay?”
“Fine.” Avoiding my gaze, she tucks her left hand behind her back.
I walk over to her, ignoring the hungry look she gives my chest. “Let me see.”
“It’s nothing.”
She bumps into a counter as she retreats, her eyes widening in surprise when I clasp her by her hips.
Her skin is so soft and warm; I’m going to have a real problem taking my hands off her.
And up close, her blackberry and wild honey scent merges with the bakery smells, tempting me to put my mouth to her skin and kiss her all over.
Does she taste as good as she smells? I’m thinking she does.
“Let me see,” I softly order, aware she came to Rios with bruises and a deep wariness about anyone getting too close to her. I’m surprised she’s letting me touch her at all, but I’m grateful not to scare her.
“It’s nothing,” she says, hiding her left hand.
I dip my head, closing the distance between us. “You hurt yourself, beautiful. That is the very opposite of nothing.”
The endearment causes her to widen her huge blue eyes. “What did you call me?”
“You heard me.”
She gives me a searching look. With a sigh lifts her left arm, showing me a thin red mark on the back of her hand. A burn. It's not a bad one, but burns are almost always painful.
“How?” I take my hands off her hips, gripping her wrist and turning her hand to see it better.
“I was trying to clear my mess so you could use the kitchen and brushed up against the hot pie pan. The last pie, so of course that’s the one I burn myself on.”
With a hand on her wrist, I tug her over to the sink and turn the faucet to cold, holding her hand—and the burn—under it. “The last pie?”
I didn’t even know we had pie pans in this kitchen, and I’m in here more than anyone.
Maisie must have found it in the pantry.
This rented farmhouse came fully furnished, and the landlord had said his wife owned so much kitchen equipment that he left most of it behind when he moved to a smaller place in town after she passed.
Her hair brushes the front of my chest when she nods, the soft strands ticklish and strangely erotic.
“Uh, huh.” She clears her throat. “I wanted to make pie for you all to say thanks for letting me stay. Uh, and I used up most of your apples and the cherries in the freezer. And the sugar. Um, and the flour and butter took a hit as well. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Those apples would’ve ended up in the trash when no one ate them, and I forgot we even had cherries in the freezer. The rest is pantry stuff, and no one in this house is baking.”
The longer I stand with her tucked against my front, my left arm wrapped around her middle, the more I realize it was a bad idea.
“How many pies did you make?” I ask to distract myself from how good she feels against me.
She glances to the right.
I turn to look. Fuck me. My jaw drops when I spot the two additional pies, in addition to the one she just took out of the oven, cooling beside the refrigerator.
From her profile, her cheeks are pink. “I promise to clean up the mess and replace all the ingredients,” she says in a rush.
I bend down to meet her pretty blue gaze. “You don’t have to replace anything. And I’m less concerned about a messy kitchen than I am about you hurting yourself and not being able to sleep.”
“What made you think I wasn’t able to sleep?”
I give the one-woman pie operation she's running a pointed look.
She lets out a sigh. “Talking about Derek might have brought back some memories I’d rather forget.”
Fuck.
None of us considered that opening up to us might have awakened ghosts. But we should have.
Last night, she’d been smiling when she returned to the kitchen after Wyatt introduced her to his parents over the phone.
We’d made her laugh over dinner as we talked about our years spent traveling across the country working together.
Later, she’d gone up to bed, relaxed, well-fed from dinner, and yawning into her hand.
“What time were you up?” I ask.
She hesitates.
“Maisie?”
“Two. I just lay there, and I couldn’t shut off my brain. After an hour, I came downstairs to do something useful that would take my mind off Derek.” She glances at her hand that I’m still holding under the cold running water. “I think my hand is okay now.”
It is downright painful taking my left arm from where I have it wrapped around her middle. I switch off the faucet, and after scrutinizing her burn, I nod, pleased that it looks a little less red than it did minutes before.
I release her to snag a cloth from the drawer beside me and pat it dry. “How does it feel?”
“Better.” She says it without thinking.
I notice something I missed about her. “You don’t like people taking care of you.”
She blinks at me. “That isn’t true.”
I don’t believe her.
As a semi-pro surfer who traveled a fair bit even before I changed careers, I’ve met my fair share of omegas.
Mostly, I learned to stay away from them.
My life was on the road. I liked freedom and craved my independence.
Being tied down to an omega meant being tied down to a place. I was never interested in that.
Until Maisie.
For someone afraid and looking to escape an ex on a revenge mission, I thought she’d bite my hand off accepting our help—we all did.
But she’s been surprisingly hesitant and more independent than any of us expected.
If her ex hadn’t torched her apartment, I have serious doubts that she’d have agreed to stay with us at all, even if it meant she’d be safer with us than staying in town.
And for the month that we’ve been stopping in at the diner, she’s been polite but distant, even though we’d catch the odd lingering glance that told us she was as attracted to us as we were to her.
Asking us to stay with her when she spoke to the sheriff was the first time she’d asked anything of us.
And even then, she did it reluctantly. I thought it was because she was embarrassed or shy, and maybe that’s true as well.
But maybe it’s because she doesn’t like needing us as much as we need her.
“You don’t want to trust us,” I say, holding her gaze.
“That isn’t true,” she denies.
I cock my brow.
She releases a quiet sigh. “I just don’t want to get attached, that’s all.”
“To us?”
She gestures vaguely with her right hand. “To this. You. This house. The idea of this going anywhere. You won’t be in Rios forever, and neither will I.”
What?
I stiffen. “You’re leaving?”
She shrugs. “I should. The fire made it clear Derek is on a warpath.”
“And we’ll deal with it together. The sheriff knows about him now. You’re safe here, with us, and we’d die before we let anything happen to you.”