Chapter 23 Maisie
Maisie
Inever expected to fall in love.
Love was a dream I hoped for when I was a girl until it turned into a nightmare I was desperate to wake from. Now I wake smiling, looking forward to each day and not knowing how it will be better than the last, just knowing it will be. Because of them.
Hunter, Elias, Wyatt, and Knox.
The last couple of days after I made love with Knox have been quiet.
The call with my sister went so much better than I thought it would. She doesn’t hate me and is busy working out the best time she can come visit with her family.
This morning, I was inspired to come down to the kitchen early to root around the pantry and brainstorm how I want to use the rhubarb and tart raspberries Nico sent me the other day.
I made fresh pie dough—I like to keep a big batch in the refrigerator—ready for whenever I want to try out a new filling.
But that’s not the only reason I’m down here this early.
Someone is watching me.
I turn from the counter I was wiping down to find Hunter closing the distance between us.
“You have to stop wearing those shorts when you bake, baby, you are making me lose my damn mind,” Hunter groans, clasping my hips as he pins me to the counter.
He’s shirtless.
My weakness.
Knox said I was a chest girl, and he was right. Hunter’s grin when I give his washboard abs a lingering look tells me he knows it too.
I raise my eyebrow at him. “You came down shirtless on purpose because you know I’m a chest girl, didn’t you?”
Bending his head, he touches his lips to mine. “Why? You like what you see?” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively.
I loop my arms around his shoulders, laughing. “Maybe.”
“Ah,” he says, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “I see I have my work cut out for me.”
He kisses my throat, and I tilt my head to the side, making space for him. “What are you doing?” It emerges in a breathy sigh. Next to forehead kisses, soft throat kisses always make me weak at the knees.
“Trying to impress you with my kisses since I can’t impress you with my hot body.”
I put my hands on his chest and nudge. “Stop.”
His smile fades. “I’m pushing too hard, aren’t I?”
“No. Your body and your kisses impress me,” I admit, feeling my cheeks heat.
He rests his hands on the counter beside me. “But?”
I feel the temperature rising and figure it has less to do with the fact we’re in a kitchen and everything to do with my face turning flame red at what I’m about to say out loud. “You know what you’re doing.”
His eyebrow rises. “I know what I’m doing?” he echoes, confused.
Avoiding his gaze, I quietly admit. “With women.”
For a long moment his expression is blank, then a slow smile stretches across his face.
“You’re thinking about rubbing it in Knox, Elias, and Wyatt’s faces, aren’t you?”
“Yup,” he admits without hesitation, beaming at me.
I let out a sigh. “Please don’t.” They’d think that they don’t satisfy me, and the opposite is true. I have never been so satisfied sexually and emotionally ever.
He presses a kiss on my temple. “Done.”
Now I’m the one lifting my eyebrow. “You’re going to drop it just like that?”
“Yup.”
“Oh.” I eye him for a beat, considering my next words. “I just meant you’re a surfer. You were practically a pro and around a lot of women. Beautiful women. And they’d, you know, want to sleep with you.”
His confusion clears. “Ah.”
“That’s not helpful, Hunter,” I say when he doesn’t explain what the “ah” means.
He grins. “You think I’ve slept with a bunch of women, and that you won’t live up to them.”
“Yeah…” I hesitate.
“Go on,” he softly encourages me.
I bite my lip and immediately stop at his groan.
“I wanted to go to your room or knock on your door like I did with Elias, but I kept chickening out.” Over the last couple of days, I’ve felt him looking at me, and I know he must’ve been wondering why I don’t want to sleep with him when I’ve slept with Wyatt, Elias, and Knox.
“You were afraid you wouldn’t be enough for me?” he asks in a low voice.
I nod. “Not because I don’t want you. Because I do.”
“Maisie Lucas,” he says quietly, bridging the distance between us, “do you know how many times I have cum in my pants?”
I scrunch my face. “Ten?”
His eyes widen with mock horror, and he grips me by my hips, giving me a little shake. “Ten? Woman, do you take me for a teenage boy running around with no control of myself?”
I smile. “Um. Four?”
He’s barely holding back his laughter, and my lips turn up at his ridiculous attempt at looking shocked. “Stop that. Tell me.”
“Once. With you. Against this kitchen counter. No other woman has made me lose my mind like that before. Knox made me throw out my favorite chopping board even after I told him it barely touched me and I put it through the dishwasher three times.”
I wrinkle my nose. “What’s the chopping board got to do with it?”
He waves his hand in a gesture that says it doesn’t matter. “It’s not important. You are more than enough for me. Sure, there were girls hanging around on the beach when I would be out surfing, but I was not sleeping with them, because like I said, I had nasty roommates messing up my sheets.”
“Ew.”
“Definitely ew,” he echoes. “But even if I wasn’t terrified to get into my own bed at night, I wasn’t sleeping with a bunch of girls because I like to get to know a woman before I sleep with her.
Finding her hot isn’t enough. There has to be a connection, and I have to want more than just sex with her. ”
My shoulders slump in relief. “Oh, that’s good.”
He gives me a thoughtful look. “Was there a reason you were down here wearing those gray shorts that you haven’t worn since I pinned you against this counter?”
I was hoping he would ask me that exact question, but I was dreading it at the same time.
Now I have to say something I’ve rehearsed in the bathroom mirror four times, and I can’t stop envisioning Hunter laughing in my face because it sounds utterly ridiculous. And embarrassing. So, so embarrassing.
“What makes you think I haven’t worn it since then?” I ask, delaying the inevitable.
“You in those shorts have featured in every single dirty dream I’ve had since I saw you in them.
If you honestly think I’m not down here the second I hear you moving around, hoping I won’t see you in them again, you must be crazy.
” He admits it openly, without hesitation, and right to my face. Not a hint of blush anywhere.
My lips tilt up in a smile.
“What?” he asks, softening his gaze.
“I love that about you.”
His brow lifts. “My dirty mind?”
My smile grows. “How open you are about wanting me. And about showing how you feel.”
“Too open,” he mutters. “You should’ve seen the death glare Knox was shooting my chopping board.”
“I wore it for you,” I blurt out.
His smile freezes, and he gulps. “You what now?”
“I wore the shorts for you. I thought I would hear you walk down the stairs, but I didn’t.”
He crowds me, his eyes flicking from mine to my mouth. “And what would you have done if you’d heard me walking down the stairs?” he asks, his voice husky.
Hoped for something similar to what happened last time. Except he wouldn’t have been coming in his shorts. He’d have been coming inside me.
I lift my shoulder in a shrug, hoping it looks casual as my heart hammers against my chest. “I don’t know. Maybe bend over the counter or drop something as you walked into the kitchen. You seemed to like it when I did it before.”
He closes his eyes. “Jesus, Maisie.”
“What?” I ask, alarmed. “Would bending over have been the wrong thing to do?”
He takes a step away from me and looks around. “Do you have a pie in the oven?”
I blink up at him, confused by the sharp turn this conversation has taken. “Uh, no, why?”
I’ve spent the last few minutes hanging around, trying to look busy, hoping Hunter would come down the stairs and we’d have a repeat of what happened last time I wore these gray shorts.
A split second later, I’m over his shoulder and he’s striding out of the kitchen and up the stairs. “We need to continue this conversation in my room.”
I smile as I hang upside down on his back. “What part? Me bending over or what you would have done to me if you’d found me like that?”
He swats my ass, and as I yelp, he’s already following the tap with a caress that makes me moan. “No more talk of you bending over until I have you in my room.”
I’m grinning as he carries me into his room and lays me down on his bed.
I give his room a quick scan. The walls are blue, and the furniture is a rich mahogany brown.
The major thing that sets his bedroom apart is the surfboard with a green leaf pattern leaning against the wall beside his closet.
“I thought you went back to Malibu to surf.”
He glances at the surfboard. “That was one of my first boards, and I love it too much to leave it in my parents' garage. It’s not good for surfing anymore, but I like it as decoration.” He narrows dark blue eyes at me. “But enough about that. You had plans for me in the kitchen.”
“Tell me about one of your dirty dreams,” I say instead.
He snorts. “So you can get up and walk out of here?” He mimes zipping his mouth shut and tossing the key over his shoulder.
My curiosity ramps up. I’ve never been the subject of a sex dream before, and I can’t help being curious. “Is it really dirty?”
“Not really,” he says, avoiding my gaze.
“Hunter, I won’t be offended by what happens in a dream.”
He gives me a long look. “Okay. So in one dream, you’re Little Red Riding Hood, and I’m a wolf out on a run when I see you go into a cabin in the woods.”
I blink, surprised. “I thought dirty dreams started with sex and well… ended with the sex.”
My heat sex dreams did. I would have expected a guy's dirty dream to be full of sex from start to finish.
He rubs a hand over his face. “Yeah, well, apparently my subconscious likes a bit of story before we get to the sexy part.”
Is he blushing?
Grinning, I get comfortable. “Then what do I do?”