AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter One
Hunter
“Hunter, baby, you up? Breakfast is almost ready.”
Shit, I think as my eyes flash open.
I stare up at the ceiling and listen to the sounds coming from my kitchen. Female humming. Cabinets opening and closing. Dishes rattling. To my left, sunlight peeks through the shades. I fumble for my phone, check the time, then mentally curse again. Viciously. Not only because I overslept, but because I’m pissed as hell at myself.
“Hunter?”
“Yeah,” I finally call out. “Coming.”
I throw back the covers, get out of bed, pull on a pair of sweats, then splash cold water on my face. Arms braced on the counter, I stare at my reflection in the mirror and curl my lip in disgust.
“You stupid bastard,” I mutter.
Exhausted from a string of eighty-hour work weeks and too much to drink, I’d apparently done something I haven’t done in ten years—fallen asleep immediately after having sex with a woman.
The same woman who was now frying bacon by the smell of things.
The same woman whose name I can’t seem to remember.
I’d met her at Gatsby’s last night and taken her home with me, another rarity. Usually I prefer going to a woman’s place so I can make an easy escape, but she’d been visiting from out of town and had been curious about where I lived. Getting a hotel room had seemed like too much trouble and before I knew it, here we were. She’d been good with her hands at the club, even better in bed. Wild and crazy in the sheets.
But I still can’t remember her name.
When I walk into the kitchen, the pretty blonde looks up and offers me a warm, beautiful smile. If I was anyone else, if I wasn’t Hunter fucking Kiss, the smile would probably melt my heart.
But I am Hunter Kiss and I don’t have time for this shit.
I notice she’s wearing my grey cashmere robe, the one that normally hangs on the back of my bathroom door. That annoys me. When I see my laptop where I left it on the kitchen counter, however—with the screensaver activated, telling me she’d tried to access my files—any notion I had of politely eating breakfast with her before nudging her out the door vanishes.
“Good morning,” she purrs. “You hungry? I thought we could eat and then spend the day together.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening.”
She frowns. “Sorry?”
“My screensaver is still on.” I raise my brows, but I don’t lay into her as much as I should. Yeah, she was nosey, but it wasn’t her fault I’d fallen asleep even after I’d made it clear last night I wasn’t looking for anything more than mutual gratification. Talk about giving a lady mixed signals. Still, I want her gone. “Listen, last night was great, but I’ve got to get to work. The café next door has amazing pancakes.”
Her mouth open and closes. Her face turns red. Finally, her eyes narrow. “You’re a dick.”
I contemplate her words and shrug. I’m not trying to be even more of an ass; she just happens to be right. “Which is why you really wouldn’t want to spend more time with me than you have to,” I say softly.
“Fuck you,” she scoffs as she rounds the counter and passes by me to stalk into the bedroom.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to apologize, but I force myself to remain silent. Ten minutes later, she blows out of my apartment. For a few seconds, I feel guilty. She was a nice woman, for the most part, and great at giving head. But mostly I feel relief. And determined not to make the mistake of actually falling asleep with another woman again.
I make coffee and pick up my phone to call Trisha, my personal assistant. She informs me she already rescheduled my morning meetings.
“Have I ever told you how much I love you?”
“Yes, you’ve told me a million times, Hunter. I love you too, and before the sound of those words makes you shriek in horror and run away, you know I mean that in a brotherly way.”
“Right,” I chuckle. “How’s Gwendolyn?”
“Let’s say it’s complicated and leave it at that.”
