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I brush my teeth and hair, tying the robe over the t-shirt that had been waiting on the bed for me after my bath. I feel a rush of heat knowing that Hugh was in my room while I was stark naked in the bath just a door away, but I was thankful for the clean shirt to sleep in. He’s so much taller than me that it falls to my thighs, but I’m thankful the robe is also there for extra coverage.
The inside of the house is even more beautiful than it was in the daylight, everything clean and obviously expensive. I find Hugh in the kitchen, in just a pair of silky black sleep pants, cooking bacon on the glass-top stove. My mouth is watering, and less for breakfast and more for the expanse of tan skin that the cook is displaying for me right now. I’m standing here as if I’ve been stunned, and if I wasn’t staring at his naked chest, I would have seen Hugh’s mouth quirk up in a smirk.
“Hungry?” he asks playfully.
The words, “God, yes” almost spill from my mouth before I can stop them, but I manage to get myself under control at the last second. Instead, I just bite my bottom lip and nod, forcing my gaze to his face instead. It doesn’t help me much. He’s so handsome that it threatens to take my breath away. In the afternoon sun pouring through the kitchen windows, I can clearly see the heavy shadow of stubble on his jaw and his slightly mussed sleep hair.
“Well, I hope you have an appetite, sweetheart, because I risked my skin cooking this bacon for you.” He rubs his chest as he pulls the meat from the pan with his other hand. “It’s been a while since I’ve made it, and I forgot that a shirt is usually recommended.”
Giggling, I slide onto the breakfast bar stool and let him set the plate in front of me. He’s made eggs and bacon and pours me a full mug of coffee, adding in the obscene amount of milk and sugar that I request.
“I realize it’s a little heavy for someone getting over a stomach virus, but something tells me you haven’t eaten much in the last few days. If it’s too much, I can make you some toast.”
I already have half a strip of bacon in my mouth when he says this, and I shake my head before swallowing. “No, you’re right. I’m really hungry.”
Hugh drags his eyes over my body, eyelids lowering. “Me too.”
Gulping, I cover the flush of my cheeks by taking a long drink of the sweetened coffee, watching out of the corner of my eye as he makes his own plate and eats it standing up. Hugh leans against the counter, looking so different from the clean-cut doctor from last night that it’s jarring. He’s packed with muscle, and there’s a patch of dark chest hair that thins out and leads down his ripped stomach before disappearing beneath his pants.
“Thank you for letting me stay last night,” I say softly once I’m finished eating, letting Hugh take the plate and place it in the sink before I can even consider standing and doing it for myself. “I don’t think any other doctor would have been so caring, especially for someone he was treating for free.”
Hugh drags a hand through his short, dark hair. “I’m not your doctor anymore, Haley. That part of our relationship is done and over with.”
His words strike me like a bolt of lightning. “...relationship?”
“Haley…” Hugh’s voice deepens. “Do I really have to say it out loud?” He leans on the marble counter across from me, the muscles of his arms bulging. “I want you.”
Heat rushes from the top of my head to my toes. “You do?”
“Yes. And you want me too, don’t you?”
I can’t breathe. The air in here is so thin all of a sudden. I form a denial, but when my lips shape the words, they betray me. “Y-yes.”
His smile isn’t playful anymore. It’s predatory, his white teeth bright against his bronze skin. “Such a brave girl for admitting it. You surprise me, Haley.” Now Hugh is stalking around the counter towards me. “I like a woman that can surprise me. It’s very, very rare.”
I freeze when he puts a finger under my chin and tilts it up so I’m looking at him, our faces dangerously close together. I have a million responses in my head, but they all die a quick death when he lowers his mouth to mine in the softest brush of lips.
I suck in a shocked breath but, for some reason, don’t pull away. I feel his nose brush against mine when he says, “Do you want to know how you surprise me, Haley?”
I nod, dazed.
“Because through all of this, you haven’t been too frightened to continue, not once. And that’s why you aren’t pulling away from me now, isn’t it? All that bravery.”
Now Hugh kisses me in full, changing from a single finger to gripping my jaw, turning my face in just the right way to make sure he has the best access possible to me. Everything I see and hear just becomes static, all of my senses zeroing in on the feeling of Hugh’s kiss and how it makes my stomach clench and my heart race.
A part of me knows I shouldn’t be doing this, but that just makes me want to even more. Hugh is demanding without being overbearing, tightening his grip when I don’t open my lips fast enough for him so his tongue can sweep in. I’m hesitant, but he teases me until I respond, giving in to the recklessness that he clearly wants from me. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I let Hugh pull me closer to him. All the while, his mouth never leaves mine, our kiss a battle of teeth and tongues.
Forgetting myself, and the fact that I’m not wearing panties under the overly-long shirt he had given me to sleep in, I link my legs around his waist as he pushes against me. Immediately, I feel totally bare against his silk sleep pants and the obvious erection beneath them, but Hugh doesn’t let me pull away when the shock of it hits.
“Don’t run,” he murmurs against my mouth. “Don’t run, Haley. You know you want this too.”
That’s the crazy thing. I do want it! This primal need that is building inside me is so totally foreign that I don’t know what else to do but chase it. Every time he speaks to me in that deep voice or drags his lips over mine, it just gets harder to ignore. I want him, in ways that I’ve never wanted anything. It makes me feel like I’m burning inside, desperate for more touch, more contact, and I feel so empty.
Mindlessly, I let out a whimper or agreement and Hugh rewards me by grinding against my bare core, pants so thin I can feel the very shape of him. The low-key burning inside of me becomes an inferno, and this time, it’s me who deepens the kiss, desperate for all the connection I can get. There’s a little voice in the back of my head screaming that it’s too much, too fast, but it’s very, very small. Drowning it out is the part of me that’s starving for Hugh and the way his mouth is drifting from my lips, down my jaw, and to the sensitive skin of my neck.
“I like smelling my soap on you,” he says against my skin, “and seeing you in my home. Imagining you sleeping just a room away last night had me losing my mind.”
He punctuates the end of his sentence by grinding against me again, and a moan falls out of my mouth, unbidden. Resisting him is impossible. Not that I’d want to. I’m all too curious about the steel bar between his legs, even if a part of me is also terrified by the idea of it.
