Why?
Because I could see his lips.
Plush, kissable, I want them wrapped around certain parts of my anatomy lips.
I felt my face heat, and to cover up the embarrassment of where my mind was at, I stood up stiffly and started walking toward the two of them, my hand in my purse to withdraw my wallet.
The bank company was going to be calling soon to make sure that I was all right.
I’d never spent this much money—especially not in one afternoon.
I smiled and focused my eyes on the barber instead of looking at Hunt, feeling that he was a safer target than the man standing quietly beside him.
“Hi,” I chirped as I gave him my card.
The barber took it and winked, a small quirk to his lips as he pulled out his phone and started to punch my credit card number into an app.
After he handed it to me, and I clicked a thirty percent tip—because oh my God, had he done some amazing things with Hunt—I finally looked over at Hunt full-on.
His eyes were on me.
And they felt like they were lasering into my brain.
I squirmed at his intense scrutiny.
“What’s up?” I asked, so glad that female attraction didn’t present the same way as male attraction did. “Everything okay?”
He nodded once.
“Thanks for the cut, man,” he said as he held out his fist.
The man bumped Hunt’s fist with his, and then we were once again walking together side by side to the car.
“Anywhere else you want to stop on the way home?” I asked as we got into the car.
His eyes came over to me.
“No.”
CHAPTER 8
God tried to make me pretty, but the R didn’t take.
-Text from Wyett to Hunt
HUNT
The woman was so hard to fucking read.
I’m talking, I couldn’t figure out one single thing that she was thinking about because she was so closed up with her emotions as well as her words.
It was like looking at a blank mask and trying to figure out what was wrong.
I knew something was wrong, too.
The closer we got to my place, the stiffer in her seat she became.
It was starting to worry me at this point because I wasn’t sure if it was because there was something there she didn’t want me to see or know about, or because there was something wrong with her.
It was as we were pulling into the garage and getting out that she finally gave me some semblance of an idea of what she was feeling.
“I, uh, didn’t clean up,” she admitted. “I didn’t know you were coming home, and the place is a bit of a mess.”
My brows rose.
“You are a mess?” I asked curiously.
She shrugged. “I’m a bit of one.”
Her idea of ‘a bit’ and my idea of ‘a bit’ were completely different.
The moment we walked into the door of my place, I realized what she meant.
She was a slob.
Not in a ‘there’s a roach problem now’ kind of way. But in an ‘I can’t seem to make it to the room to throw my clothes into the hamper’ kind of way.
She had stray shoes all over the floor by the door. And just a little bit farther into the living room where the evidence that she also didn’t wear her pants very long once she crossed over the threshold.
She flushed and started to pick up her shoes, then her pants.
I looked over at the coffee table to find it piled high with paperbacks.
Paperbacks that had photos of half-naked men and women on the covers.
I grinned and turned at the sound of claws clicking on the hardwood floor.
That’s when I saw my babies hurtling toward us.
Or, more importantly, Wyett.
But they stopped midway when they realized she wasn’t alone and gave a menacing growl when they saw me.
I stepped forward and whistled.
A whistle that I used when I was trying to get their attention.
A whistle that they hadn’t heard in over three years.
They both quirked their head to the side and crept forward, their doggy confusion almost adorable.
Though Wyett had given me regular updates and shown me photos, nothing could compare to seeing them in real life.
“Silo, Bones,” I said softly, dropping down onto my knees in the middle of the living room floor. Right next to one of Wyett’s high-heeled shoes. “Come here, Silosama. Come here, Bonessama.”
“What does sama mean?” Wyett asked curiously.
I was about to answer her when Silo got close enough to sniff me.
Then she pounced.
She hit me like a battering ram, taking me down onto my ass, then farther down onto my back as she licked and barked and yipped at me.
She’d gotten older over the years. Her hair wasn’t nearly as sleek and black, and instead now looked like it was silvering gray.
Bones, who’d been cautious up to this point, got closer and closer until he was lying on the ground next to me, waiting for his turn.