I huff out a laugh. “Greedy thing.”

“Maybe,” she says. “But after last night…I don’t think anyone can blame me.”

She wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me in for another kiss, and I can feel it happening—the last of my walls crumbling and giving way to the vulnerable center of me, laid bare for her to do with whatever she might want. It should terrify me, but right now…I can’t find it in me to feel that. Not with her warm and sated against me.

I hold her a little tighter as I steal one more kiss, telling myself that this time might be different—that Tess is nothing like Chloe—even as some part of my brain tells me it’s impossible to be sure of that after knowing her for such a short time. Which is true, really, and I’m aware of that. But the problem is, now that I’ve started?

I can’t seem to stop wanting to kiss her.

Something deep inside me worries I never will.

“I’m just saying,” I tell him after eating the last bit of fireplace bacon. “There’s an argument to be made here.”

Hunter snorts. “Are you complimenting my cooking or insulting me in…other ways?”

“Maybe I’m goading you,” I suggest, waggling my eyebrows.

He shakes his head, stowing his plate away. “I’ve got to check the windows after the storm last night. Need to make sure there aren’t any cracks.”

I don’t tell him that he’s really putting a damper on about a dozen different sexy ideas I dreamed up during breakfast, but since I am the one who got the whole revamping ball rolling, I guess I don’t have any right to complain. I’ve already suffered through him redressing as it is, and if I can survive being robbed of shirtless Hunter after having intimately experienced it for twelve hours straight, I guess I can survive this as well.

“We could totally fix the railings today too.”

Hunter raises one eyebrow, the ghost of a smile at his mouth. “ ‘We’?”

“Yeah, I can put you to work.” I can see that he’s seconds away from laughing. “You can be Mr. Fixit for a day.”

“You don’t need to be on that ankle of yours,” he says sternly. “And you still smell like heat. It could hit you anytime. You need to rest.”

“It’s not even bad today,” I argue. “I’m just a little sore. And I feel mostly fine otherwise. So we might as well do what we can while we can.”

“It’s too cold,” he counters.

“Okay, Grandpa.” I tsk. “I’ll dress warm.”

“You keep calling me Grandpa,” he warns with a low sort of laugh, “and I might have to do something about it.”

Warmth pools low in my belly. Now, that’s what I’m talking about. “Oh? Like what?”

“Hmm.” He eyes me up and down in a slow, lazy way that has my toes curling again (and there aren’t even any orgasms involved this time, go figure), his brown eyes hooded and thoughtful, as if he’s imagining exactly what he might do. God, I would eat a hippo whole to read minds right now. “Guess we’ll see.”

Damn it.

He pushes up from the floor to stand, retrieving his plate, and I realize that he’s really not planning to indulge in a little secluded sexcation with me. Cowabummer.

“Fine, fine,” I sigh. “We can do responsible things today.”

He crosses the minimal space, stepping over the still-rumpled pile of blankets that made up our personal love nest last night, and if that memory isn’t enough to have me blushing, the way he bends to kiss my cheek as he takes my plate from me definitely finishes the job.

“At least for a little while,” he murmurs, a silent promise of much-less-responsible things to come later.

Now, that I can work with.

I have to make the trek back up to my room after breakfast. Hunter was completely right about the upstairs freezing over when the power went out—I can barely stand to be up there for the five minutes it takes me to grab fresh clothes and some washcloths from the cabinets so I’ll be able to take some semblance of a bath with the water Hunter is boiling over the fireplace (it’ll be more of a rubdown situation, from the way he described it, but he did allude to helping me, so I’m letting it slide).

I can dress myself now, thankfully (or not, depending on how you look at it), and even though my hair is still a disaster—the sex-mussed mess hastily thrown into a bun without many other options—I feel much better in new clothes and slightly more prepared to tackle a bit of light reno by the time I come back down the staircase to find Hunter.

He appears from the dining room with a befuddled expression, looking from me to the ceiling as if trying to figure something out. “Did you…clean?”

“Yeah, yesterday.” I cross my arms when I step off the staircase. “You’re just now noticing?”

“I was a little distracted yesterday, if you remember. You know, the snow, the shower…other things.”

He purposely leaves out the other s-word from last night, but it doesn’t keep me from remembering. He really has a way of getting the upper hand with minimal effort.

“Well, yeah,” I say, a little red-eared. “I cleaned. Figured I’d get a jump on the easy stuff since I had time, you know?”

“You didn’t have to,” Hunter tells me. “That’s not part of your job.”

I shrug, going for unbothered as I tuck an escaped tendril behind my ear. “No big deal. I just wanted to.”

Hunter surprises me with a wide arm sweeping around me to pull me in close, his hand tipping up my chin as his lips press to mine for another stomach-swooping experience. I close my eyes as I melt into it, feeling a little dazed when he pulls away.

“What was that for?”

Hunter smiles as he gives me that same sort of unbothered shrug. “Just wanted to.”

I curl my fingers into the hem of his flannel shirt (it’s blue today). “Are you sure you don’t want to…?”

“Come on,” he says with a sort of wizard-like move that has me turning on my heel at the gentle urging of his hands on my hips. “Put me to work.”

“So explain to me what we’re doing here again.”

Hunter’s stained towel continues to swipe back and forth across the wooden counter where the computer and other things have been cleared away for the moment, and his lips press together in a line.

“It’s like…a cheat varnish. A refresher. It’s supposed to restore the old finish so you don’t have to sand and stain again.”

“Do you always keep cheat varnish on hand?”

“For emergencies,” I tell him. I can see the way his brow wrinkles in concentration from across the room, his lips turning down in a frown as I say with a chuckle, “Just focus on your counter.”

“Sure thing, boss,” he grunts. “It seems to be working, at least.”

“It’ll do in a pinch,” I say. “We’ll make sure to do it properly after this whole thing pans out.”

He makes a quiet hmph sound that I don’t miss. “You mean if.”

“Don’t be such a downer,” I chide from the staircase where I’m working on the banister. “Positive thoughts manifest positive outcomes.”

“Did you just think that up?”

“No, someone wrote it on a wheatgrass smoothie I got from a café once.”

Hunter makes a less-than-pleasant sound, and when I peek over at him he looks positively disgusted. “Wheatgrass?”

“Yeah, it was about as good as it sounds.” I laugh. “My friend Ada was on this health kick, and for like two seconds I let her take me along.” I stick out my tongue. “No thank you. It would take a hell of a lot more than positive thoughts to get me to drink that stuff again.”

Hunter shakes his head, muttering something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like Californians. One of these days I’m going to have to take him back there simply for the comedic value of seeing him so out of his comfort zone.