Treasured by Thursday

Gabi shifted in her sleep, and Hunter reached around her waist and moved closer. Only when his head rested on the same pillow as hers and her floral scent met his nose did he let himself relax.

He’d heard people talk about mind-blowing sex . . . rock-the-universe orgasms . . . and yeah, he’d had his share of encounters that he thought were defined in those terms.

He’d been wrong.

Maybe it was the conquest itself. The reality that the woman sleeping in his arms had told him that under no terms would she let him touch her.

Maybe it was Gabi.

Maybe unadulterated lust poisoned his brain.

He started to doze and Gabi wiggled one of her legs between his.

His body responded to her slight touch. Hunter considered taking her . . . again . . . then decided a wide-awake lover would prove better than one half-asleep. The sun would rise in a few hours.

He could wait.

Chapter Twenty-One

Hunter sat across from a bathrobe-clad Gabi as they sipped tea and enjoyed room service.

She’d been just as passionate in the morning as she had been the night before. If she was having second thoughts on what had happened, there wasn’t any sign of it in her voice, or her actions.

And since when did he want to talk about sex after he’d had it?

Since he woke up, apparently.

“Is it me?” Gabi asked as she spooned a forkful of scrambled eggs into her mouth, “Or are these eggs magnificent?” She licked her lips, the tip chasing a tiny speck of egg inside.

“Watching you eat them . . . that might be classified as magnificent.”

She tilted her head and gave him a slightly embarrassed smile. “I’m starving. I haven’t been awake and active that long at night since . . .” She lowered her fork and studied the ceiling. “I don’t think I ever have.”

God she was good for his ego. She’d also just opened the door to the conversation that had been on his mind since he showered. “Any second thoughts . . . on last night?”

Her eyes met his. “Probably. They just haven’t made themselves known yet.”

An honest answer.

“What about you?” she asked, forking more eggs into her mouth.

“I’m more concerned about you. You were adamantly opposed to intimacy.”

She lowered her fork and leaned back in the chair. “I didn’t know you. I probably still don’t. Not completely, in any event.”

“Couples that have been married for twenty years learn secrets about the other.”

Gabi wiped her mouth with the napkin in her lap before she spoke. “I’ve learned a lot more about Hunter Blackwell in the past month than I ever thought possible. Intimacy, however, has been something I’ve feared . . . I think you can understand why.”

He leaned across the table and placed his hand over hers.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said. “I probably should be.”

That hurt, but he had to own her statement. “You probably should be,” he agreed.

She actually grinned with his words. “Thank you for not ignoring the elephant in the room.”

“You’re my wife,” he reminded her. “You’re not someone I can ignore.”

She removed her hand from under his and continued eating. “Would you? If we’d just met . . . no marriage contract . . . no drama? Would you ignore me after last night?”

“And this morning?”

Her fork hesitated and her cheeks turned pink.

“And this morning,” she repeated.

“Another woman? Maybe. I didn’t get my reputation by speculation alone.”

She seemed to respect his answer, so he continued, “Gabriella Blackwell demands something more. And it isn’t simply the last name . . . though I think we can both say neither of us have embarked on a sexual affair with our spouse.”

“That sounds so strange.”

“Do you have another way of putting it?”

She continued to chew as he shrugged. “Affair sounds better than a one-night stand. And is that what we’re doing?”

He lifted his coffee cup, brought it to his lips, and muttered. “One night? I don’t think so. I can’t say I know what the hell I’m doing.”

She gave up on her breakfast, dropped her napkin on her plate.

“I don’t either,” she told him. “But I do think we need to cover a few rules.”

There she was . . . the woman who stormed into his office with a contract only a fool would sign.

Color Hunter a fool. “What kind of rules?”

“We both have issues with trust . . . yes?”

“Yeah . . . I suppose.”

“So honesty above all things. I’ll start. When I put the clause in our contract about affairs, it was more to push your buttons than me caring if you slept around. But as long as you and I are . . .” her gaze drifted to the closed door behind him.

“Intimate?”

“Yes. As long as we’re intimate, monogamy isn’t something I want to live without.”

He swallowed. He hadn’t agreed to that kind of relationship since high school . . . and that was for what? Two weeks? Then again, he hadn’t thought of another woman since he’d met and encountered the force named Gabriella.

“And if either of us feels the itch with someone else, we’re honest about it,” she said.

The thought of her with another man left him colder than he liked. “I can agree to that.”

She kept her eye on his. “No matter how it might hurt the other person.”

“I promised I wouldn’t hurt you.” But could he keep that if someone else came along? God, he was such an asshole.