Page 34 of Bones

But no other meal had felt as important as that one.

The woman’s lids drifted closed, and a small smile tipped her lips. She took a bigger bite and made a happy murmur that hardened my cock instantly.

Thank fuck for this table.

When her hiccups started, I nudged her water glass closer, but she didn’t take it. She continued eating, her hiccups mixing with the occasional soft laugh at Victoria’s dramatics.

I waited until she was done to grab a notepad and a pen. The pad was a mix of torn pages, jotted-down notes, and random recipes. If I’d been capable of dying—and my failed attempts to do that said I wasn’t—Black Horse would have a fuckuva time making sense of what I left behind.

The woman looked at the messy scrawl.

“Ignore that, it’s work shit.” I flipped to a blank page and handed her the pen. “What’s your name?”

She wrote quickly before turning the pad so I could see it.

Aurora.

“Aurora. Pretty.” Her cheeks flushed and my still hard dick jerked, but I ignored it. “Where do you live?”

Georgia.

“You’re a long way from home,” I forced out past the sucker punch of her answer. If I hadn’t wanted her to leave when I thought she lived somewhere close, there was no way I couldhandle that distance. I pushed that problem away to deal with a different time. “Why’re you in Maine?”

She pulled her split bottom lip between her teeth and didn’t flinch even though it had to hurt like a bitch.

Without thinking, I reached across the table to grip her chin and dislodge her lip. “Hey, it’s fine. You don’t have to answer.”

Her lids closed, and she tilted her head like she was going to lean into my touch before pulling away suddenly. She wrote again.

I want to move here.

Thank fuck.

“Are you staying at a hotel?”

She shook her head.

“Where then?”

Nowhere, I just got here today.

“What’s your plan?”

She shrugged.

If I had any chill when it came to her—or social skills in general—I would find a way to finesse the conversation.

But I didn’t.

I didn’t even have enough toaskher to stay. Instead, I opened my mouth and ordered, “Stay with me.”

Her eyes widened until I worried she would hurt herself.

I had a vague thought that something was…off. That her guard was up, and I needed to put mine up, too. That it could be a Marissa situation again. But my main focus was on clarifyingthat I wasn’t holding her hostage in my secluded cabin in the woods.

Christ. All those years imagining my other half, and this is how I act. I’m doing a bang-up job turning it into a clusterfuck of stalker serial killer proportions.

“At least for the night,” I tacked on knowing damn well one night wouldn’t be enough. “You can take my room upstairs, and?—”

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