Page 90 of The Potter

I take a step closer, pushing between her knees, careful to mind the new skin that’s almost healed, and ignore her question, choosing to ask one of my own. “Astor tells me you’ve been scheduling his appointments.” I arch a brow, daring her to deny it.

“Astor is shitty at keeping secrets,” she returns with a grin. “Open.” She dips her finger back into the spaghetti sauce and holds it at my lips until I open, taking extra care to suck the sauce off harder and more thoroughly than necessary.

I have missed her, even though I spent the entire car ride home fuming that she defied me by forwarding her work phone to her cell, answering Astor’s calls and scheduling his appointments, when I haven’t released her back to work yet.

Astor thought I knew.

He thought wrong.

Ms. Belle has become quite clever these last five weeks, figuring out how she can defy my orders. She already convinced me to agree to a six-week recovery period instead of eight. I put nothing past her when it comes to getting what she wants.

Releasing her finger, I slip my arms around her hips and pull her to the edge of the counter. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Fuck me against this counter?”

I press a kiss to her mouth, my tongue slipping in as soon as she takes a breath. “I’m thinking that sounds like too pleasurable of a punishment.”

She leans in, nuzzling my neck. “The worst kind.”

Damn, I’ve missed this woman, and I’ve only been away from her for ten hours.

Time seems to tick by slower without her presence in the office.

Though, since I performed her surgery, I’ve been busier than I have in years. I owe many patients their time in the OR, and thanks to Halle, they are finally getting it.

Taking care of Halle these past few weeks has been like watching a wrecking ball tear down the walls around me.

She’s changed how I see myself as a surgeon.

As a man.

And as a brother.

My therapist called it a breakthrough.

I call her an angel.

Halle is the reason I’ve spent so much time at the office, rebuilding myself—my practice. I needed to make up for the pain and lost time I’ve spent wrestling with my demons.

“Vance…” Halle’s sing-song voice interrupts my thoughts. “Are you all right? Did something happen at the office today?”

Yeah, I didn’t get to strip her naked on one of many solid surfaces.

I didn’t get to talk to her over lunch.

I didn’t get to smell her hair as I buried my face into her neck, kissing every inch of bare skin I could reach.

Yeah, a lot of things happened today, but none of them were what I really wanted—to be here, with her. Taking the first week off after Halle’s surgery radically changed how I wanted my days to go.

It started with eating her pussy before breakfast.

Lunch came with sucking her tits on the island.

And dinner, well, that routine hasn’t changed.

“Nothing happened at the office,” I tell her, tugging off her T-shirt and tossing it to the floor. “I arrived, spent the whole day in the operating room, and then I came home—to you.”

The best fucking part of my day.

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