It was only twenty minutes later, when he was finally able to get into a chair, that I realized that I had a problem.
He was sauntering toward the seat that the barber had indicated, and my eyes were on his ass.
The plain gray sweatpants that I’d bought him fit him like a glove, and the shirt was almost a little too snug.
They clung to him in all the right places, and the only thing stopping me from going over the edge had been his rough appearance.
But, as the barber sat Hunt down in his chair and started to clean him up, I realized that with each inch of hair that they cut off, the more appealing he became to me.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. All scruffy and rough looking, he was attractive as hell.
But him with a trim haircut, clean beard, and overall sexy appearance?
It was my undoing.
I was nearly squirming in my seat when the final product was unveiled.
“The beard, too,” Hunt said when the barber went to unbutton the cape around him. “Not all the way off, but cleaned up. Professional looking.”
Dear God.
What was he doing to me?
Over the last few years that I’d been visiting him, the beard had gotten progressively longer and longer. Unkempt. Making him appear rough around the edges.
And I’d only thought that I had a thing for the beard and the long hair. A ‘he’s bad’ vibe wafted off of him every time I’d watched him walk into the visiting room at the prison.
But when the barber whipped the cape off ten minutes later, his hair now pristinely cut in a medium fade, longer on top and fading to a buzz down the sides of his head, my heart was pounding.
And then he turned around and looked at me.
Almost as if he was making sure I was still there.
That’s when I saw his beard.
It took my breath away.
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
