Page 9 of The Agent’s Curvy Seduction

. . .

Willow

The smell of coffee and something savory drifts up from downstairs before I even move, warm and unexpected in a place that still doesn’t belong to me. I lie there for another second, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling, completely aware of where I am and exactly how I got here. The bakery. The black SUV. Hudson Wolfe walking through my door and saying my real name like he’d been holding onto it for months.

Willow Thompson.

Not the name on my lease. Not the name printed on my work schedule. The name I haven’t heard spoken out loud in seven months, and somehow it sounded different coming from him. He said it with so much certainty that for one strange second, it felt less like a secret I’d been hiding and more like something that still belonged to me.

I sit up slowly. My body feels heavy from the crash of adrenaline and the long drive. The scars on my hip and thigh pull when I swing my legs over the side of the bed. I always notice them first thing in the morning. They’re the first thing I hide.

I pull on clean jeans and a soft gray tee that covers everything, then head downstairs barefoot. The cabin is brighter in daylight. Sunlight pours through the big windows and turns the leather couches a warm brown. The forest outside looks endless.

Hudson is in the kitchen.

He’s still in the same black t-shirt from last night, sleeves pushed up to his elbows, showing those thick forearms I keep trying not to stare at. His blond hair is a little messy, like he’s run his hands through it more than once. He’s standing at the stove cooking what looks like eggs and bacon, and the entire space smells like home in a way my tiny apartment never did.

He glances over when he hears me. Those blue-gray eyes move over my face, then down my body in a slow, thorough sweep that makes my skin warm.

“Morning,” he says. His voice is still rough from sleep. “Coffee’s ready. Sit down before you fall over.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re exhausted. Sit.”

I almost argue just on principle, but the way he’s looking at me makes the words die. I slide onto one of the stools at the counter instead. He pours a mug of coffee and sets it in front of me without asking how I take it. Black. Exactly the way I like it. I don’t ask how he knew.

He plates the food and pushes a full plate toward me, then leans against the counter across from me with his own. We eat in silence for a few minutes. It’s not uncomfortable exactly, but the air between us is thick with everything that almost happened last night in this same kitchen.

“You always cook for the people you’re protecting?” I ask eventually.

“No.” He takes a bite of bacon, watches me while he chews. “You’re the first.”

The honesty in his voice lands hard. I look down at my plate and force myself to keep eating so I don’t have to meet his eyes.

After breakfast he starts cleaning up. I move to help without thinking about it. He doesn’t stop me. We work side by side at the sink, him washing, me drying. Every time our arms brush, heat sparks under my skin. I keep waiting for it to fade. It doesn’t.

“You don’t have to do this,” he says after a while.

“Do what?”

“Help. Pretend this is normal. You can be pissed at me. You can ignore me. You don’t owe me polite conversation.”

I dry the last plate and set it down harder than I mean to. “I’m not pretending. I’m just… trying to figure out what the hell this is.”

He turns off the water and dries his hands on a towel, then faces me fully. The kitchen suddenly feels smaller.

“You already know what this is,” he says, voice low. “You’re just not ready to admit it yet.”

Something hot and defensive flares in my chest. I don’t like how easily he reads me. I don’t like how right he sounds.

I decide right then that I’m done hiding.

My hands go to the hem of my tee before I can talk myself out of it. I pull the soft fabric up on my left side, high enough to show the worst of the scars that run from my lower ribs down over my hip and disappear under the waistband of my jeans. The skin is raised and uneven, a permanent reminder of the night everything burned.

“This is what I am now,” I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel. “This is what they left me with. So if you’re going to look at me like I’m something you want, you should know exactly what you’re getting.”

I expect him to flinch. To look away. To give me the careful, pitying expression I’ve seen on every doctor and nurse who ever examined me.