Page 57 of King of Pain

“Dandy,” he answers, leaning against the jam. “You look amazing this morning.”

I lift my brows with a laugh. “In your giant shirt?”

“In my shirt. Yeah.” And then he reaches for me, pulling me into his arms and kissing my mouth. It’s playful and intimate as his hand creeps up into my hair, cradling my head.

“It smells like you,” I whisper against his lips as I wind my arms around his neck.

His other hand skims up the back of my thigh. “And now it’s going to smell like you. When you change, I want it back.”

Holy crap, he knows how to get me going. I lean back, my heart beginning to skip in my chest.

He kisses me again and then lets me go, pushing off the jam. “Don’t want to burn your bacon.”

“My bacon?”

“Yeah. I’d eat the burnt stuff, but you might not want yours as cooked as mine.”

I close the bathroom door and finish up, then head to the kitchen. Luke has started eggs.

I take a seat at a kitchen chair, and he hands me a cup of black coffee. Smiling, I take a sip.

“I’ll call Mason today, see if we can head back to Vegas.”

“If we don’t,” I take another sip, “I need to do some laundry.” Now that the call with Dr. Shrewsbury is done, I’m in way less of a hurry to get back. I’ve even wondered if I want to do the internship.

Do I want to be a surgeon? If I didn’t care what anyone thought of me, what would I do with my life?

I’ve been so focused on being as successful as possible, I haven’t stopped to ask questions like, what brings me joy? What do I love?

I think back to the kids we rescued on the side of the road. I liked helping them. Liked their adorable smiles and their sweet voices.

Maybe that’s where my future lies. Either way, there have been some blessings in what’s happened the past few days. One of them was meeting Luke, but the other is just taking a moment, away from the noise of life, to really think about me and what I want.

“Laundry?” he asks, quirking a brow.

“Yeah. I’m out of shirts,” I point to his.

“We can definitely take care of that.” He leans down and kisses me again, despite the coffee breath and then returns to the stove to flip the eggs. “And as much as I like having you in my shirt, when we go out, I’ve got a few more things you can wear.”

A minute later, he sets down a heaping plate in front of me. I wrinkle my nose. “How much do you think I eat?”

“I know you didn’t finish your tacos last night,” he responds, setting his own plate down, which has the same amount of food as mine.

I am not a male who needs to eat a mountain of food, and as he disappears from the room, I take some of the food from my plate and dump it on his.

He comes back, and narrows his eyes at first my plate, and then his. But he doesn’t say a word as he sets down several bags at my feet.

My food forgotten, I cock my head. “What’s all this?”

“Stuff I picked up for you in town.”

I open the first bag and pull out a Dyson hair dryer. My mouth drops open. “What is this?”

“The hair dryer in this place stinks and I know you like to dry your hair.”

“But…” I stare at the thing. I could never afford one. “These are like six hundred dollars.”

He shrugs.

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