Page 137 of Full Mountie

“Gimme a chocolate one.”

Lachlan’s beside us, cookies on a small plate, before I can even move. Hugh takes one, and I shift my hug to Lachlan.

He runs his hand up and down my back soothingly. “May I have a cookie as well?” he teases.

I laugh. “Maybe we should make some coffee to have with them instead of just gobbling them here at the counter.”

Hugh winks at me mid-bite. “Watch out for crumbs.”

I swipe the rest of his cookie and shove it in my mouth.

He gasps and I raise one eyebrow in challenge.What are you going to do about that?

Lifting his hand slowly, he reaches up and brushes the corner of my mouth with the pad of his thumb. “Crumbs,” he whispers, and leans in.

Then he licks me.

A big, wet, cheeky swipe of his tongue on my face.

I shove him in the chest, and he doesn’t move an inch. By now I’m laughing so hard my sides hurt, and he’s leaning in to do it again.

“Uncle, uncle!” I cry.

“Uncle by marriage and we meet the day after your eighteenth birthday. The marriage is a sham and when I see you it’s love at first sight?”

“Gross,” I whisper, but I let him kiss me anyway. I’ve missed his dirty ways.

“Or are you begging for mercy?” he asks silkily. “I’m generally not a fan, but I’d make an exception for you.”

He’s such a liar. A soft-hearted, sensitive soul trapped in an alpha male’s body.

And as much as I can’t wait to get dirty and teasing and raunchy with him…I want to find out more about that secret side of Hugh he managed to keep hidden from us while distracting us with sex.

“I’m calling a timeout on welcome back sex,” I say with a sigh, patting his delightfully hard chest through his shirt. “Just a short one. So we can have milk and cookies and talk.”

He rolls his head to the side and gives Lachlan a pained look. “She wants to talk.”

Lachlan gives me an indulgent smile as he moves to the coffee maker and pulls out three mugs from the cupboard. “She’s smart that way.”

I scoot off the counter and plate up some of the cookies, and put the rest in a resealable container for later.

Hugh watches me work for a minute or two, then crosses his arms and shrugs his shoulders. “Okay. What do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know exactly. I guess I want to know why you ran, and what we can do to ensure you won’t feel pushed to that again in the future.”

He groans. “Because I’m an idiot? And I won’t?”

Not good enough. “You aren’t, and you might. Any of us could get cold feet about this relationship. Regular relationships fail all the time for stupid reasons, and they don’t have the pressure of not being able to…talk to their friends, for example.”

He frowns at me. “You could talk to your friends about us. We trust your friends. Don’t we? Do you need better friends?”

“I’m not looking to confide in anyone about you guys, so that’s not really the point. I’m just saying, two hot heads and a bossy woman…we’re liable to run into conflict again. I want us to agree that we talk stuff out, even if it’s uncomfortable.”

More talking. I’m not surprised that suggestion is met with uncomfortable silence—from both of them.

I turn my attention to Lachlan, and he shrugs. “You’re not wrong. But maybe Hugh needed some time to process, too? It’s all worked out in the end, hasn’t it?”

I want to point out that’s incredibly naive, but I don’t know that Lachlan’s wrong. Ithinkhe is, but time will tell.

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