10. Cole

And the nextmorning didn"t start off any better.

I woke up to my usual pre-dawn alarm in a foul mood that couldn"t fully be attributed to the early rise time.

It was all her fault.

I"d spent much of the night tossing and turning. A certain part of my anatomy reminding me with increasing insistence that Sunny was right there. In the very next bedroom. Her soft, curvaceous body was lying underneath a couple of sheets and a thin blanket, which I would only have to pull back to…

Around 2 AM, I was forced to take care of myself like a high school boy to finally get to sleep, andeven that hadn"t been enough.

I woke up with morning wood and ended up having to jerk off again in the shower just so I could walk downstairs in a pair of joggers without embarrassing myself.

The chessboard feel of my personal abode didn"t give me my usual satisfaction as I made my way to the kitchen that morning to put together a pre-workout drink. The House was always supposed to win, and I was the CEO of The House. But this sudden low-key obsession with a woman who was only meant to be a pawn in my board game?

Let"s just say, I did not feel like a winner as I tore open a package of high-quality protein powder and dumped the contents into my sports shaker.

Regardless, I stuck to my usual morning routine. Today"s plan was a long workout with my personal trainer. Then I"d head into the office until it was time to leave for the CEO dinner.

While I chugged my pre-workout shake, I picked up the phone I always left charging in another room (as all the productivity podcasts suggested). But along with the usual a.m. digest of emails from Agnes, I found several alerts from my state-of-the-art home security system.

Apparently, there had been movement on the main floor shortly before 12 a.m. and again around 4 a.m., with someone coming in and out of the penthouse while I"d been sleeping.

Furrowing my brow, I opened up the security camera app, where I found two videos of Sunny. In the first, she was leaving the penthouse at 11:40 p.m. in a short, shimmering green dress with a red Benton Girl swag coat draped over her left arm. The second video showed her returning about two hours ago, now wearing the coat. With careful movements, she pulled off her slingback heels, then tiptoed toward the stairs to return to the room I"d provided her.

Where the hell had she been?

A red, angry bile rose inside of me as my head filled with possible answers to that question.

"Hey, what are you doing up so early on a Saturday morning?" Sunny"s voice suddenly asked behind me.

"I"m getting ready to work out," I answered, raising my head from the phone to confront her. "What were you?—?"

The rest of my question stuck in my mouth when I took in her appearance.

I was accustomed to women whomade every effort to present themselves impeccably. Full makeup, sophisticated outfits, with a spritz of perfume on top.

Sunny looked like she just climbed out of a tumble dryer—rumpled, oversized T-shirt, glossy curls going every which way, including up. Yet her bountiful curves, barely contained by the drawstring shorts she"d apparently changed into before going to bed in the wee hours of the morning, sent a lightning bolt of lust straight through me.

Which I forcibly tamped down to finish asking, "Where did you go in the middle of the night?"

"Was I too loud?" Worry filled her pretty eyes. "I tried to be quiet as I came back up the stairs. I didn"t want to wake you."

I might have been moved by her consideration if my head hadn"t filled up with images of her and another man. Maybe that boxer ex Nora had mentioned?

"My security camera caught you." I held up my phone. "Going out at midnight and coming back at four. Some might call that booty call prime time."

"I wish!"Sunny snorted and shuffled over to my state-of-the-art shiny black GoNoTo Barista machine. "Unfortunately, I was just working my usual graveyard cocktail waitress shift over at the Tourmaline Vegas. And now I"ve got my dance instructor gig in a couple of hours."

She yawned and stretched, sending another bolt of lust shooting straight through me.

"You"re waitressing?" I had to work hard to keep the physical strain out of my voice. "At the Tourmaline Vegas?"

"Yeah, the base pay isn"t the best, but the tips are great and sure to get even better when I go full-time on Monday. So I"m super grateful," she answered, fiddling uselessly with the GoNoTo Barista knobs. "The only thing is, I"ve got a dance class to teach in, like, ninety minutes, and I"m in desperate need of coffee. I can"t even think about a shower until I"ve had at least one cup. Can you show me how to use this robot you call a coffee machine?"

I couldn"t remember the last time a woman asked me to teach her to do anything. No, Sunny was definitely not my usual type. Not even remotely.

But somehow, I found myself making both her and myself a double shot of espresso cappuccino.

"Oh, my gosh, this tastes amazing," she said after the first sip. "If you"d told me your place came with the best coffee I ever tasted, I might not have fought you so hard on moving in."

Contrary to how we parted ways last night, Sunny hit me with a grateful smile."Are you going to be around after I get out of the shower? I"d love to have another cup before my class, and I"m not confident I understood everything you told me to do. Like, at all."

Usually, I reserved coffee as a post-workout reward. I glanced at my watch, knowing that I"d be done with my morning cardio an hour from now and ready to meet with my personal trainer for measurements and a heavy weights session. No, I didn"t have time in my busy schedule to wait around for a second cup of coffee.

But instead of telling her that, I asked, "What time is your class?"

"At eight thirty," she answered, taking another sip of coffee. Then she scrunched her forehead, as if it had just occurred to her to ask, "Why do you want to know?"