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Buck rushed in to say hello to me and then run to find one of his toys to play with.

“Hey, babe,” I said. I’d adjusted to the term of endearment with a little too much ease for my liking.

Stace always kissed me when she got home from work. Or when she took Buck out to use the bathroom. Or sometimes when one of us left the room and returned.

It was cute as hell and I wanted to hate it, but I could never hate kissing Stace.

“Ohh, this is fancy. What’s the occasion?” she asked, putting her arms around me from behind and resting her chin on my shoulder.

“I just wanted to have a nice dinner with you. I feel like you’re always doing this for me, and I want to make sure that you’re not the only one.”

Stace turned me around in her arms.

“You know I do things for you because I want to. Not out of obligation, right?”

“I know,” I said, resting my hands on her ass. It was something I’d gotten addicted to. I just loved touching her there, and not necessarily in a sexual way.

“But sometimes you are so busy doing everything for everyone, who’s doing something for you? I want to be that person.” Shit. I hadn’t meant to say that much.

Stace tilted her head to the side. “You do?”

“Yeah. I do.”

She rested her forehead against mine. “You’re incredible, Hunter. You’re everything I could have wished for.”

“You don’t have to wish for me. I’m right here.” I squeezed her cheeks and she laughed.

“Mmmm, you can’t do that, baby. Because I’m starving and if you keep touching me like that, I’m going to want to take you to bed and you worked hard on this beautiful meal.”

Stace stepped back from me and groaned.

“Don’t look at me like I’m the bad guy.”

I patted her abs and bit my lip.

“You’re not the bad guy. Okay, fine. We’ll eat first. How was the shelter today?”

We did manage to eat dinner before we ripped each other’s clothes off and ended up in her bed. I’d started traveling with several vibrators and Stace had pulled out a few of her own and we’d both discovered that we liked adding them to our repertoire.

“You didn’t want to go out tonight?” Stace asked as we lay tangled together.

“Did you want to go out? We can.” This week we’d been kind of in our little bubble, but we’d have to go out sometime.

“No, I just didn’t want you to feel like we had to hide away. I can’t lie; I want to take you out and show you off all the time.”

I kissed her bicep and propped my head up so I could look at her face.

“You wanna go out to Sapph tomorrow night? Reid is working so we might get free drinks.”

Her smile was slow. “I was going to volunteer Saturday night but I can go out with you. If you want.”

I nodded. “I do. And maybe we can invite Cade and Eloise. You can finally meet the great Eloise Roth.”

Stace raised her eyebrows. “Meeting your friends? That’s kind of a big step, baby.”

It was, but I’d already met her family. It only seemed fair since she probably wasn’t going to meet my family if I could help it. Eventually. Probably. But far, far in the future. I didn’t want to subject Stace to my parents. She’d probably charm them, though. I had faith in her skills.

“I know. But I’m not scared of a big step,” I said, the words I’d been holding in all day pulsing beneath my skin.