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“I thought you weren’t expecting trouble tonight.”
“I’m not.”
“Let me guess. You’re patrolling and standing guard anyway?” Chas murmured.
“Bingo.”
“Should I be fully dressed and have my shoes ready to go too?”
“Wouldn’t hurt.”
Chas groaned and rolled out of bed. Sex with Gunner was rather more athletic than he was accustomed to, and he was a little creaky as he dressed. Gunner moved over to stand behind him as he put his shoes on the floor. Big, powerful hands kneaded his shoulder muscles with just enough force to make him groan with pleasure.
“I’ll give you a full back rub tomorrow,” Gunner murmured.
“You know how?”
“Standard SEAL training. We have to keep one another fully operational in the field.”
“Ooh. SEALs giving each other full-body massages. Kinky,” Chas mumbled.
Gunner made a sound of disgust that spun Chas around to face him.
“What?” Chas asked, startled.
“It’s one of the many reasons I couldn’t come out as gay. We did give each other rubdowns, in addition to sleeping, eating, and bathing together. Some of the guys would have been afraid that I might be attracted to them and that such contact would get sexual.”
“But if it was your job and they were just your coworkers….” Chas frowned. “It’s not as if being gay would make you attracted to every single male you worked with.”
Gunner rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t attracted to any of them. They’re hairy, obnoxious macho jerks like me. No, thank you. Honestly, I have no idea what you see in me.”
Chas laid his palms on Gunner’s stubbled cheeks. “You and me, we have a very long history together. We’ve been friends, confidants, brothers, heck, even enemies. I can’t imagine my life without you in it.”
“You spent the past ten years without me in your life,” Gunner muttered.
“And it sucked. No, thank you,” he echoed.
Gunner swept him up against all that tactical gear and the hard, powerful man beneath, and it was almost too sexy to stand. Then Gunner leaned down, kissing him hard at first and then gentling the kiss to a long, deep, intimate thing that communicated how much Gunner cared for him.
“Not to be cliché,” he murmured against Gunner’s warm, resilient lips, “but is that your pistol poking me in the belly?”
Gunner let out a silent gust of laughter against Chas’s mouth. “That’s a breaching tool. I’ll show you how it works sometime. My pistol’s around the side of my hip a little bit more.”
Chas stepped back, and in the faint glow from a streetlight outside, Gunner gave him a guided tour of a SEAL’s operational gear. It was impressive how much crap Gunner carried around with him. Chas commented, “You’re like a walking Boy Scout manual. You’ve got every eventuality covered.”
“If only. No matter how prepared we are, we can always count on the bad guys to come up with something that we haven’t anticipated. The name of the game in the field is being willing and able to improvise.”
“That’s why you’ll be a good lover. We just need to tap into your natural ability to freestyle.”
“If you say so,” Gunner muttered, sounding a little shy.
Chas chucked him under the chin. “Never fear. I’m creative. Our sex life will never be dull.”
“Can’t say as I was actually worried about that.”
Chas stared up at Gunner in the shadows, trying to make out the expression in his eyes. “Meaning you don’t plan to have a lengthy love life with me, or that you believe we’ll keep it fresh and hot for a long time?”
“The latter—” Gunner broke off, reaching for his ear with his right hand.