Page 28 of Code Word (The Atrous #3)

FOURTEEN

I knew my knee was jacked up, but I tried to pull up without falling. “Ow, fuck.”

“What’s wrong, Acosta,” Luke called out. “Don’t wanna test my theories?”

I laughed, despite my stupid fucking knee. “My theory is I fucked up my knee.”

A few seconds later, he came running toward me, concerned. “For real?”

I limped and winced. “Fuck.”

“Oh crap,” he said, coming to put his shoulder under my arm. He helped me walk back to the house, opening the door for me and helping me onto the sofa before he disappeared into the kitchen.

I gently put my foot up on the coffee table and Luke came back with some ice in a kitchen towel. “Here,” he said, holding it on my knee. “This should help.”

“I felt it give out as soon as I hit the sand,” I said. “Fuck.”

He frowned as he sat beside me. “I’m sorry. I just...”

“It’s not your fault.” I winced. “Stupid fucking knee.”

Luke pouted in a way that was far too cute. “And I really wanted to test those theories. ”

I laughed. “I think the lesson we have learned today is that you should have tested those theories when you were torturing me before dinner. We could have had orgasms before food, then ate the food, then strolled back for round two of theories, instead of trying to run.”

He was still pouting, so I put my thumb to his bottom lip. “None of this.” Then I thought about it... “Wait, are you pouting because of my knee and I’m in pain, or are you pouting because your theories and orgasm expectations aren’t being met?”

He had the decency to look offended before his smile gave him away. “Well, yeah sure, your knee, of course...”

I gave him a shove and then fisted the front of his shirt and pulled him in, his nose touching mine. “The rest of me works just fine.”

His surprise soon became a smirk. “Duly noted,” he murmured as he pressed his lips to mine. It was a soft kiss at first. Then he pulled my bottom lip between his, tilted his head, and forced my mouth open, delving his tongue inside.

Of course, my first reaction was a full-body need to feel him against me, and I stupidly moved my leg. “Ow, fuck,” I hissed, favoring my sore knee.

Luke pouted again. “Stay here,” he said before disappearing out of the room.

I inspected my knee. It wasn’t bruised or swollen; it just wasn’t good. I’d had a fucked knee for years and surgery to repair the tendon. The rest and physical therapy that followed had healed it, but it was never one hundred percent again. Still, the pain was gone.

Until now.

It didn’t feel like a tear, incomplete or otherwise. I knew what that was like. This felt like more of an overextension or a strain at the wrong angle or something.

Luke came back with Alma. Not what I was expecting, but she looked at me, at my knee and the ice pack, and made a sad face. “I have ointment,” she said before she was gone.

Luke sat back down beside me. “I didn’t know what else to do,” he said quietly. “And she’s like a mom, and moms know what to do. Should we get you to a hospital or something? I feel terrible.”

“Luke, babe, it’s fine. It’s just sprained or something. I don’t think it’s torn or anything.”

His eyes met mine. “Babe?” He was slow to smile. “Did you just call me babe?”

“Nope. Are you feeling okay? I’ve never called anyone that in my life. Did you hit your head or something?” I put the ice pack on his head.

“You totally fucking did,” he said with a laugh, putting the ice pack back on my knee.

“Here,” Alma said, holding up a small jar. “Ointment.” She handed it to Luke. “Rub it in. The smell is not good but it will help.”

“Thank you,” we both said at the same time.

“Okay,” she said with a smile. “I’ll come see you in the morning.”

We both waited until she was gone. “She’s just at the front of the house?”

Luke nodded. “Yeah. It’s like an annex or something. There’s a door. She told me to knock if I ever needed anything.”

“Dude,” I said. “We made out on this couch! We made each other come on this couch.”

“Yeah, but she wasn’t here then.”

“I was gonna make it happen again just now when I said the rest of me works just fine,” I said.

“Dude? I thought I was babe.”

I sighed.

“And past tense? ‘Was gonna make it happen again.’ So that means we’re not—” He shrugged. “—testing theories? ”

“Not with Alma on the other side of the door. It’d be like doing it in your mom’s house. Ew.”

He snorted. “I’ve fantasized about that, just so you know.”

I stared at him. “At your mom’s house?”

He laughed. “Not like that. Don’t make it sound weird.”

“I didn’t make this weird. Believe me.”

He snorted. “No, when we were younger, hanging out at my folks’ place or yours. In our rooms, like we used to do all the time. I used to picture us wrestling over something and falling on the bed. You’d look at me, at my lips, then you’d kiss me...”

That stopped me in my tracks. “You did?”

He’d really wanted this for so long. Years and years.

He nodded.

“I wish I knew. I wish we hadn’t missed out on the last decade.”

He shook his head, sad, pensive. “Nah. If we had, maybe it wouldn’t have worked out. Maybe it would have ended terribly because we were young and stupid.”

I sighed and took the ice pack off my knee. “Now I’m just old and stupid.”

“Twenty-eight isn’t old,” he said, unscrewing the cap off the jar.

We both recoiled at the smell. “Jesus. The fuck is that?”

Luke held his nose with one hand and read the label. “Ingredients: ointment, dirty feet, and unwashed assholes.”

I laughed. “Smells like it.”

Luke smeared some of the goopy terribleness onto his fingers, then proceeded to rub it on my knee. “This feel okay?”

I nodded, taken aback by his gentleness, his surety.

“Yeah,” I whispered. Now, over the last ten years, we’d rubbed heat gel on knees, shoulders, backs.

We’d massaged each other’s sore and tired muscles; we’d learned enough physical therapy over the grueling years to help out. But this felt different.

A tenderness he’d never shown me before.

It struck me, right in the solar plexus. This man, my best friend, the one person on the planet who made me feel peace.

“Here,” he said, pulling his shirt over his head. Then he wrapped the shirt around my knee like a bandage and tucked it all in so it held. “So you don’t ruin the sheets.”

“Ruined your shirt though.”

He looked at the shirt, then at me. “It was your shirt anyway. I took that out of your dirty-clothes pile about five years ago.”

I laughed. “Thought it could have been familiar.”

“I dunno where my wardrobe ends and yours begins, to be honest. If I see it in the laundry?—”

I took his face in my hands and kissed him, soft and sweet. “Like I said before, everything I have is yours. And I like you wearing my clothes.”

He blushed and the smile he gave me made my heart squeeze, but he was holding his hands out kinda weird. “I need to wash my hands. I have that nasty stuff all over.”

“Ointment, dirty feet, and assholes,” I said.

“It was unwashed assholes,” he amended as he got up. He took the ice pack to the sink and washed his hands before I heard him duck up the stairs.

I turned to scope out the stairs, dreading even the thought of it. There was no way I was climbing those...

The couch was comfy enough. I’d certainly slept on worse. I was patting and plumping one of the cushions when Luke came back down. He was carrying the bed cover and a pillow. “Figured you weren’t up for climbing the stairs,” he said.

“You read my mind.”

“Get yourself comfortable,” he said, dumping the bedding on the coffee table, then switching the lights off. The moon outside gave us enough light to see .

I lay down on the sofa, careful with my knee. “Hey, do you remember the first place we all lived together? That couch? A box of nails woulda been more comfy than that.”

Luke took the blanket and laid it over me.

“Of course I remember. We shared a room. How could I forget?” He took the pillow and propped it under my head, and when he sat on the edge of the sofa, his smile was kinda sad.

“Best and worst years of my life. God, remember when we shared that double bed for a time. That was torture. I spent many nights telling myself that wanting to jump your bones was just hormones and nothing else, wondering what it’d be like to wake up in your arms.”

I slid my arm around his waist and pulled him backward. “Well, you don’t have to wonder anymore. You’re sleeping here with me tonight.”

He chuckled. “On this couch? Will we fit?”

I pulled the blanket up and he got himself situated, careful of my knee, of course. My arm under his neck and my other arm around his middle. It was snug and neither of us was rolling over in a hurry, but it was awesome.

“Perfect,” I murmured, kissing the back of his head.

“This is nice,” he replied.

“Just nice?” I countered. “I mean, it’s not testing any of your theories, but it’s better than nice.”

He chuckled. “Yeah. It’s better than nice.”

“So, you wanna explain what you meant when you said you had things you wanted us to do?”

“Uh . . .”

“I’m assuming they were sexual things.”

He snorted. “Well, yeah, mostly. But I don’t think it’s a good idea to talk about it while we’re lying like this and...”

I chuckled. “While we’re in this position and what?”

“You’re gonna need a fully functioning body for that,” he said. Then he grumbled and did a shuffle-roll so he was now facing me. “This is probably better. ”

I laughed again and lifted his chin so I could kiss him. “Okay, so you being the little spoon is definitely a theory you want to test.”

I was gonna say with his ass pressed against my crotch but figured I’d save him the embarrassment.

He smiled and his sigh was content, and I was glad I’d not gone for sarcasm.

“Now don’t get me wrong,” I murmured. “I’m all for testing whatever theories you wanna test when I have a fully functioning body. But this is pretty damn awesome too.” I kissed him again, softly but a little deeper.