Page 16 of Hot Chicken (Sunday Brothers #6)

Tears, unnecessary and unwelcome, stung the backs of my eyes.

When Theo looked at me like that—like he really saw me and took me seriously as a person—it was nearly impossible not to want to tell him about it.

But the truth was not only low-key humiliating, but it might actually make Theo feel bad.

So instead, I did the super-mature thing.

“No, thank you,” I said politely. Then, I bolted for the kitchen.

Theo followed me, persistent man that he was, and found me rinsing plates and putting them in the dishwasher.

“I love having Aiden here, but damn we make a mess, huh?” I commented. “Sorry I didn’t get to all this earlier. ”

“Baby, since when do you apologize for making a mess in your own kitchen?”

Since never. But I couldn’t help thinking that Remy wouldn’t leave dishes in the sink overnight.

Just like Remy wouldn’t have stolen his brother’s magic ceramic poultry in a fit of panic or required his boyfriend to parse him like he was written in Morse code.

But that was because Remy—aka Dr. Remi-Joseph Vessy—was everything I was not.

Remy was urbane and French. He wore scarves unironically.

He rolled his r ’s in a way that made the most basic things—like “ah, you are Theo’s Por-tair, non?

”—sound sexy and not patronizing. He had literary freaking tattoos down one forearm.

And most annoyingly of all, he’d recently found a rare, annotated quarto of Love’s Labour’s Lost —one of Shakespeare’s early comedies—at a small museum in Paris and had come to Vermont to ask his old pal Theo to collaborate on an academic paper about it.

Cue twice-weekly Zoom calls with Remy back in France—private ones, in Theo’s home office—and Theo spending his summer break working as hard as he did during the school year.

Cue plans to co-present the paper at some symposium this summer.

Cue my boyfriend absolutely glowing ever since.

And cue me, for the first time in my life, feeling acutely, horrifyingly, irrationally jealous… and guilty as fuck about it.

I was not an insecure person by nature. I was comfortable in my own skin, I was confident in my relationship, and I wanted Theo to have as much career success and fulfillment as it was possible for a person to have.

I’d joked once, early in our relationship, that I knew Shakespeare was Theo’s first love and that if the bard ever got himself reincarnated, I’d generously grant Theo a hall pass.

But when it suddenly felt like that reincarnation had come in the form of a tight-bodied Frenchman whose smirk spoke of inside jokes from when he and Theo had been friends in grad school and an obvious interest in doing more than discussing rhyming couplets with my boyfriend? Well, I’d freaked out a little.

And by a little, I meant a lot.

I’d been trying for weeks to get a handle on it.

I’d told myself firmly that I had no right to feel this way since I knew Theo loved me.

I’d scolded myself that it was mean and unfair of me to feel this way since I knew Theo would never cheat on me physically or emotionally.

I’d berated myself for being immature as fuck and not living up to my own expectations.

And I could not tell Theo about any of it because that would make it his problem when I knew it was mine and only mine.

Like, how lowering would it be if he felt like he needed to reassure me when he hadn’t done anything to make me doubt?

“Now that I think about it,” Theo said, leaning back against the counter by the sink, still studying me, “you’ve been acting strangely for a few weeks.

I offered to go see Thor: Ragnarok at the revival theater, and you suggested we go to a student production of Much Ado About Nothing. Which you hate.”

“I don’t hate the whole play,” I muttered. “I just hate that Hero pays the price for Claudio’s pride and jealousy, and then she forgives him in the end, and we’re all supposed to clap.”

Theo shrugged. “Well, reason and love keep little company together , right?”

I squinted at him, trying to remember if I’d heard that quote before, then shook my head. “I don’t know that one.”

“ As You Like It .” Theo’s gaze grew abstracted, and he slipped into his deep, resonant professor voice, seemingly on instinct.

It was really fucking adorable. And hot. Hot-dorable .

“Shakespeare’s saying that emotions aren’t always rational,” he said.

“They can’t exist within the framework of reason.

Now, we might take this as a kind of warning that our unreasonable emotions can steer us wrong—like with Claudio.

But I like to think it’s an acknowledgment of our contrary human nature.

And whether Shakespeare would agree or not, I think it’s kind of a gift.

Imagine never being able to do something as wholly irrational and unreasonable as falling for the hot guy screaming angry sonnets at your house in the dead of night.

” He stuck his hands in his pockets, and one side of his mouth tipped up in an affectionate grin.

“Who’d want to live in that kind of world? ”

Throat tight, I shut off the faucet, then turned and twined my damp hands around Theo’s neck. “I love you, Theo Hancock,” I whispered, staring into those pretty eyes I loved. “You’re the most wonderful, unreasonable thing that ever happened to me.”

Theo ran his hand through my hair and then cupped the side of my neck. His eyes sparkled. “As the bard himself might have said… ‘Same, baby, same.’”

I laughed out loud. And then I pulled him closer and kissed him slow and deep, trying to pour every unspoken thing into it.

His lips were warm and firm as they moved under mine, and I pressed in closer, curling my fingers into the hair at the back of his neck.

When his strong hands slid up the back of my shirt and he made a low hum like he was already sinking into it, the sound vibrated right down my spine, and I could have cried at the relief of it.

Kissing him was always a little overwhelming, not because he took over—he didn’t, usually—but because he paid attention, and being the focus of Theo Hancock’s attention was a heady thing. I never felt more right, more confident, more wholly me than when I was in Theo’s arms.

My heart thumped crazily, like it wanted to leap directly from my chest to Theo’s. My whole body felt keyed up; every millimeter of skin was tuned to Theo’s wavelength and hungry for contact, for friction, for the dizzy, helpless, perfect closeness I only ever got with him.

His hand cupped my jaw, holding me still. “You’re trying to distract me, Mr. Sunday,” he said in an evil Bond-villain voice. “It won’t work.”

Laughing unsteadily, I pulled him off the counter and manhandled him—backward—through the living room.

“Oh, it will,” I murmured against his lips. “It definitely will.”

That earned me a grin that was a little crooked, a little wild. “Cocky little shit,” he said affectionately.

“ Your cocky little shit,” I reminded him, and his grin got wilder.

“All fucking mine,” he agreed with a growl in his voice.

He turned us and backed me into the wall by the bedroom door.

“ That was never in doubt.” He slid his hands under my shirt again, his palms gliding over my bare skin with uncompromising ownership, pulling the thin material up and over my head.

“Theo,” I whispered. “I need?—”

“I know what you need.” He stepped closer, forcing his muscled thigh between mine.

I was still reeling at the welcome intrusion when he grasped both of my wrists in one hand and trapped them against the wall over my head in a pose reminiscent of the one I’d tried earlier.

“This is what you’ve been practicing for, isn’t it? ”

“Fuck.” I laughed breathlessly. It was crazy that even after all this time, he could still make my blood fizz and pound.

“Mine.” He dragged his free hand down my abs, snagging at my waistband. Then he moved lower, fondling my already half-hard dick, tracing the shape of it through the silky mesh. “Mine. ”

My eyes burned again, so I shut them. With a shaky breath, I nodded.

“Mine,” he whispered against my lips before kissing me gently. Then he pulled back, waited for my eyes to open and meet his, and set his hand directly over my heart. “Mine,” he said once more.

I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to tackle-kiss him or burst into tears, but I didn’t get a chance to do either because Theo was already moving.

With a final kiss to my jaw, he guided me backward into our bedroom and then further, until my knees hit the bed.

With a firm push, he sent me down onto the mattress, and I barely had time to gasp before he was straddling me, flipping me, and easing my shorts down my thighs with reverent hands.

He knelt between my legs, kissed my hip bone, and dragged me up to my knees with my legs spread wide, my chest and stomach against the mattress. Then he kissed me again, just below the curve of my ass. His hands slid away from my hips and?—

Fuck .

Theo gripped my ass in both hands with strong, sure fingers, spread me open, and licked a slow, deliberate stripe over my hole. “Mine,” he whispered against my damp skin.

“Theo.” I clutched our comforter in both hands and arched involuntarily, caught between squirming away from the overwhelming sensation and pressing back to beg for more. The movement made my dick rub against the bed, and pleasure cracked through me like the lash of a whip.

Theo’s tongue circled and pressed, hot and wet and relentless. As he worked me, he made these little hums and groans, encouraging me to rock against the bed and ratchet my own pleasure even higher. My toes curled, my thighs shook, and my breath was reduced to shallow pants in time with my rocking.