Page 13

I FINISHED UP working just before six. Outside, the sunlight was golden.

I cleaned up the workshop and took the quickest shower I could under the hose outside, the memory of Adam stumbling across me naked still branded in my mind.

Then I dressed and checked for any messages in the group chat with Sam, Haider, and Conor that I might have missed.

Conor’s annoyed rant about one of the guys he worked with at the fire station sounded hilarious delivered in Siri’s calm, measured tones.

When I got to the cabin, the cat was sitting on the front porch, right outside the door like she was waiting for an invitation inside.

I knocked on the door and heard footsteps a moment before Adam opened it. He was wearing track pants and a soft-looking T-shirt and had bare feet. He appeared right at home, and something about the sight of him, so cozy and domestic in my house, kicked me in the solar plexus.

“Hey,” he said, stepping back to let me through. “Come on in.”

The cat strutted through the door.

“Oh, wow,” he said. “You too, I guess?” He gave me a questioning look.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” I said. “She’ll yell to get out before she pees on anything, right?”

“I mean, hopefully.” He stepped aside and let me in. “We’re having pasta. It’s literally sauce from a jar though. I kind of used up all my culinary skills last time.”

“Sounds great,” I said, my gaze caught by the coffee table. The laptop was open and so were a bunch of books and notepads. “You look like you’ve got a lot done.”

Adam winced. “I’m still in my research phase. I’m worried I might only be enjoying it so much because I’m actually procrastinating. When you pick up a bit of wood for whittling, how do you know what it’s going to be?”

I flushed. “Ah, I sit with it for a while and wait for it to tell me.”

Adam didn’t laugh.

“That’s what I wish my notes were doing,” he said with a sigh. “Except so far it’s been total radio silence. But I got a really great book at the library today, and I’m sure I’ll find something in there that’ll spark an idea.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’ll all come together.” He drew a deep breath, his smile back. “Okay, let me get dinner started.”

I followed him into the kitchen to help, still marveling at how right it felt for him to be here in my space. He fit in that easy way as if we’d known each other for years.

Adam filled a pot with water and put it on the stove. “We have garlic bread too, in the freezer.”

I turned the oven on to preheat, and Adam pulled salad ingredients out of the fridge. He opened a few drawers and then said, “Cutting board?”

“Next one along.”

He flashed me a smile and took a knife out of the block. “Hmm. You know what this kitchen needs?”

“What?” I looked around the kitchen. It wasn’t fancy by any means, but I’d designed it with practicality in mind.

“An apron that says ‘Kiss the chef.’” He flashed me a cheeky smile.

My heart skipped a few beats, and my blood heated. “Is that right?”

Adam’s grin faded as I closed the space between us, and he tilted his chin up. “Yes. And a sexy woodworker who can follow written instructions.”

My steps faltered, but I recovered quickly. He didn’t mean anything by it. He couldn’t, because he didn’t know about my dyslexia. Just, that old response of shame was bone-deep, and I’d never quite been able to shed it. I pushed it aside. “I can follow instructions.”

He set the knife down. “Prove it.”

I could also rise to challenges.

I reached him, cupped his face with my hands, and kissed him.

Hard. He melted against me, his hands on my hips pulling me even closer.

His track pants did nothing to hide the fact he was hard, and I groaned as I felt his erection press against my thigh.

His mouth was hot against mine, his tongue electric.

This wasn’t like the kisses we’d shared on the porch swing, gentle and warm and slow—this one was a flash point. It was fire meeting gasoline.

“Ryan.” His fingers dug into my hips. “Let’s go upstairs.”

“Okay.” I was breathless. “Yeah.”

Adam turned off the stovetop, grabbed me by the hand, and drew me through the cabin and up the stairs into my loft bedroom.

And didn’t he look just at home here as everywhere else?

There was a shirt on the bed that wasn’t mine and a pair of socks discarded on the floor. A phone charging cord rested in a coil on top of my bedside table, and the bed was unmade and rumpled.

Adam saw me gazing at it. “Shit. Sorry.”

I laughed. “I literally don’t care.”

“But it’s your bed, and I’m being a slob in it.”

“I can think of better things for you to be in my bed.”

“Same,” he said, his eyes sparkling, and then he reached for the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it over his head.

He dropped it on the floor. “I’m not usually this forward.

” He chewed his bottom lip. “That’s not a judgement on forward people.

Just an observation. Only, I’m so awkward that usually when I open my mouth, I put my foot in it instead of someone’s dick. ”

I didn’t think I’d ever laughed before when I was about to have sex. It was new and kind of exhilarating. “I’m not usually very forward either.”

His gaze held mine. “It feels different with you. In a good way.”

“Yeah,” I said, letting the word out on a breath. “It does.”

For a moment we were silent, each of us taking a moment to consider the weight of that realization, and then Adam stepped toward me and kissed me.

Our mouths met, and then his body was flush with mine, and my palms brushed over the bare skin of his naked back.

His fingers touched my chest, searching for the button on the collar of my shirt.

I ran my fingers through his hair, tugging gently, and he moaned.

Then his moan turned into an annoyed grunt, and he drew back from the kiss. “These—these fucking buttons !”

He creased his brow and glared at the offending buttons, his fingers working more easily to tug them through the holes now that he could see what he was doing.

I could have helped, probably, except I was unable to take my gaze off his shining mouth and the way his teeth dug into his bottom lip in concentration as he worked at his task.

If anyone should have been biting Adam’s lip, it should have been me.

He pulled my shirt open and then slid his hands up the planes of my chest and over my shoulders, pushing the fabric over them.

I shrugged the rest of the way out of the shirt, and it dropped onto the floor somewhere behind me.

Adam’s hands went to the button on my jeans, and he darted his gaze up to meet mine.

“Is this too fast?”

“No.” My throat felt dry. “Not with you.”

His smile was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen.

“I—I don’t have anything.” Rebecca had cleaned my place out before Adam had moved in, and that included the lube in the drawer underneath my bedside table and the backup stash in the bathroom.

I knew, because the fact I had lube and no condoms was a sad indictment on my single status, and Rebecca had shared that opinion with me.

“Masturbation is normal and healthy,” she’d said, as though she was a health class video and I was a mortified thirteen-year-old instead of a mortified thirty-year-old. “But, Ryan, you should at least be prepared to be with someone apart from your hand!”

And now, on top of that embarrassment of her initial assessment, I also had to suffer the knowledge that she’d been right . I could never tell her. I’d take it to my grave.

“I might…hold on.” Adam crossed to a suitcase in the corner of the room, opening it and digging around for a moment.

Then he stood and dumped a handful of detritus onto the bed.

I saw a toiletry bag, a pen, a small bottle of hand sanitizer, three different keyrings, and a foil package with large glittery writing on it.

“Ignore the monster fucker,” Adam said.

“Um,” I said, a second before I parsed that was what was written on the condom in huge, sparkling letters: MONSTER FUCKER.

“I got it at a book convention,” he said. “Romance writers give away wild swag. All I had were pens.” He unzipped the toiletry bag and produced a tube of lube which, thankfully, appeared to be a regular brand and nothing to do with monsters.

“Like…is it a furry thing?” I asked tentatively.

“No, just usual monsters, I think,” he said, tilting his head thoughtfully. “Maybe werewolves. Werewolves are huge .”

I blinked at him.

“Popular, I mean,” he said with a snort of laughter. “But probably also in the other way.” He picked up the condom and waved it in my direction. “Who’s going to be the monster, you or me? Wait, is a monster fucker a monster who fucks, or someone who fucks monsters?”

I laughed. “I have no idea!”

He wrinkled his nose as he looked at the condom. “It kind of killed the mood, right?”

I shrugged. Maybe it had, but this mood, the one where we were half naked and laughing together, was pretty amazing too.

“Come here,” I said, sitting down on the bed. I reached for the lube. “You ever, um, jacked off together with a guy?”

I couldn’t believe I’d even said that aloud, but Adam’s expression sharpened with interest.

“No,” he said, planting his ass beside mine on the bed. “But I didn’t grow up with three hot gay friends.”

It was my turn to snort. The idea of doing anything remotely sexual with the guys was so funny. “Nope. It never happened.”

Adam turned the MONSTER FUCKER condom over and over in his palm, his smile fading into something softer, more intimate. “Kiss me again, Ryan?”

I’d told him in the kitchen that I could follow instructions, and so I did.

The heat grew steadily between us again, until our mingled breaths were short and sharp with need.

I was hard, throbbing in my jeans, and Adam’s track pants were doing nothing to disguise the fact that he was in the same state as me.

And suddenly jacking off sitting beside him didn’t seem like enough.

I shifted further back onto the bed, and lay down, pulling Adam against me.

He flung a leg over mine and dug his fingers into my hip.

We rocked against each other for a moment before I decided I needed my jeans out of the way and popped the button.

Adam bit his lip when he heard the rasp of my fly and then lifted his chin for another kiss.

The hand that slid into my jeans wasn’t mine.

Getting our pants off was hot and messy and much more complicated than it would have been if we’d done this standing up. But it was also fun . We laughed when our heads bumped together as I shimmied out of my jeans and when Adam accidentally elbowed me in the gut.

And then the mood shifted again, as the heat rising between us stole our laughter and replaced it with a desperate need.

I got a knee between Adam’s, and he thrust against me, his cock as hot as a branding iron.

I kissed the side of his jaw, then scraped my teeth against the skin there just to feel him shudder against me.

Somehow we remembered to bring the lube into mix as he rode my thigh and I thrust into his hand. It was so messy, but at the same time it was perfect. Arousal lit my blood on fire, and every nerve was attuned to Adam and to the way our bodies moved together in a clumsy rhythm.

“Ryan,” he whispered urgently. “Ryan, I’m gonna—” He shuddered against me as he came.

I was barely seconds behind him.

He sprawled over me, his breath hot and fast against my jaw. “Holy shit. That was incredible .”

I kissed the top of his head, happiness coursing through me like the bubbles in soda. “Yeah. It was.”

He was.

WE ATE AT the small kitchen table with our chairs pushed close together.

It was late by the time we ate, but neither of us minded.

The cat watched us warily from the corner of the kitchen she appeared to have claimed as her own, but that might have been because Adam had put down a few pieces of shredded chicken for her.

When we finished dinner, I stacked the dishwater while Adam wiped down the counter. Then, leaning against the counter, he said, “You should stay here.”

I hit the button to start the dishwasher, and it hummed to life. “What?”

His mouth twisted. “Ryan, you’re sleeping in a camp bed in your workshop.”

“It’s not so bad.”

“No, it’s not,” he said. “But it’s also not a proper bed, when there’s one here you’re more than welcome to share.” His face flushed bright red, and he cleared his throat. “Or there’s the spare room downstairs.”

God, I was so sick of that camp bed.

“This is a weird situation,” he said. “I’m inviting you to stay in your own cabin.

And I don’t want there to be anything weird between us because of what we just did upstairs.

So, don’t feel to be obligated to stay over or anything, at least not in the same bed as me, but there’s also a spare room, and it’s stupid for you to be sleeping in your workshop when you could be here instead. ”

“Yeah, but you didn’t want to be disturbed,” I said. “That’s what Rebecca said. You paid for the entire place.”

“And you spend every waking hour over in your workshop anyway,” he said with a shrug. “I mean, think about it, that’s all. The offer’s there, and it makes sense.”

He was right. It did make sense, but it also opened the door to a whole lot of awkwardness if he changed his mind for any reason. Like if it turned out he didn’t want anyone in his space after all, or, more specifically, that things didn’t work out between us and he didn’t want me in his space.

I held his gaze, searching for any uncertainty there and not finding any. “Okay, but only if you know that you can kick me out again if you want to, no questions asked. You paid for the cabin. It’s yours, not mine, until you leave.”

He showed me a pleased smile. “Okay. That works for me. Now.” His eyes sparkled as he nodded toward the cat. “What’s your pet policy?”

I’D NEVER SHARED my bed with anyone. I’d never had a boyfriend, and all my hookups happened out of town.

I’d been back to a few different guys’ places in the past but never had one to mine.

The cabin was my sanctuary, but Adam fit here.

He fit in my bed too, his body molding to mine.

I’d never been anyone’s spoon, either big or little, but I liked how Adam snuggled closer, reaching for my arm and pulling it over him.

I slept a lot better than I had on the camp bed, but I was awake as dawn lit up the lake outside the floor-to-ceiling window with a slow fire. It was my favorite part of the day, and it turned out it was even better with Adam sleeping in my arms.

The sky lightened as I watched it, the fiery colors of the dawn slowly fading into soft daylight.

A new day was beginning.

When I pressed a soft kiss to the side of his head, Adam’s hair tickled my lips.

And maybe—my heart raced when I thought of it—a whole new life.