Page 40 of Burning Up

“Really? You’re saying that when I just sucked you off while Bryce wrapped his mouth around my cock like he’d never tasted anything better? That’s following the rules?”

Toby rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“Look, I don’t need you?—”

Bryce whistled and raised a hand, which had to look ridiculous since they were all more or less lying down. “Enough. We’re all breaking the rules here, and I’m the fucking officer for our unit, so I really can’t keep ignoring it. We need to?—”

Matt levered himself to a sitting position. “Just take us to my car, and we’ll?—”

“No,” Toby said. “We’re not going to pretend this never happened. This”—he gestured between them—“is too good to ignore.”

Bryce nodded. “You’re right. Things are good between us, but we can’t keep working together if we—” Shit, he’d almost confessed to more than he meant to.

“Need each other so much we can’t fucking stay away?” Toby asked.

Bryce nodded. “Yeah. Something like that.”

Matt looked at Bryce, pain clear in his eyes, his usually tan skin now pale. “I… I can’t…” He sounded like he was about to hyperventilate.

“Lie down.” Bryce pushed him back against the mattress and held him there. “Good. Now take slow breaths.”

Matt pushed his hands away and tried to sit up again. “Don’t. I don’t need you trying to take care of me.”

“You’re about to fucking pass out. So lie the fuck down,” Toby yelled.

Bryce looked from one man to another. He’d made a mistake, and now it was likely to cost Matt and Toby their relationship as well as leave him feeling lonelier than he had before he’d slept with them.

“Talk to me,” he said to Matt.

“I don’t want to change units,” Matt said. “I don’t want to do this without Toby. I… I’ve never done anything without him.”

Toby ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. “You don’t need me.”

“Yeah, I do. I… I really do.”

Toby looked panicked now too. Fuck, how could Bryce make this right?

“You could probably manage to stay on the same shift and work at different stations.”

Matt shook his head. “No. Not yet, please. Just give me a little more time to figure this out.”

Bryce knew it was wrong for him to agree to it, wrong professionally, wrong personally. If they were caught, he would be blamed for not reporting that they were in a relationship. He could lose his job. Wasn’t the possibility of getting transferred a hell of a lot better than that?

And yet, once again, instead of the smart move, he made the stupid one. “Okay, I won’t say anything or expect you to right now. But if we… If this…”

“You’re not going to report us? Really?” Matt looked so fucking hopeful, like a puppy who realized he was about to be cuddled instead of kicked. How bad had it been for him as a kid?

Bryce shook his head. “Not now, but I can’t let this go much longer. You’ve got to understand that. I was already ignoring what I suspected about you and Toby, and now I’m involved too.”

“But you only suspected about us. You didn’t know about us for sure,” Matt said.

“There were enough clues that I considered confronting you.” That wasn’t exactly true, but Bryce wanted Matt to see the risk he was running.

“Fuck,” Matt muttered. “Who else knows?”

“No one that I know of, but that won’t last forever.”

Toby laid a hand on Bryce’s arm. “Give me and Matt a chance to talk about the best way to approach this. I know things have to change, but we need a little more time.”

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