Page 15 of Passion and Payback

That put a smile on his face. “I’m not one of the cats, you know.”

“Yeah, well, tell that to my poor nerves,” I said with a laugh, spreading the potatoes out and shoving the tray into the hot oven. “That should give me enough time to do the steaks.”

“I’ll try to make a noise moving around,” he said.

I took a deep breath, pulling the steaks out to season them with salt and pepper. “No, it’s fine. Just something I have to get used to.”

“It’s easier to train myself to stop walking quietly than it is for you to stop being freaked out about it,” he said casually as he pulled a stool out and dropped onto it.

I glanced at him and then looked away just as quickly. He had at least put on a pair of shorts, perhaps the smallest things in existence, but he hadn’t bothered with a shirt. The last time he’d been around had been a year ago, and I…well, I hadn’t been in the state of mind that would notice him in a physical way, but there was always a pattern to his deployments. Usually, when he came back, he was skinnier because he lost fat from a dodgy diet in the desert and being worked to the bone. After a few monthsback, he put on some softer bulk as he wasn’t required to be as harsh on himself, and I usually spoiled him with food.

Currently, he was pretty much all muscle and almost no fat. His skin had taken to the sun like fish took to water and had turned bronze while he’d been gone. The decently thick dark hair on his stomach and chest was beaded with water and not quite thick enough to cover up the muscles. Even now, I remember being fascinated by the dark hair on his forearms when we were teenagers and loved watching his arms when he moved.

“You okay?” he asked in a tone of concern that was wholly inappropriate to the perverted thoughts I was having. I quite frankly needed to nip them in the bud because not only was I too old to be lusting after my straight friend, but the idea of having sexual thoughts was absolutely terrifying, let alone the act itself.

“Looking at you, I have a question,” I said, pushing the thoughts away.

“Yes, I did eat. Yes, I did drink water. And I only got grazed this time, not shot.”

My lips pursed at the reminder of his first deployment. He’d taken three shots, one to the arm, one to the chest, and one to the torso. All three wounds were reminders of how close to death he had come. That wasn’t counting the other marks, like the shrapnel from a mortar shell that had cut through the back of his calf or the two damn knife wounds on his torso.

“Hey,” he said with a cock of his head. “You said to never keep that kind of thing from you again.”

“Actually, what I think I said was, if you ever hide getting hurt like that again, I was going to finish the job when I found out,” I said, remembering how furious I had been. Unlike what many people thought about me, Ididhave one hell of a temper. I was just good at keeping it under control. Or maybe it was like Lucas had always said, I was better at chaining it and burying it for fear of becoming my parents. But hell, if it worked, it worked.

“That was closer to what you said,” he said with a smirk.

“I love how you smile every time that’s brought up, like it’s a joke.”

“Mmm, no. I smile every time because I know other people think it’s a joke, but you’d probably gun me down for it.”

“Suddenly being taken seriously over a threat like that leaves me unsure about myself.”

“Cook the food, you dork,” he said with a chuckle, leaning back in his seat. “And tell me what burning question you had.”

“I just,” I said, turning to the large, hot skillet and dropping the steaks in. “I know you walk around in gear all the damn over there. How the hell do you manage to keep an even, full-body tan?”

“Full-body?” he asked, twisting in his stool to shove a finger into his waistband and pull it down at his hip to show that his skin was, in fact, incredibly pale where his underwear sat.

“Thank you for that,” I said dryly in an attempt to cover up the distinct jolt of arousal that shot through me. God, it was weird how foreign that feeling was. My sex drive had been buried under so much grief and loss I’d forgotten what it felt like to be turned on by the faintest glimpse of skin.

Not that it should have been too surprising. Even knowing I was too old to be lusting after my best friend, that truth had never gotten further than my conscious thoughts. My hormones, body, or whatever was responsible still refused to listen to reason. Which had been incredibly awkward when I’d been with Lucas, but he?—

“I know,” he’d said one day, watching me from the comfortable cocoon of blankets and pillows he’d made on the couch. Held in one hand was a book with a practically naked man on the cover, a steaming cup of tea on the table next to him.

“What’s that?” I’d asked him, glancing up from my screen as cries of dying goblins from the speakers finally died out. We hadonly been living together for a few weeks but quickly settled into a comfortable routine of being able to do our own thing in the same room.

“About Kai.”

“What about him?”

“I catch the way you look at him sometimes. I bet I’m not the only one.”

Never had I paused a game so fast. “What?”

He’d given me a soft smile. “Are you…in love with him?”

“I’m not?—”

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