Page 59 of Labor of Love

Or else.

6

Tanner dried off another pint glass, glancing to the back door that led to the stairs to his apartment.

He didn’t need to be working tonight. It wasn’t busy in the bar by any means, and his bartender Sandra was already on duty. But Tanner had desperately needed space from a certain pregnant fae before he went and did something very, very stupid.

Tanner had thought he had a hold on his attraction to Bracken. He’d thought he could handle it.

He’d thought wrong.

Because Bracken was so very beautiful and so very grumpy, and it made Tanner want to do terrible, terrible things to him. Not to mention Bracken was carrying Tanner’s child, and the larger he grew and the more evident that became, the more something primal in Tanner screamed out,Mine. All mine.

But he wasn’t. Not really. And Tanner had to respect that fact.

Still, keeping his hands off the beautiful omega was a daily battle that Tanner was getting closer and closer to losing.

Hence the space.

It didn’t help that, technically, Tanner’s hands were on Bracken all the time. Massaging, petting, holding him tightly on the couch. Bracken required quite a bit of physical touch to keep his orneriness even remotely at bay, and it was both heaven and torture to provide him with it.

Itespeciallydidn’t help that Bracken had told Tanner what his aroused pheromones smelled like—spiced honeysuckle—so now Tanner knew that Bracken was aroused quite often. As in, all the godsdamned time.

And yet he didn’t seem to want Tanner to do anything about it. No matter how many times Tanner asked if there was anything—anything at all—that he could do to make the fae feel better.

Which left Tanner walking around with an indecent erection about 80 percent of the time. The other 20 he was asleep.

Tanner wanted Bracken. Desperately. He wanted him more than he’d ever wanted anything. And it was more than just base attraction now. More than the hope for a second chance. Ever since that first night of his return, when Bracken had sobbed in Tanner’s arms, something powerful had come over Tanner.

He wanted to be Bracken’s person. His safe space. He wanted to always be the man Bracken turned to when he couldn’t stop his tears.

It was fitting, Tanner supposed. He still remembered a camping trip his family had taken in middle school, one where a bossy girl the next campsite over had taken to ordering him around. Tanner had been tickled by her brash confidence and complete disregard for his feelings, and he’d complied willingly with all of her demands. His parents had watched it all and joked over the campfire that the two of them would get married one day.

Tanner had already been pretty sure at that age that his interest lay solely in other boys, so he’d been less certain of theirprediction. But after two months of panting after a fae whose main hobby seemed to be waltzing into a room and demanding Tanner rearrange the furniture that very instant, Tanner was now thinking maybe his parents hadn’t been far off.

He did have a type.

“Just go home.”

Tanner looked up from his glassware. “Pardon?”

Sandra was leaning against the bar, her muscular arms crossed. “That’s the fifth time in the last minute you’ve gazed longingly up the stairs.”

“And…?”

Sandra arched a brow. “And so now it’s time for you to fuck off back to your beautiful fae.”

“I’m working.”

“You don’t need to be.”

Butch spoke up from where he was nursing his beer at a much more sedate pace than his previous visit. “He angry with you? You break a couch?”

“I didn’t break anything. I—” Tanner trailed off.

I promised I wouldn’t take advantage, but I want to kiss him more than I want to breathe, and I’m worried I’m going to make a liar of myself.

Tanner rubbed at the back of his neck. He couldn’t say that out loud.

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