I didn’t think anyone had ever wanted to hold me before, or even wanted me to hold them. I felt like when Fenn looked at me, he saw a different Mason from the rest of the world—not a fuckup or a passionless, emotionally stunted person, but something closer to the real me. Something closer to the person I wanted to be, anyway.
“I could have stayed on that blanket for hours, and I would have given you truth after truth to keep you there. And it scared me how much I wanted that. I put it on you, for not having your shit figured out, when the truth is that none of us have our shit figured out.” His mouth twisted into a rueful smile. “Sure as fuck notme.” He hesitated. “So, look. You’re here for a couple more weeks, right? If you want—no pressure—we could spend that time together, and—”
I pressed my lips to his, cutting off the rest of his words. His arms wrapped around my back, pulling me in closer as our breaths mingled.
No part of it was weird, no part of it feltwrong, and all the tension I’d been holding in all day leached out through the kiss, only to be replaced by a different kind of tension.
My hands trailed up from his waist beneath his shirt, and he moaned, fingers flexing against my spine. I pulled back slightly.
“We have a problem,” I informed him. “This T-shirt is absolutely disgusting.”
Fenn raised one eyebrow. “It’s my favorite shirt.”
I shook my head. “Its existence is an insult to high-quality T-shirts everywhere.” I tugged at the sleeve of my own shirt in demonstration. “Your shirt goes, right now, or I do.”
“Wow. You drive a hard bargain.” Fenn’s lips were red and damp from our kisses as he smiled hugely. He pulled his shirt off and threw it across the room to land on the sofa. “Done.”
“Much better,” I said delightedly, sliding both hands over those abs that had been taunting me for days.
“Not so fast.” Fenn grabbed my hands and pulled them away, flashing me a challenging look. “Those shoes are not Loafers-approved footwear.” He nodded down at the ratty, old sneakers I’d pulled on that morning. “We have standards in Whispering Key.”
“Is that right?”
“We’re very big on Italian leather.”
I whistled through my teeth to hide the wellspring of joy that had sprung up in my stomach. “Far be it from me to disregard your local customs.” I toed off my shoes and kicked them in the general area of my desk.
“Better?” I asked.
“Much,” he whispered.
I wrapped one hand around the back of his neck and pulled his smiling mouth to mine.
As it turned out, Fenn also objected strongly to my T-shirt (too tight) and shorts (too loose), which was fine, because I had strong objections to his boots (too large), and his underwear (too small).
“You can’t possibly have a problem with my underwear,” he argued, dragging his teeth over my bottom lip in a way that made me shiver. “You can’t evenseethem under my shorts.”
“That just makes it worse,” I informed him. “The shorts are accomplices. They have to go, too.”
He shook his head, grinning. “Who the hell are you, Loafers? Where did you come from?”
The question made me pause for a second. WhowasI? A week ago, I’d been… very, very certain about a lot of things. Now, I had more questions than answers. But it felt like my time on Whispering Key was a step removed from reality—like, the second I’d passed over the Cooter Key Bridge, I’d entered an alternate universe where the old rules didn’t apply. So, for as long as I was here… maybe I didn’t need answers. Maybe I could just take Toby’s advice and see how things went.
“Delaying the process won’t go well for you. Or the underwear,” I assured him.
“You sure about this?” Fenn cupped the side of my neck with one large hand and stroked his thumb over my cheekbone. “We can take things slow. I’d be more than fine with that.”
“I’m very sure.”
“Committed to acquiring data, hmm?” His thumb moved to trace the corner of my lips, and his voice said he was kinda teasing, but not. “Gotta have an adequate sampling? For scientific accuracy? To test your hypothesis?”
I moved my tongue to trace the tip of his thumb. “No, um. That portion of the experiment concluded last night, as far as I’m concerned. Overwhelming clinical evidence outweighs theoretical every time. I just… really, really wanna see you naked.”
Fenn laughed out loud. “Well, hot damn, Loafers. Why didn’t you say so?”
He unzipped his shorts and let them drop, then kicked them over by my desk to join my shoes.
He hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his underwear and started to drag them off, but I pushed his hands away. I didn’t want to be a passive observer here.
