I nodded. “I know. I couldn’t either.” It went without saying that despite our being confident in our decision to come out to our brothers, it still had nerves kicking up.
“I’ll go whip something up real quick,” I said before pressing one last kiss to Theo’s lips.
He nodded, rubbing his stomach. “I’ll help you.” But then he smothered a yawn, and as much as I wanted his company now, he needed the rest.
“Why don’t you go relax and kick your feet up? I’ve got this, and it’s been a long day.”
“I’m fine,” he said, but yawned again. This time I didn’t have to say anything—he held his hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay. I’m going. But let me know if you need my help.”
“So you can burn down my kitchen? I’m good.”
He shot me a glare, but the fact that nothing sarcastic came out of his mouth told me just how exhausted he was.
Needing something quick and easy, I decided on something I knew Theo liked: croque monsieur. I had everything I needed,since I’d made a delivery order yesterday to restock my fridge. Being gone for weeks meant I had little food, and I’d been listening out for any meals Theo mentioned that he enjoyed.
Croque monsieur being one of them, of course.
It didn’t take long before I was pulling out the bubbly ham and cheese sandwiches from the oven, plating them, and then heading into the living room area of the spacious loft to?—
See Theo passed out on the couch.
He hadn’t even managed to kick his shoes off or grab a blanket.
I put the plates down on the coffee table and grabbed up a blanket. Then, careful not to wake him, I gently covered him. He looked so peaceful lying there, so at home in my house that it made my stomach flip.
It was hard to believe this was the same man I used to butt heads with on the regular. That only months earlier I would’ve laughed in the face of anyone suggesting that Theo and I could or would be anything more than friends. But as I stared down at the beautiful man resting so peacefully in my living room, I couldn’t imagine being with anyone else.
In the span of a couple of months, Theo had gone from being the rebellious, irresponsible chaos king I had to watch over to the sexy troublemaker I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off. Something that didn’t seem to be changing in any way, even now that we were back in the States.
The fact that our brothers had taken the news so well was shocking in and of itself. It was hard for me to even believe how strong this new relationship between us was. But there was no denying it.
With every day that passed, Theo and I grew closer. I supposed that was what happened when you threw in a few life-or-death situations. It helped propel us toward deciding whether we wanted to be with each other.
Something we both seemed to be on the exact same page about.
This was not a passing fling. It had gone way beyond a few fucks to ease the tension and barreled headfirst into relationship territory. We were acouple. Something neither of us had been looking for, or particularly wanting at this time in life, but had somehow fallen into anyway.
We’d made that decision when we told King, confirmed it when we told our brothers, and now that we were back in New York and his family and mine would start sniffing around soon, I wondered how long it would be until we had to tell them too.
It was a discussion we hadn’t had yet, but one that needed to happen. We were both highly public figures, men that the world would take an interest in.
But there was time to worry about that later, time to think about all the logistics that would come with that announcement. But I still couldn’t stop my smile at knowing that therewouldbe an announcement of some sort at some time.
That was the one thing I’d always struggled with when dating King—keepingusa secret. He’d always thought our relationship was too risky to be public, too high profile, and while I’d understood, it always kind of grated on me. It had made things between us contentious. He’d sworn it was all about the connections people might make between us, business, and Libertine. But it was hard not to take it more personally, not to feel it was somehowmehe was hiding.
Theo was definitely not worried about people knowing about our connection. Hell, it’d been all I could do to keep him from outing us to the world before now with his overt public displays of affection and penchant for public sex acts.
The man was an absolute deviant and didn’t care one way or another who knew it. He was wild, confident, and one hundred percent uncaring of others’ opinions, and that was so damn hotit was difficult to behave myself when he turned that charm my way.
Something I wouldn’t change now for the world.
I grabbed up my laptop and took one of the recliners opposite Theo, wanting to keep an eye on him even though he seemed out of the woods now.
The information he’d told me back at the jungle and again tonight with our brothers still niggled at the back of my mind.Mott…One word that really could be anything. But according to Theo, it seemed like a location his captor had been planning to take him.
Alessio had said he was going to work on it, and while I didn’t want to step on his toes in any way, I also couldn’t sit around and do nothing.
I connected my earbuds and logged into our secure network. When I saw that Alessio was online, I pulled up a chat box to ask if he was available. He repliedyes, and seconds later, we were connecting via video chat.
