Stupid. This was so stupid, but Nick kept talking. “Yeah. At the fire department, there are informal codes, things we’ll—um, thingsthey’llsay if they’re at the scene of an accident, and things are going south, but they don’t want to alarm the victim.”
“We did that. In court or if we were in a big meeting. We didn’t have words so much as gestures. If someone on the team put two pens parallel at the top of a notebook, it meant to redirect the question. If a specific person coughed, time to request a break. You mean like that?”
Maybe not so stupid after all. “Sort of.” The ones the firefighters used were never so sophisticated. They had official codes, of course, but over the years, they developed their own lingo to keep dispatch up to speed on the situation. Brian liked to work in sports analogies. If he referred to the driver in a pileup as “slugger,” then Nick was going to be in for a long night.
Oliver scratched at his beard. “So if one of us starts to slide too far into the personal stuff, the other one uses the code word, and we back off?”
“That’s the idea.”
“What word do you want to use?”
Nick glanced over Oliver’s shoulder as he thought about that. The light in the bedroom at the end of the hall was on, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from it. Nerves twisted in his stomach in a way he hadn’t felt since his wedding night. Oliver was still intimidating, almost too perfect to actually be real, and now Nick was supposed to have sex with him like it was no big thing.
He stared at the comforter on Oliver’s bed, smooth and carefully spread out. By comparison, Nick hadn’t made his own bed regularly in more than a decade, and his sheets were a nondescript gray after too many washings. Oliver’s sheets had a shine to them and were striped in navy and a gold-brown the color of—
“Caramel.”
“Caramel?” Oliver waggled his eyebrows. “That’s the code word?”
“No, it’s—” Nick’s explanation was cut off as Oliver stepped into his space and kissed him. For once, Nick’s nerves were enough that he didn’t completely lose his self-control. When Oliver pulled back again, Nick exhaled a shaky breath.
“You okay?” Oliver asked.
“Sorry.” Nick tried to put on a brave face. “I’m a bit . . .” Old-fashioned? Shit, he wasn’t going to be able to do this after all.
“You’ve never hooked up with someone before?”
Nick could barely withstand the urge to scuff his feet on the hardwood. “I guess that’s what the kids call it these days. It’s been a while, anyway.”
“Hey.” Oliver put a hand on Nick’s cheek. “We can go slow. It’s casual, not porn. It doesn’t have to be anything that makes you uncomfortable.”
Nick licked his lips and forced himself to nod. He was rewarded with another kiss. This would be fine. Oliver knew what he was doing. Nick’s hands were like lead weights, but he lifted them until he could grasp Oliver’s hips. The body underneath his palms was hard and strong.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Oliver said as he kissed softly along Nick’s jaw.
“I was fantasizing about you,” he said.
“When?”
“At the market. The first morning we met.”
The admission made Oliver stop and pull his head back. A crease formed between his eyes as he frowned.
“When I had your car towed?”
Nick laughed. “That killed the mood pretty quickly. But before that. You had your back to me.” He ran his hands around Oliver’s body, gliding them down the muscles on either side of his spine. “You’ve got a nice back and—” his hands slid farther, over the rough denim of Oliver’s jeans, “—a great ass.” When Oliver didn’t laugh at the cheesy line, Nick caught Oliver’s chin gently between his teeth, then kissed over the same spot. The hair of Oliver’s beard tickled at his lips, while Oliver’s laughter puffed across Nick’s cheek.
“See?” Oliver placed his hands over Nick’s and squeezed. “You’re going to be fine.”
They moved to the living room, which helped ease Nick’s anxiety further. Why the bedroom set him off, he wasn’t sure, but he could handle making out on the couch.
“What do you like?” Oliver asked as he pulled him down.
“Why don’t we go with it, and I’ll let you know if you start going in a direction I don’t want to follow?”
“What about your leg? Anything I need to know?”
Nick snorted. “As long as I don’t have to carry you anywhere, we should be okay.”
