“I want to play with it. You said I could soon, and it’s the best toy in the house.”
“Are you really all right? I’ll drive you home.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I mumbled, even though he was already dragging his keys out of his pocket. “Last night I was worried you’d maybe decided I wasn’t worth being nice to or something. Couples fight, right? That’s normal?”
Happiness tingled through me as he hooked his arm around my shoulders and held me close. “Sometimes. I don’t want that to be us.” Casey pulled me in for another nice hug that went a long way toward making everything better.
“Sorry I’m a ton of work.”
“You’re not. I’m sorry I scared you. Let me take care of you, little cutie.”
“Okay.” I buried my face against him and inhaled his clean scent while my dick gave a pleasant, needy throb. I rubbed against his muscled thigh. “Do I still have to write lines?”
“Yep.” He chuckled, and I couldn’t bring myself to be mad about his amusement. I’d been so sure this was gone—my safe place in his arms. I was grateful I still had my spot here. “Let’s get going, little brother. You’re asleep on your feet. Maybe you should take a long nap.”
“Mm.”
Casey brushed his hand over my head, and I glanced up at him. His wide smile lit up his face, even if it could never look soft and approachable.
“When you say home, you mean your house?”
He brushed his lips to my forehead. “I do. That’s your home,” he said firmly.
Who the hell was I to argue with that?
He stepped back and grasped my falling apart cast, which he gave a long glare. “Actually, we’ll get this fixed first, and then home. No arguments.”
I groaned but couldn’t hide my smile. He really did like to take care of me.
14
Casey
The house smelled amazing when I opened the front door and stepped inside. The living room was dark, and the furniture had transformed into boulders that loomed in shadow and broke up the expansive floor plan, but the kitchen lights blazed through the wide doorway off to my left, as well as the lights in the den on my right, and a warm glow spilled down the steps from upstairs. A song I didn’t know with a low, drowsy beat pulsed from the downstairs sound system, almost too softly to hear.
The small signs that Angel was here made coming home all the better. I’d had to stay late because my concentration had been completely fucked this morning, and then I’d had Angel at the hospital for an hour and a half this afternoon to get his cast fixed. It had been worth enduring the suspicious glares of staff to sit with him and hold his hand. Anything to make sure Angel was healthy was time well spent, but I’d had to make up the hours. My dress shoes fought me as I tried to kick them off, and I ended up untying them, while the fatty smells of mouthwatering food with a Southwest tang filled the air and had my stomach complaining.
“Little brother,” I called softly. If he was napping, I didn’t want to disturb him. The lack of answer didn’t disappoint me because I’d told my cutie to get some sleep. I went to the kitchen and found the small Crock-Pot out on the wooden counter. Under the steam-clouded glass lid was chicken in a sauce, and on the stove I found a pot of rice waiting to be eaten. Not a vegetable in sight, of course, because Angel had been left to his own devices and it would probably take a divine intervention to make that happen. Or me standing beside him. The meal wasn’t chef-level cooking, but in my mind it was five-star excellence since Angel had made it.
On the kitchen table I found a stack of paper with ragged edges that had been torn out of one of Angel’s sketchbooks, which had me cringing. I hadn’t meant for him to ruin any of his drawing materials for his punishment.
I scanned down line after line ofLove you, Casey bear. Couldn’t remember what you wanted me to write. I’ll listen to you. I traced my finger over the “L” on one of his loves, done in sloppy letters, and stared while my pulse pounded in my throat. He was probably just trying to be funny and sweet, the way he always was when he didn’t have any troubles hanging over his head. He didn’t mean anything by thatlove, not even if he’d written it five hundred times. My number cruncher brain was still on overdrive from work, and I couldn’t stop myself from spreading the papers out and scanning my finger down the lines, checking the count.
423 jumped to 425.
My pulse hammered until I could taste it on my tongue. One skipped line was a mistake, not a purposeful cry for a larger punishment. Part of me craved laying him over my knee. I knew I couldn’t hit him. Though we hadn’t called physical punishment a limit in so many words, he’d made it clear pain was one thing he didn’t want from me. That one requirement—no pain—had forced me to rethink a lot of things I wanted to do with him. There were other ways to tease a man, and I could imagine quite a few tender tortures I’d love to work him over with. I shuffled the papers back together and rolled them in my hand as I went in search of my missing little brother.
“Where are you, baby boy?” I called, and when I went into the living room something smacked me on the chest.
“Not a baby!” The raspberry that followed his declaration had me turning to study the dark corners of the room near the stairs.
Frowning, I bent down and picked up a soft blue cylinder with an orange tip. It took a second one bouncing off my side for me to recognize I was dealing with guerilla warfare and this was a Nerf-gun bullet.
I tracked Angel to a hiding spot beside the couch, and he popped up and pegged me again, this time catching my cheek. He had his tongue sticking out before he ducked down again.
“Not the face,” I admonished.
He squeaked. “Sorry! I found your surprise!”
