“Don’t suppose it ever occurred to either of you knuckleheads to ask for help?”
Neither of us responded.
“Well, I’m not going to impose myself on you.” He tucked a strand of Evan’s hair behind his ear. “But you have to realize that sooner or later, one of you is going to break and I would certainly hope we figure this out before then.”
I saw Evan try his signature grin but it only flashed, weak and fleeting, before he was swallowing hard enough I heard it from where I stood behind him. I made a move to touch him but Alan held up a hand, stalling me, without actually taking his eyes off Evan.
I watched them stare at each other before Alan finally nodded and broke the tension with a fast, hard kiss that Evan barely had a chance to respond to before it was over and Alan was out of his reach.
“Wait—”
“Not today,” Alan said softly. “Not when we’re all angry and scared. We’ve been playing together for months but not pausing long enough to actually get to know each other.” He faced me, a hand on the side of my face. “I want that. With you, especially, because you keep yourself out of reach and that sucks. I want to change that before I want to do anything else.”
“Yeah,” I rasped.
His smile was amused, probably because his touch and attention left me with barely enough breath for a single word.
“Let’s cook,” Evan blurted.
We both blinked and looked over at him.
“Well, not me, because…” He shuddered. “Yeah, no. But I can cheer and slice things.”
“He can do that,” I agreed.
Evan smiled on me, loosening something in my chest that had slowly tightened over time without my noticing.
Fast, I was on him, grabbing him and kissing the air out of him. His grunt morphed into a groan and he clutched at me. Maybe we would have stripped down right there, if the door hadn’t opened, admitting Carol, looking slightly wild-haired and tipsy, and Michael looking exasperated, in a blast of cold air and noise.
Carol said something very French, and Michael laughed as Evan and I parted.
“Cooking,” I whispered, tucking that stupid bit of his hair back behind his ear.
“Cooking.” He took my hand and tossed a kiss onto Alan’s cheek as we passed.
Okay. We were going there. Publicly.
Kissing him wasn’t quite where I was at. I patted his chest as I walked by him. Instead of laughing at my awkwardness, he grabbed my hand and kissed my knuckles.
Evan snorted. “This is going to take some time,” he mumbled.
If I did this at my pace, instead of his, then yes, it was going to take time. I hoped he could be patient with me.
CHAPTER 18
EVAN
No one could have toldme joking over how terrible I was at cutting potatoes into chunks would give me the same kind of jitter-releasing relief as Perry’s dick in my ass. Maybe because I still had his undivided attention for much of the meal prep, and when he was distracted elsewhere, it was fascinating to watch him blush over Alan’s attention.
Fascinating, and more of a relief than I would have thought. For the first time, I realized he’d been holding back, maybe waiting for me to take the lead. Was it because I had the experience with multiple partners?
Did he even realize my experience began and ended with cocks in my holes? I did love sex an awful lot but I’d never really connected with anyone until him. Sharing him with anyone else had twisted me up more than I’d thought it would. But watching Alan with him, how he touched my boyfriend, when he smiled at him, the way he cared for him, Alan was doing all the things I wanted to but didn’t always have the capacity for lately.
In the same way he’d grounded me out on the sheet, calming my vibrating nerves today when I hadn’t dared approach Perry because I would have just made his tension worse, he loosenedPerry up as we worked, and seeing that let me breathe normally again too.
“Perry, you cut the onions. They have to be uniform.” Alan handed Perry the onion in question and looked over at me with a wink.
I stuck my tongue out at him and he laughed.
