Chapter Nineteen
“Well, at your age, it’s not the sex, is it? It’s the companionship you want.”
FLYNN STOPPEDthe jeep, and Nate woke up with the realization that he was probably drooling a bit and that they weren’t parked outside his house. He wiped his hand over his cheek as discreetly as possible—dammit, he’d definitely been drooling, that was a great impression—and peered up at the pale tower of the lighthouse.
“So, your place?” he said.
Flynn shrugged and got out. “If you don’t want to disturb your mum, rolling in at this hour isn’t a good idea,” he said. “You can crash here if you want.”
He headed for the front door. Apparently if Natedidn’twant to crash there, he was going to sleep in the car. It didn’t sound appealing, and besides… it had been a shitty day. It could do with a happy ending.
“Mr. Delaney,” Nate drawled as he hopped out of the car. His voice carried on the still air. It was nice to get a chance to flirt without worrying a neighbor would give him evils through the blinds. “Are you planning to take advantage of me?”
“I’m just offering the sofa,” Flynn said without looking around as he opened the heavy front door. There was an edge to his voice that Nate couldn’t pin down. Maybe he was more pissed about a midnight disturbance than he acted earlier. “You’re safe with me.”
“That’s a relief,” Nate said. He gave Flynn’s ass a glance. The old jeans should have sagged too much to be flattering, but the soft denim hinted at the firm curves Nate already knew were there. “Wish I could say the same.”
Flynn finally glanced around at him. The light was on inside, and it illuminated the hard, lean lines of Flynn’s cheek and jaw. It also caught the skeptical expression he turned on Nate.
“What?” Nate asked.
“You think you could take advantage of me?”
Nate tilted his head to the side to look Flynn up and down and quirked his mouth to the side thoughtfully. “Maybe with a running start?”
“Don’t be cute,” Flynn said as he gave Nate an unceremonious shove through the door into the lighthouse. “What do you want from me, Nate? From this.”
The whole bad-boyfriend thing was meant for the public eye. What they’d been doing in private wasn’t exactly covered in the original agreement. So a fair enough question, but one that Nate shied from answering. It felt like any answer he gave would end up with them agreeing it hadn’t gone according to plan and they should wrap it up.
Nate didn’t want that—not yet. He supposed it was time to admit it, though. As bad boyfriends went, Flynn didn’t exactly make the grade.
“I want to see your bedroom.” He lifted a hand and sketched a cross over his heart. “I promise not to talk about Airbnb profit margins.”
The twitch at the corner of Flynn’s mouth could have been amusement or old frustration at a well-trod topic. He narrowed gray eyes at Nate. “Tell me you won’t be thinking about it,” he challenged dryly.
“I might,” Nate said, raising his eyebrows. “Unless you can distract me.”
It was the sort of corny, over-the-top line that Max would try out—come-ons that worked when you were rich, cocky, and dating twenty-year-olds. Usually it would have made Nate feel like an idiot to be nearly forty and still using the same pickup lines he’d cribbed off Max as a teenager, but the dry tilt of Flynn’s eyebrow offset that. Sure it was ridiculous, but they both acknowledged that, and they were in on the joke, not the butt of it.
“And after?” Flynn asked. He closed the door and leaned back against it with his hands tucked into his pockets. “Nothing has changed there, right? Once we call this quits, you shred your earning projections and never darken my doorstep again?”
“Sure.” Nate shrugged. “It’s not going to be an amicable breakup, remember. No one will expect us to stay friends.”
A smirk twisted up the corner of Flynn’s mouth, and a dimple carved into his cheek under the salt-and-pepper stubble. “Yeah, because everyone is going to be glad to see the back of me.”
That was the plan. It was a bit late for Nate to suddenly have the sinking feeling that it was abadplan. He couldn’t even put his finger on why—because he was lying to his family or just because he should be focused on doing his job after today’s—yesterday’s—disaster.
Or was it something else? Nate wasn’t stupid. He knew he was lying to himself. The truth would definitely have gotten in the way of Flynn grabbing his shirt and dragging him into a hard, insistent kiss.
Later. Nate gripped the back of Flynn’s neck and traced the long tendons of his throat with his thumb, from the bristle of stubble to the soft plane of bare skin. His tongue tangled with Flynn’s, trading breath and heat between their eager mouths. He could deal with the truth later.
He shoved his hands under Flynn’s jacket and pushed the leather down over his arms. His T-shirt had short sleeves and exposed his lean, tanned arms. The flick of ink that peeked out from under the sleeve drew Nate’s fingers.
“Your hands are freezing,” Flynn mumbled around Nate’s tongue as he shook the jacket off the rest of the way. It landed on the doorstep in a tangle of leather and he left it there. He caught Nate’s waist, hooked his thumbs over his hip bones, and walked him backward toward the stairs.
Nate tilted his head out of the kiss and braced his palms against the hard muscle and bone of Flynn’s shoulders so he couldn’t chase Nate’s mouth. “You could stop complaining,” he said, “and warm me up.”
“You could stop talking.”
