“I was starting to think you’d stood me up,” he said.
“Son of a bitch.” Tag stepped into the apartment and slammed the door behind him. His upstairs neighbor stamped on the floor in response to the disturbance. “And you’re in my apartment. It’s kind of hard to stand you up.”
Bass tilted his head to the side and smirked crookedly. He lifted his draped hand off the couch cushions and waved it at himself with a sweep of his fingers that took in everything from his halfheartedly tamed curls to his battered, dusty boots. “Also, well, all of this.”
“Really?”
Bass grinned at him. “You gotta admit it’s true.”
“Asshole,” Tag muttered. He shrugged out of his hoodie as he glanced around the apartment. “How did you—”
“It’s a shit lock,” Bass said. He swung his legs off the coffee table and got up to walk across the room. “I got you pad Thai. It’s in the fridge. First, though….”
He grabbed Tag’s wrist and yanked him across the distance between them until their bodies were pressed together from shoulder to hip and Bass’s breath tickled against Tag’s jaw as he waited. It was Tag who leaned into the kiss, his hand cupped around the back of Bass’s neck and his body relaxed—as though he hadn’t spent any five minutes he wasn’t elbow deep in a patient worried that Bass was a liar and a criminal.
Which was stupid because they both knew Bass was both.
Bass growled appreciatively into Tag’s mouth and ran a broad, warm hand up his back.
“Have I told you that you look really goddamn hot in scrubs?” Bass asked. The words grazed over Tag’s lips as he leaned back slightly. His voice was a low rasp, and he tightened his hand around Tag’s hip to pull him closer. “It’s like fucking someone fromGrey’s Anatomy.”
Tag licked his lips. The tip of his tongue flicked over the curve of Bass’s mouth as well and dragged a groan out of him.
“I thought you might have stolen my car,” Tag admitted.
Bass pulled back from him with a sigh. “Okay,” he said. “I let the Thai thing go, but you suck at talking dirty, Doc.”
Heat flushed up into Tag’s ears. He tried to ignore it.
“I don’t trust you,” he pointed out. “Not even for a day. That’s—”
“Common sense?” Bass suggested with a shrug. There was something brittle under his smirk, shadowed over the backs of his pale eyes. “You have no reason to trust me and plenty not to. Just because you want me to fuck you doesn’t mean you have to pretend you’re stupid and don’t know who I am…. What I am.”
Despite himself, Tag felt the ridiculous—Bass had just agreed with what Tag said—urge to defend Bass well up in his throat. He forced it back down. It was that urge to protect someone, even against themself, that had gotten him into trouble before.
“I told myself that,” he admitted. “That this wasn’t stupid as long as I knew what I was getting into. Do I, Bass?”
Bass hesitated for a second, as though that question were hard to answer. Maybe he thought Tag wanted him to be honest. He curled his hand around Tag’s hip and pulled him closer.
“This?” he finally said. His lips were soft and his stubble rough as he nuzzled the skin behind Tag’s ear. “Me right now? It’s about the most honesty I’ve got. I’m still a liar, and you still shouldn’t trust me, but this is as close as anyone comes to knowing what they get with me. Good enough?”
Tag snorted. Of course it wasn’t. It was a half-baked promise of nothing in particular, presented as though it were something real.
Itfeltreal, but even an idiot wouldn’t believe it was.
Maybe a lovestruck idiot.
“What am I going to do?” Tag asked with a wry smile. He cupped the side of Bass’s face in his hand and stroked his thumb over the curve of his mouth. “Throw all of, well, this out?”
Bass turned his head into Tag’s hand and bit him. The pressure of his teeth prickled a tight wash of pleasure up Tag’s arm and into his armpit. His balls clenched in reaction, and he breathed out raggedly. The wet swipe of Bass’s tongue soothed the injury.
“You sure about that?” he asked, breath ticklish against Tag’s fingers. “This is your last chance to be rid of me without a fight. You might not want to be too hasty.”
It was just a joke, but something still hitched eagerly in Tag’s chest at the idea. He ignored the fresh heat in his ears.
“Pretty sure I could send you running just by suggesting you get a nine-to-five job,” he said. “Or asked if you wanted to bring a toothbrush over.”
“Why would I need a toothbrush? Your one is fine,” Bass said. He turned Tag around and walked him backward toward the couch. “And trust me, you’d get bored if I weren’t a bad boy.”
