“Maybe next time you take me to dinner instead of a gunfight,” Marlow suggested, his voice ragged. “It won’t take up so much of the evening.”
Cade’s mouth slowed down against his throat, and after a moment, he lifted his head. The light from the crescent moon that filtered through the window picked out the gold flecks in his amber eyes.
“So,” he said in a voice that sounded carefully skeptical. “This really has been your idea of a date?”
Marlow cupped Cade’s face in his hand. He ran his thumb along the scabbed-over line that skimmed along Cade’s cheekbone and up into his hair.
“Not a typical date,” he admitted. “Date-adjacent. If you want it to be.”
He waited. Cade turned his head and pressed a kiss to the pulse point in Marlow’s wrist. Some atavistic instinct twitched as Marlow had a borderline tactile thought about how easily Cade’s wolf would have taken his hand off. He ignored it. Some things you just couldn’t dwell on.
“What would move it over into a real date?”
“Ask me to dinner.”
The challenge in that sentence hung in the space between their lips. It was Cade’s turn to ignore something he didn’t want to look at. He rolled them both over so he sprawled out along the couch, one leg dangled off the side to brace against the floor, and Marlow straddled him. Cade’s face looked softer from this angle, the hard lines blurred, but his expression was still carefully noncommital.
“Why don’t you ask me?” Cade asked, as if the answer didn’t matter.
And maybe it didn’t. It mightfeellike Marlow had seen a side of Cade that other people didn’t, but a couple of kisses and a conspiracy was no way to get to know someone. Even if Cade was the only person in Marlow’s life he could trust right now. Maybe especially because of that.
He pushed that itch of thought away and smiled crookedly down at Cade.
“I could, but you’re rich, and I can’t take overtime until I’m cleared to go back on active duty.”
Cade laughed, a startled and inelegant snort of a sound. It caught in his throat, and he choked it down. His hands stilled on Marlow’s hips, placed gingerly as if he thought he could snap something.
“Are you… Were you hurt?” he asked. “That night?”
Oh.
There was a reason that nulls with ambition on the force wanted onto the Night Shift. It was common knowledge they didn’t have the nose for a hunt a detective needed. Eventually though, Marlow supposed, as all the puzzle pieces clicked together, even the most oblivious had to see what was right under their nose.
“Shit,” Marlow said as it finally dawned on him. “That’s what I did. Why you didn’t want to see me.”
Cade scowled, his face all sharp lines and impassive beauty again, as he tilted his head back against the cushions. It let him look down his nose at Marlow with a dismissive sneer. “Don’t put words in my mouth. Not many people are smart enough.”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
Cade took a breath, and Marlow was pretty sure he was going to do the opposite of what Marlow had just asked him. So he kissed him to shut him up. There were worse ways to do it, less enjoyable too.
The kiss started out deliberate and then turned into something desperate. Cade’s hands tightened on Marlow’s hips, hesitation forgotten as he pulled him down. Marlow leaned into it and chased the taste of Cade between his lips and over his tongue. It felt like something he needed, like a man needed a drink of water on a warm day.
Marlow wasn’t going to think about why. Or about how long it had been since someone, anyone, had cared if they’d hurt him.
He pulled away finally, his lips tender, and looked down as he tugged at the buttons on Cade’s trousers.
“Fuck,” Cade groaned, his voice caught, low and husky, in his throat. He got his elbows under him and hitched his hips off the couch to make Marlow’s job easier.
Marlow hesitated for a second as the taut play of muscle under tanned skin made him fumble as he forgot how buttons worked. His mouth went dry, and his breath caught in his throat as heat crawled up his neck.
It wasn’t fair. When you’d seen someone naked once, by rights, it should lose some impact.
Apparently not.
Marlow got his mind back to the task in front of him and finished undoing Cade’s trousers. He dipped his hand inside and curled his fingers around Cade’s cock. It was heavy and warm against his palm, the thick weight of it solid under a layer of thin, velvet-soft skin. Blood pulsed quick and eager against his palm. He dragged his thumb over the head, slick and wet with precome, and leaned in to swipe his tongue up Cade’s throat at the same time.
He tasted like salt, a film of sweat faintly bitter on his skin, and he groaned out another soft “Fuck” as Marlow tightened his grip on his cock. Fine skin creased under Marlow’s calloused fingers as he stroked the hard shaft.
