Page 10 of Built to Last

I heard the double meaning behind my words as soon as they were out of my mouth and caught my breath. Sweat started to form on my back, and it wasn’t because the RV’s temperature controls were out of whack.

Worse still, Kyle also caught the double entendre in my words. His eyes widened for a moment, his pupils blown. He stepped closer to me in a way that felt menacing.

Except, instead of shoving me or shouting in my face, he did something much worse. He grabbed my waist with one hand and hooked his other around the back of my neck, yanked me close, and brought his mouth smashing down over mine.

My brain shorted out entirely. Thought was a thing of the past. I gripped his newly donned t-shirt and kissed him back, parting my lips and dragging my tongue along the seam of his mouth until he opened for me. He wasn’t passive at all, and before I could take the lead, his tongue was in my mouth, exploring and claiming.

I made a sound of triumph before I could stop myself and shifted one hand to grab a handful of his pec. Through his t-shirt, I felt his hard nipple against my palm. His hand dropped lower, grabbing a handful of my ass. He made a deep, rumbling sound as he kissed me harder, turning my world upside down and my brain to mush.

A flash of a second later, like someone pulling a plug, it was over. He stepped back so quickly that I was left making an embarrassing fish-lip face as I sought out another kiss. Kyle cleared his throat and stood taller, tugging at the hem of his shirt. His lips were red, and he wiped the back of his hand over his mouth, a look of disbelief in his eyes.

I tried to recover just as fast, taking a step back and shoving a hand through my hair.

What the actual fuck had just happened?

“I’ll deal with it,” Kyle said, voice gravelly.

He stared at me for a few seconds longer, then marched past me, his shoulder hitting mine like we were two gang members passing in an alley and not two guys who had just shared a kiss that rocked the world.

I had no choice but to follow him as he left the RV and marched up the street to the alley entrance. The backhoe was still there, and unfortunately, Casey and the driver were in each other’s faces, arguing.

“Okay, okay,” Kyle said, raising his voice and sounding irritated and authoritative enough that both of the other two men stepped away from each other and turned to him. “I understand there’s a scheduling conflict here,” he went on, making the fight seem even more petty than it was. “Gordy, what’s your rush? Why can’t you let this delivery happen before you start?”

“I suppose I could wait,” Gordy grumbled, looking as resentful of Kyle as he did of Casey. He climbed back into his backhoe, though.

Just like that, the whole fight flattened into a logistics problem. Gordy moved the backhoe while Casey unloaded the equipment I’d ordered. As soon as that was done, Casey drove his van to a better parking spot so the digging could proceed. The mountain that the two guys and their egos had created turned back into a molehill.

But it wasn’t the only mountain and molehill situation.

Kyle had kissed me. I’d kissed him back. It hadn’t been any old peck on the mouth either. It had been a full-blown, fiery inferno. It had been the sort of kiss that carried volumes in it, volumes of unresolved lust and memories of the past that hadn’t been forgotten. I wasn’t the only one that hadn’t forgotten.

“So what do you want me to do with this basket of goodies?” Diccon asked me a good fifteen minutes after Casey had started unpacking and setting up the new sound system.

“Hmm?” My kiss-addled brain had no idea what my brother was talking about.

Until it did.

“Shit,” I hissed, staring at the basket Diccon held out to me. I grabbed it from him, staring at its contents. But that wasn’t what I really cared about.

I’d completely forgotten about Marco. One minute the two of us had been chatting away about business and whether he had a shot with Kyle, and the next…. The next I’d been the one with Kyle’s tongue down my throat.

Extra shit.

“Where did Marco go?” I asked Diccon, fighting not to look and sound guilty.

Diccon’s half-concealed smile told me he thought he knew something. “He left. He said it looked like we had a lot on our hands here and he would get back to you once things calmed down.”

Once things calmed down. Like that was ever going to happen now.

“Thanks,” I mumbled aimlessly at my brother, still staring into the basket but not seeing any of its contents.

Marco Andreotti was interested in Kyle, but he didn’t stand a chance with the man. Not for the reasons I’d assumed just an hour before, though. He didn’t stand a chance because it was beginning to look like, against all odds, that Kyle was still hung up on someone else. There was a chance he was still hung up on me.

CHAPTER 4

Kyle

What the hell was I thinking?