Page 75 of Dangle

“Margaritas would be good. I’ll remember that for next time.”

“Is there anything you can’t do?” The laughter in my voice probably made it sound like a joke, but I was dead fucking serious. He seemed overly competent at fucking everything he did.

“I can’t do a double axel. Not even in figure skates, much less kitted out for an NCAA hockey game wearing skates without a toepick.”

I rolled my eyes, then went cross-eyed when he leaned in close. Our breath mingled; his smelled of beer and lime, and a hint of the peppers he’d sneaked. Mine probably mimicked his, since for every pepper he ate, he fed one to me.

“You’re so fucking beautiful, brat.”

Sounds of sizzling meat and vegetables receded, replaced by the heat that traveled from my chest up my neck to my face as his lips met mine. His eyes slid closed, and mine followed. The closeness of our faces probably gave away my reaction to his words, but I couldn’t find it in me to care.

The kiss started soft, languid, with very little heat, but that changed. And quick. Soon we were pawing at one another. Chests pressed together, cocks turning from flaccid to interested, and hands gripping and pulling and holding on just shy of too tight.

A hint of smoke penetrated the fog that crept in and stole all conscious thought whenever he got close.

“Shit!” he swore when we parted. He turned back to the food and shooed me away with a wave of his hand. “Get the fuck on that side of the island before I burn the building down around us.”

I laughed, and instead of tempting either of us with close proximity, I took a leisurely stroll through the lower level of his loft. The decor told a story, not some designer-curated, mass-marketed pieces anyone could pick up at a department store. No, the story his space told was as individualistic and unique as the man currently creating a masterpiece with regular ingredients in the kitchen. The space had no theme, no color palette, nor any of the other things my mother spoke of incessantly when decorating a space or hosting an event—small and intimate or grand and lavish—size didn’t matter, nor did cost. “You must always, always have a theme, Trey.”Her voice echoed in my head as if she stood just behind me.

Slone’s space held pieces of the life he’d lived to tell the tale of. The bookshelves held framed photographs of him. Of Ewen. Of Priest and Cam. Some individual snapshots, some group photos of the four of them together, some with several men, afew older than Slone, and then there was a photo that blew me away.

“You know, Katie Carter?” I asked, holding up a photo of Slone and Katie.

He smiled and nodded. “Yep. It’s a fucking weird ass story. My buddy Hayden’s dad is friends with her dad. Some nasty piece of work targeted her a few years ago when she first met her now husband, and they needed some personal security. Her husband is Jackson Holt, the Holt twins’ cousin. Anyway, long story short, her dad wanted people he could trust and not just the Holt Securities people, so he called Hayden, and Ewen, Priest, Cam and I went with him along with a couple of other Marines we know. That’s how Priest and Cam met Bauer and Gavin.”

I set the photo back down, moving on to other photos. A few moments later, I picked up a hinged frame. One side held a picture of the group all decked out in their fancy Marine uniforms, from the white hats to the blue tunic top and dark pants with a wide red stripe and mirror-shiny black shoes. They looked so fucking sexy and deadly. On the other side, the same set of guys were clearly well past tipsy.

In the pictures, Slone looked good, but I preferred the current version. All the guys in the photos were clean-shaven, and after experiencing Slone’s beard rasping over my naked flesh…well, I wouldn’t have thrown the earlier version out of bed, but the current version made me contemplate investing in a set of handcuffs so I could lock us together and throw away the key.

“Chow time,” he called out, skirting around the dining table with the food-laden tray he set on the large wooden coffee table.

“You good?” he asked, pointing at my beer.

I nodded and joined him on the couch. He grabbed the remote, flipped on the television, and pulled up the Unchartedmovie. “I figure if we start with the movie, then we can move on to binge the TV shows.”

Food went down as the movie played and I bitched. This…I won’t say it sucked because it did, but well…movie adaptations only vaguely resembled the original work.

When the movie ended, we tackled cleaning up the kitchen, which didn’t take long since Slone cleaned as he cooked.

“So, what’s your stance on ice cream?” Slone asked once everything looked like a kitchen showroom, since it was so clean.

“Are there seriously weirdos who don’t like ice cream? I mean, I get some people can’t eat it, but to not like it at all as a personality trait? That’s almost as bad as not liking Mexican food.”

“I mean, yeah, probably. Ewen only eats it in the summer, which I think is ridiculous.”

“Blasphemy!” I joked.

“I’m glad you think so,” he said, reaching over to open the freezer door. The man had a thing for ice cream. The freezer had several flavors, from the mundane to the more unique, but something told me there was more than this, given the blush and how twitchy he looked.

“You remind me of how our rookie gets when he’s fucking embarrassed or hiding something,” I said. “C’mon, fess up.”

The pink deepened, but he sighed, threaded our fingers together, and pulled me along behind him. Tucked behind the kitchen and hidden by cabinet doors sat a pantry, which held an upright freezer filled with meat and a plethora of vegetables, soups, bread dough…and ice cream. So much fucking ice cream.

“You have a fetish,” I laughed, and I didn’t mean just the ice cream, which looked more well-stocked than some of the grocery stores I’d been in. The man had a serious food hoarding kink going on.

His head, which had been in the freezer rummaging through pints of ice cream, calling out flavors whenever he found a new one, turned toward me. The lightheartedness I saw on his face when we came into the pantry had disappeared, replaced with a feral, predatory heat that stole the air from my lungs. He shut the freezer door, grabbed me by the throat, and pulled me close while also pinning me against the cabinets with his body. One hand skated down to my thigh, pulling it up over his hip to make room for his cock to notch into the curve of my hip. The other hand slid under the T-shirt he tossed me when we first woke, to pinch my nipple. His mouth sucked and bit at my neck as he growled, “Yes. Several. And I can’t wait to introduce you to the sexier ones. I’m especially excited about turning you into my personal cockwarmer.”

My head dropped back against the upper cabinets with a thud. “Not sure what that is, but I can’t wait.”