Page 48 of Uncharted

“You can do that all you want, but don’t put pressure on your left side and tell…whoever you’re sleeping with to be gentle when they ride you because you probably won’t wanna do too much thrusting with those ribs,” Colin listed off, and I felt the air stutter in my lungs.

“I…was kiddin’,” Jake said, looking uncomfortable and, oh my God, he glanced at me.

“Kid less if you don’t want a serious response then,” Colin told him coolly. “Reno?”

Oh God. “Yeah?”

“Are you going to deal with this? As it should be?”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” Colin said with a huff and stomped off with a dirty look on his face.

“Ya think he’s off to find Xander and take it out on him?” Jake wondered, and he probably thought he was being quiet, but the thing was, unless Jake was really, really putting work into it, he couldn’t be quiet.

“Better I take it out on him than you, trust me,” Colin called over his shoulder, and I winced at the obvious edge in his voice.

“Nicely done,” I told Jake as I squatted to sit on a rock beside his chair. I looked at it and then over at him and snorted. “Did you purposefully set the chair here so I’d have a place to sit when I found you?”

“I hear ya didn’t say ‘if ya found me’,” Jake chuckled. “So yeah, I guess I did, didn’t I? How mad do ya think he is?”

“Not sure. I would say pretty damn mad, but like…he left me to deal with you, so he’s passing up the chance to torture you. He also might be so mad he doesn’t trust himself to treat you because he might torture you too much,” I said. “Thoughts?”

“Hmm, first one,” Jake said with a nod that was supposed to be decisive. “He’s a doc; he’s had to deal with worse than me. So he’s probably just…lettin’ me know he’s serious but lettin’ my best friend help me.”

I thought about Colin’s almost knowing look after he’d hinted that he’d practically eye-fucked Jake in the shower. “You know, I don’t know why but…I feel like Colin was telling me that when he first met you, he like…checked you out.”

“Checked me out?” Jake asked, brow furrowing, and then his expression brightened with a laugh. “Oh yeah! First day I brought him here.”

“You knew?” I wondered.

“I mean, I know y’all think I miss things, but it’s not everything…just a lot,” he grinned. “But yeah, when we were in the showers. I’d say he was undressin’ me with his eyes, but I was already naked and wet, so that don’t really work. So I guess he was just⁠—”

“Eye fucking you,” I finished for him, my stomach twisting unhappily. Some part of me almost wished the mental image of Jake wet and naked was enough to soothe my discomfort at the story, but that only made my unhappy stomach more confused.

“I guess,” Jake said, wrinkling his nose. “It didn’t really feel like that, though. I mean, he was kinda obvious about lookin’, ya know? But it wasn’t like he was…bein’ a creep about it. I can’t blame ’em, ya know?”

“Because you’re such a fine specimen of a man?” I asked dryly. He was the very definition of masculine from head to toe, and yeah, even before…things changed, I would admit he was also a good-looking man at that. Now though? Well, I supposed it was still true, but I wasn’t as casual about it as I once might have been, but that was before my brain and body decided they weren’t sure if we were supposed to find him attractive, even if he was…and I did.

Ugh.

“No,” Jake said with a laugh, where other guys might have agreed and probably flexed, even as a joke. “I mean, I guess because I ain’t bad lookin’, but I meant, if ya’d dropped me into a shower with the kind of person I was attracted to, I’d be havin’ a hard time not lookin’…heh, ‘hard time’. I bet he was havin’ a hard time after I…oh my God.”

I stared at him with wide eyes. “What?”

“It was after I left the shower,” Jake said with a repressed laugh. “A few minutes after. Xander was bitchin’ him out, Cait mentioned it, but she never found out what it was about. I fuckin’…do ya think Xander busted him jerkin’ off?”

“To thoughts of you?” I asked.

“I dunno, maybe,” Jake said with a shrug, clearly not as fixated on the idea as I was. “But, Jesus, imagine if that was the way they first met.”

“If that’s true, it clearly didn’t bother Xander much,” I said with a snort.

“Might even be what got Xander started down the path to suckin’ dick,” Jake said with a snort.

I raised an eyebrow. “And what about you?”

Jake cocked his head. “I guess I just didn’t find a dick I wanted to suck until recently. So what?”