“Don’t be stubborn. Listen to me.” Tiller’s voice had turned serious, so I stopped and met his eyes. “Let me do this for you.”
Well, hell. How weird would it be for me to rip off my clothes and attack him right here on the kitchen island?
I spoke around the thick lump in my throat. “I can’t.”
“Mikey…”
No. Hell no. If he started using that affectionate tone with me, all bets would be off.
My clothes begged to be tossed aside. My dick begged to press up against him with a groan of hard need. Apparently, I was a “kind offerings” slut. What was up with that?
“I…” My voice sounded breathless and weird. I cleared my throat. “I appreciate your help. I do. But this is something I need to do myself.”
He met my eyes for a moment before nodding firmly. “Then I’ll help in other ways. Free ways. How about that?”
I nodded, refusing to think of the kind of free ways I might enjoy. “I’d like that. Thank you.”
Tiller’s grin was the one that could be used in war to subdue angry villagers. Or the one that could be used in a club to attract horny twinks into wanting to climb the man like a tree.
He hasn’t had sex in three years.
My stomach wobbled again. What if… what if I could take care of that for him? Just… a quick suck or jerk. Or hump. Or sixty-nine… Would that be so bad? We were a thousand miles away from everyone we knew. No one would ever find out if we hooked up on vacation.
I let myself fall into the daydream as I began punching down the bread dough. Of course, I wouldn’t actually do it, come on to my boss, but a boy could dream, right?
It was nice being here alone with him and kind of pretending to be a couple. Clearly we weren’t actually pretending to be a couple, but everyone in town had made assumptions, and… well, it was kind of nice. I liked the idea that it wasn’t so unbelievable a man like Tiller Raine would pick a little nobody of a guy like me. That wasn’t to say I thought I was a nobody. But to the rest of the world, I was.
Tiller finished eating his banana—something I refused to watch him do because I was a professional, dammit—and walked over to my side of the island to throw the peel away. After chucking it in the trash can, he came even closer to me.
I watched him like a hawk out of the corner of my eye until he lifted his good hand and rubbed his thumb across my jaw.
Blood flooded my dick as I sucked in a breath of surprise.
“Little bit of flour dust,” he said in a low, deep voice that made my toes curl in their thick, fluffy socks.
Do not come in your pants.
“Oh,” I said instead.
He exhaled and stepped back, leaving his warm banana breath in my personal space. “Kinda cute,” he said over his shoulder as he walked away.
As soon as he was gone, I threw the dough back under a tea towel and hotfooted it back to my room for yet another masturbation session.
At this rate, December was going to be a very long month.
9
Tiller
I couldn’t sleep. Mikey and I had stayed up late playing Scrabble on a deluxe spinning board we’d found in the cabinet under the TV. The man had some Scrabble chops, but I’d still beat the pants off him.
Every time I scored high on a short word, he made the most adorable miffed sound in his throat and squirmed in his seat as he struggled to come up with a plan to do better on his next turn. Needless to say, by the time we’d gone our separate ways to bed, I’d been turned on and frustrated as hell. Instead of tugging one out, I’d forced myself into a cold shower and tossed and turned for another hour.
But now I was too annoyed with myself to stay in bed and try to sleep any longer. There was no point. I threw the covers back and got up. After grabbing a string cheese and my water bottle out of the fridge, I made sure the door to the back hallway was closed before I turned on the TV so I wouldn’t accidentally wake him.
I flipped through my movie account that Mikey had set up for us before deciding on an old heist movie. The Italian Job was one of my favorites, and I settled into the familiar opening scene after stoking the fire back to life in the fireplace.
The sofa was soft and comfortable under the afghan Mikey had been using earlier, and I could smell a faint trace of his familiar Mikey-vanilla scent on it whenever I shifted.
About halfway through the movie, I heard the creak of a door opening. I turned around to catch him shuffling out of the back hallway with a deep red quilt wrapped around his shoulders. His hair went every which way from his pillow, and his eye squinted against the light from the TV.