I chuckled at that.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m more than happy to be out of the city. It’s just taking a bit of getting used to. It’s very quiet around here, and I guess that sometimes reminds me of home.”
“Where’s home?” I asked. We’d reached the walkway and I decided to cut across the grass to get to my truck.
“A million miles away,” Sebastian murmured. He seemed to get lost in thought for a moment before he remembered what we’d been talking about. He was still holding on to my arm, though the grass was flat. I wasn’t about to point that out to him, though.
“Fargo,” he said. “North Dakota.”
I whistled. “That is a million miles away,” I joked. “I guess I don’t need to ask why you left. Probably not much opportunity for someone with your abilities out there.”
He glanced at me. “You’ve never seen me dance. How do you know I have abilities?”
“It’s in the way you move, Bastian. Sorry, I mean Sebastian.” Jesus, what the fuck was wrong with me?
“It’s okay,” he responded softly. His voice had taken on an almost dreamlike quality. It was so smooth and sensual that I swore I felt it stroke over my body like a caress. We’d reached the passenger side of my truck, but for some reason, instead of reaching for the door handle, I found myself crowding Sebastian back just a bit so his back was against the cool metal. The big side mirror made it seem like he was caged in on one side.
I wondered if he noticed.
“I like it,” he whispered.
I was staring at his eyes, then his mouth, so I didn’t hear him at first. When his words finally did register, I had to process them through my sluggish brain a few times to get them to make sense. Even then, I couldn’t for the life of me remember what we’d been talking about.
“Bastian,” Sebastian said on this really breathy kind of sigh. “I like it.”
I knew I was supposed to say something witty in response.
Or at least respond, period.
But all I could do was stare at him.
I’d already accepted that I was attracted to him. I wasn’t foolish enough to pass it off as anything else, and I wasn’t about to degrade Sebastian by trying to convince myself it was because he had some feminine quality that I was responding to. My brain was not confused about the fact that he was a man. And my body really, really didn’t give a shit.
But that didn’t mean I totally understood what was happening to me. After leaving Sebastian’s house earlier in the day, I’d tried to keep myself busy with bookkeeping stuff, but it hadn’t been until I’d come up with a net profit for the quarter that’d turned me into a supposed instant millionaire that I’d realized my mind was not going to let me forget about my sexy new neighbor. I’d ended up pacing back and forth by the front window to make sure Sebastian’s asshole of an ex didn’t come back. I’d used the time to try to make sense of how I could suddenly be attracted to another man when it wasn’t something I’d ever had to deal with. It was only when little scenes had started to play in my head about guys I’d been friends with in high school and later college, that I’d come to realize that maybe this wasn’t actually the first time I’d felt something just a bit more when it came to members of my own sex.
I wasn’t sure how long Sebastian and I had been standing there like that when I heard a horn honk. I was so startled that I jerked away from Sebastian, who let out a little rush of air.
How the hell had we ended up with mere inches separating our bodies and I hadn’t noticed?
My body shook with thwarted desire as I tore my eyes from Sebastian and looked at the pickup truck sitting behind mine in the driveway.
Good God, I hadn’t even heard the thing pull in.
My eyes went from my younger brother in the passenger seat, who was watching me with what I could only classify as an excited look on his face, to his more stoic husband who might have looked just a little too happy.
“Hey,” my brother called as he got out of the truck.
“Hey yourself,” I responded. “What are you doing here?” I tried to keep the irritation from my voice, though I wasn’t exactly sure what I was irritated about.
Yeah, you are. It’s called cock-blocking!
I told my subconscious to zip it and glanced at Sebastian. He looked super uncomfortable.
“Cain and I were just driving by and thought we’d pop in and say hi,” Ethan said as he waited for his husband to come around the front of the truck. Not surprisingly, he held out his hand for Cain and didn’t head toward us until their fingers were linked.