Page 74 of The Play

You’d have done a hell of a lot more with it than just use it as a prop.

“Yeah, I did,” Deacon said.

“Oh. Oh.”

It wasn’t like Grant didn’t know their feelings were mutual. He knew. It was clear from the two kisses they’d shared they had a healthy dose of lust for each other.

“Yeah.”

A trickle of moisture seeped out from under the towel pressed to Deacon’s jaw. Grant reached out and swiped it up. Froze as he touched Deacon’s skin, prickly with stubble.

He wanted to feel it all over his body.

“Just . . .uh . . .doing your part to defend the Condors name?” Grant said half-jokingly, trying to dispel the tension suddenly simmering between them.

“No,” Deacon said bluntly. Shivering under Grant’s touch.

Because he couldn’t stop, once he’d swiped up the water. He was tracing all along Deacon’s jawline now and couldn’t have stopped even if there were a hundred people watching, a thousand.

“No?” Grant realized how hushed and intimate his voice sounded. How close he’d gotten, until his arm was pressed right up against Deacon’s broad chest.

“No,” Deacon said gruffly. “I didn’t do it for the Condors. I did it for you. Because I love you, damnit.”

Grant froze.

He wanted to shake his head. Argue. Something. But there was the truth of it, shining in Deacon’s dark eyes. He genuinely believed it was true, that he loved Grant.

No wonder he hadn’t wanted to talk to Grant after he’d blown him off, last week.

No wonder he’d lost his shit when those guys had started running their mouths.

“I thought it was just . . .uh . . .” Grant couldn’t untangle his tongue from the words. Just the thought of them made his blood beat hot and his brain go hazy. “Uh . . .just sex.”

“No,” Deacon said. He looked darkly amused now. “Is it just sex for you?”

He could practically hear Deacon’s unspoken question. How could it just be sex if we weren’t even having any?

“No.” That much was easy to say.

Deacon gave him a slow, leisurely perusal. As openly as he’d ever dared, his gaze tracing the curves of his body, which, to Grant, had never seemed particularly extraordinary, but from the way Deacon was looking, he might disagree.

“You gonna say anything else but no?”

“Do you want me to say yes?”

Heat flared in Deacon’s dark eyes. “More than anything.”

“Then . . .” Grant thought about saying something else. Justifying this decision, because even though they’d kissed twice before this, they couldn’t do it a third time and walk it back. Not after Deacon had told him he loved him.

If he leaned in and kissed him now, this would be it.

What’s stopping you? The whole world already thinks you’re doing this.

That was what was stopping him, Grant realized. He didn’t want Deacon, who loved him, to think he was only taking this step and bridging the gap between them because some old college friend had sent him a ridiculous email and then the whole world read it.

But Deacon took his hesitation another way. The wrong way. His eyes shuttered as Grant paused, on the knife’s edge of giving in, just not sure how to take the leap while making it clear why he was doing it. He pulled back. Grant’s hand dropped from his jaw to his chest.

“I get it,” Deacon said, and he was turning away, his throat working.

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