Page 45 of Code Name: Michelangelo

I knew he’d get my reference. Tara and I had watched the movie almost every night the year she brought him to Fire Island and he saw the butterflies for the first time.

Hadn’t I known then, too? I joked about lusting after him, but deep inside, hadn’t I known that the connection between us was something uniquely special?

“We should sleep,” I suggested. “We have the meeting with Sundance and Flick tomorrow.”

“You’re right. Five more minutes?”

I must’ve fallen asleep in less than that because when I woke, Brand had scooped me up and was carrying me to the elevator.

“I can walk,” I said, putting my arms around his neck to let him know I really didn’t want to.

“Holding you is my excuse to take the lift rather than walk up five flights of stairs.”

He nuzzled my neck when I reached down and hit the call button.

“Plus, I just like it.”

I kissed his cheek. “Me too.”

As much as I regretted not asking Brand to stay after he gently rested me on the bed, I knew it was the right decision not to. Last night, he’d told me he understood and that he’d wait. I didn’t have to explain or make excuses. He just knew and respected my struggle with insecurity.

And I loved him for it.

Maybe that was what scared me the most.

This thing between us was the exact opposite of how my relationships usually went. I was all in for the hotter-than-shit sex. As much as I could get. Then when a guy got too clingy or wanted to see me more often than I wanted to see him—outside of bed—I was history. That was my wall, and I was happy to stand behind it. Now, though, Brand saw right through it and told me he’d wait until I was ready to ask him to knock it down. I didn’t know how to do things this way.

I rolled over and checked the time. Six. Or zero six hundred, as I’d need to get used to saying if we were about to be trained by a retired military officer.

Since I knew I wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, I got up, showered, and went downstairs, intending to bake something for us to have at our meeting.

Except when I walked into the kitchen, Brand was standing in front of the stove, holding a spatula, clad in pajama bottoms that sat low on his hips and nothing else.

“Good morning, Butterfly.”

“Whatcha’ doin’?” I asked, focusing on the cooktop rather than how much I wanted to rub my hands all over him. Even his bare feet were sexy as fuck.

“I was going to make bacon”—he wriggled his eyebrows and motioned to his bare chest—“but thought better of it.”

“I’d offer you my shirt, but…” I walked over to the pantry. “This may help, although not with your arms.” I handed him an apron.

“I’ll soon undergo training for hand-to-hand combat but am afraid of a little bacon grease. Oh, the irony.”

I chuckled. “It could be considered a viable form of torture.”

He turned away from the skillet where he’d dropped an entire pound of bacon. “Made worse by forcing the torturee to endure the aroma of bacon cooking and refusing to give them any.”

“I think the word is victim, not torturee.”

“I suppose you’re right. Except, new words are added to the dictionary every year, are they not? We could petition to have it included in the next batch.”

“I can come up with causes I’d much rather get behind than having torturee added to the dictionary.”

“You make another good point.”

“So, couldn’t you sleep?”

He separated the pieces of bacon, laying them flat on the griddle before turning to face me. “I had billions of things on my mind.”

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