Page 75 of More than Need

“Mmm?”

“Why do you know so much about me?”

Riley tensed. “I’m—”

“Observant, yes, I’ve heard. I don’t believe you.”

Riley shifted him, and water cascaded over his head. He rinsed the shampoo out of Gideon’s hair with more of that obscene massaging that made Gideon’s legs turn to jelly.

“We met when I was very young,” Riley said hesitantly.

Gideon snorted, then had to sniffle because gross. “You were twenty-five; let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” Hopefully, Riley could translate the language of the blocked nose.

“We met before you were my detective,” Riley said quietly.

Gideon opened his eyes, unable to keep them closed. He needed to see Riley’s face. Oh, that’s right. “I was one of the officers on the scene for a case of yours; I remember now.” The memory slowly forms in Gideon’s mind, one long forgotten. Riley had been completely unflappable, even back then. He and Quinn had worked the scene like seasoned pros, and Gideon had barely met them before they’d left the place, taking their observations and some of the evidence with them. Why didRileyremember that?

Riley cupped Gideon’s cheeks and tilted his face up. “You made me trip over my own feet.”

“I—what?” Wait. He couldn’t mean— “You—what?” His brain didn’t have nearly enough power to decipher that.

Riley brushed first his thumb and then his knuckles over Gideon’s cheek, momentarily keeping the pains at bay. Rivulets ran down the back of his hand and over his forearm, dancing around the fine hairs there. “I was going to ask you out for a coffee. And then I found out you were married and expecting your first child. I kept my distance after that.”

“Oh.”Oh.“Oh my God.”

“I can’t help watching you, Gideon. I have been from the moment we met.”

Gideon didn’t know what to say to that. Pleasure fluttered in his chest like happy butterflies, a warmth that went beyond heat sitting against his heart. Riley had wanted him forseven years?

He lifted his head for a kiss because after that he couldn’tnot. Riley didn’t hesitate, meeting him halfway. Gideon clung to Riley’s wet skin, attempting to get close enough to meld into him.Holy Christ.Riley Sinclair had been crushing on him. The same man that Gideon had looked up to for years.

Eventually the need to breathe—since his nose couldn’t help him there—forced him to pull back. “You were the reason I became a detective,” he confessed, sucking in a breath. “I wanted to be like you, workwithyou.”

Riley searched his gaze and then gently tilted Gideon’s head, pressing his lips to his forehead, a soft touch that lingered. Gideon’s stomach flipped as he let out a shuddered exhale. The simple touch somehow felt like the most intimate thing they’d ever done together.

The shower door opened, and a cold breeze brushed over Gideon’s skin.

Dawson hesitated. “Should I come back?” he asked, glancing between them.

Riley curled a hand around his elbow and pulled him in. He slipped, barrelling into them.

“If you help me clean Gideon and get him ready for bed, you can stay.”

“I think I’m getting the better end of the deal with that one, so yes.”

Dawson soaped him while Riley rinsed out the shampoo and rubbed in the conditioner. Gideon stayed pliant between them, leaning on each of them in turn as they cleaned him. Occasionally he sniffled, horribly unattractively.

He felt cherished, warm.Theirs.

They didn’t let him dry himself; Dawson held him from behind as Riley towelled them all off. Then they shuffled him into bed and made him take some medicine. Riley slipped a thermometer into his mouth, and he lay placidly, uncaring what they did as long as he didn’t have to move again.

He fell asleep before they’d even closed the bedroom door behind themselves, only waking again when two bodies slipped in on either side of him. He sighed and melted against them, letting them warm him with their body heat.

Perfect.

Riley let himself intohis older brother, Kellan’s, house and promptly tripped over a pile of long planks of wood in the dark entryway. Pain shot up from his toes all the way to his knee, and he slapped a hand on the wall to steady himself. For fuck’s sake, Kellan needed a warning label on the front door: “Danger zone, do not enter.” At the very least.

He flicked the lock behind himself and carefully made his way through the construction site that his brother called home. Even after this long, only the bedroom, half the bathroom, half the living room, the kitchen, and the back porch were done. Nothing new had been done on it in six months and probably wouldn’t be for another six months. Kellan should have built a granny flat out the back or a bungalow or something to live in instead of right in the thick of the mess.

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