Page 38 of Melting the Ice

After all, the last time they’d seen each other, he’d been in full panic mode.

“Listen, I just wanted to say . . .uh . . .sorry if I freaked out a little bit.”

Dean raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.

“I just haven’t seen you since,” Brody added, hating how petulant he sounded now.

“I’ve been busy,” Dean said defensively.

He didn’t have to say,you knew I was super busy when you decided to hook up with mebecause his meaning was clear enough.

Message received. Loud and clear.

Well, Brody had a message of his own to deliver.

He leaned in. Not quite as close as they’d been the other night, but close enough to bring all those memories, still red-hot, right back. Watched as Dean’s breath caught and his knuckles gripping the edge of the door went white.

For a single moment, Brody remembered how it had all felt. Dean’s mouth on his, fierce and undeniable, the firm grip of his big hands, and the way his hips had stuttered, searching for his, wanting more than either of them knew how to give.

It turned him on. And Brody was pretty goddamn sure he wasn’t the only one.

“I’ve been busy too,” Brody murmured. The arousal he felt, just thinking about how it had been, roughened his voice.

The wood under Dean’s grip creaked ominously.

“Yeah?” Dean asked. His voice had softened, but he still seemed apprehensive.

“Yep,” Brody said, nodding. “Have a good night.”

But as Brody returned to his own room, shutting the door behind him with a long, heartfelt sigh, he realized the only problem with teasing Dean was the knife cut both ways.

Now he was really horny, with nothing to do but to take care of it himself and hope that his orgasm might even come close to how good it had been with Dean.

Chapter Six

“You got my emailthen?” Ian, the agent that Dean had started chatting with this summer, leaned forward, his greenish-gray eyes intent on Dean.

They were sitting in Jimmy’s, in one of the back booths, sipping coffee, and Ian had ordered a slice of Jimmy’s famous apple pie, but Dean found he couldn’t relax against the cushion because he was so tense.

He’d been dreading this meeting for a week now, ever since he’d gotten Ian’s email.

Of course, the whole business with Brody had been a pretty decent enough distraction. If he wasn’t agonizing over what had happened with his roommate on that couch, he was agonizing over the hard truths Ian had delivered.

“Yeah,” Dean said. He’d read it probably a hundred times, and he couldn’t say now that it was potentially any less true than it had been the first time he’d scanned through it.

Was he too tense? Too tightly wound?

Maybe.

But he was only that way because his life had forced him into that mode, over and over again. If he let go for a second, something bad could happen, could derail everything he’d worked for, and then what would he do?

Beaverage?Have an average life? Keep scraping away for every little thing?

He wasn’t going to do that. Hecouldn’tdo that.

“You don’t look happy about it,” Ian said.

“Of course I’m not happy about it,” Dean retorted.

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