Page 96 of Tangled up in You

Mark shrugged. “We stay in a hotel and don’t bother telling anyone which one. When things get shitty, or I’ve had enough, we slide out the nearest door and dip.”

“You won’t get tired of me?” Christopher asked.

“I think if that was going to happen it would have been a couple of years ago. I mean, seriously, I’ve finally got the hang of dealing with you.” He smiled. “Why the hell would I want to have to go through that again with someone else?”

As he’d hoped, that made Chris smile again. In this dim light his brown eyes looked nearly black. “Well, I wouldn’t want to put you throughthattorture a second time. And I’ve nearly got your allistic ass fully trained, so why would I want to have to start all over with someone else, either?”

Mark closed his eyes and nuzzled Christopher’s forehead again. “I love you,” he whispered. They’d said it before to each other, countless times, but maybe he didn’t say it enough. “I don’t ever want to lose you and you not know that.”

Christopher leaned back and cradled Mark’s face in his hands. “I love you, too. And you’re the one I worry about every time you get on a horse or ATV or snowmobile and head into the interior. At least my job is safe and I spend a chunk of it inside an office or a lab. When I’m spending it in the field, I’m rarely at risk.”

“Maybe we should buy each other sat phones for wedding presents.” It wasn’t a joke, because it was something they’d discussed before.

“You know, I think that’s a great idea,” Chris said. “Something else we can shop for.”

When they returned home and headed inside their small two-bedroom cabin, they quickly ended up naked in bed, holding each other, kissing, hands exploring.

“Were you really jealous?” Chris teased as he rolled Mark onto his back and straddled him.

“Yeah,” he reluctantly admitted. “A little.”

He grabbed Mark’s hands and shoved them over his head, pinning them at the wrists. They both knew Mark could easily flip Chris over and off him and pin him, but he didn’t mind Chris getting a little aggressive like this on occasion. “I think that’s adorable,” Chris said, leaning in for a kiss. “My big bad park ranger getting territorial.”

They were both hard and Mark resisted the urge to rock his hips against Chris, because his guy was just sadistic enough he would delay things for both of them simply to hear Mark beg.

Because Chris was the only person in the world he’d beg for, under any circumstances.

They kissed, nibbled, teased each other, until they eventually ended up on their sides and facing each other, their hands lubed and stroking each other’s cocks. If it wasn’t the end of a long day, and if they both didn’t need to get up in the morning to deal with work stuff ahead of this unexpected trip, they could have taken more time and done more. But over the years they’d learned to work with what they had in terms of time and energy—physical and mental—and when Mark came first, after he finished Chris grabbed Mark’s hand and started fucking his fist, quickly finishing.

They laid there for a moment, nuzzling, breathing and…being.

“I love you,” Mark said. “And I mean it—I want to get married. I’m thirty-two and you’re thirty-four. I think we know who we are and what we want.”

Chris kissed him. “Love you, too. And yes. When we get back we head to Bozeman and get married.”

Chris played the little spoon tonight. Mark never would have imagined ending up with this man, but…yeah.

Things felt right with him, despite their rocky beginning. Once he’d understood his guy’s brain was tuned to a different wavelength, and Mark started unpacking the dysfunction he’d grown up with thanks to his step-father and step-brother, he’d been able to drop his expectations and start over fresh.

A reboot, as Chris referred to it.

He’d learned Chris’ unending questions weren’t defiance or challenging Mark—he was trying to understand the whys of something. Once Mark stopped trying to read “tone” into Chris’ words, and stopped expecting Chris to infer things from Mark’s admittedly sometimes passive-aggressive behavior, and started forcing himself to verbalize his thoughts and feelings, things became…

Easy.

Yes, he still joked with Chris that living with him was a pain in the ass. But that was okay, because Chris teased him back in other ways.

It was their…thing.

And it was special to Mark because he’d let Chris inside his head and heart, revealed things he’d never told anyone else.

Revealed to him how he’d felt less-than thanks to the teasing he’d received from people who were supposed to love him.

With Chris, he’d finally stopped trying to prove himself, because no one else mattered. As long as he performed his job tothe best of his abilities, and kept improving himself personally so he could be the best partner possible to Chris, that was all that mattered.

And with Chris he’d also learned to look at things from a different angle. There were even times dealing with the public when he’d stopped himself mid-sentence and reframed a question or command to a visitor that took a potentially volatile situation and almost immediately transformed it into a conversation full of laughter and goodwill.

He’d once joked with Chris about him being a “sparkly vampire unicorn” when talking about Chris’ autism, and Chris had immediately latched on to that and ran with it, loving it.

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