Page 25 of Wolf Lost

Then he remembered where “there” was. The kitchen. He’d come in his pants, in thekitchen. He groaned and curled into Dez even farther. “The guys are never going to let me live this down.”

Dez chuckled as he ran his fingers through Sawyer’s hair. “They won’t bug you about it. It’s not like you’re leaving the mess here.”

Finally, Sawyer pulled back. He had to work not to pout. “What about you? You didn’t—” He motioned to the clear line of Dez’s hard cock in the front of his jeans.

“Figured if something weird is going to happen, maybe I should hold off until I’m not wearing jeans and standing in the kitchen.” He actually looked a little spooked, which Sawyer supposed made sense. If he’d just been told he might have a knot, that would have freaked him out—and he’d already known they existed when he woke up that morning.

“Okay,” he whispered in agreement. “As long as I get to be there for that sometime too.”

Dez shivered, and when his eyes opened again on Sawyer, they were darker than ever. “If that’s what you want, I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.”

Sawyer leaned in and kissed him again, just a press of lips. “It is. But I should go clean up and spare the guys the worst of this.”

“Worst?” Dez asked, reaching out to palm Sawyer’s softening cock through his jeans. He wanted to lean into the touch and away at the same time, but instead stood there and whimpered. “I think you mean best. But sure. I’d prefer they don’t get to see you like this.”

“I can get behind monogamy,” Sawyer agreed, pressing forward into Dez’s hand once more before peeling himself away and heading for his room. “Or on top of it,” he shot back over his shoulder. “Under it. Wherever, really.”

A groan followed him, and it was perfect.

16

Here You Come Again

“I’m going to call a dumpster for those chairs,” Gavin said the next morning as he marched into the front of the shop, where they were still working on the case.

Dez sighed and rolled his neck back and forth to try to decrease the tension there. “I keep telling you, they’ll be fine if we reupholster them.” He opened his mouth to go on about how inexpensive it would be, and simple, when he caught Sawyer biting his lip nervously. “But Sawyer had an idea you might like.”

Gavin, who had clearly been ready for Dez’s diatribe on not throwing things away, reared back a pace, startled. “What?”

Not willing to go into it, Dez motioned to Sawyer. “His idea. Listen to him about it.”

For a second, Sawyer got the look of a deer in car headlights, but then he drew himself up, straightened his back, and nodded, as though reassuring himself it was a good idea. It was adorable, and Dez had to squash the urge to kiss him.

He did reach out and pat him on the shoulder before he let himself think about it too hard.

“So,” Sawyer said, voice an octave too high, then stopped and cleared his throat. “I was thinking that having a bunch of tables with those little chairs like a restaurant might have worked for a bakery, but a coffee shop should have a different kind of atmosphere.”

“What kind of different atmosphere?” Ash asked, ever vigilantly defensive of his image of the shop as a faux bakery. Dez hoped for his sake that when he started baking, he was good at it. He didn’t think Ash would survive the disappointment otherwise.

Sawyer blushed and ran a hand through his blonde locks. “Ah, kind of... cozy?”

Ash and Gavin kept staring at him blankly, waiting for more information, but Ash’s expression had turned interested instead of defensive.

“My favorite coffee shops always have, like, big fluffy chairs, and Wi-Fi, and you can hang out there if you want. I’d say a bookshelf, but we’ve already got a bookshop next door, and the owner is pretty excited about us—I mean, um, you—opening.”

“Us,” Gavin recorrected, but he was nodding. He turned to the front end of the shop, the side near the door to the bookstore. “We could set them up around the edges of the store and put regular tables in the middle.”

“With the reupholstered chairs,” Dez interrupted.

Gavin glared at him. “But we’re only keeping half of them. The rest get replaced with real furniture.”

Dez rolled his eyes but nodded. It was a fine line they tread sometimes. Gavin had better taste than Dez, and he was particular, but if he spent what he thought was too much money, he started feeling guilty about how it “wasn’t his money to spend.” So sometimes Dez drew a line in the sand, and that made Gavin stop and think about what was actually important to him instead of acting on his spoiled-rich-boy instincts. If Dez drew too hard a line, it made the problem worse. If he got it just right, though, it helped mitigate some of Gavin’s guilt.

Half the time, Dez wished his grandfather had left everything to Gavin—whom he’d admittedly never met—but that would have produced a different kind of guilt.

Sawyer stood there for a moment, biting his lip, staring at Gavin. For some reason, he turned to Dez. “Wait, so—yes?”

“Yeah,” Dez agreed as he grabbed Sawyer’s hand and put it on a beam, an implied order to hold it steady. Sawyer grabbed it and held it, but his mind was clearly still in the process of being blown. “It’s called living in a democracy. Everyone’s allowed to make suggestions. We all get to have an opinion. If it’s a good suggestion, we agree, and we do it.”

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