Page 11 of Running Scared
And he hated to shut that eagerness down, but he didn’t lie, prevaricate, or exaggerate.
“Only Val.Val doesn’t get nosy.He takes what I tell him in stride.”In the name of honestly, Dean felt like he should add, “Mostly he just grunts.”
“Great, there’s two of you,” Bailey muttered and then shook himself and, to Dean’s immense relief, smiled a little.“Okay.It’s not exactly an invitation home to meet the parents, but I’ll take it.It’s progress.Dry off and I’ll make you breakfast.”His face fell again.“Do you really have to leave today?”he asked wistfully.
And—perhaps for the first time—Dean felt apologetic about answering the demands of his job.“We have to catch a flight to the Chihuahuan Desert today.We have averyexciting development in our case.”
Bailey just stared at him.“The Chihuahuan Desert.That’s romantic.”
Dean knew he was being sarcastic, but he didn’t play sarcasm games.“In fact it’s not.There are some lovely places in Mexico and South America, but unless you’re an ecologist or botanist interested in three quarters of the world’s species of cacti, there’s not much to recommend it.”He wrinkled his nose.“It’s really hot in July, for one thing.”
Bailey raised his eyebrows, and that soft smile appeared, the one that Dean was starting to treasure.“Poor baby,” he said, moving close enough to kiss Dean’s cheek.“I’ll have to make you something really good for breakfast.”
Dean smiled back, savoring the feeling of their skin, warm and clean, in the steamy heat of the bathroom.“Maybe we could stop for breakfast on the way to the hospital.”
Bailey’s eyebrows went up.“You’re taking me to the hospital now?”
“Yeah,” Dean said softly, going in to kiss him again.
Bailey let out a soft sigh of surrender, and Dean fell into his sweetness all over again.Oh, this was good.Yes, it was probably addicting, but Dean?He was already an addict, and he had zero regrets.
Dean felt Bailey open, as he always did, and captured his breaths in his heart, like he had from the very beginning.He devoured, stroked, lubed, and thrust with the same certainty he’d always used, but as he buried himself in his lover’s body, for the first time in an active, healthy sex life, a little voice in his head was saying this—the lovemaking, the sex—was not enough, and a little voice in his heart was begging him to open for more.
A Left Turn to Hell
“OH SHIT!”Bailey said as Dean pulled his rental car to the front of Outskirts General.“I forgot my ID!”
“Will they let you in without it?”
Bailey wrinkled his nose.“Yeah, I can get a visitor’s ID on my way in.It just, you know, looks flaky.”
Dean’s mouth twisted into a smile that, for Dean, was almostgoofy.“Well, Ididalmost make you late.”
Bailey knew his own smile was just a little bit shy.“It was… memorable,” he said primly.Oh God was it.Was itever.True, he hadn’t had sex in nearly four years before Dean had seduced him in that crib, but this morning, after pulling off little pieces of Dean’s armor, it felt like the sex had gotten… better.Not that it had been bad before, but it had been like having sex with a tidal wave.Sure, it was exciting, and it rolled you over and over again inside it, but it was like some huge naturalevent.
This morning Bailey had felt the human being inside him as Dean had thrust.Instead of being completely blinded bywooolf,damn,he’d been tingling with the distinctly personal sensation of being touched.Small things—Dean’s fingers breaching him, lubricating him, making sure he was ready—struck him as suddenly considerate.Dean alwayshadbeen considerate, but Bailey was starting to see the attention to detail now.Things that had always seemed too smooth to be mechanical but too mindless to be thoughtful now assumed a special significance.
Dean hadn’t just been “having sex,” he’d been “executing an operation” on Bailey’s body, with forethought and gentleness.Something about the way Dean had said, “It’s all in how I assimilate information,” had struck a chord.
Dean had been collecting little pieces of Bailey’s life and forming a pattern—because he cared aboutBailey.
Bailey had expected those conversations to happen naturally, spontaneously, as they had with… just in general.But that wasn’t how Dean operated.
Now, in the car after a long, interesting conversation about Dean’s family, during which Dean had answered questions freely and without reservation as though Bailey could have been asking themthis whole time,Bailey kept remembering a moment, his back arched, his head tilted back in climax, and Dean’s gentle fingertips drifting along his hairline, under his cheekbone, along his jaw.
Such a tender gesture from a man Bailey had begun to suspect of using him for booty calls.
That morning after their shower, their talk, thatterriblewistful expression on Dean’s face when he’d talked about getting a kitten with his brother, none of that had been about booty calls.
“Was it?”Dean asked now, obviously teasing.“Was it memorable?”
“Val, Laure, Sal, Prock, you, Reg, and Chance,” he rattled off.“Iwas not top ten of my med school class for nothing.”
“And your father’s name is Connor,” Dean said lazily, probably to prove he was smarter, “and his dog’s name is Cathy, which is an odd name for a dog, but she’s a golden retriever, and you said it’s short for Catherine the Great.”
Bailey shook he head as Dean came to a stop.“It’s not fair.I told you thatweeksago, and you still remember it.”
He paused, one hand on his door handle as Dean leaned across the console of the sedan to give him a kiss.One hand came up to brush Bailey’s nose, and Dean pulled back and said, “You have seventeen freckles across your nose and cheeks, but that might be just because it’s summer, and your nose peels even if you never go out in the sun.”
