Page 71 of Winning You
“Mhm. All spicy…and heavy and rich like vanilla.”
Frankie kissed him again. “I don’t want to make you feel weird, but I’d like to take you on a date. It doesn’t have to change this—change what we have. But it’s been a long time, and I thought it could be nice. Though I’m totally fine if you don’t want to take the risk and be seen with?—”
“Wait.”
Frankie’s lips shut with a quiet little popping sound as skin met skin.
Lucas reached out and traced the seam of his mouth. “Is that the question you wanted to ask me?”
“Mhm.”
“Why would that cross lines?”
Lucas pulled his fingers away as Frankie licked his lips. “We…have an agreement. You said you weren’t in a good place for dating, and I respect that. But I want to show you more than a good time in the bedroom. And I want you to have a break from cooking for me. We can go somewhere—the next town over if you don’t want to be seen, but?—”
“Wait.”
Frankie shut his mouth again.
“Do you think I’m ashamed to be seen with you?”
Frankie took in a deep inhale, his chest expanding, lifting Lucas’s body with it. “I’m not the most well-liked man in town. For obvious reasons. Though I rarely fuck up as badly as I did with you.”
Lucas sighed. “We decided to be over that, remember?”
“Fine, fine. But my point stands. There are a few restaurants where I’m more than welcome, but I am…older. I know it doesn’t matter to you, but I look older. I have a lot of grey hair?—”
“I know.”
“You asked?”
Lucas snorted. “I can feel it, honey. There actually is a different feel to hair colors. When it’s dyed, I can get kind of lost, but natural? Yeah. I know where your greys are. I like them.”
“Okay. But…I’m just trying to say I understand why you’d prefer not to.”
“I never said I preferred not to. I just said that I felt a little fucked-up in the head, and I was afraid I might be a bad boyfriend.”
Frankie was quiet again, and Lucas wondered if maybe he’d broken something between them. The air around them didn’t feel tense, and Frankie’s posture hadn’t changed, but he was rarely at a loss for words like this.
“Do you still feel like that?”
Lucas swallowed heavily and pressed his entire face against Frankie’s chest. He didn’t want to answer because he didn’t know. He wanted to believe he could be good for Frankie and his little family. Over the last week, he’d gotten comfortable. He’d felt at home.
But would that last? What happened when he became overwhelmed? What happened when Frankie forgot to stop being careful where he put things? What if he realized that for as independent as Lucas always had been and always would be, there were some things he could just never, ever do?
That life with him wouldn’t be simple or easy?
“I’m sorry if that was the wrong thing to say,” Frankie told him. He toyed with the curly plastic hair tie that was keeping Lucas’s messy bun in place. Reaching behind him, Lucas tugged it out, letting his hair fall around his shoulders, and then he whimpered until Frankie began to card fingers through his hair, untangling some of the knots.
He knew he should say something. Someone else would have spoken by now. They would have unstuck their tongue from the roof of their mouth and at least uttered a few words. But Lucas felt trapped in his own head.
“It’s okay,” Frankie murmured softly. He pushed Lucas’s hair off his neck and tickled his sensitive skin at the edge of his hairline. “It’s okay, princess. I’m sorry for making it?—”
“No,” Lucas rasped. Even that word felt like he was pushing a boulder up a hill, but he had to stop Frankie before he said all the wrong things. “It’s not you. I just…it’s…I can’t…”
Frankie’s fingers traced along Lucas’s face—feeling around like Lucas used to do when he was very little and learning what eyes and noses and mouths were shaped like. It was tender. His touch was careful but bold, like he knew he had permission to get his hands all over Lucas and keep them there.
Minutes slid—honey thick and slow—into half an hour. Then forty-five minutes. Frankie’s chest rose and fell, and if it weren’t for the way he was still drawing lines over Lucas, he might have assumed the older man had drifted off.
