“God, I hate that we’re being rational. This whole adult thing—don’t like it.” Gibson made a face, drawing a laugh out of Zach. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning? If you come up early, you can have pancakes with us.”
“You’re really going to attempt to make pancakes?” The mock horror in Zach’s grimace was a clear indication he’d picked up more than his share of sardonic expressions from the brothers. “Aren’t you happy with trying to kill me just at dinnertime? Now you’ve moved on to breakfast?”
“Hey, I can cook,” Gibson protested weakly. “It’s just not anything anyone besides me would eat.”
He stole Zach’s teasing retort with a long, deep kiss. The few moments they spent saying goodbye were the best—and the worst—part of his day. The minutes before Zach climbed into his car and disappeared down the road kept Gibson going into the next morning, but also left him with an aching emptiness he hated. There were usually a couple of hours between their goodbyes and when Gibson stretched out on the king-size bed in the loft, and there’d been more than a few instances when he’d turned to talk to Zach, only to remember he wasn’t there.
The winter sky resided in Zach’s mouth, the brisk cold of the mint ice cream they’d had after dinner coupled with the warm, masculine spiciness Gibson always found in Zach’s kisses. He couldn’t get enough of Zach. There were times when he wanted to crawl inside of him, roll around in the sweetness of the man’s personality and delve into the sharp corners he found in unexpected spots. There was a labyrinthine quality to Zach, a slight maze of complications and simple beauties Gibson knew he would never grow tired of.
He could feel that complexity in Zach’s kiss, in the light caresses they stole from each other while Ellis wasn’t looking. It was like the metamorphosis in his worldview when he went from human to wolf, the mind-blowing explosion of colors and scents suddenly occurring when Zach came into a room. He felt more, felt deeper but calmer at the same time, and despite how much he wanted to call himself a rational thinking creature, he wanted to do things to Zach that bordered on savage.
“Okay, if you don’t get going, we are going to christen the deck,” Gibson said, reluctantly drawing away. The cold rushed between them, dousing his arousal, but Zach’s wicked smile brought it right back. “Don’t want to be like that. I am a very simple creature, and I won’t be taunted. I will see you in the morning, but let me know when you get home. I won’t be able to sleep unless I know you’re safe.”
He watched until he could no longer see the taillights of Zach’s car shining through the forest, then waited another minute, just in case Zach turned around and came back. His heart twisted when Gibson realized he’d stayed out in the cold for fifteen minutes, hoping beyond hope for a pair of headlights to light up the snow on the cabin’s driveway. His cell phone buzzed, vibrating in his jeans pocket, and a quick text message check assured him Zach was already at home. Debating for a second, he typed in love you, then headed back inside.
Only to find Ellis waiting for him on the sectional.
“Not fucked him?” Ellis leaned into the L-shaped corner, hooking his arms over the back of the couch. “Why?”
“You know, I liked it when you couldn’t talk, brother.” Gibson checked to make sure the door was locked, then toed off his shoes, sighing to himself at the dampness of his socks. After padding over to the couch, he took up the opposite end of the sectional and put his feet up to dry them by the fire. “We’ve been kind of busy trying to teach a grumpy wolf how to walk again.”
His brother sneered at him. “Walk fine. Can’t blame me.”
“Maybe I don’t want to make love—” Gibson closed his mouth, hearing his heart in his words. “I think both of us just want to make sure you’re okay. Let’s face it, so much has changed around us, and even though—I don’t know—I think we both feel like now isn’t the time to explore that part of our relationship.”
“When?” Ellis leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His grace was fluid, a far cry from the jerky, painful movements his body suffered through after his shift. “He the one?”
“Yeah.” Gibson cocked his head, studying the flames. He couldn’t look at Ellis, not out of anger or any regret but because he knew there would be guilt in his brother’s eyes. “But you’ve got to understand, you are important. To me. And to him.”
“Like him. Like him with you,” he said, then stretched over the expanse of the sectional to tap Gibson on the thigh. Their eyes met, and Ellis bared his teeth at Gibson’s frown. “He’s yours. Make him yours.”
“El, I appreciate your wolf perspective on this, but you don’t really have a good track record with relationships,” Gibson reminded his brother. “If I remember correctly, your last girlfriend threw all of your clothes into the middle of the front lawn and set them on fire. And the one before that, wasn’t she the one who did that thing with the knife.”
“Shut it.” Ellis tossed a pillow at Gibson’s head. It came at him hard and fast, with a power Gibson didn’t think his brother possessed yet, but he felt it when it hit. “Need to take care of you more. Less me.”
“I know. It’s just that… it’s hard not to… what I mean is, I wasn’t expecting Zach. And he wasn’t expecting me.” He tried to pull his thoughts together, searching for words to the emotions he hadn’t looked at, hadn’t wanted to feel. “Do I want to have sex with him? Yeah, I touch him and he drives me insane. Just seeing him makes me hard sometimes, but today, with the two of you coming through the door, I felt… happy. It was a kind of happy I’ve never had. And I’m enjoying it. We’re taking things at our own pace, and who knows? Maybe tomorrow is the day he and I decide to drive his SUV someplace really far away, park, then work at steaming up his windows.”
“Stupid. But okay,” his brother grunted at him. “Just… see you’re happy. Zach gives you smiles. Want that for you. Love that for you. Love you.”
“I love you too.” Eyeing his brother from across the couch, Gibson said, “You heard us talking outside, didn’t you?”
“Still hear wolf,” Ellis said, tapping his ear.