Mati clutched her bottle to her chest. “That won’t be necessary.”
“That’s what I thought,” David said, taking the bottles from Reese and laying them on their sides on top of the kitchen cabinets.
David unloaded the rest of his haul into various cabinets, arranging everything in the tiny space just so. When Reese went to get a glass of water, David nudged him aside, got it for him, kissed him soundly, and sent him back to the table adorably dazed.
Mati decided she was also thirsty.
She and Reese spent the afternoon trying to get some work done, but it was easily one of the least productive days in her professional life. David kept touching them, humming while he worked, and sometimes wiggling his hips in time to the tune he had going in his head. She’d defy anyone to focus in the face of all that.
He brought them ham and brie sandwiches on fresh crusty bread at noon and spent the early afternoon chopping and dicing and sautéing. The tiny apartment filled with the scents of garlic, parsley, and olive oil.
Mati had an unexpected pang of homesickness, something she hadn’t felt once in the years since she’d moved out of her parents’ house. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the smell of good cooking percolating from the kitchen all day. These days, she rarely spent more than an hour before any meal at her parents’ house, knowing if she did, her father would expect her to be in the kitchen with her mom, rather than catching up with her brothers or playing with her nieces and nephews.
It wasn’t a coincidence that Mati couldn’t cook for shit.
David seemed perfectly happy working on his own. Mati spent most of an hour waiting for him to ask for her help, expecting that at some point he would insist she chop something for him or stir while he worked on something else. He didn’t, allowing her to wallow in the incredible aromas he was generating.
She considered offering to help, but Reese beat her to it. David accepted, and they ended up side-by-side at the tiny sink and countertop, chatting quietly.
Mati gave up any pretense of working in favor of enjoying the view. They were both beautiful, but in totally different ways. David was more heavily muscled, from his neck to his arms to his thighs. Just, thicker all over, but oddly graceful and at ease in a kitchen better suited for the Barbie Dream House than a man his size.
Reese was an inch taller, and much leaner, but his shoulders were just as broad and his movements more sinuous, his arms long and lithe as he reached for whatever he was to wash next. They were both winter-pale, but David’s skin held the deeper olive tones of his Mediterranean heritage. Reese’s chestnut hair looked red and curly next to David’s pin-straight dark brown.
David snatched something from Reese’s hands. “You aren’t allowed to help if you’re going to violate my vegetable scrubber.”
Reese burst into laughter. “You make it sound like I was going to shove it down my pants!”
David looked for all the world as if he’d had pearls, he would have clutched them.
Reese curled a wet fist into David’s t-shirt. “Don’t be mad, sweetheart,” he said in a low voice.
David’s eyes went dark, his outrage gone in a blink.
Reese towed him in, their lips barely touching, when an alarm went off on David’s phone.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
Reese drew his hand through the sudsy water in the sink and dabbed a ball of foam on the tip of David’s nose. “I’ll make it up to you later.”
With a frustrated huff, David silenced the timer and returned to the stove.
“Damn right you will,” he mumbled.
David glared at his laptop and cleaned out his mailbox with ruthless efficiency, leaving the email he’d been waiting for until last. Dinner was simmering on the stove, but it had a while yet and he couldn’t put this off any longer.
“Chance sent me the video,” he said at last.
Mati looked up from her screen. “The one from the house, you mean?”
“Yes. Do you want to watch it now?”
“Okay,” she said, voice steady. He wouldn’t have known she was nervous if she didn’t stall there, unmoving.
He and Reese waited.
At last, she stood and circled the table to hover at David’s shoulder. Reese slid into the chair on David’s other side. David wanted to pull them closer, suspecting this was going to be harder than they realized, but for now, he gave them their space and hit play.
A door appeared, oddly elongated because of the angle, but clear enough that David could tell Reese hadn’t gone cheap on his cameras. There was snow piled on either side, and a hint of movement, a shadow, moving at the bottom edge of the frame.
Mati gripped his shoulder. “God, I was on the other side of that door. I walked through the front hall to get to the kitchen.”
Reese was no longer paying attention to the video, watching Mati instead.
David hit pause. Fuck giving them space. “Come here.”
He pushed his chair back and she slipped into his lap. He anchored her to his chest with an arm around her waist and leaned his shoulder against Reese’s when he scooted closer.
David, at least, felt much better.
Mati blew out a deep breath and nodded. “Okay. Go ahead.”
David hit play again. The shadows on screen shifted and a man in a ski mask stepped into view, holding what looked like a cell phone in front of his chest.
Reese curled a hand around David’s knee.
The man on the screen waved the phone around like it was some kind of magic wand.
“What the fuck?” David muttered with a half laugh that cut off when, a second later, the man opened the door like it was nothing. He disappeared into the house, followed closely by a taller, thinner man who shut the door behind them.
The screen went dark, then split into two feeds. One half showed Mati in a brightly lit kitchen, and the other showed the two men gesticulating at each other in what appeared to be the front hall.
“These cameras have sound, right?” David asked.
“They do,” Reese confirmed, squeezing David’s knee as on-screen Mati peeked through the door.
“Fuck,” David whispered, pulling her closer. Her heart pounded against his arm. They’d told him what had happened, but it was hard to watch her bolt up the back stairs and hide in a bedroom while the stockier man began his search. For her? It was hard to tell.
Meanwhile, the other man went down the hall and through a door. The screen flashed and showed a large, dark wood paneled room.
“Where is that?” David asked, pointing.
“My office,” Reese replied. He shook his head when the man on the screen began searching for something. He started by tilting the paintings away from the wall. “This guy has no clue.”
“What makes you say that?” David asked.
Mati answered. “He never even looks in the direction of the safe. He has no idea where it is.” She gestured at the screen when the man switched to digging through Reese’s desk drawers. “And all of the files are in cabinets in my office. All he’s going to find in there are some pens, a pack of gum, and a bottle of lube.”
“Excuse you. That’s hand lotion,” Reese said.
“Hand lotion I’ve never once seen you use,” she muttered under her breath, her eyes still on the screen. “But that you run out of every few months.”
Reese opened his mouth, presumably to protest, but closed it again without saying a word, his cheeks mottled red.
A voice boomed from David’s tinny laptop speakers, chaos breaking out in all three frames of the split screen. Mati jumped and Reese’s fingers dug bruises into David’s thigh. He clenched his teeth and told his pounding heart to knock it off, but it was impossible as he watched Mati run down the stairs, almost wiping out at the bottom. The stocky man burst into the kitchen and through to the front hall, chasing her in the direction of Reese’s office while his partner waved his arms frantically, apparently trying to tell him to stop.
The howl of
pain when the panic room door closed on Mati’s pursuer’s arm was satisfying. The way he cradled that arm to his chest as they fled the house wasn’t bad either.
The screen went blank. David realized he was crushing Mati and eased his grip.
Reese took Mati’s hand. “Are you okay?”
Mati nodded. “Yeah. That doesn’t—it shouldn’t change anything. I was there. That was way scarier than watching it now, after the fact, right?”
“Adrenaline is an amazing thing,” David said.
She tucked a curl behind her ear, her hand trembling. David captured it with one of his own.
“You don’t have to watch it again,” Reese said, “but I’d like to. I can do it wearing headphones, if you want.”
“No, I think I should,” she said. “I missed stuff with the split screens.”
David didn’t argue. He intended to review it several more times, but she and Reese were far more likely to pick out important details than he was.
They watched the second time in silence while she clung to their hands.
When the screen went blank, Mati frowned. “It’s weird they don’t talk, right?”
David nodded. “There’s a bunch of weird shit in this.”
“Like them wearing black to break into the house in broad daylight?” she asked.
“Huh,” Reese said. “That’s a good point. And actually…kind of stupid, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” David agreed. “Total amateur hour stuff.”
“Also, what was with the wavy thing at the door? Did they think they needed to do that to trigger the lock? They must have had the encryption code on that phone,” Reese said.
“I have a thought about that…” Mati began. She made a face like she knew she was about to open a can of worms. “Could that have been him making the sign of the cross?”
“Yeah, it could have,” David agreed, his eyes narrowing on Mati’s face. “You said Frankie wasn’t big with technology, right?”
“Right. I had to help him update his computer. He didn’t have, nor want, a smartphone. I doubt he’s ever seen a lock like the one on that door.”
Which, to be fair, wouldn’t be unusual. Reese and Hodges didn’t mess around when it came to choosing hardware.
“Okay,” David said, “but people change.”
“I guess, but from Luddite to hacker in a year? And why on earth would he want something from Reese’s office?”
“Could you have told him about something valuable? Or something that would have helped him get in? A password or gate code?”
“No! Never.” She clutched Reese’s hand and turned to him. “I would never—”
“Easy, sweetheart. I know that.” He ran a soothing hand over hers and looked at David. “There’s nothing truly valuable in my office. And there’s no fixed code to get through those locks, only the encrypted Bluetooth keys will open them. The gate does have a keypad option, but they didn’t come in that way.”
“How do you know?” David asked.
Mati shrugged. “That’s easy. If the gate opens for any reason—with a code, without, once because a plow pushed too much heavy snow into it—our phones and tablets are alerted and the camera shows us what’s going on. I would have known if they’d come in that way.”
David nodded approvingly. “That’s a good system.”
“I thought so,” Reese agreed, “but apparently not good enough. I want to know where and how they did get on the property. Hodges said he and the police are working on that.”
“They are,” David confirmed. “But there’s nothing yet. Going back to Frankie. Did you ever tell him about the cameras?”
“No? I don’t think so? Why?”
“Because they don’t talk,” David said.
Mati connected the dots first. “Shit. They wore ski masks and didn’t talk.”
Reese sat straighter, his face pale. “They knew details about my security. Not just things anyone who’d been to my door would know, like the lock. But about the cameras. The gate.”
David wrapped a hand around Reese’s shoulder. “Yeah, it looks that way.”
“But they had no idea about the panic room. Or where the safe is,” Mati pointed out.
Reese’s shoulders dropped a fraction. “That’s true. Though, no one knows about that room. You didn’t. Just me, Hodges, and Rupert.”
“And the company who installed it,” David added. “Same with the safe. Who knows where it is?” David asked.
“Me, Hodges, Mati, and Rupert. That’s it, as far as I know. I’m not sure if the company that installed it is still around. That was my dad’s handy work.”
“Who is Rupert?” David asked.
“My oldest friend. He used to be my business manager, but now Mati does most of that.”
David arched an eyebrow. “I thought you were his personal assistant?”
She waved her hand. “Same thing, really.”
David was no MBA, but that was not the same thing.
Reese squeezed her hand. “If a person who isn’t a company could have a vice president, she’d be that, too.”
Mati’s smile was radiant. “Thank you.” She glanced over at her stacks of colorful folders and sighed regretfully. “And to that end, I should get back to work. I wouldn’t want to lose my unofficial titles.”
“Not a chance,” Reese said, kissing the back of her hand.
Reese spent the afternoon despairing over his hamster-like attention span. He’d defy anyone to be able to ignore David and Mati for any length of time, and after watching that damn video over and over, he’d needed to see them, to soothe himself with the knowledge they were close.
Turning back to his laptop, again, he tried to crank through some work while Mati was neck-deep in a real estate inventory project and David was puttering around the kitchen. Reese lost at least an hour watching David’s hands while he worked. They were strong, the many small scars and callouses signs of long hours and hard work. But they also were gentle, displaying the great care with which he could apply that strength.
Reese wanted to know what they would feel like against his skin.
It was still strange, how he could want something for the first time this far into his life. Yet the idea of being with David, touching David, also felt like it made perfect sense. Reese didn’t have a doubt in his mind.
Though, he still wanted to speak to Rupert about it. Having forced him to stew for hours, Reese sent a text to say, I’ll call you when I can.
He received two replies almost immediately. One from Rupert that said, I hate you, and another from Christian that read, OMG, please call him so we can get back to our normal lives.
Reese felt guilty, but he still didn’t call right away. Not that he wanted to torture Rupert, but Reese refused, at his age, to call his best friend from the bathroom to have a whispered conversation about boys.
At five o’clock, David slid cheese and bread and wine onto the table and took a seat. Reese and Mati shut their laptops and cleared everything away.
They talked about work, about family, about what was in the paper that day, never digging too hard into any one subject and avoiding anything to do with the break-in. David’s food thing clearly extended beyond his refined taste buds. He closely monitored their first bite or sip of anything, smiling when they smiled, grinning when they exclaimed with delight as he placed the main course in front of them.
Reese bit into the light and deceptively simple bolognese over fresh tagliatelle and let out an uncontrolled moan, his eyes fluttering closed as he savored the flavors.
When he opened his eyes again, David was actually blushing.
Reese had somehow forgotten how amazing a homecooked meal was, the flavors bright the way fresh, well-cooked food could be. He and Hodges were terrible in the kitchen, and it wasn’t like anyone delivered out to his house. They ate well enough, but nothing like this.
The pasta was followed by salad and dessert and another bottle of wine. If Reese spent more time complim
enting the chef than normal, it was well deserved and had the added benefit of making David’s eyes, his smile, even his cheeks warmer with the praise.
It was barely nine o’clock when the wine, the food, and the poor sleep of the past couple nights conspired against Reese. He yawned widely, and Mati shot him a curious look. He hadn’t told her about David’s dreams, but he would. He hoped David would sleep better now that the space, and the couch, were more familiar. But if not, Reese would try to help again.
“Tired?” David asked.
“Yes,” Reese admitted. “But I don’t want the night to end.”
David stood and kissed Reese sweetly. “How about we get ready for bed and we’ll see how much longer the night goes?”
“That sounds wonderful,” Mati said, rising for a kiss of her own before disappearing into the bathroom.
David went to his suitcase and stripped down to a pair of dark blue boxer briefs like it was nothing.
Reese told himself not to stare, his palms itching to run over all that warm skin and hard muscle, his heart racing because that was actually an option. At least, he thought it was.
David cocked his head when he found Reese standing there, not getting ready for bed. His gaze was hot, his smile lethal.
Reese slowly pulled off his clothes, achingly aware of David’s eyes on him as he bared his arms, his chest. He turned his back to tackle his belt buckle, not wanting David to see how his fingers fumbled with anticipation and nerves.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when David’s hand brushed over his shoulder.
He spun, his face heating as David ran his eyes down the length of Reese’s body, lingering briefly on the erection tenting his briefs. David’s hand brushed over one of Reese’s pecs, his palm rubbing the nipple until it peaked.
“No hair,” he observed, his fingers brushing over Reese’s solar plexus.
“I never had much, and I swim almost every day. The chlorine took what little there was.”
David hummed, tugging him closer for a kiss. Reese opened to him, meeting David’s tongue with his own and curling his hands around David’s ribs. His skin was warm. Soft. Beneath it, muscles bunched and quivered.
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