Chapter Eight
I didn’t see Leland for the rest of the day, which was for the best. Away from the patio, my shock-dead senses revived quickly, and if we’d crossed paths too soon I would have gone medieval on his ass.
I was fuming, and rightly so.
After homework hour in Ella’s pink princess bedroom suite, I arranged with Lauren to bring our dinner to the tiny doll table with an on-the-fly explanation that we were having a tea party together.
As if muddling through sitting on a twenty-four-inch-tall chair wasn’t bad enough, trying to eat while Ella bombarded me with endless questions over our strange deviation of routine made the food catch in my throat.
The dinner hour passed with her endless inquisition that hopped from why was I behaving so odd, to wanting to know why we hadn’t joined Daddy in the dining room, to demanding I explain why she wasn’t allowed to leave her bedroom. To escape her probing, I bribed her with the promise that after dinner we could have two hours of TV time—something I never allowed—and the surprise of that instantly stopped her questioning.
Yes, I’d buckled under the pressure in less than four hours. Leland was irresponsible, fun daddy. I was the grown-up parental figure always. But that didn’t mean in a crisis I couldn’t be flexible in our SOP.
This was a crisis. I needed to keep Ella safely away from the Ramoses, occupied and quiet, and somehow not alarm her while doing it. Spending the evening with Ella as fun dad seemed my only winning option now that Leland was home.
It still smarted she’d wanted to stay on the patio with him and the goon squad, and had only left with me without a fight because Leland had ordered her to. The only fucking right decision the man had made all day, and even that had been maddening.
Oh wait. Correction—from the current status of our domicile—ordering Ella to leave the patio with me had been the only right decision Lee had made in over a year.
As my eyes stared unseeingly at the TV, my arm tightened around Ella and I laid my cheek on her head. What the hell was the matter with Lee? The shocks of the day were so numerous I was starting to doubt I’d ever really known him.
Was it possible that love—overlaid with a generous amount of lust—could make a man foolish enough not to see their partner clearly? My earlier phone call with Zac flashed in my head, and with it came the unpleasant suspicion that maybe there was a basis beyond a lingering affection for me as to why the good doc disliked Leland.
There was much of late to give a man pause.
Not a single element of the day would I ever have expected from him. Bringing cartel members to the house with Ella there? No, I would never have thought him capable of that, not with how he loves her. Not telling me a contract hit had been put out on him? I didn’t even know how to come to terms with him not sharing that with me. Then that appalling charade on the patio he forced me to listen to. And that’s what it had been: a charade.
Distance and a healthy measure of calming down had provided a different assessment on the courtyard nightmare. He’d ordered me to join them and had purposely wanted me at his side during what was little more than a crass, heartless discussion about moi with Hector. His purpose in that defied analysis but that’s what it had been. Calculated, thoughtless, hurtful banter with the scum of the earth, designed to minimize my role in his life.
Then the nuclear bomb of all surprises: casually dropping in mid-sip of his margarita that he’d had an affair with Hector Ramos and Richard had been a participant.
A faint sound blended with the music from the cartoons—soft snoring from Ella—and I adjusted to find that she was finally sleeping.
I checked my watch. Nearly midnight. The house had quieted some time past. It was at last Graham having it out with Leland time.
Carefully, I slipped from Ella’s hold and then the bed. After tucking her in, I stood above her, watching her curl around the still warm pillow I’d just vacated.
The feeling diluting the unpleasant emotions Leland had flooded me with was unmistakable, uncomplicated, and undeniable. I loved her—I was mad as hell at her father—but this girl fully held my heart.
From the inside, I set the alarm and locked her door—a heavily reinforced security barrier camouflaged beneath pink paint and stickers—and then went to the artfully disguised wall where the panel was to the corridor joining the three rooms that made up the safe pod: Ella’s room, my former quarters downstairs, and the master suite. Exactly as they had also been built in the Montecito house.
I left the panel door ajar and made my way down the tunnel within the walls to my bedroom. I’d only been in it once before, on our first day in Mexico when I inspected its safety and construction. I never expected to be in it again or the cause Leland had given me to utilize them tonight.
We were on bunker status until I decided my next move or the cartel cleared our universe. Extreme reaction? Hell no. I could feel it in the pulse of my body. Too many things not making sense usually equaled dangerous situation. At least it had in my years with the military and later with the CIA. Why second-guess it now?
Instinct. It’d never failed me before and it was the only thing that I trusted after the cocktail hour with the Ramoses. Instinct, my own gut, and my love for that little girl. Whatever decisions I made, if I held firmly onto my feelings for Ella, I was positive my gut wouldn’t steer me wrong. The same way love of country hadn’t steered me wrong in combat.
Some things were just true.
Logical.
Predictable.
And unfailing.
Dedication and love of country.
Dedication and love of family.
Or at least I thought unfailing, right up to that moment I entered my bedroom and faltered mid-step as my gaze landed on Leland. He was on the bed and I could tell by his pose he was waiting for me.
He pinned me with his eyes, and damn, through my anger at him, even after every infuriating moment since his return, he still had the power to get me hard by simply looking at me. Or perhaps it was what didn’t accompany his stare. He was naked.
“There you are. You’ve been out of sight so long I thought maybe you’d moved out.”
One had to admire his tenacity to minimize. That was the card he decided to play first. Referencing in his coy way the hour of cocktails with the Ramoses and letting me know he was aware I was infuriated and that he was…indifferent? …unwilling to argue? Or maybe he didn’t want to deal with what he anticipated would be an argument with me.
“Don’t think I didn’t consider taking off north of the border with Ella,” I grumbled, my eyes shooting lasers at him. “I almost kept driving past the house when I got back and saw you hadn’t done anything about getting rid of your cartel guests as I requested. If I hadn’t talked to—”
I caught my words in the nick of time, before I threw into the mix too early my call with Jared and that I knew about the contract hit put out on Leland’s life.
That discussion first would’ve crowded out the possibility of making it before the next millennium to the hot topics of the Ramoses, Emilio, and that nauseating discussion en español Lee had had about me on the patio.
I reminded myself that resolving things with Lee would work better if I engaged in small scrimmages before launching a full attack. Depleting his stamina to fight before tackling the weighty matters was often a high-success tactic if one wanted to get at the heart of things with Leland in under a century.
“I, for one, am glad you didn’t,” he simpered, a flirtatious twist to his lips. “Letting the Ramoses stay couldn’t be helped, and being here without you would have made it hard for you to have my back. So I’m glad you’re still here.”
Have my back was said on a husky whisper. He followed that with a slow roll onto his hip so he could continue holding me in his gaze as I moved around the bedroom. It provided me with a deliciously provocative view of everything.
I took in a deep breath—or a few dozen—to ward off the impact in my cock from how he caressed me with his eyes, because that forewarned how Leland intended to manage me and the purpose of his artfully orchestrated pose.
It was erotic as hell, both his gaze and the languid lay of his body, and intended to defuse my reasonable objections to every fucking thing that had happened today before my temper fully lit and detonated.
The best defense is a strong offense.
Sun Tzu’s Art of War—well, not for Leland. More likely the movie M. Butterfly, but oh, he’d learned the maxim.
Tossing my cell onto the dresser and then unclipping my gun, I firmed my resolve since in tonight’s pretense of lies and deceit I supposed I was going to be Jeremy Irons through this.
“Start talking quickly, Lee, or we’re through,” I ordered, but my body wasn’t fully over the fuck me look a minute early. Fortunately, I was as determined as he was exasperating. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t ring your neck for the Ramoses being here when Ella got home from school or that bullshit cocktail hour you ordered me to sit through.”
“Graham. It’s business. You know that.”
I jerked from the drawer the sweats I planned to wear sleeping in Ella’s room. “Business?” I severely lifted a brow. “You fucked Hector Ramos and now you have him in our home. That sounds more like being a callous prick without standards than business to me, Lee. Are you still fucking him?”
Lee’s head fell back as he exploded in laughter. Damn him. It’d been a mistake to begin there. I’d digressed into the mud pit in the first minute instead of leading with the dangerous and more important issue of having Hector and his men in the same house as Ella.
His humor quieted abruptly and he locked his scintillating amber eyes on me. “Do you really believe I’d go to bed with Hector Ramos? Credit me with some standards. That conversation—pure bullshit from word one to the end, I might add—was for Octavio’s benefit not yours.” His eyes flared and began to shimmer. “Though the sight of you all heated up and jealous does quite a bit to me, baby. I never would have expected you to get hot in your boxers about me over Hector Ramos. God, you are sexy when you’re jealous.”
This time I pinned him with my stare. “I’m not jealous. I’m incensed. Credit me with some standards and the ability to maintain clarity over what’s material and what’s trivial. You’re chock-full of bullshit tonight, Lee. What possible reason could you have for wanting Octavio to think you’d been lovers and had a ménage with Richard Meyers? Explain that.”
His mouth turned into a straight line that was neither angry nor smiling. “You translate Spanish very well. It makes it quite remarkable not only that you didn’t betray that with your expression, but that you didn’t punch Hector. That would have been an interesting twist to the afternoon.”
“You know I speak fluent Spanish,” I countered, frustrated. “Interesting twist? Glad I amused you. What am I? A pawn in some farce you’re conducting with the cartel?”
That last part poured from my lips without thought, but Lee’s devil-may-care evaporated. “No farce, Graham. Deadly serious strategy. I didn’t want them to know about you.”
My mouth gaped. “Me? That I’m your partner?”
He lifted his chin. “No, that you’re my ace in the hole—” He paused a moment to smirk over that poor word choice then pouted when I didn’t show amusement at his lame pun. “—and the most dangerous man in the room to them. It’s better they don’t know that. Better for Ella. Better for me. Better for all of us. I don’t completely trust any of them.”
A shuddering breath rattled from my chest as I shook my head at him. One year, and Lee continued to do shit like this. Ego rub—the most dangerous man in the room—in seven words. Always a healthy vanity boost when he knew he was one wrong step away from me tearing him a new one. Cock rub. Not verbally that time. I glanced out of the corner of my eyes—ah, literally tonight, a nice variation to the standard routine. He was stroking himself as he waited for my next move, a clear indication he knew how serious a situation this was. The truth? Partially maybe, but not completely. We were too early in the fighting and he could hide things too well from me behind the arresting features of his face for him to fall on the sword of honesty.
I set my fresh clothes on a chair and started unbuttoning my shirt. “You’d have to be a fool to trust any of them. You’re a lot of things, Lee, but you’re not a fool. Though that bullshit about Octavio shows you’re still fast and creative on the fly. I’ll bite—for now—and play along since I can see you expect me to. Why did you want Octavio to think you and Richard had a sexual history with Hector?”
Lee’s hand moved from his loins to push back his tumbling blond waves. “We’ve done business before. The three of us had meetings together, outside of the cartel. A very dangerous thing for a man like Hector to do. And things have changed in Mexico since I lived here before. Lots of new players. Elements even worse than the Ramoses muscling in. Hector isn’t in complete control of the territory any longer. He’s doing things to save his own neck before one of his new partners decides to chop it off, and he doesn’t want Octavio reporting back on it. It’s better Hector’s associates think what we do alone together is fuck. It seemed the most logical cover story. I did have a reputation of being a bit of a philanderer when Richard and I lived together here. It was the best lie to feed his men so they wouldn’t grow suspicious of our frequent alone-time meetings.”
That statement from him—bit of a philanderer—was comical since he’d been very open about his sexual exploits before me in more graphic terms and detail than I wanted to hear, but there was nothing funny about this discussion.
Keeping my eyes trained on my bottoms as I pulled them on, I asked, “The being a philanderer, that better be past tense, Lee. If I find out you’ve lied about being faithful after the ceremonial trip to the doctor’s office you insisted on for our his and his clean bill of health to go without skins—”
“I haven’t,” he assured me vehemently. “How could you even think I’d do something like that? Us going together for the health checks meant more to me than you know. It told me you were finally starting to think of us as a couple. Like a prelude to blood tests and getting a marriage license. A rehearsal to what I really want. Committing to each other in body if not legally yet. It meant everything to me, baby.”
I hitched one brow, remaining visibly unmoved by that declaration. “It will mean everything to you if you’ve been fucking around, Lee.”
“I haven’t been,” he stated with an anxiousness that convinced me at least that from his mouth was truth. He nervously waited for me to thaw and when I didn’t he grew more uncomfortable. “I haven’t been with another man since you, Graham. But you’re going to hear things, lots of things, and I want you to know that from me. We’re cutting out Hector’s partners and I have to do it cleverly or none of us are walking away alive from Mexico. I’ve never had a sexual relationship with Hector. We just play as though we have so no one will question why we spent so much time together alone in the past or why we are now.”
It sounded stupid enough to be true. In fact, too ridiculous and far-fetched that my inclination was to let it go, but I was unwilling to swallow it completely. It was time to turn up the heat, expose more of his lies, and see where Lee went with them.
“You haven’t been in Guadalajara for the last three weeks. You’ve been in Colombia. Why? A romantic getaway with Hector? Or Emilio?”
His golden brows shot up. “How the hell do you know I’ve been in Colombia?”
His alarm—and that he hadn’t tried to lie his way out of that one—filled me with optimism that we might make real progress on our issues for a change.
My steely stare met his directly. “I make it my business to know everything about you, Lee. It’s what you hired me for. Part of protecting Ella. And I’m fucking good at what I do. It’d be wise to remember that.”
He was flustered. “How long have you known?”
I shrugged, since it wouldn’t be a smart move to give up more until I knew how he intended to explain away this one. “Colombia. What’s in Colombia, Lee?”
“Fuck. I can’t believe you’ve put a track on me. You’ve got your own honesty issues, baby, so don’t be so damn smug.”
“This has nothing to do with our relationship. It’s my job, Lee. Start explaining your recent travel destination.”
“Fuck, you have a way of worming into things I don’t want you part of.” His jaw tightened as he shook his head. “Hector’s associates. They wanted a sit-down with me. Face-to-face. It was the kind of invitation you can’t say no to—bad hombres even worse than Hector—and I didn’t want you worrying so I didn’t tell you. Hector’s partners are based in Colombia.”
I spent some moments digesting that one as I adjusted the drawstring on my pants. “I know about the contract put out on you. Jared told me today. And this is the first time you’ve told me Hector isn’t running the show down here. Who put the hit on you, Lee? Hector’s Colombian friends? Are they the ones who want you dead?”
He was more visibly agitated than I’d ever seen him before. “I don’t know who it is that’s trying to kill me. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you going off and doing something dangerous to protect me. And fuck Jared. He shouldn’t have told you any of this.”
“It’s not worth noting you should have told me months ago that someone wanted you dead. That’s a safety issue for all of us. Maybe you’re not being as clever in your secretive shit with Hector as you are with me, Lee. Jesus Christ, they got four shots off at you. When were you going to tell me?”
I tilted my head to look at him. No reaction to that news blast. None.
“I’ve got it handled, baby,” he stated confidently. “Now listen. You stay clear of this. This is a no-go zone for Graham. It’s not part of your job guarding Ella and it has nothing to do with our relationship. I’ve got it handled.”
My temper exploded. “Are you actually ordering me to stand down and not protect you? You think you have it handled? You mean Emilio? Jesus Christ, Lee, I wouldn’t trust him with the life of my dog let alone my own life.”
“We don’t have a dog, baby,” he murmured, holding back a smirk. “He got the better of you this morning, didn’t he? Don’t underestimate him. The man’s a highly trained killer. Fuck with Emilio and you may get a surprise or two. From both of us.”
From both of us? What the hell did that mean? And was he warning me to stay out of the crosshairs of that dipshit? My reaction to that wasn’t what I expected.
“Or what?” I snapped into the tension-crackling air. “Have you fucked Emilio? Is that why you expect me to tiptoe around that jerkoff?”
Lee fell back against the pillows laughing so hard he had to hold his gut. He rolled over until he was balanced on his forearms.
“Emilio? God, no. Not my type, and I’m a one-man guy since you. I’ve told you, Graham. You’re the only man I come with these days.”
I was disappointed in myself over my reaction to that. Relief? Joy? What the hell was it about Lee that he could scramble reality then make me teenage-girl relieved in the most inappropriate context? We were arguing about threats to his life he hadn’t told me about and my internal processes were receptive to him saying he hadn’t fucked Emilio.
“My doing anything you need to be jealous about isn’t one of our problems,” Lee whispered, and damn if it didn’t sound sincere. And fuck, overly arrogant. Like he knew he’d taken some of the steam from my boiling kettle.
“But we do have problems, Lee.”
He shook his head. “None that are going to matter in the long run, Graham. Not if you don’t let them.”
That was a loaded statement that rocketed me back to our issue at hand. “What are we really doing here in Mexico? It’s more than the Grupo Azul acquisition. We’ve been together for a year. I know when I’m being fed bullshit. Isn’t it time to tell me everything?”
“It is more. I’m trying to acquire a new business and trying to get my man to say yes and marry me.” He must have sensed my internal disarray over that because he added, “We love each other. Trust that and this will all work out.”
My fingers clawed in my hair as I sank down on the chair. “You make it hard to trust you, Lee. I don’t like being kept in the dark about things and being used in the way I was in the courtyard to kill suspicion among Hector’s associates and as a diversion for whatever it is the two of you are trying to do.”
His gemmed eyes turned partly pleading. “And I don’t like doing it. But this is a tricky situation, the kind you don’t put all your cards on the table with.”
“Ah, at last you admit you have been withholding vital intel from me. That’s some progress. I guess.”
“I admit I haven’t been completely informative. But dishonest? No, Graham. The things I’ve told you have always been the truth.”
I grimaced in disbelief. “Not completely informative? You elected not to tell me someone put a hit out on you. That’s a rather significant life change to keep from your partner for a man who claims he’s honest.”
“I didn’t want you panicking and putting a nix on our life here. That’s what you would have done, Graham. Stormed into the middle of it and ruined everything. Then you would have demanded we all go north of the border and I can’t do that yet.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t ever quit before I finish anything, baby. A few more weeks. Hang in there with me, Graham. Everything I’ve worked for is almost in my grasp. I can’t stop now. I won’t. It’s too important that I succeed. It’s why I’m so successful at what I do. When I lock on a target I don’t give up until I reach my goal. You should know that better than any man.”
He snorted, and in the blink of an eye, glib Leland resurfaced. He tried to feed me nonsense that time and I could tell from his expression that was how he chose to end this discussion. His posture—stubborn tilt of the head and tense jaw—conveyed I wouldn’t get any more answers from him tonight.
He was dug in and waiting for my next move, and I knew he wasn’t going to participate if I continued to grill him. In spite of everything about him saying pointless to continue, I wasn’t totally of a mind to let it go for tonight because, fuck yeah, he was fully hard—arguing was an aphrodisiac for him—and worse, tonight it seemed to be for me as well. I might have blocked the one-track mind of my cock if he hadn’t looked so damn incredible naked and angry battling with me.
We stared at each other from our neutral corners across the room and the change in his gaze as he ran his tongue quickly across his lips—fully expected—rocketed down my body and settled in my groin.
It was Lee’s fuck-me pose.
Sometimes it worked to bank our arguments.
Sometime it didn’t.
But however I responded, there was no denying the man was a glorious fuck when he used his body to appease my annoyance with him. That thought I felt shoot with the blood through my rod.
Damn.
The male pheromones firing between us were like Morse code. Man ready to fuck staring at man ready to fuck. Message received.
I adjusted my legs, making an opening with my thighs for him. “Get on your knees. Open your mouth and give me some of that determination of yours, Lee. Three weeks apart. Not telling me someone tried to kill you. You disregarding my request to get the Ramoses out of the house. That fucking farce on the patio. Emilio. You’ve got a hell of a lot to make up to me for, and you can start here at my cock.”
His salacious stare fixed on the bulge in my sweats. I wasn’t proud of myself for being able to table our differences for an intermission of deep-throat action, but sometimes there wasn’t any other way to get to the root of things with Leland than with a dose of grunting and moaning.
Moving on to thrusting didn’t mean we were done with this discussion. In fact, it would make him more malleable when I proceeded with my next round of questioning if he believed he’d placated me with his body.
It was us. How we approached life and our differences as a couple. Verbal combat giving way to cock-on-cock combat to remind me why I bothered to hold on in our situation that at times warned I shouldn’t. It also was unfailing at reminding me I loved him.
He slowly rose from the bed then sank to his knees and opened his mouth. A rolling shockwave ran my body. I kneaded his hair and my moan filled the air as he played with his tongue on the head of my cock. His smooth hands ran up my sides to clutch my hips before engulfing my entire length.
Despite everything, when my dick pushed at the opening of his throat I felt the rightness of us in every cell that a moment ago had felt nothing but wariness. His head bobbed like a pro as his hand stirred his own cock and, arched over him, I taunted his back door entrance with my thumb.
My tongue teased on his back in swirling patterns, urging him onward. The taste of him was nectar from the gods and there was no denying the fucking thrill of him lapping on my dick and feeling how each move of his mouth sent shivers through him then me.
He was groaning like a man on fire, an arousing symphony to our impending orgasms, and to turn up the heat in us both I slipped my finger past his ring as deep into him as it would go.
“Jesus Christ, Graham,” he whispered raggedly, pausing to use his cheek to caress my appendage. “I want to taste you tonight, but you’re driving me out of my mind. I can’t hold it together if you tease me while I throat you.”
My dancing finger slowly eased out and he shuddered then dove back onto my cock. The man was a slave to his orgasm and it was a fucking power trip that he wanted to hold back until I got everything I wanted from him.
I tilted my head back on the chair and watched as I fucked his face. I was shaking in cadence with his mouth, and I’d pushed this far enough. I was going to blow my load if I let him worship at my dick much longer.
His mouth stormed my length, loudly slurping. What was it about that fucking sound from Lee that drove me crazy? Another slurp as he went at my root. His fingers latched onto my nipples, tugging and teasing as he flattened his tongue to my length.
“Come here,” I ordered, my voice shaky. “Get your hole on my dick. I’m ready to fuck you right here.”
Leland let out a husky laugh before he lifted off my lap and upward into my chest so his mouth could crash on mine. “Even when you are a pain in the ass, you get everything you want from me,” he whispered as our wet lips devoured each other.
“You can’t help yourself, can you?” I jeered, my breath uneven and ragged. “Your puns are terrible. Grab the lube, babe. Slick us up. You’re riding me tonight.”
He eased his face back from mine and quirked a brow as he darted to the bedside table. “In more ways than one, Graham. Count on it. That is if I can find anything. Where the fuck did you stow the gear?”
“It’s in the same drawer it always is.”
Of course, he opened the wrong one. “Which drawer is that?”
I pointed. “The one that keeps Ella from seeing it. She asked me what the lube was last week. And yes, I lied. I told her hair gel. So remember the lie if she sees it again.”
He was laughing as he moved around like a feisty rooster opening and rummaging through doors. I finished taking off my sweatpants and stretched back in the chair, waiting for him.
Opened drawer. Curse. Slam.
“You getting aboard my cock anytime soon, Lee?”
“All I can find is that fucking box of rubbers you forgot to toss out,” he grumbled. “No skins. No way. Never again. Ah.” He rammed a drawer closed and whirled to face me, the elusive bottle in hand and a grin on his lips.
I heard him suck in a deep chest of air and prepared for him going on the offensive. Only he didn’t move. He slowly melted to sit on the edge of the nightstand and stared at me with eyes flashing with brilliant shards of light.
“I love you, Graham,” he murmured softly in an intense, unlike Leland way.
“I love you, too, babe.”
His hand noticeably trembled as he ran his fingers through his hair. “Promise me, no matter what, we’ll always be together.”
Seriousness out of Leland should have put me on full alert, but my cock was achingly hard and the nerves of my body sizzled from want of him, and I didn’t pick up on subtle things when he stared at me that way.
“Fuck, Leland. I haven’t left yet. I’m pretty confident that means I’m in this for the long haul no matter where you take me.”
It wasn’t until I spoke the words that I felt how true they were. But I didn’t have time to pause on that then because he lathered up his hole and my swollen cock, then took me hard and roughly into his body. I alternated the press of my cheek with the hungry swipes of my tongue on his back as he plunged over and over a like lusty cat in heat on my rod.
Expertly he tunneled me and hit his own hot spots. He was fucking me even with my length gloved by him and I loved every fucking minute of it.
Over his shoulder, I watched in the mirror his gorgeous face, eyes closed as he pounded atop me and rapidly stroked his own weapon. There was nothing unclear or confusing about this part of us.
“Oh fuck,” I moaned, my head falling back as my hips pumped upward meeting his downward move on my cock.
I grabbed his hips and moved our joined bodies to the floor, positioning him beneath me as I drove our orgasms home. Slamming into him, we let out in unison an earthshaking breath of pleasure.
The tremors of our bodies told me another thrust and we’d both come. I eased out and slammed into him, and my cock exploded.
Quaking in my hands, he screamed, “Coming here,” and his jets streamed out onto the carpet.
He stretched out on the floor, turned on his back, and touched my face. “You’re everything I ever wanted in a man. I can’t believe I found you.”
It was intoxicating to have a guy like him saying that to a guy like me. For all his complications and irritating difficulty, Leland was the Holy Grail of gay men. He had it all—and some—and was my all.
We showered quickly, and I made a fast stop in Ella’s room to check on her before I joined Lee in bed.
“By the way,” Leland murmured, laying his head on my shoulder as I surrounded him with my arm, “your variation on the truth is a blunder you’re going to regret.”
I reached out with my other arm to hit off the light. “What are you talking about?”
He kissed my chest. “Calling the lube hair gel. You couldn’t think of anything else? You better check Ella’s backpack every morning and make sure she doesn’t try taking it to school. She’s at the age. Brings a brush and her little clear lip glosses everywhere, and you don’t want to get a call from Mrs. Roberts asking you to explain why our daughter is doing her hair with lube.”