Stretched out on my sofa shirtless, warm, damp, and pink from his shower and wearing low slung joggers that revealed the cut vee of his hips, Liam was temptation personified. If I weren’t in the middle of cooking dinner, I would have climbed on top of him and rubbed our bodies together until we were both panting with orgasm.

I couldn’t get enough of him.

And in the time we’d been together, his body had only improved. If I’d thought Liam had looked good the first time I’d seen him without his clothes on, he was stunning now. I wasn’t sure Michelangelo himself could have produced a more perfect specimen of manhood.

With me feeding him a healthier, more balanced diet, Liam was eating fewer “bad” foods that left him feeling heavy and lethargic in favor of lean proteins and vegetables packed with complex flavors that fueled his body properly.

There was also the fact that he was consuming a few extra vitamins and nutrients he hadn’t been before.

With another quick, stolen glance at Liam as I stirred our dinner, I smirked, remembering the picture he’d painted only a few hours before. On his knees between my legs, licking my cum from his fingers, I’d never laid eyes on a more tantalizing site.

But the way I felt about him wasn’t just about sex. Since he’d confided in me about Daniel, Liam and I spent a lot more time talking, and I’d gotten to know the man behind the mouthwatering good looks. His heart and mind were as much a turn on as his cut abs and thick, heavy cock. I liked to think he felt the same.

“Dinner will be ready in ten minutes,” I called out over my shoulder as I sprinkled chopped herbs over the side of salmon I’d just pulled from the oven. Wiping my hands on a towel, I set the pan aside and tossed a radicchio salad I’d dressed with mustard aioli.

Liam stood and stretched, his muscles rippling and his bones popping and settling in place. He rubbed his hand over his belly. “Good, I’m starving,” he said, crossing the room.

So was I. For him.

And after the last few weeks, I wondered if we might finally be ready to take the next step in our relationship.

From the outset, I’d told Liam I wanted him to experience all the unique ways in which we could make each other come without immediately reverting to penetrative sex. And while that had been true, I’d also pushed for this prolonged period of restraint as a means of protecting myself should he suddenly decide to go back to being straight. Our desire for one another had never been in question, but whether we’d be able to sustain a relationship beyond just the intense, physical need we had for one another had always lingered at the back of my mind.

I hadn’t lied when I told Liam I’d never been in love with any of the men I’d fucked, but the more time he and I spent together, the stronger my feelings for him became, and now I recognized that I was in genuine danger of falling in love with him.

While sex had been a casual thing for me in the past, with Liam, it was anything but. Every time I touched him, I discovered new things about me too. Things like what I genuinely enjoyed versus the things I’d always just gone along with because it was what I thought I was supposed to do.

For example, kissing. Who knew I could lose myself in the sensation of my lips on Liam’s, his on mine, of our tongues tangling, our hands linked, and our bodies flush? The first time I’d come just from kissing him had been mortifying. Thankfully, after a few shocked seconds of silence, we’d laughed hysterically about it.

Everything with Liam was shiny and new, and while I’d said we were holding off so he could have new experiences, the truth was, I was reveling in them right along with him. The truth was, even though we hadn’t fucked yet, but I’d never been more sexually gratified.

But even so, I couldn’t deny I wanted to take that next step with him. If not fucking Liam was exhilarating, I couldn’t begin to imagine what it would be like when I let him into my body for the first time.

Which, if I played my cards right, would be any day now. But I didn’t want it to be like every other time we’d been together. I wanted to do something special for Liam to mark the occasion.

“I checked our calendars,” I said, setting his plate in front of him and dropping into my designated seat. “We both have the weekend free.”

It might have seemed silly to some, but when it was just the two of us here at my flat, we had our seats at my table, the sides of the bed we each preferred, and several other things most long-term couples established over time. Since that cold day last month when we’d laid our pasts at one another’s feet, we’d fallen into an easy, relaxed domestic routine.

I’d never bought into society’s ideals of what constituted traditionally masculine and feminine roles in a relationship, but if I had needed those labels to be comfortable, I’d gravitated toward what was typically considered a woman’s place. I cooked dinner, while Liam cleaned up and took out the garbage. I took care of him when he came home bruised and battered after a match. I was neat and fastidious where he could be a bit of a mess.

Between us, I was also the planner in our relationship. And I had a plan for how I wanted to spend the weekend with him.

“Oh yeah?” he asked, swallowing a bite of salmon and letting out a vulgar moan that indicated how much he appreciated the simple meal I’d prepared.

I was an acclaimed chef who’d won every award I’d set out to win. And yet none of those accolades gave me as much pleasure as seeing my boyfriend devour the food I’d made for him.

“What did you have in mind?” He wiped his mouth and took a sip of the sauvignon blanc I’d poured him and then stared at me expectantly.

This was where things could get dicey, and my plan might fall apart. I had it all worked out, but it hinged on Liam trusting me—or more precisely, trusting the people I knew. Besides Angus and a few long-time members of my staff at CAMP, he hadn’t been comfortable letting my inner circle in on our big secret.

But if I could convince him to loosen the reins a bit, it could be an epic weekend.

“One of my whisky reps had a custom tour arranged for two rich American buyers, but they had to back out when one of them broke his pelvis in a skiing accident last weekend. I talked with Bolton yesterday, and it’s ours for the taking.”

“A tour?” Liam set his napkin to the side and asked, “Is that wise?”

I finished chewing and swallowed. I’d expected Liam’s response, so I’d come prepared. “I’ve known this guy for ten years. He’s trustworthy.”

“Yeah, but what about everyone else?” he asked, his lips turning down in a skeptical frown. “The driver, the people who work at the hotel, the people who work at the distillery. You can’t vouch for them.”

“Distilleries, as in multiple,” I corrected. “We’d visit one on Thursday, three on Friday and Saturday, then we’d come home on Sunday afternoon.”

“Even worse,” Liam muttered, turning his head to stare out the window, encountering his grim reflection in the glass.

“Can you look at me when I’m talking to you, please?” I asked, fisting my hands and crossing my arms over my chest. While I’d expected him to find fault with my idea, it didn’t mean I had to like it or accept his whinging.

He faced me and mimicked my body language. “Fine.”

“Thank you,” I said, leaning forward and bracing my forearms on the table on either side of my plate. “Now, are you willing to hear me out, or are you going to keep finding reasons why you can’t accept what’s a pretty amazing gift?”

He took a deep breath and rubbed the tips of his fingers over the frown lines that dug a groove in his forehead. “I’m sorry. Please continue.”

“The guys who’d originally booked the tour are partners.” Realizing how he might interpret that, I was quick to amend my statement. “Not partners in the sense that they’re together, but business partners. Which means Bolton booked them separate rooms at the hotel. There’s no reason why this can’t work, Liam.”

He stared at me silently for a few beats, likely trying to come up with more ways to pick the weekend apart. Then he asked, “So what—we just go in their place?”

I leaned back in my seat and picked up my glass. “Yes, we just go in their place. The distilleries are expecting people who are there to buy whisky, and lots of it. You happen to be dating the owner of one of the most popular restaurants in Scotland. That’s why Bolton came to me with the opportunity.” I smirked and took a drink of my wine.

For a year or two, Bolton had been trying to get me to add some rare and small bottlings to my restaurant’s whisky library. I’d meant to, but I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. I hated the idea of offering my customers something I hadn’t tasted myself, so this weekend was the perfect opportunity to remedy that.

All Liam had to do was concede.

“Okay, you being there makes sense, but what about me? How do you explain my presence?”

I rolled my eyes and chuckled. “I hate to break it to you Liam, but it hasn’t gone unnoticed that your favorite restaurant in Edinburgh just happens to be mine.”

His brows knotted together and he asked, “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you have an agent or a PR person or someone who alerts you to all the articles that mention you?”

“I do, but …” He blew out a breath and said, “I don’t read them. Or rather, I stopped reading them.”

My eyes widened in shock. “For someone so concerned about his reputation, that surprises me.”

Liam waved away my concern. “If there was something worth paying attention to, Sean would call me. Since he hasn’t …” he shrugged nonchalantly.

I set my glass back down and twisted in my seat to reach my phone on the credenza behind me. Pulling up my email, I clicked on the link my PR person had sent a couple of days before. Once the article loaded, I passed the phone to Liam.

“This is just an article about your new menu.”

“Keep reading,” I suggested, finishing off the wine in my glass. “Out loud.”

His eyes flashed with confusion over my request, but for once in Liam’s life, he didn’t argue with me.

He cleared his throat and began reading aloud. “While CAMP is an excellent choice for a night out with well-heeled friends or for celebrating a special occasion, it’s also become the go-to haunt for Edinburgh’s foodies and celebrities. In fact, it’s become quite popular with the Edinburgh rugby team. Hamish Burns and his girlfriend, model Amanda Crosby, are frequent diners, as is recent Dublin transplant Liam Donnelly. The rugby club’s newest star has been spotted dining at CAMP regularly. In fact, it seems he even has a preferred seat at the long copper counter overlooking the kitchen where Chef MacLeod produces his award-winning dishes. But don’t let the bevy of celebrities dining there put you off. The warm, comfortable atmosphere MacLeod has created at CAMP is perfect for regular folk like you and me.”

His eyes skimmed the rest of the article, but I already knew he wasn’t mentioned again. When he finished, Liam set my phone, face down, on the table. Shoving a hand through his hair, he flicked his gaze up to mine, the look on his face startling me.

“You can’t be serious,” I huffed. “You’re not actually upset, are you?”

Liam dropped his head back and stared up at the ceiling. “This is how it starts, Lachlan.” His head fell forward, and he stared at me. “First, it’s an innocent mention about me liking the food at your place; then, in a few weeks, it’s a gossip columnist asking if I’m interested in more than the food at CAMP. They’ll speculate about which of your hostesses I’m secretly seeing.” He groaned. “They always start with the hostesses. And when that doesn’t pan out, they’ll move on to your waitresses. And when that line of thinking leads them down a dead-end street, they’ll dig deeper and deeper until they come up with an idea so salacious that even if they didn’t think it was true, they’d run it as click bait. Next thing you know, people will question why I’m spotted so fucking often in the company of Edinburgh’s most famous openly-gay chef,” he finished, his chest sawing in and out with each frustrated breath. “Why can’t they just leave me the fuck alone?”

“You’re in the wrong line of work if you want to be left alone.”

“Why?” Liam shot back. “Why can’t I just do my damn job without people speculating about my personal life?”

“Because that’s not the way it works,” I told him. “Whether you like it or not, athletes are celebrities, and celebrities get gossiped about.”

He covered his face with his hands and scrubbed his palms down his face. “This is what I was worried about.”

“You’re overreacting. Everything’s fine.”

“Everything is not fine,” he exclaimed, shooting up and out of his chair, propelling it across the wood floor. “I’m trying desperately to salvage something of my career here, and shit like that—” he pointed at my phone “—is going to ruin it.” Liam stared down at me, his nostrils flaring with suppressed rage.

I opened my mouth to respond but thought better of it. He wasn’t thinking rationally, and nothing I said would make him see reason.

For my part, I wasn’t feeling all that reasonable either. I’d done everything he’d asked in keeping our relationship a secret. I’d pushed my feelings aside so he could come to grips with this new phase of his life.

I’d denied who I was so Liam could learn to be who he was.

And I was tired of it. So fucking tired.

I’d started the evening looking forward to a weekend away with the man I was probably falling in love with, but now I wondered why I bothered with any of it. Liam was no closer to opening himself up to the possibility of being in a committed relationship with a man than he’d been when we’d first met. Over and over I’d told myself he just needed time; that he’d come around eventually.

But if the wild look in his eyes was any indication, I didn’t think he’d ever be comfortable with our relationship.

Any of the progress we’d made by going to the movies, eating dinners out, or grabbing coffee was negated by a short paragraph about the type of people who dined at my restaurant. If he could find something to panic about with something as innocuous as that, I could only imagine his reaction if anyone ever did start to speculate about us.

I scooted my chair back, stood, and tossed my napkin down on my plate. “I had a long day, and I’m tired. I’m going to take a shower and then head to bed. Lock up when you leave, okay?”

“What about your dinner?” he asked after a long pause.

“I seem to have lost my appetite.”