Chapter Fifteen
Cory
With Levi off saving people and fighting fires, an ineffable tension filled the house that day. For the first few hours, Ben worked at his desk in his home office, and I played with Tobias, fed him, and gave him a bath. We ate a light breakfast and some chili leftover from a couple of days earlier for lunch, along with buttered French bread I picked up at the store on a quick dash for diapers.
But as the day stretched on, and the little guy went down for his long afternoon nap, the entire herd of elephants stomping around the room and trumpeting became too noisy to ignore. We’d flirted a little, decided to “date” maybe, or see where our attraction took us in the family direction, but how did someone do that?
When Levi kissed my forehead that morning, I’d come within milliseconds of tipping my face up so his lips would land on mine. How weird was it that the three of us seemed so confident in going serious when I’d never even kissed any of them? Was it supposed to go that way?
And what if something happened to Levi while he was piloting the fire copter over the biggest wildfire in over five years? I’d been checking the news reports on my laptop every ten minutes since he left. It was 0 percent contained, and one firefighter had already been injured while doing battle with a wall of fire.
He went out on fires all the time, and I was always happier when he came home again, but between the intensity of the emergency and the change in our relationship, it was all I could do not to scream.
When little Tobias was cuddled up with his favorite T. rex, I tiptoed down the stairs, baby monitor receiver in hand, to find Ben sitting on the couch, reading something on his tablet.
“Mind if I join you?” I hovered, weirded out. Where was I supposed to sit now? Usually I sat on one end of the couch, but we’d all sat close together and...would it be okay to do that now?
Ben lifted his face toward me, and the lines of tension by his eyes gave away the worry that his small smile sought to conceal. If he was truly worried… “Sit right here.” He set his tablet on the end table and patted the couch right next to him. “We can fret together.”
“Thanks.” I settled a few inches away, leaving room for the Holy Ghost as my Catholic school friends said, but he looped an arm around my neck and pulled me closer.
“No need for space anymore, right?” He ruffled my hair and picked up the tablet again. “Let’s see what’s up with the fire.”
I leaned on his shoulder and read the reports. “That looks bad, doesn’t it?” Fifteen percent contained was better than zero, but not a whole heck of a lot.
“No worries. Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I always worry, but he is very good at what he does. And very careful.” He kissed the top of my head. “And he has even more reason now to come home safe.”
I sniffed a little, moved more than I wanted to admit by his words. “He already had a lot.”
Ben nodded. “Yes, he did. We thought we were perfectly happy before Tobias then we couldn’t imagine how we ever lived without him. Two weeks later, you walked in the door.” He sighed. “We liked you right away, but we didn’t want to do anything to make you uncomfortable.”
I sighed, too. “And I was afraid of losing my job. But more afraid of completing my year with you guys, finishing my thesis, and walking away without you knowing how I felt.”
He flipped pages on the tablet until he came to a hidden objects game. “You ever play these things?”
I suppressed a chuckle. “My mom loves them.”
“Hey! I’m not your mom’s age. I just like to turn off and zone out.”
“I left my gaming system at home when I came out here to finish my PhD, but maybe I should send for it. You ever play any real games?”
We joked around like that for a while, and I grudgingly agreed to help him hunt for hidden andirons if he’d give Destiny 2—which I planned to buy as soon as Mom sent my system—a try.
He flipped back and forth from his game to the news, and by the time my receiver vibrated with Tobias’s first babbles, a downpour had started, changing the conditions Levi dealt with from extra-dry fire weather to heavier rain than he should probably fly in.
“How do you survive this?” I played with a bit of fuzz on the afghan we’d pulled over our legs, waiting to see if the baby was awake awake or just temporarily so.
“I’d say you get used to it, but you don’t. Everyone says firefighters are sexy—”
“Levi is very sexy,” I defended as if he’d said he wasn’t.
“And I know that better than you...so far. But what I was about to say is that everyone likes to look at them, but living with one is challenge. He puts everyone else first, and sometimes that’s other people’s families, while we wait here. I think it’s worth it to have him in my life. You’ll have to decide if you do.”
I tilted my head back, looking at his profile, a nose a little too big, the scruff on his cheeks from a day at home without shaving. Those worry lines by his eyes. And I couldn’t help myself. I cupped his cheek and turned him to face me then pressed my lips to his for just a moment. “He’s worth it,” I murmured. “You’re both worth it.”
As we drew back, I noticed his flushed cheeks. Mine were currently on fire, but I never thought he’d feel that way. He caressed my cheek. “Cory, I—”
“I’m so s-sorry,” I sputtered, moving to stand up. Tobias had stilled, but I’d use checking on him as an excuse to escape. “I—”
He grabbed my wrist and yanked me back to him. “If this is going to work out, we are all going to have to be good”—he tapped my ear—“listeners. Okay?”
I nodded but he held a finger over my lips.
“Just listen to what I want to say. I love that you kissed me. I plan to kiss you, too, often, if you want me to.”
My nodding became bobbing, and a soft smile curved his lips. “But let’s wait for Levi to get home before we kiss again, okay?”
Oh man. “I blew it. But I don’t know the rules for this. If we’re dating, aren’t we going to kiss and hug and…” My face felt so hot, I thought I might explode.
He still held my wrist and used it to move my hand to his lap. “Definitely ‘and.’ But at least the first time, we need to be together, and as you can tell, my control is being tested.” He was not only hard, he was big. Whew. “And the only rules will be the ones we make, okay? But we have to do that together, too.”
“Okay. So you didn’t mind that I kissed you?”
He patted my hand that covered his throbbing erection. “No. And that is a really stupid question from a man with his palm on my cock.”
It really was.
On the table next to him, his phone buzzed with a text. He lifted it and let out a long breath. “He’s back at the heliport. The weather is too bad to fly anymore, and the rain has pretty well put out the fire, so he’s headed home. Let’s be ready for him.”
Ready? “You mean make dinner?”
He snorted. “Sure, we have to eat, but after Tobias goes to bed...a grown-up surprise. After all, you owe him a kiss.”