Page 181 of The Fire Line

“You continue to misunderstand how injuries work.”

“Shut up, Navarro.”

Harris kissed the place beneath his jaw that made the next remark inaccessible. His hands no longer moved over Jay by trial. He knew where Jay was still tender and avoided those places without looking, adjusted when the healing shoulder pulled, recognized when Jay’s breathing changed because something felt good and when it meant he needed a second.

They had always been good at this part. Before the fire, Jay had treated that as evidence of physical compatibility and unusually successful bad judgment. Now Harris knew him too well for the explanation to remain that simple.

Being known by him had happened gradually enough that Jay had failed to recognize the risk until there was no reasonable way to undo it.

Harris drew him toward the alcove and lowered him onto the mattress with a care that landed harder than urgency would have.

“You’re bein’ strange,” Harris said.

“Am I?”

“Quiet. Usually you talk enough for both of us.”

“Normally you find that charming.”

“Never said that.”

Harris took his time.

He had not really planned to. Planning would have required admitting how often he had imagined this night before Jay crossed the yard, or how empty the cabin might feel after he left. Now Jay lay beneath him, warm and familiar, dark hair spread across the pillow, and moving slowly seemed like the only available way to keep tomorrow from arriving too quickly.

His attention kept returning to the fading evidence of the fire: the healing burn at Jay’s shoulder, the bruising along his side, the scrape near his hip. None of it looked dangerous anymore, but Harris remembered too clearly how each mark had happened. When Jay caught him looking and tried to make light of it, Harris bent and kissed the bruise nearest his hip until whatever joke had been coming disappeared.

There had always been care between them, even when neither called it that. Tonight there was no reason to disguise it as anything else.

Harris moved slowly over Jay’s body, lingering over places he had rushed past before. He kissed the center of his chest, the soft skin below his ribs, the inside of one thigh and then the other. Jay’s fingers moved into his hair as Harris worked lower, not directing him, simply staying connected.

Harris paused there.

Jay looked down, surprise flickering across his face before he deliberately relaxed against the pillow. He did not tease him or offer instructions.

Harris appreciated that enough not to mention it.

He wrapped his left hand around Jay and let his mouth follow the movement, first a kiss against the head, then another, his tongue tracing briefly along the sensitive underside. Jay’s hips shifted before he caught himself.

The response went through Harris like heat.

He took him into his mouth only a little farther, enough to feel Jay’s fingers tighten in his hair and hear his breath break, then drew back. This was not something Harris wanted to learn in a hurry, not tonight.

Jay opened his eyes.

Harris kissed the inside of his thigh again.

“Tease,” Jay murmured.

“Thought you were being quiet.”

“Momentary lapse.”

That was nearly all they said.

Harris reached for the condom and lube, and Jay took the packet from him before he could struggle one-handed with it. Their fingers brushed as Jay rolled it onto him, the simple familiarity of the gesture somehow more intimate than it had any right to be.

Harris settled between his thighs and prepared him slowly with his left hand. Jay opened for him more easily now, his body already familiar with Harris even if neither of them had decided what that familiarity was supposed to mean.