Page 32 of Take The Risk

​The sound of wood cracking, the whirl of a drill, and other construction noises ceased, and I found myself on the receiving end of both men’s stares. Wade licked his lips hungrily, concentrating on the plate of sandwiches in my hand. Ty, on the other hand…

​Let’s just say I was glad I didn’t really have a deck to step out onto at the moment. Granted, with the way he looked at me, I felt like I was falling anyway. I curled my toes into the tile beneath my feet just to make sure I didn’t.

​“Hell, yes!” Wade tossed his hard hat to the ground, ripping off his safety glasses and dropping them on a pile of tools at his feet.

​“We have work to do.” Ty turned to Wade with a glare.

​Wade scoffed. “You really don’t understand my needs. I’m a growing boy, damn it!”

​I giggled. If a growing boy was a six-foot two man who carried a gun, could give you a withering look that would make a hardened criminal wet his pants, and was built like a lumberjack, was a “boy,” then sure. That was Wade.

​At my giggle, Ty’s head swung back to me. Suddenly, I felt too hot standing in the open doorway.

​“I’ll—uh, just put these in—”

​“Watch out, oh goddess of sandwiches,” Wade warned, hoisting himself up through the open door, forcing me to take a hasty step back.

​There was something smeared on his shirt and at his hip, which had me putting some distance between us. The combined “Holy fuck” I’d heard from them a couple of hours ago, along with what sounded like gagging, though I couldn’t be sure, had me not wanting to get too close to whatever it might be.

​“These are heaven!” Wade took the sandwiches right out of my hands, already devouring half of one. “Is this…? Oh my God!” He picked up the prosciutto, pesto, tomato, and provolone sandwich I made on fresh, homemade Italian bread, whimpering.

​I bit my lip trying not to laugh. “Good?”

​Wade gave me a shocked expression. “Good? These are incredible!”

​I took a deep breath, trying not to think about the truly shocked expression I’d elicited from him earlier.

​Wade had shown up before Ty this morning, which was a bit of a feat seeing as Ty usually got here early enough to have breakfast with Lock and bring me a coffee before Lock headed off to school. The coffee was our compromise to me feeding him all the time. And one I argued against even though it made my stomach do somersaults. The good kind.

​Wade arrived half an hour before Ty. I’d just hopped out of the shower, wrapped in nothing but a towel, when I’d heard my cell ringing. Because I’d been up late working on a scene in the kitchen, a certain contractor starring in it, I’d left my phone downstairs, which led to me racing down the stairs only to have Wade scare the hell out of me when he knocked at the back door.

​What took a slightly awkward situation and turned it into full-blown mortification was when, in my terror, the hand holding my towel loosened, the damned thing falling to my waist before I could stop it.

​Once I was dressed, Wade cracked jokes in a good-natured and, thankfully, not creepy way, turning the whole thing around. Well, mostly. I was still mortified he’d seen me half-naked, but he either was a great liar or was telling the truth when he said he’d barely seen anything. The morning light reflected off the glass, so all he saw was some blurry skin.

​“What do I have to do to get you to make these for me every day?” Wade’s expression was both hopeful and calculating. “I’ll do anything!” He devoured another…didn’t he just have an Italian sandwich? There was a large ham and cheese sandwich half-eaten in his hand.

​“Stop dropping crumbs on her floor, you Neanderthal.” Ty hoisted himself up into the kitchen.

​Oh, boy. Where the hell did the air go? Helplessly, I ran my eyes over his arms and chest, noting the way his muscle shirt clung to him, the gray darker in places. I didn’t know how anyone could find those muscly bodybuilders with their veins popping out all over the place attractive when a man like Ty was built by hard labor. The muscle shirt made his tattoos stand out, revealing ones I didn’t know he had. Across his chest, he had some guy with a sword mingled with a Celtic cross and some kind of nautical thing with the names of his mom, dad, and siblings. I tried not to swoon. Who didn’t love a man who loved his family so much, especially his younger half-siblings, that he’d get their names tattooed on his body proudly proclaiming them as his?

​And you wouldn’t mind another name, or rather, two, added there, a voice whispered in my head.

​“What?!” Wade looked wide-eyed down at the floor. “I can’t waste a single morsel!”

​“It’s okay. I have to give this place a good sweep later today anyway,” I assured Ty.

When he moved further into the room, I decided I needed to be back behind the island with the makeshift countertop he’d put on for me between us. My hands trembled as I picked up the knife, returning to cutting the apples for the first apple pie of the season. “There’s lemonade in the fridge, if you guys want some.”

​I tried to focus on cutting, but when Ty grabbed a sandwich, one of the prosciutto ones, his white teeth sinking into it…my neck itched, wanting to know what it would feel like to have them scrape my tender skin. Would he scrape his teeth along my neck or bite down? Not hard enough to hurt, of course. I wasn’t into sadism. But enough for a little sting, to leave a mark, maybe? My thighs clenched, and I took a deep breath, willing the pulsing between them to settle down.

​Then Ty had to go and moan. I swear I felt the vibrations right on my clit.

“This is the best sandwich I’ve ever had,” he praised me, and I nearly cut my finger off.

Looking up, I found him watching me while he chewed. Red Bull drinking butterflies decided to batter my insides. “Thanks, but they’re nothing.”

Wade scoffed, opening the fridge in search of the lemonade.