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“I’m into you,” he repeated. He lowered his head to kiss her, gentle and brief and at odds with the desire vibrating between them. “If you ever need a reminder, let me know.”
Before Kat could disentangle her hands from her robe, he released her. The upstairs shower cut off. She watched him grab a clean mug and fill it from the coffee carafe. In those few seconds, she managed to compose herself. The question of other women still niggled but she was reluctant to broach the subject. Their arrangement as three was new enough without seriously raising the question of whether Hunter would ever want their arrangement to extend itself to four. Asking now likely wouldn’t yield a meaningful discussion, anyway. Liam had proven to her that desires have tremendous capacity for change. If Hunter ever wanted a fourth—a woman—well...she’d deal with that in the moment. This moment was enough in itself without borrowing trouble.
Well. Without borrowing more trouble. Bracing herself for a fight, Kat hit him with a new challenge. “Liam and I have plans to meet a few friends later. Adele, her husband, a couple others.”
The muscles in Hunter’s back tightened before she finished speaking. He replaced the carafe with a very obvious measure of calm, which carried over into his tone. “No problem. Just let me know when you need me to clear out.”
“I don’t ever need you to ‘clear out’. You’re welcome here 24/7. I’ll give you one of our spare keys. I—”
“Kat.” He turned to face her but didn’t say anything else.
She frowned at his shuttered expression and stomped on her uncharacteristic neediness before it scared him away. “Well, dinner. I didn’t tell you in order to give you an eviction notice. Will you join us? You know Adele and her husband. It’ll be us and them, Adele’s brother, and his partner.”
“Partner? Michael’s gay?” Hunter didn’t wait for an answer. He shook his head. “I can’t stay. I’m back on duty tomorrow morning so I have to head back to D.C. tonight.”
Kat pressed her lips together and watched him without saying anything. She wasn’t about to kick their relationship off by letting him off the hook every time he referenced the Marines. Hunter looked away from her and narrowed his eyes at the window above the kitchen sink. She could read his thought process in his flexing jaw. The urge to rescue him stirred behind her breastbone but she suppressed it. This was a hook he’d just have to dangle from.
Hunter was still glaring at their small backyard when Liam came downstairs and joined them a minute later.
“Morning.” Liam stopped behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. He pulled her back against his chest, comfortable with his affection. Kat turned her face up for a kiss. Liam generously complied. His warm, minty mouth and roaming hands distracted her from Hunter’s internal argument until he broke the kiss and angled his head toward their stone-faced lover. Problem? Liam mouthed.
She shrugged and silently answered. Ask him.
Brow furrowed, he shook his head, squeezed her butt and headed for the coffee. “It smells amazing down here. Hunter, you’re in for a culinary treat.”
“Cinnamon rolls need a few more minutes. I’m going to go up and get dressed if you’ll pull them out when the timer goes off.” She glanced at Hunter, who was now watching them instead of staring out the window. “Let me know what you decide about dinner.”
Hunter rolled his shoulders, an action that did interesting things to his pecs. “If we’re going to be seen together in public, we need some rules.”
Liam set his coffee on the counter and folded his arms across his chest. Even though he had a different, slimmer build than Hunter possessed, he cut a tempting image of his own. “Well, neither Kat nor I have any restrictions so rule-setting is going to be your show. Let’s hear them.”
“Fine. When we’re in public, you refer to me as a friend and we don’t touch each other.”
Kat was shaking her head before he even finished speaking. “I can’t promise not to touch you. I’m a touchy person. I even touch Adele.”
“I think we can agree to no overt PDAs,” Liam said. “But Kat’s right. If you’re going to get bent up over casual touches, we should avoid public situations completely.”
Hunter’s jaw worked. “No hand-holding, no touching below the waist. Nothing that will make a casual observer wonder about the nature of our relationship.”
Liam’s features relaxed. “That seems reasonable. Kat?”
She didn’t want to agree—wanted to spend all her time making up for the years they’d lost—but Hunter wasn’t making draconian demands. Even though he stood there with his rigid posture and shuttered eyes, his PDA limits were reasonable. They weren’t anything new, either. He’d never been the touchy type in public, not even when their peers had gone through an odd kissy-cuddly phase in high school. While the guys pretended to French kiss and the girls sat on each other’s laps at lunch, Hunter had remained aloof.
With a sigh, she nodded. “Fine. But I want a protection clause for this rule. For all rules, if we’re going to have a relationship that includes them.”
Both men glanced at each other with different degrees of wariness.
Kat rolled her eyes and continued without waiting for them to ask. “Rules come with consequences. That’s just the nature of rules. Break one, there’s a consequence. I want your assurance—both of you—that the consequence of a broken rule isn’t a broken relationship. And if either of you have a hard limit that would result in an immediate end, you need to say so up front. I’m not going to live my life tiptoeing around in fear of accidentally tripping the ‘game over’ button.”
/> She watched Hunter, figuring he would have a whole list of lines they weren’t allowed to cross, but he didn’t say anything. Liam’s voice surprised her.
“You just issued a tall order, K-K. Do you need a list of limits right now or can we all take a few days to think?”
The thought that her relationship with Liam might have a breaking point was unsettling. Even as emotion rolled through her, she logically acknowledged that she shouldn’t be surprised. Ten years of marriage hadn’t prepared her for the things she’d learned about him the night before. If Liam had kept details to himself of Hunter’s interest in her, and his own interest in turning their traditional relationship into a trio, he probably had other undisclosed layers. She’d meant to toss the ball into Hunter’s court. Having it served back to her caught her off guard.
“Liam’s right,” Hunter said. “And so are you. We all deserve to know where the landmines are planted so we know how to approach them. Let’s take a week.”
“A week.” Kat looked between them. “That puts us at New Year’s Day for our first relationship meeting.”
