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Okay, that wasn’t true. If some random person walked in and wanted to snuggle, he’d at least think twice about it first. And then say no. Saying no straightaway would have been rude, and he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. But Jericho was… Will didn’t know. Something. They all felt it.
He carefully got out of the bed, sneaking so that he didn’t wake anyone. Peyton had better situational awareness than that, but thankfully, Will slipped under his radar. Had for years. That made him warm and happy inside.
He padded down the stairs, holding the banister so he didn’t slip.
No one was in the hallway or the bathroom, though the overhead light was on, dimmed down to a warm softness that didn’t hurt his eyes or require adjustment from the dark.
That hadn’t been on when they’d gone to bed.
He stifled a yawn as he made his way through to the living room. He had to go through there to get to the kitchen. It was a weird setup. If it had been Will’s house, he would have knocked out a wall between the hallway and the kitchen so that there were two open entrances to the most important room in the house.
Jericho was in the living room, his back to Will, one hand holding the curtain open enough to peek through as he watched the street outside.
“What are you doing?” Will asked.
Jericho glanced at him, not startling. Will bet that he’d been aware of him from the moment that he’d stepped out of the bedroom. Once out of earshot of his sleeping men, he hadn’t been stealthy.
“Do you know how exposed this place is?” Jericho asked.
The question didn’tsoundrhetorical, but Will wasn’t going to answer it and add pressure to that particular nerve. “You need to relax,” he said instead.
“Go back to bed.”
“Have you slept yet?” Will asked, doubting it. He was a strange juxtaposition of calm and tense, switching to either in a split second. That level of control over his emotions was admirable. Will had never been very good at hiding like that.
“I had a nap.”
Which was not the same thing as sleep but a sneaky way to bypass the question. Jericho was good at that, Will was noticing. Misdirection. Sebastian was also good at it. Figures that they’d be drawn to someone else that was just like their lawyer.
Jericho tensed when a car drove past. It wasn’t a busy street since it was all private houses along a shared beach. Was Jericho just… watching every car that went past? How long had he been up? Had he even gone to bed after they’d all gone to shower? What did nap even mean? Maybe he could do it standing up. Will had witnessed Peyton sleep in some places that it honestly shouldn’t be possible for a person to fall asleep. Peyton said it was a military thing. Was Jericho ex-military? Or just someone that had that particular weird talent? It took all sorts.
“Do you… want to put the TV on?” Will asked.
“No.”
Will scratched his chest absently as he navigated around the furniture, moving closer to the open archway that had a single step leading to the kitchen. “Hungry?”
Jericho checked him out, a slow up-and-down perusal. A flush moved down Will’s chest. “Depends what’s on offer.”
“What do you want?” Will thought about what ingredients he’d seen when he’d been scrounging up something for dinner. “I can make pancakes? They’re a great ‘always’ food.”
Jericho blinked. “Pancakes?”
“Yes. They’re like… flour, egg, milk, sugar—Peyton doesn’t like his with sugar, but we don’t listen to people that are wrong. It’s a breakfast food? You don’t know what a pancake is?”
“I know what a pancake is.”
What had he asked for, then? Seemed like an odd question to ask. Maybe he wascurrentlynapping and had the ability to communicate but only within certain parameters. That would be kind of cool. “Well… you want some?”
“I wasn’t talking about food, William.”
“Oh.”Oh.Right. Of course. It was like stupid o’clock. It made more sense to want sex than pancakes. For some people. Now he wanted pancakes.
“Or perhaps…” Jericho trailed off, his lips curling into a sly smile. “A type of food.”
“I—what?” His brain had short-circuited somewhere.
“You don’t consider yourself food, William?”
