was a towel around my hips and he was practically straddling me as I sat on the edge of our bed, he couldn’t help but notice. “Tell me you’re not getting turned on because this hurts. I don’t think I’m ready for that kind of adventure with you. With your luck, I’d end up tied to the bed with you passed out on top of me wearing only a Batman mask because you thought it would be sexy to leap across the room and you hit your head on the dresser or something.”
“It sounds like you’ve thought that through,” I mumbled, shifting the towel so it sat more comfortably across my lap. “Batman? Really?”
“The way you’re going, it’s going to be Deadpool,” he remarked sarcastically. “I’m surprised you didn’t come home with more toys from that shop. You like those kinds of things.”
“I like the shows and books, but I don’t want a lot of stuff cluttering up my life.” It was a habit mostly, years spent being yanked out of military housing and shuffled around to the next stop on my father’s Tour of American Bases. Moving often was easier if you didn’t have a lot to pack, and my stepmom, Barbara, was strict about Mike and me fitting our things into only two boxes with a suitcase for our clothes. “I got that Godzilla for you the last time I was there.”
“You have five Chicago Cubs jerseys and four signed baseballs.” Jae snorted, smearing something on one of the deeper cuts. It stung, but I held off any sign of pain by biting my lip.
“That’s different.” I winced when he smoothed the lotion into the crevices of the cut, mostly because the sting prickled and grew when he moved it around. “It’s the Cubs.”
“Remember that when you’re throwing things at the TV.” He studied my face, turning me with a firm hold on my chin. “Some of these really didn’t need bandages. Was the EMT gay?”
“I don’t think so.” Maybe that was the wrong answer, because the butterfly bandage he put on stung nearly as much as whatever it was he’d smeared on me. “I didn’t notice. Married to you, remember?”
I went for romantic, snagging his hand, and kissed the ring I’d put on his finger during a ceremony that seemed to go on longer than a double-header. All I got in return was a withering look and a disgusted snort, followed by another smear of pain gel across my forehead.
“Sit still,” he ordered sternly, but there was a twinkle in his gold-flecked brown eyes. “You’re moving around too much.”
“There’s ways of making me stay still.” I wiggled my eyebrows at him, pulling a sweet smile out of his mock frown.
Laughing softly, Jae straddled my lap, pinning my thighs to the bed and sliding the V of his legs across my groin. The towel was trying very hard to contain me, but it was a lost cause. A low growl thrumming through Jae’s throat cautioned me to keep my hands planted on the mattress when I tried to slide them up his hips, but it was difficult to concentrate on staying still, especially since the wet towel was bunched up against my abdomen and his heat spread across my damp skin.
“This is not helping me stay still,” I cautioned, steeling myself not to groan when Jae shifted on my lap, allegedly to reach a small slice on the other side of my forehead. “Babe, a man can only be so strong.”
“You’ve had worse,” he murmured, kissing the cut briefly. “I have faith you’re man enough to hold on while I finish taking care of you.”
He was good at testing my limits. He should be. Jae’s been testing them for years now, and I’m not too proud to admit I buckled every time.
I’d fallen for him practically from the moment I first saw him. It wasn’t love then—maybe fascination with a heavy dose of lust—but he’d intrigued me. That day he’d been another grieving relative in a house full of pain and sorrow, but then something happened between us in the kitchen as he chopped up vegetables. In the middle of all of that death and a tangled weave of lies I’d been caught in, Jae teased me about spaghetti.
It’d been unexpected and pretty much laid the path of our relationship from that moment on. He was complicated in ways I couldn’t begin to understand and possessed a simple philosophy on things I could only envy. I counted each