so he beelined for the living room and quickly put the container in the corner of the sectional and covered it with some pillows.
Before John could enter the room, Lukas was on the other side, grinning innocently, hands clasped behind his back.
Storming in, John ran his eyes over Lukas, then grunted and looked around the rest of the room. “I can’t believe you did that.”
With a laugh and a wink, Lukas practically skipped over to where John stood frozen in the doorway, eyes still searching for the container. He placed a hand on John’s midsection, touch as light as a butterfly and just as quick to move on. Heading back to the kitchen, he called back, “Do you have any rice?”
John stood frozen in his living room, eyes on the obvious pile of pillows and skin tingling where Lukas had brushed his hand on the way past.
What the fuck is happening?
Lukas was Dave’s son, and John had been best friends with Dave for nearly fifteen years. He’d taken John under his wing when John was struggling to find work and had been the one to encourage him to become a plumber and then to start his own business. He’d been there for John in every way imaginable—personal and work related. Hell, he got John drunk the night Heather served him their divorce papers.
So why was he thinking about how bright Lukas’s eyes were when he teased John? Or how, even though his body tended toward lean, he had nice shoulders and muscle definition in his arms and abs, and his ass was absolutely luscious?
John had never looked at another man’s ass and thought of it as bitable, so why the fuck was he thinking such things about his friend’s son? For Christ’s sake, his dick was twitching to life just remembering how Lukas’s ass had looked as he’d run from the kitchen.
He glared down at his crotch in annoyance.
“John? Rice?”
He turned toward the doorway but still didn’t head back to the kitchen. God, even Lukas’s voice was doing something to him. It was deeper than you’d expect, given Lukas’s sweet face and affinity for a little bit of makeup when he was feeling particularly happy or celebrating something.
Lukas’s smiling face appeared in the doorway, but a frown quickly formed between his brows. “What’s wrong?” His eyes dropped, and he appeared more fully in the opening, a blush rising to his perfect cheekbones. “Do you, uh, want me to leave? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to barge—”
“No,” he cut in, not quite sure why he wasn’t taking the out. All he knew was that he couldn’t stand the sad look on Lukas’s face. “No, I want you to stay.”
Large, sapphire eyes shining, Lukas grinned. “Okay, cool. Um, rice?”
“Right.” He nodded, promising himself he’d figure out what was going on with his dick later, and started toward the kitchen. “Let’s see.”
Turned out he didn’t have rice, but Lukas wasn’t deterred. John sat on the other side of his kitchen island and watched in a state of fluctuating arousal, mixed with awe, as Lukas threw together a meal out of the combination of things John had purchased himself or Lukas’s mom, Lydia, had dropped off the other day. She’d done that about twice a month since his divorce, telling him how worried she was about what he was eating when she wasn’t around and that he should be dating more so he could find someone to take care of him.
After the way his marriage had crashed and burned, John wasn’t really interested in doing that again, so he just smiled and nodded as he thanked her for the food. He used to have to throw things away as they went bad because he didn’t know how to use them, feeling terrible for wasting so much. The last couple of years, though, he’d been able to give away some of the food to a family down the street that never had enough of anything.
He’d given up telling her she didn’t need to bring the stuff ages ago—it wasn’t worth getting his ass chewed by Dave when Lydia went home with hurt feelings.
As Lukas cooked, he chatted easily, mostly about what he was doing—like there was any chance in hell John would be able to replicate it—but also about stories from his job at the vet clinic. John remembered how excited Lukas had been when he’d gotten the job offer right after graduating. Lukas had told him once that the place was special, and he