sighed and reached up to his ear and took out his com, then held his hand out for Grace’s.
Without a thought, Grace took out the bud in his ear and dropped it in Hunter’s palm.
Removing the buds deactivated them. Hunter walked into the bathroom and came back with two nice tissues. He wrapped each bud in a tissue and put one on top of the clock. “Yours,” he directed—and one next to it. “Mine. Now I’m taking off my duster and my boots, and that’s all. You can take off your shoes and your hoodie—”
“No.” Grace clutched Hunter’s hoodie to his chest with tight fingers. “You gave it to me.”
Hunter raised his eyebrows but nodded. “Fair enough. Now I’m going to sit on this bed, and you’re going to lay your head on my chest, and we’re going to talk about stupid stuff for about half an hour before I leave and let you sleep. Do you understand?”
Grace let out a breath. Well, the instructions couldn’t be clearer.
“Why no sex?” he asked suspiciously.
“Because sex is easy for you,” Hunter told him sharply. “And I don’t want to be forgotten.”
Grace swallowed and tried to remember the last guy he’d been with.
No dice. A cock, a touch, the back room of a club—forgotten before the jizz had been tossed into a trash can.
Well, his first real lover had been the guy to stick the needle in his arm, so there were worse things.
“Fine,” he muttered, feeling out of sorts. Off-balance. “It’s your time.”
“That’s sweet,” Hunter said dryly, laying his duster on the office chair and then sitting down to unlace his boots.
“I’m not, you know.” God. Honesty. Grace was a great thief, but being subtle and silent was not his thing.
“Not what?” Hunter set one boot aside and went to work on the other. Grace peered curiously over the edge of the bed and saw black cotton socks, high-end. The socks of a guy who spent a lot of time on his feet and needed to think about comfort.
The boots were worn enough to be comfortable, new enough to take some damage.
Everything about this man was practical and no-bullshit. What in the fuck was he doing in Grace’s hotel room?
“Sweet,” Grace said, feeling helpless and trying to take charge of this situation. “I’m not sweet. I’m an asshole. Drop lovers like Kleenex—”
“They’re not lovers if you drop them like Kleenex,” Hunter argued. “They’re flesh-covered dildos, and I’m not one of them, so knock it off.” With a grunt and a heave, he pushed himself backward on the bed, stretching out with his head on one pillow. Imperiously, he stretched out his arm and glared at Grace until Grace made himself comfortable, his head on Hunter’s shoulder, body fitted neatly alongside.
He took a deep, experimental breath and tried to decide if he liked this or no—
“Are you purring?” Hunter asked, breaking into his thoughts.
“No,” Grace lied. Oh wow. This—this feeling here. This was amazing. His body started doing things Grace hadn’t given it permission to do, namely burrow deeper into Hunter’s amazing heat. Hunter dropped his arm and used it to roll Grace over so he was sprawled partially on top of Hunter’s lean, well-muscled body, and then he wrapped that arm around Grace’s shoulders, holding him tighter.
“You okay?” Hunter asked.
“Sure. Fine. Don’t move, all right?”
Another move, this one putting Hunter on his side and Grace fully in his embrace.
“Now we’re good,” Hunter whispered, dropping a kiss on the top of Grace’s head. “This is fine. You stay right here.”
“I’m not sweet,” Grace said again, perilously near tears. His feet throbbed, and his adrenaline was letting down, and while that could have accounted for some of the excess… whatever this was, that damned honesty wouldn’t let him use it as an excuse. “Why are we doing this?”
“Because,” Hunter said softly. “Because I was going to wait for you to grow up a little, figure out what you wanted, before I approached you.”
“I was getting there,” Grace sniffed.
“Yeah?”
“Haven’t gotten laid in three months. You think that’s normal?”
“I’m honored,” Hunter said, and he sounded half-amused, half-sincere, but Grace wasn’t giving up this place where he could smell Hunter’s chest to study his face and find out.
“What changed?” That was what Grace really wanted to know.
“You, running away from a man with a gun,” Hunter told him, and his arm tightened convulsively. “We like to pretend that what we do isn’t dangerous. I think we’re all thrill junkies in one way or another. But—” He took