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“You can cook?” His face was twisted into a look that clearly conveyed his skepticism.
“Enough to get by. This isn’t anything fancy. Some chicken in the oven and pasta with olive oil and garlic.”
“Better than anything I can make.”
“Cooking isn’t that hard.”
Cal frowned. “It’s lots of tedious work and a bunch of steps, and I get bored.”
I wasn’t sure what it meant that the first thought that popped into my head wasn’t some snarky comment about how he had the attention span of a gnat or something similar, but over the last few days, it felt like things had mellowed between us. Even so, the words that came out of my mouth shocked us both. “Find simple things to cook like this. I can teach you.”
My words hung in the air like the scent of cooking garlic, and neither of us said anything. An offer like that meant that I thought there would be a reason for us to spend more time together, but the reality of the situation was after this op whenReuben and I had the answers we needed, I wouldn’t see Cal again. He’d quit working for Alex, which was a good thing, not only because I thought Alex was the textbook definition of a douche canoe but because there was a leak in his organization he didn’t seem interested in plugging, and sooner or later, it was going to get someone killed. Cal had already been close a couple of times. But now that Cal was working with his brothers and the new ORCA organization they were creating, he wouldn’t be at risk unless he put himself there, and the only way I would know about it would be if I continued to follow him around, watching from afar.
Which I couldn’t do.
When this was over, I needed to take jobs that actually paid me. Not that I needed the money. Reuben had seen to that, but still. I couldn’t sit at home all day twiddling my thumbs, and as good a hacker as I was, I barely touched Felix’s or even Cal’s brother Julius’s skills. Besides, I wouldn’t be happy stuck behind a computer screen.
Maybe I could talk to Nero. Maybe ORCA needed a great white shark shifter with a specific skill set. But that would mean working with Cal, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for that.
“Jack.” Cal’s voice pulled me out of my spiral of what-ifs and whenevers, his tone making it clear he’d tried to get my attention a few times. “Is it supposed to be doing that?” He pointed at the pan where the slivers of garlic I’d been frying were jumping around in the pan, a few a little too brown around the edges.
“Shit.” I turned down the heat and stirred the garlic, then peeked in on the chicken.
“Do you want to eat before we look at surveillance footage, or do you want to do it now?”
“Food’s almost ready, so let’s wait.” Pulling open the box of pasta, I dropped the spaghetti into the water and set a timer on my watch. “Do you want a beer?”
“Hell yes. No offense to the Italians, but I’m over wine for a while.”
“You could have had beer in Italy.”
“So you could tell me I had no class. Yeah, right.”
“I don’t think that.”
His eyebrow rose. “Who are you, and what have you done with Jack Grayson?”
I flipped him off as I opened the fridge and pulled out two beers, passing one to Cal. The bottles had flip-top caps, and Cal cracked the seal and downed a healthy swig. My eyes were glued to the way his Adam’s apple bobbed along his throat, the cords of muscle in his neck standing out as he knocked back the drink. If someone would have asked me twenty minutes before if I found a guy’s neck attractive, I would have shrugged and said I’d never noticed, but I did notice the long lines of Cal’s neck, and my gaze fell to his saddle patch. My eyes raked over the darker skin, hungrily taking in every slight variation in shade and the way the edges blurred until they faded into the natural bronze of the rest of his skin. There was a swirl at the edge of the patch that held my attention, and my mouth watered wanting to taste the salt of Cal’s skin and trace the pattern on his skin with my tongue. I couldn’t look away. It was like there was something significant I was supposed to know about that patch of darker flesh, but the knowledge was just outside my reach. In the tank top he’d changed into, I could see almost the whole thing, and I wanted to bite it, to mark Cal as my own, my shark pushing forward so hard my teeth started to sharpen. Cal was mine.
Mine.
A possessive growl built in my chest as I stared at him, but through sheer force of will, I swallowed it down. I was going to have to deal with the irrepressible urge I had to claim Cal eventually, but I didn’t know how. We probably needed to have a conversation, but I couldn’t see him taking it too well if I justblurted out, “Hey, Cal, uh, my heart, brain, and body seem to think you’re my mate, and I’d like to bite you now.” I could picture his reaction. Hell, he’d probably shoot me on the spot. I knew he had his favorite gun in a travel lockbox in his bag.
Cal wiped his hand across his mouth, and for a second, I thought I’d managed to look away without him catching me ogling his sexy neck, but when his eyes met mine, there was a question there I didn’t know how to answer.
So I opted for something I figured was mundane. “Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention when we fucked around in the past, but I don’t remember that swirl in your saddle patch.” I pointed to where the edge of his saddle patch was visible around the ribbed fabric of his shirt. “Has it always been there?”
In a split second, Cal’s expression shuttered, and I knew I’d said the absolute wrong thing. I just wasn’t sure why. His hand came up to cover the skin in question, and the single word he gave me in reply seemed to carry immeasurable weight. “No.”
The timer on my watch went off, giving me a much-needed escape from whatever the hell had just happened, and I put the finishing touches on dinner while Cal alternated between scowling at his beer bottle and drinking from it. When he finished the first, he tossed the bottle into the trash and went to the fridge.
“Want another one?” He held up the bottle.
“No.” I shook my head. “I’m good.” Setting plates I’d found in the cupboard on the counter next to the stove, I gestured at the food. “Help yourself.”
Cal set his beer down on the farmhouse-style table and walked around the island to fill his plate. When I’d gotten my own dinner, I joined him at the table, leaving my laptop on the island.
Once again, the silence that had fallen between us felt oppressive, and again it seemed like it was somehow my fault.
