Page 60 of Summer Holiday Lifeline

Steven nuzzled him through his boxers. “Not if you tell me to stop.”

“I…”

Steven did stop, but only enough to look up at Myles. “You…?”

Myles stared at him. “You’re impossible.”

“Am I?”

Myles touched his mouth, right there at the corner where his smile broke off. “I’m not sure how to take you.”

Steven grinned as wide as his lopsided mouth would let him. “Who said you’d be doing the taking?”

That had Myles blinking and sputtering a bit, which was adorably out of character, and Steven loved it.

“You serious?” Myles asked at last.

Steven tilted his head. “Is that a deal-breaker?”

“Not… necessarily.”

“Well. Thankfully, you don’t have to decide right this second.” He patted Myles’s bare stomach, then swung off him to stand next to the sofa, a hand out. “Come on. Let’s go see to those books, shall we? They aren’t going to count themselves.”

“Wait, what?” Myles didn’t move. He blinked a few times as he lay there, staring up at Steven. The sight made Steven hungry for what he was offering, but at the same time, the hesitation implied by his questions made it clear that Myles wasn’t exactly certain of what he was offering. Or if he was quite ready to deliver.

Steven stroked the tips of his fingers through the growing-out crew cut of Myles’s hair, idly wondering if it would be straight once it got longer, or have some curl to it.

“Why are we stopping?” Myles asked, sitting up as he did and bringing Steven’s attention back to the moment.

“It occurs to me that if you have to ask if we are at this stage of our relationship, then perhaps we aren’t there yet.”

“I could get there.” But he was fastening his jeans as he said it.

“And we will.”

Myles sighed. “But we’re counting books first.”

“We are.”

Myles stared up at him, both hands braced on the edge of the sofa cushion.

“You aren’t used to this, are you?”

“To what?”

“Not being the one to call the shots.”

Myles shrugged. “It depends. I was never a commander in the army. Ozzy was always bossy, but not the same as you. He was bossy in a way that set my teeth on edge. I didn’t expect this kind of, um, directness? From you.”

“Why? Because I’m younger than you? Or smaller? Or not military?” He only listed off the most obvious reasons.

“All of the above, very stereotypical reasons?” He even rolled his eyes, as if he knew exactly what he’d just assumed and realized how ridiculous it sounded out loud.

“You know I’m not angling to be the boss of you, right?” It didn’t hurt to reassure him that if Steven liked to make him melt, it didn’t mean he had any desire to undermine Myles or control his actual life.

“I wouldn’t think so, no.”

“But if letting someone else do the heavy lifting once in a while takes a bit of the stress away—” He bent down to kiss Myles soundly. “—maybe that’s not such a bad trade off, eh?”