“I’m sorry that didn’t go as planned,” Bull murmured, cupping both of his cheeks as he leaned down and brushed a tender kiss over his lips. “We’ll have to try again soon.”
Fox opened his mouth and encouraged Bull to go deeper. He wrapped his arms tightly around Bull’s waist and melted into him, moaning into their breathing space.
“Last night,” Bull sighed, “was—”
“Hot.” Fox smirked.
“I was gonna say special.”
Fox sobered at that word as he watched a variety of emotions pooling in Bull’s sweet brown eyes like honey. “Yeah,” he breathed. “It was that too.”
Bull’s rough hands covered his jaws while his thumb made lazy circles along his bottom lip. Fox flicked his tongue out and caressed the calloused pad before sucking it into his mouth. He wanted to go down on his knees, and he saw in Bull’s searing gaze that he wanted that too. But…
“I better get going before Dale barges back in here.”
“Okay,” Fox said, trying not to sound like he was whining.
“Are you gonna come out and talk to the reporter?”
“Hell no.” Fox recoiled. “Tell them I’m at the office. Reporters and I don’t get along. They end up twisting my words or trying to trip me up into saying something specific, then I end up taking their recorder and trying to shove it up their ass.”
Bull laughed, his broad smile brighter than the daylight. “Then yeah. Stay out of sight.”
“Besides.” Fox licked his lips. “I got one more bad guy to catch for you.”
They kissed again, getting lost. Fox admitted that he enjoyed this part of a new relationship the most. The dating honeymoon period. Where everything they did was fresh and exciting and felt exponentially good after their long drought. But life had a unique, consistent way of ripping any goodness away from him.
“Hi, Amelia. What are you up to your elbows in?” Fox asked, coming into the kitchen. He’d taken a long, hot shower after he’d darted across the lawn and into the back door to avoid the swarm, then got right to work. Dale hadn’t been exaggerating. Half the town’s mothers and wives were out there to see who the new badass in town was.
“Just making some turkey sandwiches for the staff.” She smiled, then nodded towards the window. “They’ve been so busy I know none of them had a chance to have lunch. I can’t believe how packed it is out there. Bigger than when we had the summer carnival. It must be that new ad Marcy put in the paper last week.”
“Must be.” Fox smiled around his mug of coffee. If only she knew what he’d done last night. And yet he still wasn’t done. He wasn’t just going after Newt but the entire Thompson family. Free had pointed him in a good direction, and he’d been lost in researching them all day.
“Bull hasn’t taken a break either,” Amelia added, quickly cutting her eyes to him, then back to her work.
Fox frowned. “He didn’t come back and eat anything?”
“No!” Walker yelled from his recliner in the living room where he was watching the action through his bay window. “I don’t even think he’s had a drink of water, and it’s going on one o’clock. That damn boy.”
“I got it, Walker,” Fox said and went to the refrigerator to get some more fixings to make Bull a proper sandwich.
He stood beside Amelia while she worked her own assembly line, and if she didn’t think he saw her eyes dancing as he made Bull a lunch, she was wrong.
“He likes extra mustard, the spicy kind, no mayo,” she whispered, not glancing in his direction.
Fox promptly recapped the Miracle Whip and squirted more of the habanero mustard between the layers of ham, salami, and turkey. Once he was finished, he had a hoagie fit for a Super Bowl game, with two apples, a bag of chips, and a large thermos of black coffee. Amelia wrapped the sandwich for him and placed it in a small lunch tote with his other items and two bottles of water.
“Oh wait. Put these in there too.” Fox tossed about ten of Amelia’s famous oatmeal raisin cookies into a Ziploc bag, then dropped it inside. “Now he’s set. I’ll take this to him and make sure he eats it too.”
Amelia stood there grinning until Fox felt heat touch his cheeks. He rolled his eyes instead of acknowledging anything. “Will you stop it?”
“I will not,” she teased, clasping her hands in front of her. “It’s your own personal bento box made especially for your sweetheart.”
“Oh my god. You guys are all such saps,” Fox grumbled. “And my ingredients are a little off for a bento.”
She giggled some more before it tapered off slowly. “It’s just… we’ve been waiting on him to be happy for so long.”
We’ve both been waiting to be happy. Fox was scared to say anything out loud and jinx what he and Bull had just started, but he could already tell this time around was going to be different. He touched her gently on her shoulder, then nodded because that was the best he could do.