Chapter 6

"Hey, let me know what you think." Being back at work was probably the best thing for me, even if I wasn't listening to the chief all that closely. At home, all I could do was obsess nonstop about Will.

How his body felt like it was made to be close to me.

How something as simple as a kiss had my brain preoccupied as I replayed it over and over.

It had become my own personal go-to spank bank. Now that I knew what it felt like to have his tongue probe my mouth, I wanted to know what it would feel like on other spots. Would he blow me? Even better, would he let me blow him? Would he let me call him Daddy again and let me blow him? Was rimming on the table? Frotting?

After the best damn kiss of my entire life, he'd let me escape into my library. I'd appreciated it but hadn't known how to tell him that. So, as usual, I'd said nothing and just let him go home. He had looked like he wanted to say something, but I was pretty sure my face had said it all.

I just couldn't handle any more revelations. It was too much. I was a grown-ass man who ran out like a goddamn kid who didn't want to get caught smoking behind the gym or some shit. Even thinking about it made my hard cock push against the zipper of my uniform.

"Hey, Hagen, you listening?" My chief had been going over the plan to figure out who had been doing the break-ins. I had no idea what he'd said.

"Yeah, I am. You want Cam and me to figure out who's stealing shit." The chief's side eye could melt paint, but that was his permanent expression, so I wasn't too worried. He was getting a lot of shit from the town council, and it made me so fucking glad I wasn't anything close to a politician.

Our station was on the edge of the downtown area known for its brick Victorian-style buildings. Our open windows at the front made me feel a little like we were in a fishbowl. We had private rooms in the back, but the city liked to put eyes on us when we were working in the office.

My desk faced another bank of windows that overlooked the harbor and ferry landing. On lucky days, a pod of orcas moved through the channel, but usually, cruise ships and freighters passed through on their way to somewhere not here.

I loved my job and my home, but damn, it would be nice to see something else. To see it with Will as my Daddy? Even fucking better. I knew he wasn't from here because my family had been here for generations, and I'd have known him growing up. Maybe traveling is how he ended up here? And maybe I needed to stop being a goddamned teenager mooning over my fucking neighbor and get my ass moving. Will was only temporary, and I wouldn't be seeing jack shit with him.

Our department hadn't been lucky enough to come across any breaks on the burglaries, but no more had been reported either. We were doing our usual patrols along the main drag and had added extra patrols in the more remote areas of the island. I still didn't know what the fuck Chief asked me about.

Sitting at that station wasn't doing anything to get Will off my mind, but maybe driving around checking out some of those remote areas would help. Cameron sat at his desk, actually listening to the chief. I caught his eye and jerked my head toward the door.

"Okay, Chief, Beckett and I will check around the north end this morning," Cam interjected.

Thank God, I could get out of there. Cameron and I headed out the back toward our squad car. I made a beeline for the driver's side because Cameron was a shit driver, and I didn't feel like being bounced all over the island.

Our ride was blessedly quiet for the first fifteen minutes of patrol. A few folks waved and Cameron reciprocated, but I was too focused on the road to worry about it. I hoped we could keep up the silence, but I knew I was living on borrowed time. The roads to the north of town were considerably more winding than those closer to the harbor.

It took a lot of concentration to navigate the narrow roads buffeted by the old-growth pines. They were so tall and dense in sections that the sun was almost completely blocked. It would be easy for someone to hide in the darkness and you wouldn't know until they were right up on them.

"So, how did it go with Will?" I guess my reprieve was over. Fuck. I heard the smirk in his voice, and I knew he was just biding his time to pounce.

How did it go with Will? I thought I would hate his being in my space, and it was the opposite. I didn't hate it in the least. And when we kissed, it'd been more than I had expected. It was more than I'd ever had. Will had seemed just as into it as me, and I was pretty sure he wasn't going along with it just to fulfill his babysitting obligations to Cameron.

"It was okay, I guess. Will's a nice guy." I could feel Cameron's eyes on me. He stared at me like I'd grown another head.

"What?"

"Umm, did you just say Will was a nice guy? You don't like anyone except me because I'm so fucking likable. Is your head still fucked up?" The laughter in Cameron's voice pissed me off. I wasn't that bad.

"You aren't that likable. Sorry that your mom lied to you. He's okay because he didn't get up in my business and ask me a bunch of fucking questions that weren't his fucking business. You should try it."

Cameron sat in the passenger seat, and if I looked over, I knew I'd see a stupid grin on his ugly face. Instead, I kept concentrating on the road. Since I didn't want to talk about Will and whether he was the only person I'd admitted to liking in recent memory, it was time to distract Cameron. His favorite subject, which surprisingly was not himself, always worked.

"How's Laken?" Cameron's sigh said it all. He stared straight ahead with his mouth in a grim line. The visit must not have gone well. It was probably the boyfriend's fault.

"He's still with a douchebag who was extra douchey with a side of asshole. Laken graduated with a master's in fine art and should be proud of it. He worked really fucking hard for it, and the asshole treated him like a dumb kid all weekend. Laken spent more time pacifying him than he did celebrating. God forbid Laken express anything that wasn't centered around him and whatever the fuck he does all day." Cameron lapsed into silence as we passed through the forest.

Over the next hour, we checked the back roads in silence. Most of the stops we made were spots where kids hung out, made out, and drank beer they'd swiped from their parents' fridge. It was nice to know that some things were a constant on the island and probably everywhere else. The best we could tell, none of these stops had anything that looked related to home burglaries. Cam mostly texted between stops but never mentioned who it was.

"We aren't finding anything out here. Let's head back to town and grab some lunch. Jonas and the others are going to meet us." Mystery solved on who he'd been texting for the last fifteen minutes. For his sake, I had hoped it was Laken.

"So Will isn't so bad, huh?" Cameron and the cousins surrounded me at the table, and I was trapped in hell. I should have made up an excuse to go back to the station, but I didn't, and now I was stuck.

"He's all right. It was nice of him to do Cameron a favor." He was more than nice. He was amazing. Sexy. Hot as fuck. My cousins grinned at each other. They reminded me of sharks in the water waiting for the chum to drop.

Jonas sat across from Cameron. He had his own landscaping company, so him being available for lunch was a surprise. On his one side was Cap. He was a little older than the rest of us and didn't participate in the younger cousin bullshit quite as much. On the far side was Elliot. We were some kind of relative, but no one was ever quite sure how, so we just left it at cousin. He waited tables over at the fancy dinner place on the other end of downtown from the police station. Now, all four of them stared me down.

Jonas decided to shoot his shot first. I knew they meant well, but their badgering felt like an attack, even when done with some approximation of love. "You want us to believe you spent a weekend holed up with Hottie McHotterson, and you did nothing? Either you are lying, or your game is worse than I thought."

A part of me wanted to tell them because, I mean, damn, Will was fucking hot, but none of this was their business. They wouldn't believe me anyway. One amazing make-out session didn't mean we were in a relationship or headed toward one. We wouldn't be anyway because that was a ground rule I made.

Shit, I didn't even know if Will actually liked me or was just bored and horny. He'd seemed into it, but if you were bored enough, you could get into plenty of things. And even if he was into it, I was sure he didn't want his business splashed all over town and gossiped about by my nosy family, who needed to mind their own damn business.

"Look, assholes, Will went above and beyond in the neighbor department. There's nothing to tell."

Fuck me, this lunch was a mistake. All I wanted to do was get back on shift and keep looking for the burglary folks. All they wanted was to bust my balls about Will.

"Remember when Beck was in junior high, and he had a crush on that dude who was all into science? Heh, he wouldn't talk to him either and just followed him around pretending not to see him."

"That was twenty years ago. And I don't have a crush on anyone."

I absolutely had a crush on someone.

"You should ask him out on a real date as a thank you for helping you." Elliot was as nosy as the rest of them but pretty nice. He had terrible ideas about what I should do, but that wasn't his fault because he didn't know about our deal.

Just because Will and I were almost friends with benefits didn't mean we couldn't hang out. I could ask him to do that as almost friends. But what if he said yes, figured out he didn't actually like me, and then we were stuck living next door to each other until one of us died or he moved.

"Okay, so if Beck won't ask out Will, the hot-as-hell neighbor, then who can he ask out? If he had a date once a decade…" Just as I finished lowering my hand from giving Elliot the finger, I saw the door to the diner open. And just like that, Will was at the host stand.

From my vantage point by the front window, I had a clear view of him as he waited. It must have been his lunch break because he wore office-casual clothing. I wasn't a creeper stalker. I just sometimes saw him coming and going from work. His dress pants looked like they had the best job in the world of hugging that perfect bubble of an ass. His button-down shirt was open at the collar, and I saw a hint of his collarbone. It was so damn suckable. I wanted to start there and see where else I could find to put my tongue. His long sleeves were folded up, and his sinewy forearms had a light dusting of hair. Until this very moment, I wasn't aware I had a forearm kink, but it was unlocked now.

I was certain the last thing Will wanted was to see me out in the wild before we hashed out how much that make-out session didn't matter and was just a one-off thing. There was zero chance of a repeat, especially since I practically kicked him out of the house. He was probably hoping he wouldn't run into me anywhere in town for the foreseeable future. That Daddy thing was nothing more than a bullshit fever dream.

It was pretty hard with my oversized frame, but I gave my best shot of disappearing by slouching in my chair. The guys had moved on to family gossip. Great Aunt Jayne's latest fiancé after four failed marriages was riveting stuff, especially since he was twenty years her junior. That seventy-year-old man was probably after her collection of teapots and afghans she'd assured us would be worth something one day.

The gossip occupied them enough that I was pretty sure no one noticed Will come in or that I couldn't stop staring. Will said hello to the host and then motioned to the counter toward the back of the café. She grabbed a menu and gestured for him to follow.

Will's eyes widened when he saw me hunched down at the table. What I didn't expect was the smile that broke out immediately. It was impossible not to return his grin. Will's smile was an entire burst of sunshine, blasting away the chill that always seemed to fill my chest.

His blue eyes crinkled in the corners and faint lines framed the mouth I'd dreamed about kissing again. Will made me warm from the inside out. Full stop. I couldn't force myself to ignore his pull, even when I knew the table would give me so much shit about it.

Cameron's smile turned sly when he noticed who had captured my attention.

"Hey, Will, come join us," Cameron called out. Will's smile was a bit wider as he ambled over to our table. I wasn't sure where they would squeeze him in and didn't want to put myself next to him if he wanted some space from me. Will reached the table, grabbed an extra chair from the one next to us, and immediately forced his way into the tiny space beside me.

"How's it going? Is your head giving you any trouble?" Will asked once he'd sat and pulled up to the table. His voice was low enough that the others couldn't hear him but close enough to me that his breath brushed over the shell of my ear. I couldn't control the shiver that shook my body. This calm, confident man did something to me I couldn't explain in words. It was like my body recognized him.

"I'm fine. The doctor cleared me and I'm back on patrol. My head is pretty thick," I answered in a low voice that matched Will's. His mouth quirked into a grin, and he scrubbed his hand over his mouth to stop the laugh at my honestly unintended joke. Seriously, this man did something inexplicable to me. I never joke. Like ever.

Naturally, our tablemates couldn't let the moment stay between Will and me. I had hoped they'd forgotten about us, but it was a pipe dream. They weren't going to miss such a perfect opportunity to stir the shit.

"Hey, Will, how much did you charge Beckett for babysitting?" Cameron asked as if he wasn't the one who'd arranged said babysitting. "You should make him repay you in cinnamon rolls. They're his favorite." Dammit. I forgot I told Cameron about my screw-up. The others laughed with Cameron, and I expected Will to join in. They were annoying, but the teasing was pretty harmless. He did not.

"Why would I need to be paid back? I loved helping Beckett, and he was the perfect patient. Under the circumstances, I expected him to be a bear, but that didn't happen." The guys stared at Will like he'd stripped naked at the table and suggested charades.

Elliot recovered first. "Beckett? Our Beckett? The Beckett who tried to skip out on his high school graduation because he didn't want to be there? The Beckett who allows his family one hour of his precious time at barbecues? The Beckett who flat-out refuses to attend birthday parties? That Beckett?"

"In his defense, I hated high school, and plenty of people don't like graduation ceremonies, even when it's their own. The same goes for birthday parties. Barbecues are a lot, so I'm not going to blame him for that one either." After firing back his own shots, Will turned those gorgeous eyes on me and winked.

Fuck me.

Not many things left me shocked. Being a cop, even in a small town, I had seen my fair share of craziness and what the fuck moments, but this one? Yeah, fucking shook. No one defended me when my family was slinging shit about my antisocial ways. And this guy, who was still practically a stranger, had done it without breaking a sweat. Well, I mean, he wasn't a total stranger because his tongue had been down my throat, but still. Practically a stranger.

I was completely unprepared for what came next. "Hey, are you still on duty or done for the day?" Will asked as he turned his attention back to me. The smile that made my insides melt showed up, and I was a goner.

"I'm still on duty but out on my lunch break for the next half-hour. Why?" It felt like something good would happen. I didn't want whatever it was displayed for my nosy family, but I definitely wanted the good thing.

"Cool. Let's get our lunch to go. We can discuss that project planning from the other day. It's a warm day, so the park should work and will let us spread stuff out." Will's voice had that calm, authoritative tone he'd used when taking care of me back at the house. It was pretty similar to the one I used myself when I was out on calls. It worked on me just as well as it worked on the public. I nodded along because I would gladly ditch the cousins any day.

Project plan? My mind was a complete blank on what he was talking about, but there wasn't any reason to admit that.

"Let's go."