A lump rises in his throat.
Felix swallows, tugging his sleeves down. He scoops instant coffee granules into the mugs, gives them a stir, and sets Kade’s mug beside him. “There.”
“Thanks.” Kade meets his eyes, contemplative.
His heart thumps. Why are you still here? he wants to ask. Instead, Felix returns to the stove, fiddling with the pans.
Hiding is what he does best. But now that Kade has found him again, all he can do is soldier on.
8
Kade
“Smells like cologne in here,” Kade says, looking up when Felix brings eggs, and then cereal over to the kitchen table. He turns his laptop to face them both.
Felix blushes. “I spilled some. Sorry about the smells.”
“It’s fine. Just really stinks.” Which would be tolerable, really, if it didn’t strike him that Felix is trying to hide the scent of something. Did you have someone else over? He draws a deep breath, but all he smells is the sting of cleaning fluid, the chemical sweetness of air freshener. He wrinkles his nose, wishing a breeze would clear the air between them.
Felix heads over with a mug of milk coffee. He settles down next to Kade, their knees bumping. “I’ll avoid spilling everything the next time.”
“Don’t worry about that.” Kade looks over the plates of food, raising an eyebrow. Felix has always liked sweet coffee, but Kade has never seen him eat more than a bowl of cereal for breakfast. “You’re hungry?”
Felix shrugs. “I guess.”
Their knees bump again. Kade focuses on why he’s here—Felix needs help selling his paintings. He shouldn’t be distracted by his omega’s warmth, or the image of him naked at the front door. Most of all, Kade just wants to smell him again. He can’t pick out that familiar lavender scent, and part of him wants to shift his chair closer to Felix, wants to bury his nose in Felix’s neck.
“So, your paintings,” Kade says, yanking his thoughts back to the laptop screen. “I did some research on them.”
“You did?” A hint of pink dusts Felix’s cheeks. “That’s... very nice of you.”
But that’s very nice doesn’t mean Felix wants anything to do with him, so Kade focuses on the motorbike on his laptop wallpaper, pulling up a search engine. “I’ve looked up some sites. There’s places where you can sell prints of your paintings, then there’s sites where you can auction them off. I made a list. Do you have pictures of the canvases?”
Felix stares at him, wonder in his eye. Kade’s cheeks prickle with heat. It’s been five years since Felix looked at him like that.
“I do,” Felix says between bites of egg. “On my website.” He reaches over to the laptop, his fingers peeking out from his sweater sleeves. Kade wants to pull those sleeves back, wants to nose at Felix’s bonding mark. The one he’d left almost two decades ago.
“There,” Felix says, hitting the Enter key. “It’s not much of a site, though. I didn’t really know what I was doing.”
Kade keeps a straight face. The website is terrible—the overlapping buttons, the low-contrast font colors, the outdated storefront...
“I kind of slapped together some basic HTML,” Felix says, smiling sheepishly. “Sorry it looks ugly.”
“It won’t help you like that.” Kade sighs. Does Felix really think this will sell his paintings?
“I’ve mostly done the sales in person,” Felix says, as though reading his thoughts. “At farmers’ markets in Highton, or at galleries. They weren’t too bad.”
“But people need a way to search for you online.” Kade gulps a mouthful of coffee. Still using Baker’s Brew?
Felix sighs. “I know.”
“Why don’t I redo the site for you?” Kade asks, his breath catching when Felix’s eyes brighten. Felix hasn’t needed him in a while. “Email me your hosting details. In the meantime, we’ll set up accounts on the other sales sites.”
“Okay,” Felix says. He shifts his chair closer to Kade, its castor wheels rumbling against the kitchen floor. Kade can’t help turning to sniff at him.
Felix’s arm presses against his, the heat of it dulled by his sweater, but Kade doesn’t mention it. Instead, he takes Felix through the art sites, the auction sites, and even some collectors’ forums so he’ll have a better idea who he can sell his paintings to. Through it all, Felix crunches on his cereal, a trickle of milk collecting on his lower lip.
“So that’s the easier stuff done,” Kade says, closing the internet browsers. “You’ll have to remember to sign in and actually talk to the people on the forum.”
Felix chuckles. “I’ll try. I don’t remember a lot.”
Kade looks at him in question, but he doesn’t elaborate. And now that the godawful scents have drifted out of the windows, Kade smells him a little better.
He leans closer, sniffing at Felix’s ear, then his neck. Felix’s eyes widen, but he doesn’t move away. Kade presses his nose to the loose neckline of his sweater. There’s no sharp, woodsy scent, no smell of grass, only a faint lavender; Felix hasn’t been with anyone lately. Kade relaxes. He hadn’t known he’d been worried about it.
You smell good, he wants to say, but he doesn’t. Instead, he trails his nose up along Felix’s neck, along his jaw. Felix shivers against him.
“We should be working,” Felix whispers. But his nostrils flare, and Kade licks a slow stripe up his throat, kissing his pulse. It flutters against his lips, and he sucks lightly on the skin there. Felix inhales sharply, lifting his chin to allow him access. It means he wants Kade’s touch, even after he rejected the proposal. Kade’s heart thumps.
After all he’s seen this week—Felix hard at the gas station, Felix bending over, Felix standing naked in his doorway—the thought of touching his omega sends desire humming through his body. He slips his hand between Felix’s knees, stroking up his thigh. Felix’s breath hitches.
“Something you want?” Kade murmurs, letting his warmth
