Page 85 of The Fire Line

Jay moved one knee onto the couch beside Harris’s thigh. Harris’s hands slid beneath his shirt, palms hot against bare skin. They shifted until Jay was half over him, Harris’s body taking up most of the couch beneath him.

Harris caught the hem of Jay’s shirt, and Jay lifted his arms and let him pull it away.

Harris had seen him shirtless at the line cabin, but in bad light and with considerably more urgency. This time his gaze lingered, moving openly over Jay’s chest and stomach before returning to his face.

“Accurate information at last,” Jay said.

“Thought you weren’t gonna bring that up.”

“I said no such thing.”

Jay caught the bottom of Harris’s shirt. “Your turn.”

For a moment, Harris did not move. Jay waited until he raised his arms.

Jay had gotten his own look at Harris at the line cabin, but there was a difference between seeing and having the leisure to look. Harris was larger through the chest and shoulders, his body shaped by decades of working the ranch. Sun darkened his arms and throat while the skin beneath his shirt remained lighter. A pale scar crossed his ribs; another disappeared beneath the waistband of his sweatpants.

Jay set both hands against Harris’s chest and felt him inhale. He ran his palms slowly outward, over dense muscle and the rougher hair across the center of his chest.

Harris watched with the uneasy concentration of a man who had not decided whether being examined was a privilege or a threat.

“You plannin’ to inspect me all night?” Harris asked.

“I’ve been operating with incomplete data.”

“Seemed to manage just fine.”

“I’m very committed to professional rigor. I think I need to see all the angles.”

That eased something in his face.

Jay kissed him again. They wrestled lazily for control until Harris used his greater weight to turn them, pinning Jay beneath him for several seconds. Jay laughed into his mouth, hooked a leg around Harris’s hip, and rolled hard enough to reverse them—nearly onto the floor.

They ended with Jay straddling one of Harris’s thighs, both breathing harder than the struggle justified.

Jay looked down. Harris’s mouth was red from kissing, his eyes dark around the pupils, a faint flush spreading beneath the hair across his chest.

“What?” Harris asked.

“You’re fucking gorgeous.”

“Jesus, Navarro.”

Jay smiled and slid from the couch onto his knees.

Harris went still when Jay touched the drawstring at his waist. The pause was brief, but Jay was starting to learn his tells.

“You okay?”

Harris held his gaze. “Yup.”

Jay loosened the drawstring. He took his time, partly because he had imagined this since the line cabin and partly because Harris seemed unused to being observed with nowhere to hide.

He drew the sweatpants down far enough to free him. Harris was already hard, thick against his stomach. The sight sent a sharp pulse through Jay.

He closed one hand around him and looked up.

The first stroke pulled a rough breath from Harris. Jay leaned forward, touched his tongue to the head, then did it again more slowly. Harris’s fingers flexed against the cushion.