Chapter 2
EVAN
I left the bakery in much better spirits than I’d entered it.
Getting under Stevie Devore’s skin was one of my favorite pastimes.
Maybe it was cruel of me to mess with him by implying he was a kid, but he was so damned adorable when he got angry.
His cheeks flushed, his little hands balled into fists at his sides, and his nostrils flared.
Stevie in full pique was a sight to behold. He was lovely on a normal day, but when ticked off? Ahh, that’s when he made my heart stutter-step and thunk like a lovesick fool.
Stopping by Sugar Britches for a coffee and cookie had become a daily habit of mine since I’d discovered Stevie working there a couple of years before.
At the time, I truly had thought of him as a kid, because I’d actually known him as one.
But by now it had been a good eight months of seeing him as the man he was.
I was very aware of the fact he’d finally turned twenty-one. I hadn’t let myself spend too much time fantasizing about the beautiful boy until he was old enough to have a glass of wine with me on our first date, but now it was time to finally make my move.
And I was going to enjoy every minute of it.
The plan to teach him how to refinish furniture had been a fortuitous one.
It would take several hours a day over many days with the two of us alone in the workshop off the back of my garage.
Despite Stevie’s propensity to bring bakery treats to the fire house on occasion and my regular stop-ins for coffee, we’d never really had a chance to spend any time just the two of us.
It was time for that to change.
When I got home, I quickly changed into some old clothes and made my way out to the workshop, cranking up some loud rock on my Bluetooth speakers to keep me company.
There were piles of tools and half-finished projects lying around, so I spent a couple of hours tidying up and organizing the large space.
Once I was done, there was room for his dresser, and the first few items we’d need for paint stripping were laid out on a workbench.
Later that night I received an email inviting me to a bachelor party of sorts for an old friend who’d worked on a special wildfire response crew a few years back.
There were ten of us on the crew who’d been through some shit together at the time, and even after we’d gone our separate ways, we’d kept in touch.
Weekend after next, we were all apparently taking Cody to a new club so he could enjoy plenty of drinks, dancing, and dick before taking the plunge with his partner, Eric.
I grinned at the image of a table full of firefighters at a gay club.
Two of the men in our group would squirm uncomfortably the entire time, and I couldn’t wait to give them hell about it.
There was no chance they’d let their discomfort keep them from joining us to celebrate Cody, and for that I was grateful.
It was a pretty damned decent group of men I was thankful to know.
I responded hell yes to the invite and closed down my laptop to get ready for bed.
I was covering a twenty-four-hour shift for one of my men starting tomorrow, and I needed to get some sleep in order to be at full strength.
The long shifts weren’t getting easier now that I was well into my forties, but if I didn’t eat and drink a bunch of unhealthy crap and made sure to get enough sleep, I could handle it as well as any other firefighter in the house.
The following day went by in a flash. We had an inspection scheduled at the pub Hudson Wilde was helping get off the ground, and there were several streets of hydrants that needed regular maintenance.
The Texas winter weather was the good kind of cold.
Sunshine kept everyone’s moods up, and the chilly air was the perfect counter to our sweaty work.
By the time I got off that shift, I had a full day’s work of my own to get through, which left me utterly exhausted Wednesday night when I crawled home and put myself to bed.
I slept late on Thursday, which pissed me off because Stevie only worked mornings on Thursdays.
By the time I’d woken up, it was too late to catch a glimpse of my favorite bakery boy at Sugar Britches, so I consoled myself with a big omelette breakfast at home followed by an extensive jacking-off session with visions of Stevie Devore riding me, hips undulating, needy noises spilling from his throat and his gorgeous slender form covered in delicious naked skin hungry for my touch.
When I heard tires crunch on the gravel drive, I startled out of my cum-covered haze and quickly made my way to the bathroom to clean up before seeing who the hell was stopping by on a random Thursday afternoon.