Heatseeker (Atrati) by Lucy Monroe

Hollywood B movie. “It was someone else, and I could see you were both happy.”
    “On your parents’ front porch?” Neil asked, sounding strange . . . almost amused, but something else, too.
    “Yeah. It was messed up. That should have been you and me. I wanted to kill the other man.”
    “There is no other man.”
    “But there would have been. If I didn’t get my head out of my ass, I was going to lose you forever. And on the morning of my wedding, on the cusp of having what I always thought I wanted, I realized that was the one thing I could not stand.”
    “You’d already lost me. You threw me away.”
    Wyatt couldn’t deny it, couldn’t change it, but he wasn’t living in that place anymore. “I screwed up. And maybe another man wouldn’t forgive me. Another couple couldn’t make it past that kind of mistake.”
    “But you think we can?” Neil looked at Wyatt as if he’d lost his mind.
    “I know it. What we have . . . it’s too big for my Texas-roots prejudices, or even my old dreams, to keep it buried.”
    “Those prejudices are all over the place. Too many people think I shouldn’t have a right to love you.”
    “But you do, anyway.”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “You didn’t have to.”
    “If I let you in again, you could destroy me.”
    “But I won’t.” Wyatt covered the distance between them, pulling Neil to him. “Trust me, sweetheart, please.”
    Neil shook his head. “I can’t.”
    “You will. I won’t give up.”
    Neil didn’t believe Wyatt. It was in every inch of his tense frame, but he didn’t say it.
    Wyatt was grateful for small mercies.
    “If we share a room, you’re not touching me.” There was no give in Neil’s voice.
    “Okay,” Wyatt agreed. “For now.”
    Neil nodded, clearly smart enough to realize that was the best he was going to get. “Let me go.”
    “One kiss.”
    Neil opened his mouth, and Wyatt just knew he was going to refuse.
    “Please.” Wyatt’s pride had cost him this man once before. He was never going to let that happen again.
    Neil stilled, his body relaxing the tiniest bit toward Wyatt. “Not a sex kiss.”
    They were all sex kisses, because for them sex was love, and their love made for damn good sex, but he knew what the other man was saying. And Wyatt would comply.
    This time.
    Their lips brushed, and electricity arced between them, the charge so intense, Wyatt’s eyes burned from the power of the moment. He didn’t press to deepen the kiss, didn’t push their bodies closer together, didn’t take advantage of the arousal saturating the air around them.
    Wyatt kept his mouth closed as he moved his lips against Neil’s, relearning the contours he’d craved for every day of the year they’d been apart.
    He didn’t want to stop the kiss, but if he didn’t, he was going to break his promise to Neil. This kiss was going to go carnal in about one second, and they would be in bed a heartbeat after that.
    But that wasn’t what Neil wanted, or what Wyatt had agreed to. And he wasn’t going to break his word to the other man ever again.
    Using all the self-discipline he’d learned as a Marine and later in the Atrati, Wyatt stepped back.
    Neil’s eyes opened, their indigo depths hazy with an emotion Wyatt was hesitant to name. “You didn’t push the advantage.”
    “I said I wouldn’t.”
    “You used to say I was it for you, but you were dating her on the side.”
    “I never had sex with her. Not once.” Hell, they’d never even come close.
    “Didn’t she think that was odd?”
    “She wanted to wait for marriage.”
    “You hurt her, walking out on the day of your wedding. Like you hurt me.”
    “Yes, I hurt her, but not like I hurt you. She didn’t love me like you do.”
    “But she did love you.”
    “She thought she did, but she didn’t know me, so how could she?”
    “She loved the man you let her see.”
    “Yes.” Wyatt would regret using a good woman and a good friend like that until his dying day, but