Whirlwind by Bailey Bradford (big ebook reader txt) 📗

swallow back the question he’d been about to ask when Stefan smirked at him. “You’re teasing.”

“Duh, but you and Jordan both turned white as ghosts.”

Gideon looked at Jordan. “What’s that saying about being white as virgin snow?”

Jordan turned his nose up. “I haven’t been a virgin in more years than I can count, and you’re doing a fine imitation of ghastly yourself.”

Gideon huffed but he couldn’t keep up the act of being mad. Stefan still hadn’t answered his question.

When he turned back to Stefan, Gideon knew he was waiting to be asked again. “I’m thirty-seven,” Gideon started with. “Jo is thirty-four. How old are you?”

“Including the years I’ve been dead or not?” Stefan asked, amusement lighting his features. “Are we always the age we die at?”

“Don’t go getting all philosophical on me,” Gideon warned. “My eyes will glaze over and I’ll doze off and drool.”

Stefan giggled, covering his mouth with one hand as if to push the noise back inside.

“I like it,” Gideon told him, nodding slightly. “That sound makes me happy.”

“Makes me want to lay you out and kiss every inch of your body,” Jordan supplied, which had Gideon frowning at his friend. That was a way better thing to say than ‘that sound makes me happy’. Stefan was staring at Jordan with something close to awe in his pretty eyes.

“But we’d still like to know how old you are.” Gideon hesitated, gnawing on the inside of one cheek. He let it go when it hurt like a mother to keep doing it. “Can you tell us how you died, or is that too…too much?”

Stefan’s expression shuttered but he didn’t leave them. “I’m twenty, or I was. Add over a decade to that now.”

Gideon supposed years ceased to matter at some point once you’d died. He was glad Stefan had answered the question but he felt like he’d kicked a puppy with the way Stefan had closed himself off.

“I’m sorry for asking,” Gideon said, which was true. He wanted to know, but now he wished he hadn’t poked his nose into Stefan’s business.

Stefan grunted and, after a long moment of silence, he seemed to shake off his funky mood. “Anyway, I didn’t mean to go all weird on y’all. I don’t like talking about what happened. Don’t see the point in it.”

But Gideon thought he saw fear flit across Stefan’s features, and he wondered what could have happened to make Stefan so cautious. There was something about the way Stefan wouldn’t meet his eyes just then that rang alarm bells in Gideon. He thought Stefan was scared, but of what? Pushing wasn’t likely to get him any answers, not on the subject of Stefan’s death. There were, however, other things he and Jordan needed to know.

“I want my clothes on,” Gideon murmured, picturing not the uniform he’d worn earlier, but his favorite worn jeans, flannel shirt and hiking boots. He threw in the idea of socks too and envisioned it all.

“Concentrate,” Stefan said quietly.

Gideon did, even closing his eyes to visualize himself dressed as he wanted to be. He jerked at the sensation of his skin suddenly being covered, of his feet encased in comfortably broken-in leather shoes.

“Awesome!”

Gideon opened his eyes and grinned as he gave himself a quick once-over. “Yeah, thanks for the tutorial.”

“Yes, thanks,” Jordan murmured. Gideon peered at him and gave him a thumbs up.

“Love the white tank and tight jeans, Jo. Shows off your dick really nicely,” Gideon informed him, eyeing that excellent package.

“That’s why I picked ‘em,” Jordan informed him. “If you got it, flaunt it and all of that.”

“Right.”

Stefan scooted back on the bed, a sweet smile curving his lips. “Now, why don’t you both join me?”

That was trickier. Gideon thought he’d never get himself settled on the mattress, but finally he was able to sit with an arm around Stefan’s shoulders. Jordan was on the other side of Stefan and had one hand resting on Stefan’s thigh.

Stefan liked the way he fitted between the two men, but even more, he liked the budding camaraderie he sensed developing between him and them. There was already an established relationship of some sort between Jordan and Gideon, obviously, but he wasn’t being excluded. He’d been afraid he’d blown any chance he had with these men after going all silent rather than answering about his death.

But Stefan had panicked. He didn’t know how to tell them that he used to be different, that his brain had been damaged at birth and he’d been deemed developmentally slow and other similar things all of his living life. What if Gideon and Jordan were as horrified by that as they’d been in those seconds they’d thought he might be younger than he was?

What if they look at me like I’m damaged still?

Stefan wouldn’t be able to stand it, so instead he sat between his new friends and explained as much about being a spirit as he could. He answered every question they asked in regards to that subject, and was glad they didn’t bring up his demise again.

He listened as they shared war stories, appalled by the things mankind did to one another. Gideon and Jordan seemed to have made their peace with it all, but Stefan supposed that was what soldiers had to do in order to cope.

It was the tales about what they had done other than their duty that really perked Stefan up and gave him the opening he’d been waiting for. “Y’all really have shared guys before?”

Jordan and Gideon exchanged a glance before Jordan answered, his cheeks holding a faint blush. “Yeah. We each figured out the other one was gay when we got assigned to the same troop. Gideon wasn’t as good at being unobtrusive when he was checking out other men as he’d thought he was.”

Gideon snorted. “Right, like I didn’t catch you beating off behind the showers one night after Craig walked out wearing one of those tiny towels.”

Jordan groaned and rubbed at his package. “Come on, man. Craig was fucking