On a Roll by Beth Bolden (free ebook novel .txt) 📗

groaned into his mouth and opened up, the kiss went from slow and sweet to so much hotter in an instant.

For a long minute, and then another, they kissed, Gabriel not even giving a shit that his neck was at a weird angle that would probably give him grief later, or that his knee was digging into the hard plastic of the console or even the fact that his phone was buzzing with what were almost certainly Tony’s texts, wondering where their description was.

Then Sean broke off, a bright smile on his face, his eyes sparkling. “I wanted to do that all day,” he confessed.

“Me too,” Gabe said softly. He considered saying more. Wanted to say more, but then Sean’s phone rang again, and the moment was broken.

Sean opened the door as he answered the phone. “Tony,” he said, a clear note of exasperation in his tone. “We said we’re getting it . . . okay, fine, we’ll get it faster, then.”

He hung up as he unlocked the door, Gabriel close behind him. “He is so goddamn impatient,” Sean complained as he pushed the door open. He stormed into the kitchen, clearly really annoyed by whatever Tony had said on the phone. “He actually had the nerve to tell me that he didn’t have time to wait for us to get our hands out of our pants.”

“Oh, well.” Gabe laughed nervously. “It’s like he’s got a freaking camera on us, or something.”

“Right?” Sean flopped onto the couch. “I guess we better come up with something now, before he decides to show up on my doorstep.”

“I think we could go with something simple like, Thai meatball crunch wrap,” Gabriel suggested, sitting down next to Sean and starting to type on his phone. “We’ll need a description, too.”

“I’ll text you over a list of the ingredients,” Sean said. “And we’ll need a price.”

“Oh, shit, right.” Gabriel scrubbed a hand over his face. “I guess we’ll have to fudge that. I don’t have my laptop with the pricing spreadsheet here.”

Sean looked up at him, surprised. “You have a pricing spreadsheet?”

“Well, yeah. Don’t you?” Gabriel asked.

But Sean just shrugged. “Not really,” he said. “I mean, I know the idea behind it. Cost of your raw materials, cost of your time, times the multiplier you’ve picked.” He looked contemplative. “I just wouldn’t have expected it out of you, I guess.”

“We wouldn’t have a string of successful restaurants without a pricing structure,” Gabriel admitted. “And it’s not really mine, it’s something I borrowed from Luca and fussed around with, honestly. But yeah, I do think it helps.”

“I should do that too,” Sean said with a resigned sigh. “I know I should. Just . . . there’s only so many hours in the day, you know?”

“I could help you with it,” Gabriel offered, before he could stop himself. He shouldn’t be insinuating himself into Sean’s life before he told him the truth. What he really needed to do was take Sean’s hand in his and confess everything. That he’d liked him from the very beginning, but now, those feelings had morphed into something so much deeper and stronger. Like had become love, so easily that Gabriel wasn’t even sure where one ended and the other began.

But the sudden anxiety blooming in his stomach stopped him.

“Thank you,” Sean said, and paused. “You’re just really great, you know?”

“I thought we agreed I was a stubborn asshole still.”

“Yeah, that ship has definitely sailed,” Sean said wryly.

“Well, what should we do about the price? Tony will need it today, and I don’t have the spreadsheet. We could use something on my menu as a jumping-off point?”

“Yeah,” Sean said. “I like that idea.”

They compared the price of Sean’s wraps to Gabriel’s rolls, and made some adjustments for the vegetables, subtracting out the cheese cost, and Gabriel was really pleased with the number they came up with. It lined up with some of his other menu items and fell right in the middle of Sean’s offerings, too.

Ten minutes later, they had sent the text to Tony containing everything he needed for the signs.

“Well, that’s done,” Sean said, his eyes glimmering with mischief. He leaned in, brushing his nose against Gabe’s playfully. “What should we do now?”

There was nothing more that Gabe could possibly want than to take Sean up on his clear offer. His dick was half-hard in his jeans, and his blood was still pumping from the kiss in the car. But it was getting late in the afternoon, and if they wanted to finalize everything for the new wrap, they needed to focus.

He didn’t usually like to leave anything to the last minute, but the enticing promise of getting his hands all over Sean had distracted him the last few days.

“We should really get everything set up for tomorrow,” Gabriel said reluctantly, standing up.

Sean gave an exaggerated sigh, and joined him. “I guess you’re right, though my idea sounds like a lot more fun.”

“It definitely would be,” Gabe agreed.

“I’ll go get the ingredients together for the first batch of nuts,” Sean said, turning towards the kitchen. But then, he turned back. “Hey, you know what would be great?” he said. “If you grabbed some stuff from our trucks, and we made a few more test runs here, before tomorrow.”

What Gabriel wanted was to stay, but he had to admit that it was a good idea. “Sure,” he said. Sean was already grabbing a pen and a pad from the kitchen, and scribbling down a long list of things. “Plus,” he said, glancing up, “anything you might need from yours.”

“Right,” Gabriel said, leaning in close to Sean so he could see what he was writing. The pen, which had been moving at light speed only a moment before, hesitated on the page and Sean glanced up at him, eyes wide.

“Oh,” Sean said, and for a split second, Gabriel didn’t know what he was saying. But then Sean reached up and pressed his mouth to Gabe’s. The kiss was just as hot as