Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 118125 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 591(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118125 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 591(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
Damon stopped that train of thought short.
And caught Rian’s chin between his fingers, drawing him up to kiss him.
He’d only meant to kiss Rian quickly, lightly, anything to stop that clash of misunderstandings and worries that could spiral until they started stabbing at each other again and this gentle, quiet peace fell apart. But the moment he tasted Rian’s lips, he needed more.
No—he needed everything.
He needed this fractious, frustrating man who melted so willingly into his arms; needed the way Rian made him laugh, challenged him, worked with him so well that Damon never wanted to think of them working against each other ever again. He needed to shelter Rian, and protect him; needed the small and yet so potent, telling ways Rian tried to protect Damon, as well, telling Damon without words that Damon mattered to him.
And Damon needed to matter to Rian.
Needed to matter to this pretty mercurial thing as much as Rian mattered to him.
And he kissed Rian as if he could imprint that on him; as if he could make Rian understand the things it was so hard for Damon to say sometimes, show him with every stroke of his lips and the soft touch of feinting tongues and the mingling of sighs that Damon... Damon...
Fuck.
He had to say it out loud.
He had to say it, because it was too large to hold inside him and God, he couldn’t lock this up inside as if it was something to be jealously hoarded when it only meant something for him as long as it was shared.
His entire body pounding with the rough beat of his heart, he drew back slowly, breaking that kiss and looking down at Rian’s glazed, glittering eyes; his pink-parted lips.
“I’m saying,” Damon breathed roughly, tracing his thumb beneath Rian’s pale, sweet mouth, “that I fucking love you, Rian.”
Rian blinked. Gasped.
Then burst into laughter.
Delighted laughter, warm as an embrace, his eyes lighting up so bright, the emotion in his laugh, in his smile, so unrestrained and true.
“You couldn’t get that out without one more ‘fuck,’ could you?” he teased, his slender arms sliding up around Damon’s neck. That laughing mouth taunted, enticed, and Damon could tell the words it formed by the shape of them before Rian even said it—but Damon needed to hear it nonetheless as Rian shyly, quietly admitted, “... I do hope it’s been obvious that I love you too.”
“In between calling me names.” Damon couldn’t stop grinning. How could he be anything but happy, standing beneath the pale moonlight with Rian in his arms and those words traded between their lips? “I don’t know how the hell we did this, Ri...but I been wanting somewhere to belong for so goddamned long, and somehow...somehow I found that in you.”
“I’m glad,” Rian breathed, as he tilted his head up to meet Damon, to capture him, to draw him into that warm mouth for another kiss, another promise, another affirmation that made him blaze as if he’d been struck, and his heart had never stopped burning. “Because I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather belong than with you.”
* * *
Rian wasn’t exactly sad to say goodbye to Lachlan Walden.
Oh, he felt slightly guilty that his and Damon’s decision to move in together had created a flurry of room reassignments, especially when things were still a bit of a mess after the Iseyas had moved in together before the summer—and Walden had somehow, in his own lottery system, drawn the short straw with that firebug Dr. Liu, and Rian had a feeling Walden would be missing an annoyance as minor as paint pots in the sink by the time Liu had set their suite ablaze for the tenth time.
But any guilt vanished under the pure giddy pleasure at getting to stake out a space that was both his and Damon’s after months of flitting in and out of each other’s rooms, frequently stealing underneath Walden’s nose but more often than not holing up in the cozy space of Damon’s suite.
Months of quiet stolen moments. Of kisses between classes. Of slipping off on weekends when they didn’t have RA duty to sneak a film in town, or dinner at the pub, or just driving until they found a place to camp and sleep beneath the stars. Of learning each other; of Rian learning how to draw Damon out of his silences with support and understanding rather than with frustration until Damon started opening up of his own volition, and of Damon learning how to coax Rian out of his anxious need to fix things that didn’t need fixing by sitting him down and talking him through his thoughts until Rian remembered to include Damon in the things he got himself so worked up about.
Of falling deeper and deeper and love.
And feeling more and more like they could rely on each other, as together they watched Chris Northcote get back on his feet.