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)
He’d take that measured look Walden would give him during the rare times when they crossed paths in their suite, that said See? You have no idea what you’re doing, no experience with the world at large, and you overreacted.
And if he told Damon...
Damon might smile. Laugh. Shake his head, rake one of those large, thick hands back through his hair, and say We’re pretty goddamned ridiculous, you know that?
Rian’s neck and ears felt too hot, at that thought—and he tried to push it away as he swung himself around the door frame and into the hall, twisting his body to slip through the milling clusters of students. Chris was almost to the door at the end of the hall that would take him downstairs, to the main hall, the exit, and then either the locker rooms in the attached gym or to the massive football field and open stadium at the foot of the hill, behind the school and on the outskirts of town. If Rian followed him and that was where he did go, it might be a dead end, might mean nothing, might...
He ducked around another knot of students.
And spilled right into a broad chest.
Damon came out of nowhere—stepping out of an open classroom door just as Rian walked right into his path, Rian’s eyes fixed so far ahead on the messy crop of Chris’s hair that he wasn’t looking right in front of him, didn’t see Damon in his way until Rian was tumbling right into a face full of the dark gray Albin Athletics Department T-shirt stretched across the tight expanse of Damon’s chest, molded so close that it might as well have been painted on, cotton doing its best imitation of latex in how it sealed to and followed the contours of Damon’s body.
Damon’s very hard body.
Hard enough that when Rian hit, his nose exploded with throbbing pain as he bounced his entire face off Damon’s chest, then stumbled back, clutching both hands over the sudden knot of ouch nailed right into the front of his head.
“Ow!”
“Whoa, hey!” Damon caught his shoulders, heavy hands steadying and grounding Rian before he could trip more than a few reeling steps. “Hey, you okay?”
Rian froze, peeking up at Damon over his fingers; his nose hurt, pounding and hot, and he didn’t want to pull his hands away to see if it was bleeding. “No,” he mumbled, though it came out more like dbo.
Damon frowned down at him. Those large hands still curled against Rian’s shoulders, drawn in sharp angles that made them seem like cubist art with their starkness, and Rian almost felt captured, the two of them the only points of stillness caught within the space created where the stretch of Damon’s tight-muscled, corded arms connected them.
“Where the hell were you going, running like that?” Damon demanded. “We can’t tell the kids not to run in the halls if we’re doing it, too.”
“I was trying to—”
Still clasping at his nose, Rian twisted in Damon’s grip, trying to peer around the massive wall of his body. But...damn it.
Chris was gone.
Rian slumped.
“... I was trying to follow Chris.” He sighed. “But...well, there goes that.”
“Shit.”
Damon craned to look over his shoulder, his jaw tightening. His jaw was so blunt, so stubborn, dominating the graceful features of his broad, starkly defined face; he had his hair completely swept back today, a few tangled loops twining together at his hairline but the rest curving neatly behind his ear until the arced tips hid all but the smallest edge of that thick scar beneath his jaw.
He turned back to Rian, then, his frown deepening as he let go of Rian’s shoulders, leaving behind a sense of being too light without that heavy weight pressing Rian down.
Before those hands touched his, fingertips callused, grazing along the outsides of Rian’s palms. It felt like being touched by raw organza: soft, yet rough and scraping by its very nature, touch and tingle lit bright and startling Rian to stillness until he realized what Damon was trying to do.
Damon’s fingertips hooked in the curves of Rian’s thumbs lightly, and tugged. “Come on,” he said, the roll of his deep voice as gentle as a heartbeat. “Let me see.”
Rian held perfectly still, except for the erratic and powerful kicking of his heart, hooves drumbeating against his rib cage and running, racing, pounding away. And he didn’t resist as Damon slowly drew his hands away from his face, though as Damon bent in so close that a lock of his hair fell down to dangle between them, bisecting warm brown eyes the color of a deep, quiet, comforting sleep...
Rian realized he couldn’t feel how hot the pain in his nose was anymore.
Because his entire face was burning just as hot, and he couldn’t tell the difference between the two, and he seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.