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)
His walls, instead of the ones he felt like he saw everywhere, shutting him out.
But there had been no walls between him and Rian, tonight. Nothing but shared pain, shared need, shared hope, shared warmth.
That hadn’t felt like just sex.
It had felt like...
Too much.
Not enough.
Everything.
Something that left Damon breathless, as he watched Rian sleep and wondered when he’d stopped seeing a skinny, pale, snotty, meddling pain in Damon’s ass.
And started seeing this beautiful fey thing who was just as lost as he was, so unsure of his place in the world, but goddammit... Rian was trying.
Trying until he wore himself out, and slept as deeply as an exhausted child, tangled so closely with Damon and trusting Damon to keep him safe while he escaped from their mutual troubles in sleep.
I will, Damon thought, even if he wasn’t quite sure what he was promising. He gathered Rian closer, resting his head atop that messy crown of rippling hair, and told himself even if this was just for tonight, even if it broke in the morning...
I’ll hold you close. I’ll keep you safe.
If you’ll let me...
I will.
God, his head was going all fucked—and maybe Damon had been wrong from the start, when his chest was a hollow drum reverberating with the echoes of these frustrating feelings he couldn’t name.
He’d fucked up, all right.
Because it was looking like he’d let someone like Rian Falwell break his heart after all.
Chapter Twelve
Rian wasn’t in his own bed.
That was the first thing that struck him, as he straggled awake.
The second was that he was nearly drowning in a deep, plush mattress that wasn’t his own, sinking into it so far he felt like he was being swallowed.
The third was that he was sore inside in ways he hadn’t been in quite some time, when his last sexually intimate relationship had been a boyfriend with a gambling addiction who had pawned several of the expensive bits of jewelry Rian had brought from home, then blamed Rian for trying to take over his life and “fix” him when he didn’t need fixing. Douglas hadn’t been particularly good in bed, anyway, rather selfish—and he’d never left Rian so deliciously worn out he’d passed out seconds after finishing, only to wake up sore and stretching and feeling like a very satisfied cat.
While the fourth thing that struck him, as he shifted and settled deeper into that lush mattress and stre-e-eeetched his legs out until his ankles popped and his toes curled?
Was that he was trapped against the cool wooden wall of a room that wasn’t his own by the body that was the exact reason why he was waking up feeling so wonderfully, throbbingly used.
He opened his eyes drowsily, for a moment disoriented that the light coming through the windows on the opposite wall and behind the bed was so bright until he remembered it was Saturday; no bells to wake him just as dawn crested the horizon. No bells to tell him he had to leave this, now, when right now...
He felt at peace, as he watched Damon sleep.
This was the first time he’d felt safe really letting himself look at Damon fully, taking him in without needing to hide his interest or worry he’d get caught and have to explain himself in a mortified mess. He so often thought of Damon’s face as something just as hard-cut as his body...but Rian realized now it was the tension he carried with him so often, the thoughts always weighing on him, when sleep softened his features to smooth away years and add gentle, peaceful contours around his brows and cheeks, framed by the dark slashes of tangled, unbound hair falling everywhere. He must worry so much, Rian thought, about so many things—and some tiny aching part of him wanted to kiss the furrows in Damon’s brow each morning to ease them away before the day’s aggravation could crease them in deep again.
What am I thinking?
He didn’t know.
He only knew that waking up with Damon like this, quiet and lazy with Damon’s arm draped over his waist, so heavy and warm....
It lifted something inside Rian. Calmed the nonstop storm of quietly fussing thoughts that only let him be when he absorbed himself in a painting of some other piece of art, up to his elbows in clay and wearing thick, wet gray gloves of it or making a complete disaster of himself with smears of gouache or chalky pastel powder everywhere. That same calm filled him as he traced his fingertips over the curve of Damon’s shoulder, watching how the morning sunlight turned dusky, rich brown to gold at Damon’s starkest edges, and just...let himself be at rest.
Let himself enjoy the simple pleasure of being held in a sleepy tangle by a man who had him so messed up Rian didn’t know who he was anymore.