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.
Had he really been in denial all this time?
Had he really been so angry with himself at this completely illogical, strange, inexplicable instant charge between himself and Damon that he’d lashed out to deny it, push it away, avoid giving in to something so confusing it could only be a little bit frightening...especially when he had no idea if Damon felt even remotely the same way?
What is this? What...did we just do? he asked—himself, Damon, as he walked his fingertips lightly down his bicep, then stopped on one of the scars on Damon’s forearm. Like the one on his neck, it was a twisted thing that looked as if it had been slashed quickly by a cruel and jagged blade, cut swift and deep and then stitched closed to scar in a gnarled white line. Another one cut a path almost perfectly down the center of his pectorals, starting just to the right and below the dip of his collarbone and snaking down toward the peak of his ribs; still another started at his right shoulder and writhed diagonally, narrowly cutting past the edge of one small, tight dark brown nipple on its way down to Damon’s hip. They all seemed to start somewhere on his right side, and slash outward in a radial pattern spraying out in all directions.
Rian let himself press his fingers to the scar that started just below Damon’s right pectoral, over the rhythmic wave pattern of his obliques—only to yank his hand back with a