Just Like That - Cole McCade Page 0,79

calling out for him, as if it cried in his voice. Heart slamming, he stared up at the sky; so did Summer, as lightning slashed across the darkened clouds and the storm that had been building since morning finally broke.

The rain came down as if a bucket had been tipped over, sluicing down in icy slashes. Summer yelped, covering his head, then stumbled to his feet, reaching for Fox’s hand with a laugh, rain soaking his hair to his skull in a black cap, immediately darkening his shirt to a translucent layer of pale blue that let golden skin shine through.

“Come on!” he gasped, and before Fox could protest he found himself hauled up, dragged along, dropping the flower crown from lax fingers to send it flying into the lake, his dress shoes slipping on the wet grass but they were dashing, running, darting inside and he felt like those words were on his heels, chasing him, nipping at his ankles, even if he could never escape them when the one who had spoken them held him so fast.

As if Summer would never let him go.

They didn’t stop until they reached Fox’s suite, tumbled inside, dripping all over the floor. Summer shook himself like a puppy, then let out a breathless laugh.

“I kind of feel like nature had a little color commentary for my big confession,” he said sheepishly. “And she didn’t approve.”

Fox flinched, pushing loose strands of wet hair back from his face. “You...you...”

You love me, he tried to say.

But he couldn’t seem to get the words out.

He didn’t need to, because Summer went quiet, bowing his head, but still watching him with that hopeful gaze. “Yeah,” he said thickly. “I do. I love you, Fox.”

Being loved shouldn’t feel like heartbreak.

And Fox knew exactly how broken he was, now, that he couldn’t say those words back.

Couldn’t say anything to them at all.

Couldn’t find his voice past the shattering, cracking feeling inside him, and so...

Rather than speak, Fox kissed him.

Lingering, slow, he kissed him as if this was the first time and would be the last; as if he had to make this kiss count for every kiss he might never know again in the future. He tasted every tiny crease in Summer’s lips, pressed his teeth gently against the soft giving flesh of his mouth, suckled softly at his lower lip and stole inside where Summer always seemed filled with some intoxicant that rode his breath and slipped into Fox and took him over until his senses were full of Summer and only Summer.

He didn’t have words for these feelings inside him. He couldn’t stand words for them, when words would make them real. Real enough to hurt. Real enough to be torn away, to become something fragile he could break or crush or ruin the same way he kept ruining those soft feelings Summer dashed against Fox’s walls again and again.

No...he couldn’t tell Summer what he felt.

So he showed him.

With every kiss, every slow deep exploration of yielding lips, he tried to show him. With every touch, every tracery of Fox’s fingertips over Summer’s pulse-pounding throat, over his shoulders, the shivering sensitive spots Fox had memorized over his chest and ribs and stomach, with that suntanned skin gliding so hot and firm beneath his fingertips, with Summer shuddering and sighing out his pleasure as their flesh made friction and charged kinetic energy shivered between them like static... Fox tried to say what he couldn’t say.

That Summer’s love was too good for Fox.

But that Fox was too needy, too greedy to reject it.

He didn’t know when he’d become so desperate for this beautiful strange summer child of a man, but somehow Summer had become a compulsion, pulling on him in ways that made him feel like his blood moved to Summer’s rhythm, his body drawn to his magnetism. The way Summer sighed and melted for him, so luxuriously pliant as Fox kissed him, one step at a time, into the bedroom...

How could he give himself so sweetly to someone who gave nothing back at all?

And so Fox tried to give.

In his own way, he tried to give, tumbling Summer back to the bed, stripping him in a fevered rush until that sensuously compact, tightly muscled body lay bare beneath him, touching every inch of him until he knew how Summer tasted in the hollow of his throat, the peak of his collarbone, the flat round circle of his nipple, the tight skin of his inner thigh, the sensitive underside