by Cole McCade
“Mess? You look like you fucking rolled in paint, I don’t really think you give a shit about messes.” Damon’s teeth bared in a snarl, and then those thick, heavy hands clamped on Rian’s shoulders—grasping him hard, fire-touch branding him through his thin, loose shirt, sparking and crackling through him like two live wires touched together and closing a current. “What the fuck do you want from me, Falwell? What the hell are you so mad about?”
“You!” Rian shoved at Damon’s chest; his immovable, rock-solid chest, nothing but searing body heat and fiercely sculpted musculature under his fingers. “You ignore me all week, it’s like you don’t even care, and then you come stomping in here like you can do anything you want and—and—and—”
And nothing else.
Because before he could say anything else, Damon let out a frustrated, breathless growl.
And jerked Rian roughly close as he bent over him, that sizzling presence swarming over him, the cool dampness of Damon’s hair pouring over his cheeks as those angry, firm, ever-so-sensuous lips descended on Rian’s to capture him in a kiss.
Rian froze. Heat crashed over him in an onslaught, and before his mind could tell him don’t do this every ounce of pent-up fury and frustration and loneliness and wanting inside him burst and took control. His arms slid around Damon’s neck, and he buried his fingers in the cool slick of wet hair that practically steamed against the burning flame of Damon’s burnished skin, the tight muscles flexing in his neck and thrumming with the low rumble that bled between them as Rian parted his lips and gave his mouth to Damon’s with a hunger Rian hadn’t known he possessed.
A hunger to consume...
...and be consumed.
As if his entire body ached to be devoured, melded into Damon, and Rian pressed close, so close, letting himself feel every inch of that perfectly formed body honed by time and experience and dedication and passion into something so graceful, so beautiful that Rian needed to touch to fully savor it. And as Damon’s lips plied his apart, as Damon kissed him as though he could possess Rian utterly with the desperate need given over in the lushness and slickness of mating lips and twining tongues and breathless gasps... Rian stroked his fingers over Damon’s shoulders, his arms, his chest, tracing the artistry of him with his fingertips and knowing him through tactile contact, following every defined contour and surrendering himself to the thrills tightening his stomach into knots.
Damon tasted like rainwater and the metallic sweetness of flesh and something softer, liquid and tart, that poured between them on every breath. The sheer intense rush of it left Rian dizzy, his senses spinning until he knew not up, not down, not anything but that Damon anchored him in place and held him captured with that sense-stripping kiss.
And when Damon’s arms slid around his waist, locking strong and tight and dragging Rian against him... Rian melted, his knees weakening and his entire body turning lax, a luxurious, silken feeling rolling through him, a thing that coalesced in that slow-building, scouring, dissolving feeling he could only call desire.
A desire he had been ignoring for days.
A desire he could no longer deny.
A desire for Damon Louis.
And every overwhelming, utterly unstoppable emotion he aroused.
* * *
Damon wasn’t quite sure how he’d ended up kissing Rian.
One moment he’d been thinking about nothing but making Rian stop—stop snapping at him, stop expecting anything from him, stop needing him for anything when there was nothing the two of them could do for each other except make each other miserable. He’d just wanted to get his attention, startle Rian out of the building whirlwind of anger lashing between them.
But then he’d felt those slender shoulders in his palms, so warm through the shapelessly oversized, thin muslin button-down he wore, the shirt tattered and missing several buttons and spattered in paint.
Taken in those bright hazel eyes snapping up at him, framed in wisps of messy hair and paint smudges across Rian’s cheeks, his jaw, even the bridge of his nose.
And found himself completely captivated by that insolent, furious little mouth, so much that he couldn’t even hear what Rian was saying.
All he could hear was his own pounding pulse.
And the soft, needy gasp Rian let out as Damon bent down to kiss him.
Rian tasted like everything Damon had imagined: soft sugar candy, crystallized honey-grains dissolving on his tongue as Damon took his mouth fiercely, hotly, capturing that slim body in his arms and gathering him close until he felt like he’d vaporize them both in the heat steaming off his body as rainwater dried against his skin and left him feeling too tight, burning up, ready to tremble himself to pieces.
Rian wasn’t supposed to kiss him back.
Rian wasn’t supposed to kiss him back, touch him with those slender fingers, give in to him with throaty moans that ignited in Damon’s blood and clutched in the pit of his stomach and made his cock throb with a heaviness and breathless urgency that made it hard to think of anything but the wet, plush-warm feeling of the inside of Rian’s mouth...and how soft those lips went for him as Damon tasted him again and again and again, clutching his fingers in the back of Rian’s shirt and giving in to a thing he shouldn’t want but couldn’t help but crave.
And when he pressed in closer, when he felt how slender thighs lined up against his and narrow hips slid close and hard heat ground against him, whispering that he wasn’t alone in this, that Rian’s hunger mirrored his, the friction making Damon groan...
He almost snapped.
With a hot, desperate intake of breath, just barely parting their lips for half a moment, Damon buried his fingers in those thick ripples of hair, letting them pour over his grasping fingers and dragging Rian’s head back, opening him to Damon, opening him for taking as Damon backed him against the worktable and seized his mouth again. Deep, so deep, as if he could search inside Rian and find whatever it was that made Damon want him so fucking much it had turned him upside down from the moment they’d locked horns in this very room.
Rian’s nails bit into his neck, and Damon groaned as the pressure of their bodies pushed Rian up onto the table; lean thighs parted, flanking Damon’s hips, drawing him in, and God was he going to fucking combust if Rian didn’t stop moving against him like that, didn’t stop breathing so raggedly and nipping at his mouth and whispering out a ragged, rough, “Damon...”
“Don’t...don’t say my name like that,” Damon rasped, even as he stole the taste of it from Rian’s lips, searching to lick every whisper, every syllable from pale, giving lips. “Don’t—”
A squeal came from the classroom outside: hinges. Followed by the bang of a door and the telltale rattle of a mop against the side of a bucket, and they broke back from each other with a start, both of them jerking their heads toward the door, Damon’s heart beating so fast he felt like he’d run a hard 5K at top speed.
Janitor. Moving in a slow shuffle past the open studio doorway, pushing the mop and humming softly to himself.
And interrupting something that had needed to be stopped anyway.
What the fuck?
What the fuck had he been doing?
Still breathing hard, he jerked his gaze back to Rian. A flushed, disheveled Rian, looking up at him with dazed eyes turned smoky-hot, his lips still parted but their pale color now painted with the pressure of Damon’s lips, pink and so very swollen.
Damon had done that.
Damon had completely forgotten what he’d come here for, and just...just...
He tore his eyes from Rian for a moment, caught by the canvas behind him, a work in progress that looked like a white tree on a black backdrop, but it had been split down its main fork and fire smoldered inside, embers glowing deep at its heart.
Damon felt like that tree.
Split open, his heart burning.
He couldn’t stay here. He couldn’t do this.
Not with him.
And even as Rian stepped closer, reaching out a hand, drawing in a breath to speak...
Damon shook his head.
Turned away.
And walked away from Rian Falwell, before Damon ended up doing something he would only regret.
Chapter Eight
Rian had never slept so terribly in his life.
He couldn’t believe Damon had just—and Rian had—and then the janitor had interrupted and before Rian could even ask what the hell was that?
Damon had just been...gone.
And Rian hadn’t had the courage to chase him, when his hands were shaking and he was full of too many questions he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answers to.
Questions that had played through his mind all night as he’d tossed and turned in his bed, staring up at the stucco ceiling and counting the bumps like counting stars and counting sheep, trying to count himself to sleep.
As if he could sleep when he’d kept touching his slightly sore lips, and tasting the raw, deep flavor of Damon on his tongue.
How.
Why?
He’d...he’d caught himself noticing now and then just how arrestingly attractive Damon was, from that handsome face with its blunt-edged elegance to the way his body showed the work he put in to hone himself to a pillar of strength, refining every line of his frame into a perfect aesthetic only enhanced by the scars that marked every pain he had survived.
But that was just an artist’s eye for physical beauty, he’d told himself over and over again.
As if that could explain why Damon frustrated him so much.
Made him so angry.
And was never far from the forefront of his mind.
That kiss had felt like a short fuse burning down to the final explosion, fire crackling hotter and hotter until it hit a burst point. And if Rian would stop sticking his head in the sand and playing coy, playing pretend...he had to admit.
He was attracted to Damon Louis.
And he had no idea what to do with that, when they couldn’t go five minutes without nearly ripping each other’s heads off.
Not to mention it just...didn’t make sense.
Rian wanting Damon, perhaps.
But Damon...wanting him? With how coldly he looked at Rian, and the way he stared at Rian as if the two of them were utterly alien to each other, unable to even comprehend the same concept of reality?
But...you’re not the only one looking for somewhere to belong.
By the time morning came, the first faint gray light creeping through the windows and the narrow branches of the trees, Rian had barely caught an hour of sleep. And his restless energy wouldn’t let him lie abed any longer, chasing him from his bedroom and out into the living room—where he caught Lachlan Walden at the kitchen island, settled on a stool and lifting a cup of coffee to his lips, eyes fixed on an unfolded newspaper, distant behind his glasses.
Lachlan froze with his coffee cup halfway to his lips.
Rian halted mid-stride, blinking at him.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you up before seven before,” Lachlan said, his normally stern, cool voice slightly roughened with sleep, his normally precisely swept-back platinum hair lightly mussed, a few strands falling into his eyes.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you without a suit coat before,” Rian countered, staring; Lachlan actually looked vaguely casual, as much as he could when he was still in a crisply ironed pale blue button-down with dark blue pinstripes, paired with a matching dark blue tie.
“You have no reason to,” Lachlan retorted tonelessly. “Why are you up so early?”
Rian shrugged, hefting his gym bag to his shoulder. “Couldn’t sleep. Going to work off some energy before first period.”
“Ah.”
Neutral, disinterested, reminding Rian without a single word that they didn’t really cohabitate; they just happened to awkwardly share a space. He fidgeted for a moment, then mumbled, “Morning, then,” and turned away, toward the door.
Only to stop with his hand on the knob as Walden’s voice drifted after him. “How goes your knotty little problem?”
Which one?
Rian glanced back. “We haven’t pinpointed anything. No one knows anything about what he’s doing after school, not that we can ask directly.” He couldn’t help the simmering snap of resentment there, that Lachlan thought it was so much more important to keep from inconveniencing the parents than it was to just...be certain, with the boys. “But Chris doesn’t look good. He looks sick. Like he’s losing weight, too.”
“Keep me apprised, please,” Walden murmured, lifting his mug to his lips—only to pause as Rian just glared at him, looking back at Rian frostily over the top of the mug. “I’m not heartless, Mr. Falwell. Simply cautious. Previous administrators have managed to keep this school out of the tabloids for decades. I have a responsibility to carry on in their footsteps. That, too, is part of safeguarding the boys’ well-being. They don’t need to be subjected to public scrutiny and paparazzi sensationalism on top of the ignominy of being banished to this... I believe their favorite word for it is ‘backwater.’”
“...most recent one I’ve heard is ‘boring shithole town,’ but backwater works too.” Rian smiled weakly. He wasn’t really ready to forgive Lachlan yet, but...he got it, sort of.
But that didn’t stop him from worrying about Chris.
And that worry haunted him as he made his way through the silent, whispering halls, through the misty shafts of predawn light streaming through the windows, to the room set aside as a dance studio on the fourth floor.
Technically this was one of his classrooms, but he only used it for one period per day, during fifth with the whopping four boys who had enrolled in the dance elective. Rian wasn’t properly trained to teach ballet, anyway, but he had enough foundations to guide the boys through the most basic of steps and proper posture and turn of the foot; he supposed it was another luxury he’d taken for granted, that he’d had time to learn art and music and dance like he was some child of a highbrow family practicing these things not for the love of them, but because they would make him a prettier, more accomplished piece of arm candy for whatever man he would end up arranged to marry.
He supposed it wasn’t far off from the truth.
Private tutors; ballet, violin, piano, painting, sculpting; etiquette lessons; parties just to show their “accomplished” artist son off to their wealthy friends. Even if his family wasn’t as prestigious as some of the lineages who walked these halls, he supposed in some ways he’d had more freedoms than any of these boys. At least he’d been allowed to choose.
That was why he’d let Valdez out of any obligation to finish out Rian’s class.
Not because he was trying to control things.
But because he doubted Valdez had been given a choice in coming here, and Rian had been trying to give him just one thing he could decide for himself.
Not that Damon had given Rian a chance to explain that.
With a frustrated hiss, he tried to push Damon out of his mind.
He’d come here to stop thinking about him.
So he changed in the little room adjacent to the dance studio, slipping into a leotard and off-the-shoulder sweater and a pair of worn slippers whose toes had turned rough and just right for a scuffed, comfortable grip when standing on pointe, turned on a little Tchaikovsky, and just...
Let himself go.
He wasn’t very good. He knew that. Nowhere near professional level, nowhere near even any of the better students at proper ballet schools...but he didn’t have to be good to enjoy it, losing himself in practiced movements as he stepped and twisted and twirled across the glossy floor of the wide studio space, now and then catching a glimpse of himself in the wall of mirrors along o
ne side and correcting his form, but mostly just letting his body take over and move as it pleased so he could do something that didn’t require actually focusing on his racing, hyper-cycling thoughts. Anything to work off this bristling, restless energy; anything to tire himself out with the comforting, pleasant burn of stretching and testing his body.
So that he’d actually sleep tonight, instead of thinking again and again of the heat of Damon’s lips, or how gorgeous Damon would look with his flex and flow and beautifully masculine energy captured on paper.
He wasn’t ready to stop by the time his phone called him to a halt, interrupting with its shrill ringtone that he always meant to change and never seemed to remember to fix. His breaths hitched as he stumbled to a halt, and he told himself it was just exertion, the panting sweat of exhaustion that made his chest tight as he crossed the room to his bag and fumbled his phone out from the side pocket. He wasn’t looking for that black diamond on a white circle; he wasn’t.
And he wasn’t disappointed when he saw the 585 area code for Rochester, either.
He absolutely was not.
Tell yourself another one, Falwell.
Just like he told himself he wasn’t already imagining what his mother would say. Aren’t you ready to come back yet, dearest?
Aren’t you tired of this little game?
I just worry about you, you know. You aren’t...
She would never finish that sentence.
She’d just make a helpless little gesture and a sound in the back of her throat that said everything she thought of him, and what he was capable of on his own.
With a grimace, he swiped the call to send it to voicemail then dropped the phone back into the bag, trading it for a towel that he dragged across his brow before pressing his face into it, mopping up the dampness from his cheeks. He’d need to steal a shower before class, he thought—then paused, lifting his head, as a sound drifted up from below.
He stepped to the window overlooking the front path of the school—where the boys from the football team jogged in tight circles around the small paved plaza in front of the steps, Damon at their head, pushing all of them until they were drenched with sweat, Damon’s body so tense he was a captured moment of dawn-lit angles. Rian’s heart skipped, his stomach seeming to draw in on itself.
