Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 87933 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87933 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
I want to tell him to stop with the sweetness, but I’m addicted to it. So instead, I shut both of us up by kissing him and hoping I don’t blurt out what’s going on in my head.
Blake takes control by licking into my mouth and blindly reaching for the supplies in my hand. The slight nervousness I could sense is completely gone as he presses his body to mine. He rocks his hips, grinding against me until he shudders.
“How does being with you feel this good?” he asks breathlessly.
I want to laugh, I really do, but it’s a question I’ve heard a lot. “I’m new and shiny. That’ll wear off.”
“It’s not that.”
I can assure him it is. I try to kiss him again, but he pulls back.
“You don’t make me feel like I’m famous. You don’t make me want to pretend to be someone else so I get the attention I crave. It’s like …” His lips purse like he can’t figure out the words.
“Like what?”
Even if I believe it to be bullshit. Even if I think his feelings are temporary—some lust-driven illusion of what something real with me would look like—I want to hear it.
“I think the shallowness of this town has made us both wary and unable to trust or give ourselves completely to someone. But with you, I can be the real Blake, and I don’t have that with anyone else. Maybe on a smaller scale, I have that with the guys from Eleven, but … I don’t really fit in with them. I do, but I don’t. Harley and Ryder always bonded over being queer. Mason and Denver were best friends. We’re all close, but I was mostly on my own. With you … you feel like … home.”
That’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me, but I can’t say that aloud. “Dude, you don’t have to work so hard for it. I’ve already told you I’ll sleep with you.”
“Fine, don’t believe me. I just … wanted you to know that this means something to me. You mean something. More than what we’re about to do, more than what we’ve already done.”
My throat is thick with emotion I don’t want to show, but I also know what he’s saying is more likely a bond over friendship than anything physical or deeper.
“Being friends outside of this helps,” I say. “It also helps that I genuinely like you.”
Blake’s breathtaking smile practically covers his entire face, and it feels a little too real now.
“Though, when I first met you in that club when you were with Denver and Mason, I thought you were all douchebags. It’s nice to know that even the most famous of Hollywood people aren’t complete assholes.”
Blake shakes his head. “You’re really incapable of saying something nice without a side of snark, aren’t you?”
Yes. Because real emotion makes me too vulnerable, and I hate that.
“Sorry,” Blake says. “I went and made this weird.”
“Not weird. I just don’t … I don’t talk about this stuff with anyone. I don’t get serious.”
He leans in and runs his nose down the side of my face and lowers his voice. “Maybe you should. It might open you up to possibilities you’ve never considered.”
“Like what?”
“Like instead of thinking everything is temporary, maybe you’d realize some people are permanent.”
I close my eyes and drink all of him in. His words. His presence. The surety with which he carries himself when he should be anything but confident in this. I knew as a teenager I was gay, but it still took years of self-reflection to make sense of it.
And Blake … it’s like he discovers a part of him he didn’t know existed and embraces it fully without any hesitation.
As much as I want to, I can’t think of Blake as permanent. My heart won’t survive it.
Chapter Twenty-One
Blake
Jordan doesn’t say anything, which I was expecting. To him, everything is temporary, and he fights even the thought of anything permanent. He hands me the supplies and backs up to move toward the couch, and when he turns and sticks his ass out, he looks at me over his shoulder and smirks.
I never thought Jordan Brooks—or any other man—naked and waiting for me to touch him could elicit this kind of need. It’s warm and urgent, but also something else. It’s something I’ve only ever heard of before or seen more recently with my bandmates.
I’m desperate for Jordan to see what this is, what we could be if he gave it a chance, but I know he won’t. Or he can’t. Not yet.
Jordan’s long frame on display for me … Damn. He widens his stance, bends at the waist, and folds his arms along the back side of the couch. “Are you going to stand there and look at me the whole time, or are you going to come over here and fuck me?”