Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
“Come to bed,” Aodhan murmured. “Keir gave me homework a long time ago.”
“What did he suggest you do?”
“Become easy with touch by starting small with people I trusted.”
“I’m afraid we’re far beyond that,” Illium whispered, as if making a confession. “Your hands quite undid me, in case you’ve forgotten.”
Aodhan stroked Illium’s pulse again, the staccato beat of it an addiction. “No, Blue, touch on my skin.”
The sleepiness retreated, the gold of Illium’s eyes liquid fire. Both of them silent, their rough breaths the only sound, Aodhan tugged him out of the kitchen and to the living area. The lights of the city sparkled beyond the huge windows, but since the post-war repairs, the view here only went one way—the windows were glazed in a way as to negate spying, inadvertent or not.
It meant he could tug off his shirt and drop it aside without worrying that someone was staring at him without his consent, coveting him. Making him feel less than a sentient being with his own hopes and dreams.
Just an object that could be owned.
But there was no danger of that here, with this man who had seen him from the first. And it wasn’t only about his privacy. Because when Illium pulled his T-shirt off over his head, Aodhan didn’t have to worry that others were looking at the man he loved when he was so vulnerable, so exposed.
They’d both discarded their shoes once inside the suite, and their toes brushed as they came close, closer. Aodhan placed his hands deliberately on Illium’s upper arms. Giving the other man permission. Because that mattered to Illium, his lover tautly muscled and dangerously trained.
Their eyes tangled in a visual kiss, Illium placed one hand over Aodhan’s bare hip.
20
Illium stroked up the merest breath, then down. “How’s this?”
Every one of Aodhan’s senses was focused on the skin-to-skin contact, on the slight roughness of Illium’s touch, on the warmth and strength of a hand built to carry a heavy blade in winged combat. So different, he realized, from the hands that had viciously stolen the touch that should’ve been his alone to give.
“The ones who took me,” he found himself saying, “were greedy. Weak. Cruel. You’re not greedy. You’re not weak. And you’re never cruel.”
Though Illium’s expression darkened, his jaw clenching until his skin lost blood flow over bone, he didn’t tell Aodhan that this wasn’t the time to bring up his torture. His best friend in all the universe understood that this was no longer a wound to be kept in the dark inside him, where it could fester. It was time he exposed it to the light once and for all, and burned it to cinders.
“I’m nothing like them.” Illium stroked his hip again, infinitely gentle despite his fury. “I’m also alive while those fuckers are dead and erased from existence. Keep that thought in your head anytime the memories try to claw back into you.”
Aodhan gloried in Illium’s anger, in the vibrant life of him. “You know how you fidget with things?” It had become clear to him since Illium’s arrival home that the other man had switched from Kaia’s pendant to using the belt buckle Aodhan had gifted him. Tapping at it when he was in thought, rubbing his thumb down the polished metal at times.
But, aware of how much Illium liked to play small objects through and over his fingers, he planned to make the other man a metal disk perfectly weighted for just such play—while stamping it with their entwined initials.
“You mean like this?” Illium took a small triangular piece out of his pocket with his free hand and played it around and over his fingers, his other hand never breaking skin contact with Aodhan.
Distracted, Aodhan stared at the paint-splattered object. “That’s the broken tip of my palette knife.” He’d snapped the narrow tool in the midst of an intensive painting session. “Blue, it’s sharp.”
“After I stole it from your easel, I filed down the edges.” He slipped it back into his pocket. “It’s mine now.”
Aodhan had no idea how he’d gotten lucky enough to call Illium his own, but one thing he knew—he was never letting him go.
“As you’re mine now,” he said firmly. “I’m making you my fidget—the mental image on which I’ll focus anytime I start to backslide. Because if there’s one thing I know, it’s that you’ll never let me fall.”
“Not even if you want to.” Illium slid his hand up to spread it over Aodhan’s ribs. “You’re a stubborn bastard, but I’ve decided to never again play nice when it comes to your nightmares—I’m hauling you back from the abyss even if you try to take my head off.”
“Call me beautiful again,” Aodhan rasped, his abdomen tensing. “I want to remember only you when I hear that word.”
He could all but see Illium fighting his overprotective impulses when it came to Aodhan. “Beautiful,” he murmured roughly. “Beautiful Adi with the artist’s hands and a spirit made of steel fire.”