Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
“Cheng!” Cillian—Richard—threw himself to the edge of the cliff, grasping on to Brendan’s arm with both hands, with all his strength, bracing his feet and dragging, hauling, but Landon’s greater weight would prove to be too much, his savior sliding, sliding, his weight threatening to drag them both down…
“Let go,” Brendan said, as acceptance, as peace, settled over him. Sometimes the only way to stop fearing loss…was to finally release oneself from the pain. “Just let me go, Richard.”
“No!” Even as they jolted downward another inch together, Cillian flung himself down on his stomach, red-faced, teeth bared and clenched, clawing at Brendan’s arm while his other hand swung down, reaching, straining. “Give me your other hand!”
“It’s too late,” Brendan shouted. “Let go!”
“I won’t—I won’t—you bastard, don’t you know she needs us both?” Gasping out rough, sobbing breaths, real tears coursing down his cheeks, Cillian nearly pushed himself over the edge, struggling to grasp on even as his grip slipped more and more. “Just take my hand!”
Brendan didn’t take his hand.
Instead Brendan let his other hand go loose, relaxing its grasp on Cillian’s forearm. “Love her,” he whispered, smiling as he looked up into pale brown eyes slowly widening with horror, with realization.
Yet deep down…
What he meant was love me.
Then the moment passed. His fingers slipped through Cillian’s, one last touch, one last moment, a fleeting second in which it was not Landon, but Brendan who ached for those wind-chilled fingers holding so desperately to his own…
And then, “That’s a wrap,” Newcomb called almost boredly. “We’ll add the fall in post.”
Cillian slumped back on his ass, breathing hard, just sprawled there; Brendan watched him for a few moments, before taking the reaching hands crew members offered to hoist him out of the crevasse. Finding his feet, he dusted himself off, and for a moment caught Cillian’s eye. Cillian’s eye, not Richard Kerrington’s, and for just a second Cillian looked at him instead of through him, something triumphant in his eyes, something full of wonder.
Brendan’s throat tightened, but he couldn’t help but smile. “You were amazing,” he said.
The first thing he’d said to Cillian since he’d used the whip of words to cut and brand him. It wasn’t what he really wanted to say, but it was a start.
Cillian’s flushed face bloomed into a breathless smile—but then that smile crumpled, broke. He looked away sharply, shaking his head, then tumbled to his feet, taking a quick step back, fingers clutching at his trim tailcoat.
“No.” He shook his head, that single word miserable, eyes downcast. “I…I can’t. I can’t, I—”
“…Cillian!”
Brendan couldn’t stop himself. He stretched out a hand—but Cillian turned and ran, stumbling past several crew members and bumping into them before he broke free and pelted down the narrow dirt pathway snaking along the side of the slope. Instinct drew Brendan after him, a few quick steps, before a hand on his arm stopped him. He froze, looking down, breathing hard, the cold icing his throat and turning his breaths into smoke.
Drake.
Black eyes watched him with a touch of sympathy from beneath the faux-fur hood of Drake’s ridiculously over-padded coat. “I think it might be a good idea to let him go right now.”
“…yeah.” Brendan watched the fleet-footed, swift shape Cillian made, racing away until he became smaller and smaller; until he disappeared into the little stand of trees they’d hiked through to get here.
“What happened with you two?” Drake asked softly. “You’ve been staring anywhere but at each other for days.”
“He…” Brendan sighed. “He gave me something I didn’t deserve. Something so far outside my comfort zone I’d never have thought it was possible for me. And I fucked it up.”
Forget the sex. Vanilla, kink, dirty, sweet…that wasn’t the thing that had broken him.
It was what Cillian had asked him to feel.
Him, and not the hundreds of people whose emotions he’d put on as costumes.
“Fucked everything up,” Drake murmured. “That sounds in character.”
“Why is your idea of comforting me to tell me just how terrible I am?”
“Who said I was comforting you?” But Drake touched his arm lightly, a gentleness at odds with his sharp tone. “C’mon. I know you’re dying in that costume. Let’s go let wardrobe peel you out of it.”
“Yeah.” Brendan rolled his shoulders inside the stiff coat, glancing around the small popup staging and dressing area the crew had set up on a flat shelf of land just below the little crack in the earth that had become their “ravine.” But he stopped, blood chilling colder than the island’s scouring glacial winds, as he realized…
“Drake?” he rasped, throat dry. “Where’s Newcomb?”
Drake lifted his head, scanning in quick sharp darts of black eyes, before he swore, already taking off toward the path with Brendan hot on his heels. “Oh, shit.”
l
CILLIAN RAN BLIND, LETTING INSTINCT and a lifetime of familiarity with the island’s slopes guide him when his mind just wasn’t working, ripping at the constricting buttons of his too-tight tailcoat until he could breathe in huge, aching gasps.