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)
Cillian’s only warning was a hard, flashing look.
Before Brendan’s hand was on his throat, shoving him back, a display of force so violent and unexpected it knocked the breath out of Cillian as he hit the sofa again. An instant rush of raw, burning lust went through him as Brendan moved over him once more, and this time that stone-set face was anything but comical, the harsh and cold menace in those features transforming them into something dark. Something hungry. And Cillian writhed, pulling at Brendan’s hand, secretly begging him to press down more as he—as he—
—as he nearly gagged as, for just a moment, he saw not Brendan Lau.
But Oliver Newcomb, hovering over him with that terrible leer.
Heat flash froze into jagged ice stabbing into him. He sucked in a sobbing breath, digging his fingers into Brendan’s hand. “Stop, I—I can’t, I—”
Brendan immediately pulled back.
And before Cillian could even try to explain…
Brendan drew him up and gathered Cillian into his arms, against his chest.
Sucking in shaking, shallow, desperate breaths, Cillian huddled into Brendan, clutching his arms between them and burying his face against Brendan’s shoulder. His heart trembled, his bones rattled, and he couldn’t seem to find any words other than, “I’m sorry…I’m sorry…”
“Hush, now.” Brendan’s hands—so cruel moments before, so soft now—stroked over his back. “Maybe it was a little too soon to dive in feet first with that, Cillian. It’s all right. Just breathe. You don’t have to apologize.”
“But he didn’t even touch me, why am I…why am I…”
Why did he feel so sick?
Maybe because he couldn’t even do something so personal, so intimate to him, without Newcomb tainting it. Intruding on what…what should have been just for him, and now…
“He didn’t have to touch you to make you feel violated.” Brendan’s voice was a soothing warmth enveloping Cillian in a cocoon of bass vibrations. “And you don’t have to be over it overnight. When you’re ready. Only when you’re ready.”
With a miserable sound, Cillian buried his face, hiding against Brendan’s shoulder and trying to force down the knot in his throat. “I…I should go.”
“You don’t have to,” Brendan said, and gathered him in closer, while Cillian knotted up handfuls of his shirt and tried not to dissolve into raw, frustrated screams. “You don’t have to go anywhere at all.”
Cillian clung to him, then—clung to Brendan’s safety and warmth, and wished…wished…
Wished this wasn’t just Brendan humoring him because it was the right thing to do.
“I didn’t say blackberries,” he forced around the knot in his throat—and Brendan’s soft, deep laughter wrapped around him in a cocooning layer, shutting out the world.
“Cillian…that time, you didn’t have to.”
CHAPTER TEN
BRENDAN WASN’T SURPRISED, REALLY, WHEN Cillian fell asleep.
He was more surprised when Cillian fell asleep snuggled against him, tucked against Brendan as if he found Brendan completely safe and comfortable, when Brendan really hadn’t done anything to earn that trust.
But he’d asked for it, hadn’t he?
By offering to be Cillian’s stand-in lover, he’d asked Cillian to trust that Brendan wouldn’t hurt him the way Newcomb had—or that prick off Grindr.
And Cillian had said yes so easily.
Brendan lingered on that asymmetrical face, loose and quiet and boyish in his sleep; Cillian’s tousle of brown hair spilled against Brendan’s shoulder. He was a strange one, Brendan thought. A man with a man’s desires, a man’s intimate knowledge, and yet there was something almost naïve about him, this sense of wonder and startlement, that made Brendan question those little evasions about where he was from, how sheltered Cillian had been.
Life just managed to drop all sorts of interesting things into Brendan’s lap, didn’t it.
But right now he had a lap full of man to deal with, and after looking about for a moment, Brendan gave up and just slipped his arms under Cillian and lifted him against his chest. As lean and compact as he was, he still made a solid weight in Brendan’s arms, testament to the athletic tone of his rangy body. Cillian didn’t stir in the slightest, other than to curl a hand against Brendan’s chest as Brendan carried him across the apartment to the bed.
When Brendan deposited him against the duvet, Cillian made a sleepy sound—then rolled onto his side and curled up, gathering one of Brendan’s pillows to his chest and hugging it close. Impertinent goddamned thing, curling up like he was in his own bed. Hands on his hips, Brendan looked down at the man sleeping in his bed, hints of settling bruises peeking past the remaining traces of makeup on Cillian’s skin.
“Aiyah…what am I going to do with you?” Brendan muttered.
Cillian didn’t answer.
He just slept on, oblivious, while Brendan wet a towel and settled in to wash the remnants of foundation from that pale, bruise-cracked skin.
And wondered if he would be able to even look at Oliver Newcomb tomorrow without laying him out flat for carving fissures in that quiet sense of wonder Cillian carried, until it flaked away from him in tired smears as pallid as the makeup Brendan cleaned from his face.