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)
“Well,” Cillian said firmly. “If we’re going to put on a show…”
With a sardonic twist of his lips, Brendan stood, hips angling in fluid motion; he stretched one hand out to Cillian. “…might as well make it a good one.”
It didn’t quite feel like for show, the charge of electric heat that went through Cillian when he slipped his fingers into Brendan’s and stood, following him out onto the dance floor. And it definitely didn’t feel like pretend when Brendan slipped his arms around Cillian’s waist, drawing him in, enfolding him, and Cillian didn’t know how Brendan couldn’t feel his heart trying to climb out of his chest and pound against Brendan’s as Cillian slid his arms around that strong, corded neck and leaned into Brendan and let himself sway.
Am I the only one completely swept away right now?
Brendan’s voice rumbled into him; a murmur floated, intimate, into his hair as Brendan rested against him. “It’s not a waltz,” he said. “But I hope it’ll do.”
Cillian laughed softly, tucking his head under Brendan’s chin. “Mm. It’s nice. I never imagined you could be this…”
“Hm?”
“Relaxed.” For all that Brendan’s body was toned to steely hardness, he moved so smoothly against Cillian, flowed so easily, and Cillian sighed. “It’s always thunderclouds around you. Always.”
But right now, it felt more like a gentle rain.
Low, near-soundless laughter shook against him. “…Drake may have informed me that I am pushy, overbearing, and I suck the oxygen out of any room.” Drawing back, Brendan looked down at him—so close he was nothing but the impression of curving lips, the dark fan of his eyelashes, the warm glimmer of his eyes. “So I’m trying to leave a little room to breathe.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Then let’s just…breathe.” While Cillian wondered if he really could ever understand Brendan Lau at all…when for all his pragmatism, his practicality, Cillian was beginning to see the glimmers of a certain kindness underneath that brooding storm. He tilted his head, studying Brendan with a smile. “We’re not so bad at this fake dating thing, you know.”
“No,” Brendan said—and curled his fingers beneath Cillian’s chin, lifting him up. Into a kiss: a slow kiss, a soft kiss, one that barely parted Cillian’s lips to steal and share breath in the same instant, and yet right now with Brendan’s fingers spread against the small of his back and their bodies moving in rhythm and Cillian’s pulse following in time…that simple kiss left him trembling sweet even as Brendan pulled back, once more resting his chin to the top of Cillian’s head, his fingers sliding rough and slow over the back of Cillian’s neck. “We’re really not.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BRENDAN WAS GETTING TOO OLD to have a “boyfriend” Cillian’s age.
It wasn’t that the twenty-two year age difference was particularly scandalous.
It wasn’t even that Brendan couldn’t keep up in bed—when they’d yet to do more than kiss, over the last month of “dating” that really wasn’t much more than after-hours rehearsals. Each night ended in something that had started off as a last little publicity hit, that kiss at the doorstep in plain sight of the street before Brendan handed Cillian over to a grouchy Maxwell Albright who was, apparently, not just Cillian’s bodyguard, but his driver.
But what had begun as kissing for show, though, had started to feel different. Softer. Slower. Lingering a little longer every time, and every time Cillian seemed more and more reluctant to pull away from him; every time, Brendan found himself fixating longer and longer on the warm-tingle feeling in his lips, their sensitivity.
But nothing about that made dealing with Cillian more difficult than Brendan expected.
It was the hours.
The night of the swing competition, they’d stayed out until three in the morning. The night after, practicing readings until after midnight. Stealing kisses on occasion. More readings, until Brendan had dozed off on the sofa and Cillian had apparently followed not long after, until that Maxwell fellow’s texts woke them both and Cillian straggled home to his taskmaster. Another very public date at an upscale restaurant. Cillian’s first swing lesson, in which he tried very hard to fall on his face multiple times, laughing himself breathless every time Brendan caught him around the waist and swung him away from a dangerous encounter with the floor, watching with a little pout that might almost be jealous when Brendan paired up with the instructor for a demonstration.
Brendan didn’t know where Cillian found the energy.
Even right now he was bright-eyed as a squirrel, he and Sophie with their heads together over their scripts again. Cillian had been bounding all over the scaffolding all day, testing out his footing on a high walkway meant for a greenscreened swordfight at some point.
While Brendan was currently yawning into his script.
He was going to have to find a way to balance this out.
Or he’d be the one holding everyone up on making progress with filming.