Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 79892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
It felt like Summer was saying so much more.
So very much more.
As if he knew...
The thing that frightened Fox the most was Summer himself.
Summer, and the way he made it so very impossible for Fox to stop himself from feeling all these riotous and wondrous and monstrous things—the brightness that made him laugh, the exasperation that masked his affection, the way his entire body drew tight and hot every time Summer stole his daily kiss, sometimes sweet, sometimes searing, sometimes submissive, sometimes so insistently needy.
Because every last one of those feelings whispered that Fox could learn how to be happy again.
But if he dared to claim happiness, to grasp at it with all his heart...
Then it could be torn away from him again in a single crashing instant.
He didn’t know if he could face that ever again.
And he couldn’t think about it right now, couldn’t grapple with the ongoing battle between his yearning...and that dark, ugly thing inside of him that was so convinced he would lose the very thing he reached for with both hands.
As he lifted his head, looking into Summer’s eyes, into their softness, the way they shaded toward darker colors at the center like twilight shading up into night.
“Help me,” he whispered, capturing Summer’s face between his palms, cradling his jaw, leaning into him...and stealing his lips, gasping his plea into that mouth that made him want things no man should want, but that he couldn’t deny. “Help me forget.”
Chapter Ten
Summer shouldn’t have pushed Fox.
That had been the only thing on his mind when he realized Fox was hyperventilating, standing in water up to mid-hip, his boxer-briefs soaking dark against his pale amber skin.
And his chest rising and falling in rapid wheezes, muscles constricting tight against his skin, as he froze in place.
It had taken less than a second for Summer to realize Fox wasn’t with him anymore.
Fox was somewhere else, somewhere dark, trapped inside his own head.
And Summer had done the only thing he could do:
Pulled him out of the water the moment he’d started struggling, panicking, and taken him into his arms as if he could somehow lock out whatever black nightmare had crawled into Fox’s thoughts, and keep him safe.
Maybe he was young, inexperienced; maybe Fox was so much older, so much stronger, hardened by dealing with things Summer couldn’t imagine.
But that was all he wanted, in the end.
To have the strength, the surety, to keep Fox safe.
To make him feel as sheltered, as protected, as Fox made him feel when he pulled Summer close and held him until the panic attacks calmed and he could breathe again.
So Summer held him.
He held him, listened to his breaths calm, stroked his fingers against his scalp, murmured to him—anything he could think of, anything to tell him it was okay.
It was okay to not stare his demons in the face.
Not now, maybe not ever.
Summer...
God, Summer would love him either way, whether he faced his fears or thrust them away forever.
And that was when it hit him, hard as a blow to the solar plexus, punching the breath from him and making his grasp on Fox tighten convulsively.
He...
He loved Fox Iseya.
Not just the idealized figurehead he had made of Fox during his childhood years.
But the very real, very vulnerable, very flawed and yet perfectly beautiful man currently trembling and damp in his arms.
He loved this difficult, strange man of subtle whims and irascible tempers, this quiet creature who tried to be a statue of graven stone but was instead all steel and sharp edges, and every time Summer’s heart bled with the cuts it only filled that much deeper with that slow-growing love he hadn’t even realized was creeping up on him with every day, every kiss that made him hope more and more that Fox could ever...
Could ever feel something for him.
But then Fox was straightening, looking down at him with those glacial silver eyes that suddenly weren’t so cold anymore, weren’t so closed, raw and open and driving into him with breathtaking force as their eyes locked.
As Fox’s long, agile fingers stroked along Summer’s cheeks, cradled his face.
As Fox whispered, “Help me.” Those lips descending, parted, heated. “Help me forget.”
Summer couldn’t be hearing, understanding that right.
But the feeling of Fox’s kiss could never be wrong.
And there was no mistaking the fire of Fox’s mouth on his own, the heat of his body, the pressure and desire and need building up between them as Summer sank into the wildness of Fox’s lips, the plundering desperation that seemed to beg something from him.
Something that he was only too willing to give.
He felt as though he were begging, as he slanted his mouth hotly, eagerly against Fox’s—crying take me, love me, fill me with every moment that their lips crashed together and Fox reminded him how it felt to surrender entirely; to be caught up, swept into the insistent, hungry throb of sensation that made his entire body pulse in a singular dark rhythm of desire every time Fox so much as looked at him.