Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 118125 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 591(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118125 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 591(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
Damon grinned. “...if that’s how you want to play it,” he said, “you’d better start running.”
He gave Rian half a second to realize what he’d challenged Damon to—half a second to widen his eyes, half a second to gasp, half a second to turn and bolt down the hall with a tiny suppressed shriek of breathless laughter.
Before Damon was after him, hot on his heels.
Just hot, period—when all it took was one look from his husband to ignite him all over again. Rian had always left him heated—with anger, with frustration, with passion.
With love.
And once he started to burn...
There was nothing that could calm him down but Rian’s kiss. His touch.
His love, and the promise reinforced every time their bodies crashed together in a tangle of flesh and need and wild, burning heat.
Damon couldn’t get enough.
And if this might be his only chance for the next—who knew how long?
He wasn’t going to waste it.
* * *
Rian barely made it through the bedroom door before Damon’s heavy weight hit him—and he wasn’t sure if Damon fell into him or he fell into Damon but suddenly they were crashing, tangling, the bed slamming into his back as Rian fell to the mattress with his entire body nearly vibrating with the force of impact.
The force of impact, and the force of his need for Damon.
Two years.
Two years of marriage, two years of crashing together and then apart, finding where their edges fit and where they stabbed and where they needed sanding and where sometimes the pain was the pleasure of it, when they ripped at each other and somehow that frustration turned into passion and fire and everything wonderful that burned between them.
Two years where Rian’s desire hadn’t abated in the slightest.
Two years of falling more and more in love.
With his husband—and with the life they had built together.
In some ways, nothing had changed.
They still taught their classes, still had little overlap in their disciplines, still...still sometimes fought like cats and dogs.
But bit by bit, day by day, they had created this world that was just for them; this home that was just for them, filled with furniture they’d argued over at IKEA and the kitschy things Rian picked up at the antique shops down in town and the ugly things Damon had found at the same shops and bought because he thought they were weird and quirky and something Rian would love. And Rian did love them, just because they were all wrong and so hideous and he absolutely adored that his husband tried so hard and still hadn’t quite figured out Rian’s tastes, until it had become a running joke that Damon had absolutely zero sense of style, fashion, or aesthetic balance.
I must have some kind of eye, Damon had teased, as he’d put some kind of bizarre rhinestone-encrusted pepper grinder up on one of the wall-mounted decorative kitchen shelves. I picked you.
Ridiculous man.
Ridiculous man, with that overly blunt way of talking that just made Rian blush again and again and again.
That way of looking at Rian as if there was nothing in Damon’s world but him.
That way of touching him as if Rian was something fragile and cherished that Damon couldn’t bear to break.
That way of kissing him as if Damon would devour him with his hunger—as Damon kissed him now, that hot mouth descending on Rian’s and consuming him with a heat that burst through him as if he’d plunged into the heart of a star, incinerated in an instant. Every time they came together was always like that: Rian hit his flashpoint in less time than it took to breathe, his entire body coming alight, internal combustion flaring to the point of overload. He felt the crush of Damon’s lips with every sense, from the velvet-wet texture of their mouths sliding together to the prickling sting of pressure to the scour of rough heat and silky caresses; from the heady golden-wine taste of the slick inside of Damon’s mouth to the steaming scent of his breaths to the gasping, liquid sounds they made as they moved together, mated, broke apart, met again in a frenzy.
Rian slipped his arms around Damon’s neck, gathered up handfuls of his hair, clutching them just to savor the stark coolness of soft strands trapped between the fire of Rian’s needy, sensitive palms and the taut heat of Damon’s throat. But he hardly had a chance to drag Damon’s shirt off before, with a near-desperate urgency, Damon’s hands took control of his body, pushing Rian over, easing him onto his side with Damon against his back, one large, rough hand smoothing over his hip, his ass, before ripping his pants off to leave him bare.
Bare...and spread open as Damon nudged his leg forward, the calluses on his fingertips electrifying sensitive skin as Damon stroked beneath Rian’s thigh, coaxed his leg to bend until he was vulnerable and spread open with Damon pressed against him from behind and completely controlling, dominating him with that bulk he loved so much. But Rian whined softly, hungrily as Damon slid against his ass, first denim...then burning bare flesh, teasing him with the shape of Damon’s cock stroking against him instead of giving him what he wanted with an urgency that made him feel like a little wild animal. He squirmed his hips back against Damon—only to freeze as Damon let out a soft, rumbling chuckle against his ear.