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)
Newcomb stared at them both with his eyes hard, hateful slits, his mouth wrinkling into a grimace of fury, baring his teeth.
Before he just turned and walked away, with an arrogant tilt of his head.
“We’re calling it for today,” Newcomb bellowed over the room. “Study up, be ready to start doing dry runs for set blocking tomorrow.”
Cillian let out an explosive breath, chest nearly collapsing inward as he exhaled the air straining his lungs. “…bloody fuck,” he breathed, slumping, only Brendan’s arm holding him up. “I didn’t think he’d—”
“Shh,” Brendan said.
Then tightened his arm around Cillian’s waist, drawing him upright, molding him against Brendan’s tall, unyielding frame. Brendan caught Cillian’s chin in callused fingertips, texture and heat grazing against his skin, leaving behind a trail of shivers. Cillian stared, his heart forgetting how to beat, as Brendan bent toward him.
Lips.
So close, hovering over Cillian’s tingling mouth, shock rolling through him like waves of ice water. Moving, whispering, words Cillian almost didn’t catch.
“It’d be a good idea to kiss you now,” Brendan said, soft in the space between them. “May I?”
Cillian was still so, so confused.
But it was like some electric charge had flipped a switch inside him, pushing his gears into motion, and before he knew what he was doing…
He nodded.
Yes.
Only a second passed. One in which dark brown eyes caught him, held him, as Brendan pressed his thumb to Cillian’s lower lip in a subtle gesture that still parted him open with such intimate tenderness and confidence that such a simple act screamed dominance, that thick digit grazing the wet inside of his lower lip and the barest tip of his tongue, depositing the salt of Brendan’s skin into his mouth until Cillian knew the taste of him, soaking into the sensitive flesh of his lips.
Before Brendan’s mouth claimed his.
And for Cillian, the rest of the room fell away.
He’d been kissed forcefully before—asked for it, wanted it, these strangers he sought out to understand his own desires, these odd cravings. But not one of them had given him what he truly wanted, when he hadn’t even known what that was until he experienced it. Most men equated aggression with dominance, kissed him like a wild dog trying to savage his face, teeth clacking and mouths sliding messily together.
Brendan, though.
Brendan kissed him as though he had slid into Cillian’s thoughts and wound them around his fingers, taken control of them, taken control of him, plucked every neuron and synapse with this deep, innate knowledge of just what could make Cillian melt. Not aggression, but control—pure control in every slow, firm stroke of Brendan’s lips; in the way he coaxed Cillian to open one teasing caress at a time, turning just the parting of his lips into a sensual thing of surrender as his mouth became this thing given, this thing offered, this thing to be captured and consumed if only he would let Brendan devour him.
Heat swept Cillian up as Brendan’s tongue slipped into him, found its way into him as if his mouth already belonged to Brendan and Brendan need only mark it: soft-flicking caresses against tender inner walls, teasing against sensitive corners, twining with his own tongue until it was imprisoned and writhing, writhing the way Cillian ached to writhe, writhing in this twist of torment that started in the tingle of Cillian’s lips but spiraled down into him in a groaning, gut-deep ache.
Cillian clutched at Brendan’s forearms, a moan rising in the back of his throat, a shudder rocking through him as the hot pressure of that sensuously firm mouth burned against the split in his lower lip. The pain of it burst into pleasure—night and day when it was pain he wanted, pain he craved, pain he would take from someone who made his toes curl and his breaths come in short bursts of scouring fire; someone who made his entire body tense up hard and brought to life a surging pulse between his thighs.
May I? Brendan had asked.
And all it took was that simple question to render Cillian willing and helpless to anything Brendan wanted to do.
But it wasn’t to last. Brendan could only have been kissing him for a few moments, yet Cillian felt as if he’d been dreaming for hours, languishing in the firm command of that mouth that took his own over and swallowed him whole…only for it to stop, soft damp sounds sliding between them as Brendan parted their lips but still hovered close, bending until their cheeks brushed.
“Sorry,” Brendan whispered against his ear, breaths coming in harsh, swift pants. “They’d have known the difference with a stage kiss.”
“It’s…it’s fine,” Cillian said, his voice coming out in a dazed, cracking squeak as reality reoriented itself around him and he realized where he was.
When it very much wasn’t fine at all.
Not when he could still feel that kiss in a low deep knot in his gut, his legs still molten and shaky and this aching inside that just wanted Brendan to push him up against the wall and do it again. He clenched his fingers tighter in Brendan’s shirt sleeves, holding on for dear life.