“I don’t,” I whispered, the words coming out cracked and raspy.
It was almost worse, having him pull me out of the black clouds in my head. If I stayed drowning in them, at least I was used to it. When he treated me like this, like there was no part of me he couldn’t accept or deal with, it was kind of terrifying. If I got used to it, and he was suddenly gone, I wouldn’t know how to deal.
He pulled my hand up to his lips, pressing a soft kiss to my palm. The contact was brief and totally innocent, but it sent heat and sensation racing up my arm to spiral through my whole body.
“Do you want to talk about whatever freaked you out today?”
“No.” I couldn’t talk about it even if I’d wanted to. I didn’t want to think about what might happen if I went against Faulkner’s gag order.
“But something did happen,” he determined.
I shrugged, shaking my head. “I don’t know. Not really.”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” he said, and I exhaled, my breath shuddering out in a massive release of tension. “But it might help.”
“No,” I said. It wouldn’t help. But he’d shooed away my desire for distance and the instinct to protect myself, at least for the time being. Whether that would help me or hurt me in the long run, I wasn’t sure. “I’ll forget about it,” I promised, and a tiny grin perked up the corner of his mouth.
“So we’re good, then. No backing off. No taking a break. No getting away from me.”
He leaned in, so close that I was almost sure he was going to obliterate the boundaries I’d set at the beginning, and press his mouth onto mine. But he tilted his head at the last second, gliding his lips over my jaw, and then down to my neck. Iswallowed hard, trying not to whimper as my pulse started rampaging inside me. He was way too good at this.
“No,” I promised.
“You can be so reasonable when you want to be,” he murmured against my skin, sending a shiver through me.
“And you can be so tolerable when you want to be,” I retorted. He chuckled, the vibrations traveling along his tongue and into my flesh, my abdominal muscles twitching as arousal sparked up in me, centered directly between my thighs.
“I’m sorry I got so upset, BB,” he whimpered, in his horrible impression of me. “It’s just that my brain gets so mixed up sometimes, and I need you to come make me all better.”
“I changed my mind,” I retorted dryly. “You’re barely tolerable.”
Maybe that line between love and hate really was as fine as he’d claimed it to be.
“Don’t worry, Cupcake,” he went on, ignoring my assertion, and only responding to the imaginary me. “I’ll make sure you forget all about those mean, nasty thoughts in your brain.”
Before I could ask how exactly he planned on doing that, he’d slipped down off the edge of the bed, kneeling against the mattress. Reaching out and grasping at my hips, he yanked me forward so my thighs were on either side of him.
My teeth dug down into my lower lip as he hooked his fingers into the waistband of the cotton shorts I’d changed into after coming home, tugging them down and discarding them before coming back between my legs, hoisting up my thighs to rest on his broad shoulders.
“Caelyx.”
“Yes?” He asked, his tongue sliding over my dick before he took it into his mouth, sucking me until I couldn’t hold back a moan.
“Never mind.”
Falling back onto the mattress to stare up at the ceiling, I let my fingers slip into the thick waves of his golden hair.
I didn’t know if I’d end up getting hurt. But being with him felt so good, I didn’t want to let go of it. For once, I wanted to believe that there was someone in the world that would put me first no matter what, that would do anything to keep from hurting me, and protect me from everything else in the world that wanted to.
And if Caelyx was claiming to be that person, at least for now, then I would try to believe him.
CAELYX
AFTER OUR LASTclass of the day, Aspen rushed off to start his work shift on time, but I had nothing to do. Wandering somewhat aimlessly, I found myself in BBU’s huge cafeteria. I sat at a table with some friendly acquaintances, but didn’t buy any food. I’d been eating nearly all of my meals at home, to save money. Cyprian and Maddox had picked up a lot of the slack there, teaching me the bare minimum basics in terms of grocery shopping. I was basically a lost cause in terms of cooking, taking the idea of culinary ineptitude to an extreme. But I could make toast and boil eggs and microwave ramen. And pour salad into a bowl. I could keep myself alive without going broke.
When an attractive dark-haired guy in an oversized sweater sat directly across from me, it took me a few seconds for his identity to register in my brain.
“Oh! Lazaro,” I remembered. “Hey.”
