“Of course,” he insisted. “The dream is the same. It’s always the same.”
Something in the center of his chest perked at that and he tilted his head, trying to maintain his enigmatic expression. “Always?”
“Well,” Nuri glanced over his shoulder, taking a quick peek at the room before locking eyes with him once more, “maybe not entirely. Sometimes it’s here, other times it’s your room. My apartment…the office…”
“The office?” Silver frowned. “You dream of being at the office?”
Maybe he really was overworking him…He’d canceled Nuri’s vacation out of anger and annoyance, but perhaps he had erred and acted too hastily. Knowing that Nuri’s siblings wanted to try and convince him to stay on Vitality had caused him to panic a bit on top of everything else. His only thought when he’d made the calls to have Nuri grounded had been ensuring there was no way for him to run.
Yet, that had backfired, hadn’t it? And majorly to boot. Now, Nuri was intent on quitting and leaving him for good, and in his rush to do so, had gotten into an accident.
He was about to give in to the better part of him—one that very rarely showed itself—but then Nuri spoke again and any thoughts of what was right and wrong were dashed as if on a rocky shore.
“Sometimes you bend me over your desk and force me to take it as a punishment,” Nuri’s words came out breathy and his cheeks started to turn red, not from embarrassment, but from something else.
When Nuri’s lust-filled gaze latched onto him, Silver inhaled sharply. He’d tried on more than one occasion to coax that very look out of the other man and had always failed miserably. Playing the video of Ackor Hue and him at the club had been a desperate attempt, and while he’d felt like he’d gotten close to finally eliciting a reaction from Nuri, his secretary had shuttered his expression and collected himself too quickly for Silver to be sure.
Gone was the cool and intense man known for being calm and collected, however. In his place was a new person, warm and open, staring up at Silver as though he wanted to rub against him like a cat in heat.
“Silver,” the way Nuri purred his name only drove that last thought home, “as much fun as talking is, I’d really like to get to the good part before my alarm goes off and I wake up.”
Right. Because he believed this was a dream.
“What if I told you you’re already awake?” He almost cursed himself for asking, not wanting to risk breaking whatever spell Nuri was under. Shouldn’t he at least try to be honest though, for the sake of chivalry or whatever?
Mostly to cover his bases.
Because there was no denying he was this close to cracking and tossing this act of being chivalrous to the wind. To successfully bind someone like Narek to him though took more effort than he’d once imagined.
The day his father had gifted Nuri to him, he’d thought the deal was sealed. The quiet teen sent to keep Silver in line had initially annoyed him, but he’d been unable to bring himself to do anything about it. Their very first night sharing the same dorm room, he’d even snuck into Nuri’s space, intent on strangling him in his sleep.
Silver recalled it perfectly. The moon had been full, illuminating the path to Nuri’s bedside. He’d stepped beneath it, uncaring if his Swift nature appeared since he was going to murder the fool his father had stupidly sent to watch over him, but just as he’d been reaching down, Nuri had stirred awake.
He’d blinked sleepily up at him, seemingly unaware of where he was or who he was with. There should have been fear in his eyes when he set his gaze on Silver’s hand, hovering just over him, but instead, Nuri had wrapped his fingers around Silver’s thumb and clung to him.
“You’re pretty when you aren’t causing unwarranted chaos.”
Those words, uttered from Nuri’s lips before he’d passed out on him, had somehow burrowed beneath Silver’s skin andhooked straight through his most intrinsic parts. He’d carried that sentence with him all this time, and in many ways, it’d altered him, made him rethink the way the world perceived him.
Made him want to create a new perception of himself.
Even at that age, no matter how volatile and destructive he was, compliments on his appearance were nothing new to Silver. But no one had ever referred to him as pretty before. No one had dared. Pretty things were soft and delicate. Precious.
Worth coveting.
“It’s like that night,” Silver murmured. “You aren’t aware of what you’re doing.”
“I know when a dream is a dream.” Nuri inspected him more closely. “You never look at me like this when I’m awake.”
That caught Silver off guard all over again. “How am I looking at you?”
Nuri grinned, appearing more mischievous than Silver would have guessed him capable of. “Like you want to eat me up.”
Was he? If his look was even half as convincing as the one he’d just noted Nuri was giving him, that would be an apt description. “That’s probably because I do.”
Nuri let out a sound akin to a giggle, another shocking first, and also a reminder that he wasn’t in his right mind. “That’s what I’m saying. Let’s get to it before it’s too late.”
Silver opened his mouth to try and tell him this wasn’t a dream but stopped himself once he’d fully processed that last comment. For the first time in the history of their relationship, he finally had the other man right where he wanted him, ready and willing and practically begging for it. Was Silver really about to toss this opportunity aside? And for what? The sake of being a “good person”?
