“I don’t mind.”
A bout of silence ensued and Noah allowed it until he felt too self-conscious to let it continue. “Is this your first time here in the Empire, then?”
A reply didn’t come immediately. Reign shifted his attention to the rumbling waves again, and Noah did the same, taking in the sparkling reflections.
“It is. It’s my first mission abroad, actually,” Reign confessed, entertained by something in his own words.
“Ah, you did say you got appointed recently,” Noah recalled.
“Last month, to be precise. It seems… the timing was especially favorable too, or I wouldn’t have had the chance to visit at all.” That second sentence, Reign said with his gaze back on Noah.
Noah liked it. Too much maybe, but he didn’t care, the pleasant hum under his skin and in his stomach too enticing. He was soaking up Reign’s ambiguity like a brush soaking up paint, devouring each word and glance and etching them into every fiber of him without being able to help it.
“Noah, I’ve been wanting to ask you something since earlier.”
“Yeah?” Noah came to a stop by the lit-up statue of an angel chariot where the beach neared its end. Beyond this point, the woods and cliffs started, offering a treacherous area better left for exploring during the day. “What is it?” he prompted and turned around.
“You’ve been looking at me all evening. Watching me… Seeking me out from the crowd.” Reign’s eyes held Noah’s, so intense it felt like they were glowing.Like they wanted to see who Noah truly was.“Why is that?”
Reign’s unapologetic directness cut right through Noah. Derailed him, tipped him off his center, probed for those secrets he couldn’t speak out loud, not even to Reign, not while he was still trapped here where the Holy Empire had reach and power over everything and everyone. He needed an excuse, something other than‘because you look like the imaginary man I’ve been lusting after for the past ten years’, which was objectively creepy even if the Asian Federation was progressive in their thinking. Crazy, too. Inappropriate. Delusional.
“Well.” Noah averted his gaze because he couldn’t look Reign in the eyes and lie effectively. Or prevent the flush spreading over his face from giving him away. “You looked familiar and I was trying to figure out from where,” he put out a half-truth, buying himself a bit more time to regain his composure.
“And did you?” Reign insisted, stepping in closer.
Yes, my erotic fantasies.“TV. I think I must have seen you… on TV. Or something.”Damn, he should’ve omitted the part where he was unsure of it, so he could shut the whole thing down.
“I see,” Reign said, his voice betraying… disappointment? Or was it impatience? Or some mix between the two? Noah’s borderline freaking-out brain couldn’t quite decipher it.
Despite the warmth emanating from the concrete around the statue, the chill of the night breeze cut through to Noah’s bones, sending shivers all over him.Was it really the wind causing the shivers?He didn’t explore further, just accepted it because he felt like a rabbit caught in the crosshairs of a gun that couldn’t miss. It aroused him, but also scared him, what with the kind of fate that awaited him if things got out of hand and the Church found outabout his secret. Besides, he’d never interacted with a man like Reign, with someone from beyond the borders of the Empire, so he couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t reading too much into Reign’s behavior.Projectingthings he wanted to be there just because of his own messed-up circumstances and suppressed needs.
“Should we head back?” Noah suggested, brushing past Reign without daring to look at his beautiful face. “It’s getting chilly. Plus, it looks like your lightheadedness is already gone.”
“It was never there to begin with,” Reign stated and his strange confession had Noah pause, turn around and quirk an eyebrow in question. Using that opportunity, Reign stepped closer again. “I thought I could get you away from the rest, so I used it as an excuse.”
Shit. The hairs on Noah’s nape stood up. Again. Goosebumps raced along his arms, legs, torso, everywhere, and this time, Noah couldn’t fool himself that it was because of the cool bite of the evening wind.Why did Reign say such things?Things that carried implications Noah had to really fight hard not to read into. He wanted to. Just like he wanted to take a step toward the other man, to lean in, cup his head and tilt it slightly back so he could accommodate for their slight height difference, and then taste those tempting lips—
Noah looked away, but when it failed to calm his racing heart and shut down that dangerous line of thought, he dropped to his knee. Busying himself with retying his already perfectly tied shoelaces, he focused on regulating his breathing. His brain scrambled for a diversion, for a way to unmake this conversation from the tempting trap it had become. He had to snap out of his lust-induced wishfulthinking about Reign and not give in or he was going to get in trouble.
“The bar was probably too loud to hold a proper conversation, yeah,” Noah said. He could tell his words came out forced, but that was the best he could muster right now while his imagination insisted on taking him places.
“That, too.”
Noah didn’t follow up on the implication behind Reign’s reply. Couldn’t allow himself to. Once he was home, he could indulge in fantasizing.
Done pretend-tying his shoes, Noah stood up and stalked ahead, not waiting to see if Reign could keep up the brisk pace. “Well, you’ve had a long day and it’s getting late… We should head back, so you can rest,” he called out, not looking over his shoulder. “Teresa has a lot of stuff planned for tomorrow and you don’t want to miss it.”
“I was told we could opt out?” Reign challenged, his voice clear and close behind. The thuds of his footsteps suggested the same.
“Will you?” Noah asked before he could stop himself, whipping his head back so abruptly, hair stuck to the side of his face.
Reign was right behind him now, an arm’s stretch away. “I wasn’t planning to. Unless…” He reached out, his slender fingers brushing the stray hair away from Noah’s damp forehead. They lingered, and the touch was electric. It zapped Noah’s every nerve ending, making his stomach twist in anticipation and his lungs fight to keep his breathing stable.
He couldn’t take it anymore, the way Reign made him feel right now, so he pulled away from Reign’s gentle caress. It was too much, no cell of him left out of the experience that being touched by Reign Lennox was.
Noah resumed his quick gait and his voice shook with a telltale hoarseness when he echoed back, “Unless?”
“Unless you had anything more interesting in mind, Noah.”
