Page 61 of Toren

Toren answered him with a sleepy smile and hooded eyes.

“Do you want room service for breakfast or do you want to go get something?” he asked.

Toren rolled over, rested his cheek against Andrew’s thigh.

“I want a shower,” he said. “And I think I want to go to Ink and Ember today.”

Of all the things Andrew had thought Toren would suggest, going to see his former brother-in-law was not one of them.

“Any particular reason?”

“I want to see if he’ll tattoo me.”

Andrew thumped his head against the wall and stared up at the ceiling. “You don’t have any tattoos.”

“I know.” Toren paused, turned so he was also gazing up at the ceiling. “My brother was the one into all that. It was never my speed.”

“Is it now?”

Toren scoffed. “I don’t even know what my speed is now. If you had asked me before we got to Rapture last night, I might have had a different answer entirely, but now…”

“Nothing has to change.”

“Everything has changed.” Toren sat up and rolled his shoulders. “I liked the way I felt last night, and I liked the way we were together. I just don’t know what all of it means.”

Andrew nodded his agreement, because he’d had the exact same thoughts before falling asleep in Toren’s arms.

“It means we get out of bed and get into the shower,” Andrew told him. “It means I take too much time washing that thick and gorgeous cock of yours, and maybe we fool around a little bit in the shower.”

Toren arched a brow at him. “Go on.”

“It means after we finish getting clean, we get dressed and find coffee and breakfast and then we go to Ink and Ember to see if you can get tattooed today.”

“Riggs will make time for me.”

“I know.”

Toren worried the inside of his cheek. “That sounds like nothing has changed.”

“We’ll deal with changes as they come up, right? We can see what works, see what we want it to mean.” Andrew took Toren’s hand and kissed it, smiling against his knuckles. “Same as it’s always been. Same as it’ll always be.”

CHAPTER 21

Toren

After a shower that took nearly an hour, Andrew found them both coffee and breakfast. It was a little cafe on the corner with a handwritten sign and a sliding window, and it was perfect. They carried their food a few blocks to a small park which wasn’t much more than a bike rack and a patch of grass with a weathered picnic table, but it was enough. Toren and Andrew sat on opposite benches and opened their breakfast sandwiches.

Andrew had ordered a croissant with bacon and eggs. Toren, a bagel with sausage and cheese. The smell of both of them was heavenly, and mixed with the bitter steam of overdone black coffee, Toren was a happy man. The only thing that would make the meal better was the cigarette he was going to have after he finished eating.

He’d spent most of the morning thinking, trying to make sense of why kneeling for Andrew at Rapture had been such a life-altering event for him, but he found no answer. His subconscious kept screaming at him to do it again if he wanted to understand it more, but a public park was certainly not the place for that kind of thing.

After they finished eating, Andrew tossed all their garbage into a trash can, and Toren lit up a cigarette. It was as good as he knew it would be, even better once Andrew sat down again with that drunk little look he got whenever he was really fucking horny.

“Do you want me to come to the shop with you or fuck off for the day?” Andrew asked.

“What did you want to do?”

“I’m happy to come if you want company, but I’m also happy to go annoy one of my brothers.”