Chapter 11 #3
“No one thing, really,” Myles admitted. “I was… drowning, I guess. Jet was hanging out with a crowd that six months ago, he had not a good word to say about. And suddenly, he was in tight with them? It didn’t track.”
“Bad crowd?”
“Headed that way. And he knows it.”
“He just lost his mom.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a hard thing.”
“I know.” He met Steven’s eyes. “I was only a year or two older than him when mine died. Same cause as Nat. Dad couldn’t deal.
He let the farm go to a neighbour who needed the land and our access to the river.
Moved us all into the city, no warning, no discussion about what we wanted, nothing.
I took off to university almost immediately.
Nat fumbled through high school, and Dad made a small fortune flipping houses.
” He chuckled. “Ozzy would probably call what he did to those old places an atrocity.”
“I thought you joined the army.”
“I did. After I graduated.”
“What did you study?”
“Nothing useful.”
Steven grinned. “Come on.” He jostled Myles with his foot. “Spill.”
“No, seriously. It was, as my father loved to point out until the day he died, a complete non-starter.”
“Hence the army? Couldn’t find a job in your field?”
“The army was because Nat had graduated and moved out of the house. I had no interest in joining my father’s company.
He’d grown up a farmer. Married, literally, the girl next door.
Raised us to be farmers. And then, there he was in the city growing an empire with his boots firmly planted in the kind of gentrification he’d fought off his whole life.
” It was all he could do not to curl a lip and snarl.
“Let’s just say, we didn’t agree on a lot of things.
I wasn’t going to keep living under the same roof.
And yeah, no. I couldn’t find a job in my field. ”
“Which was?” Steven sipped his coffee and lifted both eyebrows.
“Relentless,” Myles said.
“Deeply curious.”
“I earned a BA.”
“That covers a lot of things.”
“In English,” Myles said into his mug.
A slow smile grew on Steven’s face. “Now I’m wondering if you’re only interested in me for my bookstore.”
“That’s not at all—”
Steven snorted.
“You’re kidding. Of course you are.”
“Of course I am.” He nudged Myles with his foot again. “As to the other. Well. It isn’t any of my business.”
“Isn’t it?”
“If you want to talk about it, I’ll listen. But—”
“It’s important you know what you’re getting into, Steven.”
For a few moments, Steven said nothing, watching out the window and sipping his drink.
Somewhere beyond where Myles could see, a crow let out an unholy racket.
Steven scowled out the window, then sat up and pushed the window curtains together, shutting off his view of the street.
He took both their mugs, set them on the floor, then crawled forward until his lips were inches from Myles’s.
“You should let me decide about what I want to get myself into, yeah?”
“No. I mean of course.” Myles winced at himself. “I mean…” He sighed. “I don’t know what I mean.”
“Stop talking for one second.”
Myles nodded. He wanted to protest the demand, but the smell of Steven’s skin and the promise of the kiss that was so close overwhelmed his common sense.
But Steven barely brushed their lips together. When it felt like he might pull away Myles clapped a hand around the back of his neck and pulled.
He caught the barest glimpse of Steven’s eyes going wide, then their mouths met, and for one glorious second, Myles felt that familiar rush of another man giving in to the inevitable.
It only lasted a second before Steven grinned against his lips. “So sure of yourself?” he whispered.
“Well, shit. I was.”
“We’ll see.”
“Ominous.”
Steven grinned, and Myles thought that should make him nervous, but then the slightly crooked expression did what it always did: distracted him from pretty much every thought that had just been in his head. Ominous indeed.
Carefully, Steven disengaged without actually letting Myles go. He wasn’t opposed to Myles’s strong-arm tactics, but he rather enjoyed the melting Myles he’d encountered the day before. He had a feeling Myles didn’t show that side of himself to very many people.
Quick, so as not to give any impression he was about to allow Myles to turn the tables again, he swung around to straddle Myles properly, settling himself, knees folded on either side of Myles’s lap.
“Comfortable?” Myles asked, tilting his head so he could look up at him.
“Oh, very. You?”
Myles gripped Steven’s ass in both hands and squeezed. “I could get there.”
Steven grinned, tossing his hair forward to hide the weirdly crooked angle of it. Why his twin was blessed with the biggest, most brilliant smile on the planet, and he had this awkward half thing that left him looking like a cynical punk, he had no idea.
Myles reached up to sweep his hair away from his face. “And why are we hiding all of a sudden?”
“Not hiding.” He leaned down, taking Myles’s mouth in a kiss that would distract him from pretty much anything. He hoped.
He got no complaints for quite some time.
When he moved his attention south, unbuttoning Myles’s shirt as he went, he revealed… another shirt. He glanced up at Myles’s face. “Do people still wear undershirts?”
Myles growled at him.
“Not complaining. Just makes the payoff that much more worth it.” He yanked and tugged until the hem of the T-shirt was free of Myle’s jeans, then rucked it up to reveal his true goal. The hard, lean planes of Myles’s chest and stomach were more than worth the extra effort.
Myles leaned back with a groan and ran his fingers through Steven’s hair. The soft strokes sent shivers down Steven’s spine and rose goose flesh along his arms. There was strength in those fingers the gentleness only emphasised. He kept waiting for Myles to try to take charge again, but he didn’t.
“What are we doing here?” Myles asked at one point, when Steven dipped his tongue into his bellybutton. He didn’t pursue the question, though, when Steven moved on to his jeans button and zipper.
Steven figured his actions were answer enough. His own dick hardened in anticipation. He had his jeans open and had breathed a few hot breaths over Myles’s impressive bulge when Myles spoke again.
“Are we there, then?” he asked, voice husky.
Steven nuzzled him through his boxers. “Not if you tell me to stop.”
“I…”
Steven did stop, but only enough to look up at Myles. “You…?”
Myles stared at him. “You’re impossible.”
“Am I?”
Myles touched his mouth, right there at the corner where his smile broke off. “I’m not sure how to take you.”
Steven grinned as wide as his lopsided mouth would let him. “Who said you’d be doing the taking?”
That had Myles blinking and sputtering a bit, which was adorably out of character, and Steven loved it.
“You serious?” Myles asked at last.
Steven tilted his head. “Is that a deal-breaker?”
“Not… necessarily.”
“Well. Thankfully, you don’t have to decide right this second.” He patted Myles’s bare stomach, then swung off him to stand next to the sofa, a hand out. “Come on. Let’s go see to those books, shall we? They aren’t going to count themselves.”
“Wait, what?” Myles didn’t move. He blinked a few times as he lay there, staring up at Steven.
The sight made Steven hungry for what he was offering, but at the same time, the hesitation implied by his questions made it clear that Myles wasn’t exactly certain of what he was offering. Or if he was quite ready to deliver.
Steven stroked the tips of his fingers through the growing-out crew cut of Myles’s hair, idly wondering if it would be straight once it got longer, or have some curl to it.
“Why are we stopping?” Myles asked, sitting up as he did and bringing Steven’s attention back to the moment.
“It occurs to me that if you have to ask if we are at this stage of our relationship, then perhaps we aren’t there yet.”
“I could get there.” But he was fastening his jeans as he said it.
“And we will.”
Myles sighed. “But we’re counting books first.”
“We are.”
Myles stared up at him, both hands braced on the edge of the sofa cushion.
“You aren’t used to this, are you?”
“To what?”
“Not being the one to call the shots.”
Myles shrugged. “It depends. I was never a commander in the army. Ozzy was always bossy, but not the same as you. He was bossy in a way that set my teeth on edge. I didn’t expect this kind of, um, directness? From you.”
“Why? Because I’m younger than you? Or smaller? Or not military?” He only listed off the most obvious reasons.
“All of the above, very stereotypical reasons?” He even rolled his eyes, as if he knew exactly what he’d just assumed and realized how ridiculous it sounded out loud.