Chapter 28
D ANIEL COULDN’T REMEMBER ever waking up and been so damn satisfied. Both his body and his soul felt complete, and it had everything to do with the man scooting in closer to his side.
He couldn’t help but smile at the memory of how Brantley had easily won Logan and Tate over. Who would’ve ever expected that he would end up shooting the shit with those two for the night? But damn, he’d actually had fun.
After rolling to his side so he could mold his body to Brantley’s, he wrapped his arms around his waist and nudged his nose into the hair brushing his ear. “Time to wake up,” he said as he pushed his hips against Brantley’s ass.
The rumble of laughter that escaped him let Daniel know Brantley had been dozing, not really sleeping.
“I’m already awake.”
“Ahh, so you’ve been faking…”
Brantley shifted to his back and looked up at Daniel with a slow smile. “Faking? I never have to fake with you, Finn.” He winked and then explained, “I couldn’t sleep since around five. When all the traffic started up.”
Daniel rested on his elbow as he looked down at Brantley’s disheveled hair. “I told you. Horns, sirens. You name it, you’ll hear it. Well, if I leave the window open.”
“I know. I guess I really am spoiled, waking up to the waves.”
“Umm…yeah,” Daniel said, and brushed a kiss across Brantley’s lips. “Not too many people get to sleep with their windows and doors open to the sound of the ocean.”
Brantley studied him carefully before he said, quite seriously, “You could.”
“Could I?”
Brantley nodded and reached up to stroke his fingers through his hair. “Or…I could buy earplugs.”
Daniel couldn’t help the loud laugh that slipped free. “Is that right?”
“Mhmm… As long as I get to go to sleep beside you and wake up there, I could adapt.”
Daniel stretched out over the top of Brantley, and when he parted his legs to accommodate him, Daniel settled in. “You’d really move up here? What about your job? You’re about to get tenure. I can’t ask you to give that up.”
Brantley took in a deep breath and ran his fingers down his jaw. “That’s the point. You didn’t ask. Trust me—when I first sent the letter, all I was thinking was how incredible it would be if, by some miracle, you came back home…came back to me. I know,” he said, shaking his head. “Selfish again?—”
“No,” Daniel interrupted. Then he leaned down to touch his lips to the corner of Brantley’s mouth. “Oddly…romantic. And very sexy.”
Brantley scoffed. “Sure. That’s why you turned up in such a romantic mood.”
Daniel chuckled and nipped at Brantley’s lip. “It may have taken me a little while to see it that way, but I did. And when I left?—”
“I know,” Brantley said. “It was the same with me. It wasn’t until you’d left that I knew I would do anything to have you forever, Finn. Anything. And how stupid would I be if I let you go because of a job? Mine or yours? Work isn’t what’s going to make me, us, happy…”
Daniel was sure Brantley could feel his heart pounding as it beat a mile a minute against his chest, because when his professor smiled at him like that, there was nothing in the world he wouldn’t give him.
Daniel loved this man. He’d known that seven years ago. And there was no way in hell he wasn’t about to do everything in his power to be with him and make him happy.
“So let’s say, hypothetically, that I quit my job yesterday… Would you think less of me?”
Brantley’s eyes widened, and the look on his face was so far removed from the soft one he’d just had that Daniel’s lips twitched at his shock.
“You did not.”
Daniel tightened his lips and nodded. “I’m afraid I did.”
“Why on Earth would you?—”
“Shh…” he said, and then took Brantley’s lips again in a slow, possessive kiss. “I told you yesterday. I was on my way back here to fly home to you.”
“Yes, but?—”
“But nothing. That’s what I was doing. Coming to find you.”
“But you love your job. They offered you a partnership.”
“So did you…just now. Didn’t you?”
Brantley’s mouth parted, and he frowned until he realized what he’d just said. Then his face lit up in a blinding smile. “Yes. Yes, I did.”
“And I know which one I’d prefer.”
Brantley cradled his face, and he narrowed his eyes. “Are you serious?”
Daniel took Brantley’s hands and pinned them by his head on the bed.
“When are you going to understand that it’s always been you?
From the moment you called out to me at school and I turned around in the hall—I was done.
Everything I did, from running with Derek, to studying my ass off, to leaving you…
it was all for you.” He grinned against the mouth kissing his and then lifted his head.
“Now, I’m doing this for me . Because all I want, and have ever wanted, was you. I love you, Brantley Hayes.”
AS HE STARED up into Daniel’s golden eyes, Brantley couldn’t believe he was hearing him right. Had he really just said what Brantley thought?
“I love you. Did you?—”
“Shh,” Brantley interrupted, running his fingers across Daniel’s forehead and down the sides of his face to his smiling mouth. “Let me enjoy it.”
Daniel raised an eyebrow and rocked his erection over Brantley’s growing one. “I can feel how much you’re enjoying it.”
With a bark of laughter, Brantley grabbed Daniel’s ass and rolled him to his back. “Don’t try to distract me, young man.”
“Ohh, I like that,” Daniel teased, and leaned up to nip at his lip.
“Of course you do, deviant.”
Daniel planted his feet on the bed and raised his hips. “Hmm… So, what lesson are you going to teach me today, professor?”
As he stared down at the beautiful man beneath him, Brantley wondered how he’d ever been so lucky to have him walk into his life—twice.
“I’m going to teach you how much I love you. All you have to do is lie back and pay close attention.”
As a wicked grin curled Daniel’s mouth, Brantley placed a kiss over his bronzed chest and then closed his eyes.
“Tell me this is real,” he whispered.
As fingers stroked through Brantley’s hair and tipped his head up, Daniel looked up with glistening eyes and said, “It’s real.”
And Brantley couldn’t help but come back up and kiss the man now wrapping his arms around him.
As their legs entwined and their lips met, he let every emotion he was feeling rise to the surface.
Finally .
It had taken them seven years to find their way back to one another. And as they lay there with the sunlight dancing in through the window, Brantley thought that every agonizing year that had passed had been worth it for this moment.
There was nothing in their way, nothing to prove to one another, and as he laid his head down to listen to Daniel’s heart, he knew that this man was it for him.
As his eyes drifted closed in the lazy morning sun, Daniel whispered, “Ohh…let me count the ways I love my teacher.”
And Brantley chuckled against his chest and kissed him.
Life, he knew, didn’t get any better than this.