Damon tasted like rainwater and the metallic sweetness of flesh and something softer, liquid and tart, that poured between them on every breath. The sheer intense rush of it left Rian dizzy, his senses spinning until he knew not up, not down, not anything but that Damon anchored him in place and held him captured with that sense-stripping kiss.
And when Damon’s arms slid around his waist, locking strong and tight and dragging Rian against him... Rian melted, his knees weakening and his entire body turning lax, a luxurious, silken feeling rolling through him, a thing that coalesced in that slow-building, scouring, dissolving feeling he could only call desire.
A desire he had been ignoring for days.
A desire he could no longer deny.
A desire for Damon Louis.
And every overwhelming, utterly unstoppable emotion he aroused.
* * *
Damon wasn’t quite sure how he’d ended up kissing Rian.
One moment he’d been thinking about nothing but making Rian stop—stop snapping at him, stop expecting anything from him, stop needing him for anything when there was nothing the two of them could do for each other except make each other miserable. He’d just wanted to get his attention, startle Rian out of the building whirlwind of anger lashing between them.
But then he’d felt those slender shoulders in his palms, so warm through the shapelessly oversized, thin muslin button-down he wore, the shirt tattered and missing several buttons and spattered in paint.
Taken in those bright hazel eyes snapping up at him, framed in wisps of messy hair and paint smudges across Rian’s cheeks, his jaw, even the bridge of his nose.
And found himself completely captivated by that insolent, furious little mouth, so much that he couldn’t even hear what Rian was saying.
All he could hear was his own pounding pulse.
And the soft, needy gasp Rian let out as Damon bent down to kiss him.
Rian tasted like everything Damon had imagined: soft sugar candy, crystallized honey-grains dissolving on his tongue as Damon took his mouth fiercely, hotly, capturing that slim body in his arms and gathering him close until he felt like he’d vaporize them both in the heat steaming off his body as rainwater dried against his skin and left him feeling too tight, burning up, ready to tremble himself to pieces.
Rian wasn’t supposed to kiss him back.
Rian wasn’t supposed to kiss him back, touch him with those slender fingers, give in to him with throaty moans that ignited in Damon’s blood and clutched in the pit of his stomach and made his cock throb with a heaviness and breathless urgency that made it hard to think of anything but the wet, plush-warm feeling of the inside of Rian’s mouth...and how soft those lips went for him as Damon tasted him again and again and again, clutching his fingers in the back of Rian’s shirt and giving in to a thing he shouldn’t want but couldn’t help but crave.
And when he pressed in closer, when he felt how slender thighs lined up against his and narrow hips slid close and hard heat ground against him, whispering that he wasn’t alone in this, that Rian’s hunger mirrored his, the friction making Damon groan...
He almost snapped.
With a hot, desperate intake of breath, just barely parting their lips for half a moment, Damon buried his fingers in those thick ripples of hair, letting them pour over his grasping fingers and dragging Rian’s head back, opening him to Damon, opening him for taking as Damon backed him against the worktable and seized his mouth again. Deep, so deep, as if he could search inside Rian and find whatever it was that made Damon want him so fucking much it had turned him upside down from the moment they’d locked horns in this very room.
Rian’s nails bit into his neck, and Damon groaned as the pressure of their bodies pushed Rian up onto the table; lean thighs parted, flanking Damon’s hips, drawing him in, and God was he going to fucking combust if Rian didn’t stop moving against him like that, didn’t stop breathing so raggedly and nipping at his mouth and whispering out a ragged, rough, “Damon...”
“Don’t...don’t say my name like that,” Damon rasped, even as he stole the taste of it from Rian’s lips, searching to lick every whisper, every syllable from pale, giving lips. “Don’t—”
A squeal came from the classroom outside: hinges. Followed by the bang of a door and the telltale rattle of a mop against the side of a bucket, and they broke back from each other with a start, both of them jerking their heads toward the door, Damon’s heart beating so fast he felt like he’d run a hard 5K at top speed.
Janitor. Moving in a slow shuffle past the open studio doorway, pushing the mop and humming softly to himself.
And interrupting something that had needed to be stopped anyway.
What the fuck?
What the fuck had he been doing?
Still breathing hard, he jerked his gaze back to Rian. A flushed, disheveled Rian, looking up at him with dazed eyes turned smoky-hot, his lips still parted but their pale color now painted with the pressure of Damon’s lips, pink and so very swollen.
Damon had done that.
Damon had completely forgotten what he’d come here for, and just...just...
He tore his eyes from Rian for a moment, caught by the canvas behind him, a work in progress that looked like a white tree on a black backdrop, but it had been split down its main fork and fire smoldered inside, embers glowing deep at its heart.
Damon felt like that tree.
Split open, his heart burning.
He couldn’t stay here. He couldn’t do this.
Not with him.
And even as Rian stepped closer, reaching out a hand, drawing in a breath to speak...
Damon shook his head.
Turned away.
And walked away from Rian Falwell, before Damon ended up doing something he would only regret.
Chapter Eight
Rian had never slept so terribly in his life.
He couldn’t believe Damon had just—and Rian had—and then the janitor had interrupted and before Rian could even ask what the hell was that?
Damon had just been...gone.
And Rian hadn’t had the courage to chase him, when his hands were shaking and he was full of too many questions he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answers to.
Questions that had played through his mind all night as he’d tossed and turned in his bed, staring up at the stucco ceiling and counting the bumps like counting stars and counting sheep, trying to count himself to sleep.
As if he could sleep when he’d kept touching his slightly sore lips, and tasting the raw, deep flavor of Damon on his tongue.
How.
Why?