Page 33 of Gunpowder

Wren’s face was tilted back just far enough for Blair to see a furrow between his brows. “I’m kind of a fuckup.”

“Be my fuckup.”

Wren kissed him again and all the uncertainty was gone. In its place was a need unlike anything Blair had ever felt before; a need to be closer, a need for air because he stopped breathing as soon as he felt Wren’s tongue caress the seam of his lips. Blair felt like he’d never kissed anyone before at all, with how different this was from the awkward, exploratory touches he exchanged with his brief highschool girlfriend. The heat from Wren’s mouth traveled down Blair’s body, into his veins like it meant to light his blood on fire.

Everything else around them became a distant hum of nothingness as Wren kissed every ounce of logic out of Blair’s mind. Even the rain hammering the wall of glass they stood in front of was quiet compared to Blair’s heartbeat pounding in his ears, and when thunder cracked outside, Blair didn’t flinch.

Blair’s fingers curled around Wren’s nape, pulling him closer.

Definitely a bad idea.

9

GUARDED

The ice seemed to melt from Wren as soon as their lips touched. His cold demeanor vanished, replaced by a hunger that made Blair’s head spin. Wren gripped the back of Blair’s shirt, his hand warm through the cold, wet fabric. Blair tentatively touched his tongue against Wren’s and Wren met it with a pleased sound. Then Wren’s tongue was moving against his, curling, stroking, consuming.

Blair practically hung from Wren’s neck, with how deeply he melted into the kiss.

Blair felt feverish, needy without even knowing what he needed. He tugged Wren’s hair loose from its ponytail to run his hand through it, and it glided between his fingers like silk. Wren pressed them together so tightly that Blair could feel the heave of Wren’s chest against his own. They pressed together lower, too, and something electric sparked through Blair’s body. A single brush of Wren’s leg against his crotch and Blair’s world was tilting on its axis.

Blair was hard. From kissing.

That was new.

He broke away with a gasped, “Fuck.”

Wren stared down at him and Blair realized all he had to do was say the word, and Wren would fuck him senseless.

“I should go home,” Blair said, still holding on to him.

“If that’s what you want,” Wren said without releasing his grip on the back of Blair’s head.

Blair wanted him. And he’d never felt anything like it before in his life. “Yeah.”

“Okay.” Wren let him go.

Blair left, and Wren let him. It was as simple as that. Except it wasn’t, Blair thought as he stepped onto the elevator. Because he already wanted to turn around and go back to him.

Felix sighed. “So, you lost him.”

Spencer held up a finger. “I’m saying that in lieu of capture, I obtained valuable information before the target was no longer accessible.”

“So you lost him,” Julian concluded.

Spencer poured himself a finger of scotch. Given the events of last night, no one questioned him for indulging at two in the afternoon. He had already decided the bar would be “closed for repairs” that day anyway, citing that he needed a break after his city-wide car chase the night before. More specifically, his car chasing a modified street bike that left his Lexus in a cloud of exhaust fumes. His knowledge of the city had let him keep up for longer than most would have managed, but the masked rider got away in the end.

Blair spun on his barstool, listening to the rain hammer against the windows on the other side of the heavy curtains. It had subsided for a little the night before, enough for him to get home from Wren’s apartment in a drizzle rather than a downpour, but it never stopped completely. He flushed at the memory of Wren’s lips against his, the feeling of Wren’s hand on his neck still so firmly present that he almost expected to find fingerprints there.

Julian got up to go to the bathroom with a mumbled comment about his friends being idiots. Blair half listened to Felix and Spencer talking, the rest of his attention sucked into the sound of the rain, his thoughts orbiting around a world of white skin and stormy eyes.

The muffled thunk of the lock catching the doorjamb as someone tried to open the door of the bar jolted Blair back to the present. He dropped off the barstool and onto his feet with a hand on his gun.

“Boss?” he asked, knowing Felix was the only one in the position to see through the small window in the front door.

Felix didn’t answer him, but the way his lips turned up didn’t seem to suggest danger. He uncoiled onto his feet with predatory grace and crossed the distance to the door in a few long strides. He disengaged the lock, flipped the deadbolt and opened the heavy wooden door.

“Come on in,” Felix said.

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