Page 27 of Prodigal

André’s mouth opened and closed a few times, and Gideon’s grin only got wider. He loved seeing the other man flustered. “Uh, because I’m staying here.”

“Hmm.” Head cocked, Gideon reminded him, “You haven’t answered my question.”

“What’s the question?”

Getting up into his space, Gideon took note of the way André’s body stiffened and his nostrils flared. The pulse at the base of his throat went wild, and that sight, more than anything else, weakened Gideon’s knees. “Ty Levins,” he murmured. “Who is he?”

“Um.” André’s tongue poked out, sliding over his bottom lip and wetting it.

Gideon bit back a groan.

“Why do you always smell so good?” André’s voice cracked the tiniest bit. “So expensive?”

Fuck, this guy was going to kill Gideon for sure. “You like the way I smell?”

Panic chased lust across André’s features. He swallowed, holding Gideon’s gaze with dilated pupils, but he didn’t speak. What he did do was lick his lips again.

Gideon could fucking combust. He moved in closer. A hitch in André’s breath reached Gideon’s ears and it fired up the blood in his veins. His gaze dropped to those lips, glistening with André’s saliva, his dick begging for mercy. Gideon didn’t have to look down to check if André was also turned on. The signs were there, all visible. André wasn’t looking at Gideon with frustrated hatred anymore. Frustrated lust, yes. Need, yes. Slight panic? That too.

Gideon touched André’s cheek, loving the way the other man’s lashes fluttered, then lowered in submission. Rubbing his knuckles across André’s jaw, Gideon leaned forward until their foreheads touched. “I want to kiss you.”

André’s body jerked and he made a sound like a whimper. “Why?”

Why?Gideon swallowed a strained chuckle. Definitely something the stubborn André would ask. “Because I want to know your taste.”

“I haven’t—I haven’t brushed my teeth yet.”

Cupping his jaw, Gideon brushed his lips over André’s. They trembled for him, and Gideon’s grip on him tightened. “I want to know your taste,” he said again. “Grant me permission, André.”

He felt the capitulation in the way André’s body sagged into his. In the hands that landed, tentatively, on Gideon’s hips. In the lips that parted under his.

Then André breathed out, “Kiss me.”

9

André had seenthose weather forecasters on TV, reporting from hurricanes, staggering, feet dragging, teetering, and falling over under the force of the wind and rain battering them as they filed their reports.

That was what Gideon Winters was: a force.

He knocked André off his feet with a press of his lips. They were barely connected, lips clinging, and still, André couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t find balance. His lips parted on a gulp and Gideon took advantage—that was the kind of man he was, after all—tongue sliding in and twisting around André’s.

He whimpered, couldn’t help it, grasping Gideon’s shoulders. Silently begging. He hadn’t expected this when he’d opened his door, angry at whoever had woken him up from his sleep.

But Gideon…

He deepened the kiss and André let him because he wanted to, had imagined it while lying in that bed, hating himself for how much hedidn’thate Gideon. But his imagination had nothing on this moment, Gideon’s arms finally wrapping around him, hauling him into the hardness of his chest. André pressedcloser still, shivers racking his body. He couldn’t remember ever being as hard as he was now.

Gideon kissed hungrily, desperately, as if trying to stamp himself onto André’s taste buds permanently. André didn’t know if he should feel any way other than needy, wanton, eager for everything and anything. He tunneled his fingers into Gideon’s hair, gripping tight and pulling.

The other man moaned, bucking into André and backing him into the wall. Eyes closed, André lifted a leg, wrapping it around Gideon’s hip, rubbing on him in a mindless search for release, for more of that pleasure Gideon doled out so generously. It’d been a very long time since he’d been in someone else’s embrace, since anyone had wanted him the way Gideon did.

How could André bottle that feeling for when he no longer had Gideon close?

One kiss, and he felt as if he’d been consumed.

What would it be like to have more, to go beyond this—the two of them dry-humping, their movements frantic and uncoordinated? When had the kiss devolved into this?

Gideon broke the kiss, lips skating over André’s jaw. André tilted his chin up, head back, exposing his throat to a self-confessed killer. Teeth nipped his skin, slick tongue slid over him, soothing, and he trembled, both hands clutching Gideon’s head close, urging him on as André struggled to catch a breath.

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