Page 54 of Touch In Excess

Skye blinked at him. “Bid on you?”

Rami bowed his head and let out a trembling breath. “I know I have no right to ask?—”

“Sweetheart,” Skye said, touching Rami’s chin and drawing his gaze up. “You have every right to ask me anything you want. You’re my boyf—uh. We’re…we have a thing.”

“Boyfriend,” Rami said.

Skye swallowed heavily. “We’ve only been on two official dates.”

“Three. I count you coming over here as three.”

Skye rolled his eyes and grinned. “Fine. Three. We’ve only been on three dates.”

Rami wrung his hands in front of his chest, feeling a little distressed. “I don’t understand. Is there…is there a rule I don’t know about? Is there a time limit we have to reach before we can be boyfriends? I’m sorry it’s so confusing for me. I’ve never done this, and I don’t want to break any rules, but?—”

“Wait.” Skye reached out and took him by the hips. “I’m sorry. We don’t have to follow rules or some timeline. We feel how we feel. I just didn’t want you to rush into anything you’re not ready for.”

“If you don’t want to date other people, and I don’t want to date other people, why wouldn’t I be ready?”

Skye’s smile widened. “When you put it that way, I sound like a fool, don’t I?”

“Never,” Rami whispered, then signed it so he didn’t miss the word.

Skye closed his eyes in a slow blink, then reached up and curled his hands around the sides of Rami’s jaw. “Be my boyfriend?”

“Yes.”

Skye kissed him long, slow, and careful. Not enough to get his cocks hard, but enough to spark the heat that would soon become an inferno. “Okay, boyfriend. You can ask me for anything you want.”

Rami liked that word. A lot. It made him curl his toes into the carpet, and he let out a happy hum. “Boyfriend.”

“Again.”

Rami’s smile made the word sound strange with his lips stretched, but he said it anyway. “Boyfriend.”

Skye nodded. “What do you want me to bid on?”

“Everything,” Rami said. He licked his lips and glanced around. “I want to be done with this. I miss my family, and I want to be with you. If—if you like watching me, I could do stuff for you. But just you. When this is all over, I want to get back to my art, and I want to stop worrying that the county is going to come take the house.”

“And you won’t just take money from me, will you?”

Rami clenched his jaw and shook his head. “Not yet.”

“Not yet,” Skye repeated. He looked thoughtful. “You know about history, right?”

“A lot about history,” Rami said.

“Art history.”

Rami felt anxiety crawl up his spine along with joy because he loved—loved—talking about art history. He loved losing himself in the words, sharing every single fact he knew. But that was the fastest way to drive people away from him.

He swallowed heavily. “Probably too much.”

“I doubt it could ever be too much,” Skye said softly. “But you know about patrons, obviously.”

“Renaissance artists had them. Actually, a lot of artists…well, a lot of professions had them. There’s a long history behind it.” He clamped his jaw shut quickly, but Skye just swooped down and kissed him.

“Right. Sometimes it was business. Sometimes patrons were rich old men who didn’t have the talent they wanted, so they became obsessed with people of a lower class who did.”

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