Page 55 of Devilry

It takes less than a second for me to reach him, my hands gripping the sides of his head, my mouth slamming onto his. There’s no finesse in this kiss. No delicacy or caution. With nothing but shared desperation, I feast on the taste I’ve shamelessly been missing.

“Fuck,” I pant. “I can’t—”

“Don’t.” He kisses me quiet, brushing his hard cock against mine. “Don’t think.”

“We can’t,” I argue. “I want all of you, and I can’t have it.” I dive in for one more taste, caressing his tongue with my own. “And I want you so fucking bad.”

“What’s another secret?”

The words come out like a whisper, and the look on his face is an admission that they accidentally fell out of his mouth. But the meaning hits me in the chest, like a hot branding iron, painfully burning me. He doesn’t deserve to be a secret; he doesn’t need to be at college hiding. He deserves to be out and proud, and not in the sense of just his sexuality, but just from whatever chains I know he has bound himself with.

“You deserve better than this, Elijah.”

My hands slide down from his face and circle around his torso, and he instinctively wraps his arms around my neck.

“This isn’t about what either of us deserve, Cole. This is just us being realistic.”

“Nothing about this is realistic,” I dispute.

“Us trying to stay away from each other is the only unrealistic thing going on here.”

“When I saw you standing next to him,” I close my eyes wishing the image of the two of them together away. “I felt sick.”

“We’re just friends,” he says, trying to placate me.

“But you could be more. He’s Aiden, right?”

Elijah nods.

“You could be his.”

“Ha,” he scoffs. “No, I couldn’t.”

“Yes,” I counter. “If you let yourself, you could.”

“I need to sit down,” he says, looking around. Stepping to the working table sitting center in my office, he pulls out a chair and takes a seat. “I need to explain something to you.”

Dragging another chair out, I sit down next to him. “What is it?”

He runs a hand over his jaw. “I have taught myself to be unaffected by every single guy I’ve come into contact with.”

“Eli—”

He raises a hand. “Let me finish. If I didn’t let myself touch, or look, I couldn’t get into trouble. I didn’t need to give my parents more reasons to be disgusted with me.” Elijah closes his eyes before continuing, taking a large breath of air and holding it. When he finally exhales, more comes spilling out. “Since my parents found out I was gay, I have lived a very isolated life. Some of it was done on purpose, especially the part where I never allowed myself to acknowledge or even indulge in someone else.” He pauses. “Until you.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know, but from the first time I saw you, I was sucked in. At first, I thought it was just a physical attraction. You’re sexy as fuck andeveryonecan see it.”

A soft chuckle leaves my mouth, and his lips curves at the edges. “Don’t act like you don’t know.” Twisting in his chair, he reaches for my hand and holds on to it. “But the more I saw you, the more I wanted you. And after…” He lets the sentence die, neither of us needing clarification. “I can’t stop thinking about you. And when you saw me with Aiden,” He shakes his head, ridding himself of a memory. “I can't have you look at me like that… Like you're disgusted with me.”

“Fuck. No,” I say, horrified. “I could never be disgusted with you.” I squeeze his hand. “I’m fucking jealous, Elijah.” Needing to feel more of him, I hook my arm around him and drag him onto my lap. He fits in my arms perfectly. “He gets an all access pass to my fucking main attraction.”

“All access is a bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?”

“Shut up.” I press my lips to his. “I’m not used to not getting what I want, and not having you is driving me insane.”

“This is the part where we’re both supposed to encourage one another to go and find this feeling with someone else.”

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