Page 41 of Drifting Hearts
“The bedroom is the last stop on the tour. Next up is the living room.”
I took his good hand and led him through the door to where my comfortable, gray sectional took up the bulk of an entire wall. An older coffee table, the kind that was heavier than a dead body, sat on an area rug. The standard flat-screen TV set-up sat across the room from the sectional. My curtains were always drawn because I hated feeling like I was in a fishbowl when people drove by and stared in the large picture window. The unused front door was next to the window and a small closet was tucked in adjacent.
“We could make a pit stop on your couch. It looks like it would be good for kissing.” Clay ran the tips of his fingers along the fabric.
“The bedroom really is a must-see.” Something in my chest tightened as I led him down the hallway. I didn’t bother showing him the second bedroom or the bathroom, though I did point them out to him. My bedroom was the bigger of the two that overlooked my uninspiring back yard. A king-size bed would’ve been nice, but a queen left more room in the space. It wasn’t anything special, but at least I’d made my bed that morning. Sort of. I’d tossed the dark blue blanket back over the rumpled sheets. A paperback sat on the nightstand, open to where I’d stopped reading, but face down.
“It’s nice.” Clay scanned the room and though it was silly, his approval made me warm inside. I wanted him to like my space, to be comfortable in it. “But it would be nicer—”
“If we were kissing?” I asked, stepping in closer, brushing our chests together, grazing my knuckles down the side of his face.
“You’re getting it.” He leaned in, rose up, and pressed his lips against mine.
And my heart sang.
Chapter 21
Clayton
Kieran kissed like themost perfect dream. His soft lips chased mine, his tongue teased its way inside to meet mine in the middle. Nothing in my life made sense. Just this. Only Kieran and the way he made me feel. Like a person. Even when he’d hated me. It was almost like his animosity made me real again.
I sighed against him when his arm wrapped around my waist and pulled me close. Fingers threaded into my hair. I needed a fucking haircut, but right now I didn’t care. After an eternity of feeling broken, battered, and lost, I was pulled into Kieran’s arms like he was bringing me home. He kissed me like he’d waited all day to do it.
When he was ignoring me, I’d understood. I hated it. Every second of it burned, but I endured it, hoping that our one night wasn’t our last night. I clung to him now, a little wild and desperate. I wanted to be on the bed, not in front of it. Naked on the outside to match how stripped my insides were feeling.
Kieran’s hands cradled my waist. Thumbs brushed against my bare skin, then he rucked my shirt up and broke our kiss to drag if off over my head. His eyes danced, scanning the ink on my chest. I felt like all my barriers had finally crumbled and he was seeing me for the first time. A lost kid who found art. A floundering man who found tattoos. A broken person who lost everything. But Kieran looked at me like he didn’t see any of that.
He reached out and traced his fingers over my left pec. The corner of his mouth quirked up.
“Stitch? I didn’t take you for a Disney fan.”
“I understand him. I am also ninety-percent bad.”
“Stitch only acted out until he found someone to understand him.”
Well. Fuck my life. If that wasn’t the most perfect thing a man had ever said to me, I didn’t know what was. It would never be topped. My knees quaked and Kieran took pity on me, swooping me up in his arms.
The sudden change in position startled a laugh out of me. “What are you doing?”
“Taking you to bed,” Kieran said simply as he laid me down on top of the covers. “You looked like you were going to collapse.”
I bit my lip and watched him strip out of his shirt too. I didn’t want to wait to be naked next to him. Popping the button on my pants had become a one-handed art form and Kieran’s smile widened when he saw my new trick. I dragged the zipper open and started to wriggle gracelessly and awkwardly out of my jeans.
I didn’t need the boot anymore, but that didn’t mean my leg was entirely back to normal. It still looked thin and wrong, but I hoped that seeing the rest of me would distract Kieran from my imperfections.
Kieran took hold of the leg openings of my jeans and gently divested me of them, tossing them aside. It felt like it took forever for him to get out of his pants, but when he did, I wanted to just stare at him.
“You’re… fuck, look at you.” I could scarcely breathe. Kieran was tall and broad and attractive on a good day, but under his clothes, he was stunning. He looked sturdy and strong, like he could protect me from anything. I wanted to rake my fingers through the hair on his chest. There were no words for how beautiful he was.
The bed dipped when he knelt on it and then he was next to me. We were both bare except for our briefs. It was like we both knew it would be over too fast if we got rid of all the layers between us.
Kieran reached for me, grazing his fingers up my bare upper arm and across my chest. His eyes caught sight of the Stitch tattoo again and he smiled at me. Most of the people who had seen it thought it was cute, or they’d laughed at me, a grown man with a tattoo of a cartoon alien on his chest. As if men had to like only the most extreme things like explosions and loud trucks and whatever else toxic masculinity said we had to like.
But Kieran had understood, probably better than I did, why I got that tattoo. It made me want to tell him what the roses on my ribs meant, or about the constellations that I had down low on my torso. They sat mostly hidden by my briefs. Tucked into the crease where thigh becomes body, only the tops of them were currently visible.
Any further thought of what Kieran might think of me faded when he leaned over and kissed me. I hated my cast and how awkward it made things. In my head, when I dreamed about this, there was no clumsy cast. It was just me and him and nothing between us but our skin and sweat.
“Would it be better if I was on your other side?” Kieran asked, kissing the corner of my mouth.
