Page 56 of Takeover-
Sam tugged his foot out of Michael’s grasp. “That’s not it at all. Damn it, Michael. I want to be with you. More than anyone I’ve ever met. That’s why I’m in your fucking hotel room!” He paused for a moment. “But you’re not mine to keep.”
“I’m not asking you to keep me.” Michael ran both hands through his hair. “Shit. I’m asking for a date. A night out. I already went through this bullshit with Rasheed. If you’re not willing to be seen with me, then there’s no point to any of this. You prefer the closet to me.” The words were out before he could bite them back.
Sam swayed for a moment. “Now that’s fucking unfair.” Color drained from his face. “You have no idea what it’s like for me. I’d fucking shout from the rooftops that we’re together if it made you happy. But I don’t want you destroying your life for me. I care about you too much, and I’ve seen what happens… Shit. Just forget it.” Sam shimmied backward and slipped off the bed. “You won’t listen.” He took two steps then stopped. “Look. What Sundra is offering, it is everything you’ve worked for at Four Rivers, everything you deserve. It’s what you should have had from day one, what you were cheated out of. Don’t abandon your career, your dreams, just for a chance to date me.”
“I can get another job. Anywhere.” Hell, headhunters called him every other week as it was.
Sam drew himself up to his full height. Even naked, that sense of power held. “Do you give a damn about all the folks who trusted in you? You’re willing to leave them to navigate this merger all by themselves so you can follow a man you’ve known for a couple months? Is that loyalty?”
Those words were a knife between Michael’s ribs. To leave the team behind without any warning—God, that would be just as shitty as what Sam was doing to him. He’d stayed three years ago to prevent that. “You’re going away.”
“I don’t have anything to leave behind. You’ve spent nearly two decades building a life in Pittsburgh.” Sam scooped up his underwear and pants. “There’s quite a difference.”
Michael shifted to the edge of the bed and stood. “So I’m nothing, then? This”—he gestured at the bed, the scattered clothing, the crop and the clamps—“isn’t anything?”
Sam reached for his shirt. “That’s not what I said but if it makes you hate me, if it makes you let me go, then yes. It’s nothing. It doesn’t mean anything.” The gravel in Sam’s voice betrayed the lies in his words.
Fuck this shit.It took only a long step to reach Sam. Michael pulled him upright and claimed Sam’s mouth, attacking with lips, tongue, and every hurt in his heart and soul. If talking didn’t work, he’d fall back on what always had.
Sam stiffened every muscle in his body at the first onslaught, but an instant later, he yielded, folding fast and hard. He opened himself to Michael, moaning deep in his throat. Clothes hit the floor and Sam wrapped his arms around Michael, kissing back with a passion and intensity that rivaled Michael’s own. This was real and true, not the words Sam had said.
Michael broke the kiss and Sam grunted his disappointment, his cock hard against Michael’s thigh.
“You can’t tell me you don’t want me,” he said into Sam’s ear.
“If you think I don’t want you, you haven’t been listening.” Sam nipped Michael’s shoulder, then untangled from Michael’s grasp. “You’re everything I’ve ever wanted in a friend. A lover.”
“Then why the hell are we fighting?”
Sam ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not fight— Look, my life isn’t anything I’d wish for another. I go from job to job, city to city. No friends. No home.” He looked around the room. “I don’t know whether to grab my stuff and go or beg you to fuck me until this all vanishes.” A touch of panic entered Sam’s voice.
“What are you running from?” Michael hadn’t seen Sam’s fear before, but should have, given Sam’s need to be removed from the world. His mistake.
Sam’s bark of laughter was too high pitched. “Me.”
Well, yes. “Why?”
Sam stared at him.
“Why?” Michael repeated the word. He removed the distance between them and walked Sam back to the bed. A small push made Sam sit before Michael.
“There’s always another job,” Sam said. “So I go.”
Michael shook his head. “That’s not an answer.”
“You’re not my fucking therapist.”
“No, I’m not.” He curled his palm around Sam’s chin and tilted his head back. “I’m your lover. And your friend, like it or not.”
Sam’s hands bunched up the sheets and his breath hitched. “I’m the closeted gay guy who is too damn afraid that coming out will sink his career. I’m a coward and a hypocrite. I’m everything you hate, Michael.”
Michael let go. Now they were getting somewhere. “Except I don’t hate you.”
Sam looked at his feet. “You should.”
Anger in Sam’s slumped shoulders. If Michael had to guess, Sam aimed his fury inward.
“What happened?”
