Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 73240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Not when it made him feel so right.
“You know,” Brand grit out drowsily, “it’s very hard to sleep when you’re fretting.”
Ash winced with a sheepish smile. “Sorry…just thinking a lot.”
“It makes you tense.” Brand shifted against him, yawning like a great lazy lion, his mussed hair spilled across the pillow. He looked so much better now, shirtless and sprawled in languid glory against the sheets, his eyes half-closed and smoky with sleep. He moved to fold one powerful arm underneath his head, corded muscle bunching and flexing, while the other arm gathering Ash close. “What are you brooding about now?”
“I don’t brood!” Ash laughed. “…I brood a little.”
“You’re avoiding.”
“God I hate you for that sometimes.” Ash sighed, reaching out to drape his hand over Brand’s chest, tracing his fingertips to the base of that old, long-faded scar. “I was just wondering why you stayed.”
“Pardon?”
“The day I hired you. Interviewed you.”
Brand snorted. “I would not call that an interview.”
“You know what I mean.” Ash propped his chin on Brand’s shoulder, watching him thoughtfully. “You kept looking at me like I was trash. And then it was like you just…decided. And I don’t know why. Was it just a favor to Victor?”
A faint, almost sweet smile touched Brand’s lips, unlike any Ash had ever seen from the rather stoic, sardonic man. “If I had not wanted to work for you, not even loyalty to a former employer would have compelled me to.”
“Then why?” Ash asked—but Brand fell silent, gaze darting away. “Brand. I need to know.”
Still Brand said nothing, until he exhaled heavily, words thoughtful, deep, soft as if coming from some quiet and heartfelt place. “I saw more in you than you saw in yourself,” he said. “I simply hoped to be here to see the day when you understood that.”
Ash’s heart fluttered as if Brand had taken it into his hand and caressed it with those knowing, capable fingers. “I…what if that day had taken years? Decades?”
“Then I would have waited,” Brand promised.
“I…I don’t understand you.”
Those dark green eyes fixed on him—capturing him, holding him, drawing him down into the plain, stark honesty of the emotion swimming in their depths. “Do you need to understand me to care for me in at least some way?”
“Is that what you do?” Ash whispered. “You meet someone and you just…decide, right then and there, that you’ll just…just…be there for them, no matter what?”
“Is that not what loyalty means?”
Ash couldn’t stand it. The weight of that gaze, the warmth in it, the promise. He lowered his eyes, his chest hitching tight. “I…I don’t deserve that kind of loyalty.”
“I think you do.”
“Because I sign your paychecks.”
“Stop paying me, then.” Brand caught his chin gently, tipping his face up until he couldn’t escape. Not the depth of Brand’s quiet emotions, not the raw, hungry truth in his words. “I will not leave.”
“Why?” Ash pleaded, even as he feared the answer.
“Because,” Brand answered with that simplicity that could only make it real, “I could easily see myself falling in love with you, young Master Ashton.”
That one word, love, struck Ashton like a blow. He didn’t understand it, but he didn’t need to, to know he craved it. Craved it the way he’d never craved anything before in his life. Not even Brand’s kiss, his touch. They were nothing to that word, that promise, that potential inherent in this moment and every moment that would come tomorrow, and the next tomorrow, and a thousand tomorrows after that.
Ash wet dry lips, struggling to breathe. “You say that when you won’t even use my name,” he said, only for Brand to counter with,
“…Ash.” Fervent, worshipful, spoken with the same soft certainty as that single damning word.
Love.
And Ash collapsed.
He curled forward, resting his brow to Brand’s shoulder. “Fuck. Fuck, Brand. You’re…” He clutched so hard at Brand, only remembering to gentle his touch when the man was injured, hurting, he’d put himself through so much pain for Ash, he’d nearly died and just…and just… “You’re everything,” Ash breathed. “You’re the only thing keeping me together. It’s selfish. It’s so selfish of me to need you.”
“Even if I want to be needed?”
“I shouldn’t…I shouldn’t even want you.” Yet Ash closed his eyes, savoring the feeling of Brand’s fingers threading into his hair, the warmth and surety in that touch, the silent reassurance: that Brand would be his wall, his shelter, his everything if Ash would only ask. “You’re a cocky asshole. You piss me off so much. And yet…and yet…”
Brand chuckled low. “I am rather beginning to think you enjoy having reasons to shout at me.”
“Feel like giving me a few more?”
Brand’s silence stretched so long that Ash wondered if he’d fallen asleep again. But when he peeked one eye open, he found Brand watching him—intently, consumingly, drawing Ash deep and capturing him once more.