Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 79892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
No—more, he’d been staring at the coffee table, fixed on a spot just past the tip of his pen.
Hellfire.
What was this agitation eating at him?
With a frustrated sound, Fox tossed his pen onto the coffee table with a clatter, sending it spinning against the dark lacquer, then dropped the stack of pages next to it, stood, and stalked into the kitchen. His fingers fumbled clumsily with the apron strings as he strapped it on over his shirt and slacks, before ducking into the refrigerator to see what was left when he had been too wrapped up in work, in life, in Summer to remember the grocery store this week.
Except rather than empty shelves...
He found the refrigerator nearly overflowing.
Summer must have gone shopping while Fox was visiting Lily to stock his herb cabinet, this morning.
Fresh mushroom caps in a little plastic-wrapped foam bin—Fox hated the stems. A crisper full of iceberg lettuce and cherry tomatoes and baby carrots; real baby carrots, instead of adult carrots shaved down to nubs, something Fox fussed over because the taste was different and he was something of a picky eater. Even bell peppers...but the yellow ones.
Fox liked the yellow ones.
He didn’t care that they were the same vegetables as the green ones, the red ones; he’d swear they tasted different.
Two percent milk, instead of one percent or skim. Cups of Greek yogurt in every flavor Fox liked. Eggs, but the brown ones, because that, too, was another thing Fox fussed about with food.
Summer had paid attention to every little thing over these short days, and remembered.
Something so small shouldn’t hit Fox so hard, but it made him realize exactly why he was so restless.
He was lonely.
And rather than cooking dinner alone as he had for twenty years before Summer had come tearing into his life like a summer storm...
He wanted to be where Summer was.
Helping him fix up Lily’s tidy little house. Laughing with him over how his mother did so enjoy embarrassing him. Staying to help them make dinner. Creating something not just with his hands, but with other people that he cared about. Being part of something, with both his old friend and the man he was starting to think of not as a casual, temporary fling, but as...but as...
As his lover.
How long had they been doing this?
A week? More?
Time had no meaning, not when he drifted in a haze of Summer from waking until sleeping, until even those moments in class when they had to separate as Professor Iseya and Mr. Hemlock were only a bristling haze of tension waiting until they were alone again, slamming each other against the desk, devouring each other in kisses that were beginning to feel as if they could never sate the hungry void inside Fox.
A void that had only seemed to grow larger, since he’d opened himself to this.
He closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against the icy freezer door.
Was he trying to make up for so many lost years all at once?
He couldn’t do this.
Couldn’t fall so fast, so hard.
He wouldn’t let himself.
And he forced all thoughts of Summer from his mind, as he pulled the bell peppers out and dragged a cutting board off its wall hook, before turning the sink on and beginning to scrub one of the firm yellow peppers under the warm spray. He’d make a simple stir-fry, he thought; peppers, onions, mushrooms, perhaps the beef tips he’d glimpsed in one of the cooler compartments. He—
Fox almost hated himself for the delicious, horrible, sweet, painful shock that went through his heart at the sound of the front latch clicking.
He told himself not to look up, but he couldn’t stop himself.
As Summer stepped inside—a dirty mess, his T-shirt stained with grass and dirt and rust and who knew what else, his hair sweaty and raked back from his face in a tangle of black fluff, smudges on his cheeks, his arms grimed with sweat and dirt that outlined the hardened shapes of toned musculature. His shirt clung to him in a film of sweat, and his old, ragged jeans hung temptingly low on his hips, as if trying to remind Fox of the way those hips moved and twisted and undulated when Summer straddled Fox’s body and completely lost himself moving in such hungry, wanton rhythm on Fox’s cock.
Summer froze just inside the door as their gazes met, Summer’s eyes widening briefly as he made a startled sound, before smiling shyly. “Oh—hi.”
Don’t smile at me that way.
Fox looked away sharply, lowering his gaze to his hands, and realized he was practically crushing the bell pepper between his palms. He set it aside on the cutting board and picked up another, plunging it under the stream of water and only hoping the cold water would cool the flush of aching, longing need building up inside him.