Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 79781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
After Weston and Sev head out to hit the gym, I help Tate fold up his picnic blanket.
“Walk with me,” I tell him.
“Sir, yes, sir.”
We head through the main part of campus, walking side by side down one of the shorter gravel paths that cuts across the quad. The clouds are puffy and white in the sky, and students are sitting under trees, tossing frisbees back and forth, and laughing all around us.
“We go get this fucking… rock,” I say to him, waving my hand through the air. “Then I have to take care of a couple of things. Then we go back to Onyx House.”
“What do you need to take care of?” he asks.
My eyes scan the grassy quad. “Things.”
“And how do you know I don’t have plans?”
“You don’t have more classes. I know your schedule.”
“What if today was different?”
I give him a heated glance. “Okay. Do you have plans, Tate?”
“No,” he admits, and we fall into silence again.
My boots crunch on the path as we walk. It feels like I’m reverting now. It had been getting easier to talk to Tate lately… even easy to text him sometimes, too.
Now I’m myself again.
Silence hanging between us like a third person on the path.
I accompany Tate upstairs to his dorm room, where he grabs the rock, the bow it came with, and the wrapping it was in. He tosses them in his backpack and slings it over his shoulder, heading back downstairs.
“How do you do it?” I finally ask him as we get to the first floor landing. “Talk to the other guys so easily, acting like nothing is wrong?”
“I told you, I just enjoy people’s company. Even yours.”
“That’s a mistake,” I tell him.
“I have a question. And you have to be honest.”
I stop walking for a moment, and he freezes, too. I show him my free hand, tapping on the tattoo I have that says honestas.
“This means ‘honesty’ in Latin. I’m always honest.”
He bites his lower lip. “When you sent me that picture… the outline of your dick, did you think I was going to jerk off to it? Or were you just showing off?”
“Jesus fuck, Tate, we are not going to talk about my cock right now.”
He smiles a little. “I want to, though.”
“None of my business what you do with the picture, Blondin.”
He looks up at me, and his eyes make my blood flare with heat.
“Did you know I would come to it, Roman?” he insists.
I let his question hang in the air for a while, but then I relent, nodding.
“Yes.”
“Well, I did. It made me come really fucking hard, and I needed that. So thank you.”
A rush floods my body, ending at my cock.
God, what are you doing to me?
I hold his gaze for a moment before I walk off ahead of him, beckoning him to follow.
“Come on. Let’s go. I’m going to be late.”
6
Tate
I have no idea where Roman is taking me next.
We loop down into a parking lot at the bottom edge of campus and Roman stops in front of a giant, sleek black Escalade. He takes out a key and manually opens the passenger side door in front of me, then goes around to the driver’s side.
“Nice ride,” I tell him as I slide onto the cream leather passenger seat.
“Not my usual style. I normally like European cars, but the Escalade was a gift.”
“Damn, nice gift, then.”
“My cousin is very kind.”
His accent comes out as he says it. Sometimes his Russian influence sounds strong, and other times it’s barely audible. It seems like while his mind is occupied with other things, he’s less capable of holding his standard American accent.
I look over at him in the driver's side seat. “Can I ask you something?”
“Ask it. You don’t need to keep getting permission.”
“Did you grow up in the States?”
He turns the key in the ignition and the car’s engine roars to life. There’s some sort of metal playing over the speakers, but the music is turned down low.
“Yes. Mostly grew up in America.”
“I like your accent, when it comes out.”
“You like my tattoos, my car, my accent. My size.”
“Never said I liked your size.”
“Mm. But you do.”
He grips the wheel as he reverses the car, looking at the rearview mirror.
Christ, he’s so fucking hot.
The muscles of his forearm are prominent beneath the dark lines of his tattoos. Most of them are abstract, just looping lines or patterns on his skin, but I can make out a few small birds, a coin, and a date written in numerals.
He pulls out onto the road, gripping the steering wheel harder, but he says nothing as he eases the car onto the cobbled street that leads out of campus.
Soon we’re surrounded by dense trees, the light filtering down from overhead in mottled shadows.
“I was in Russia until I was five,” he says. “Then my family moved over here. All of my family speaks Russian with me, and I still default to it. That’s why I sometimes have a little accent. I don’t really hear it, but others do.”