Shutdown Pair by V.L. Locey

Author:V.L. Locey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ellora's Cave Publishing Inc.
Published: 2016-02-08T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

That night, Wyatt and I slept together. Not in the Biblical sense. Just in the sharing-the-same-bed sense. Neither of us was in a place for sexual intimacy. I was in pain physically, and Wyatt was suffering mentally. Every sound made him jump. All through the stormy night, his sudden jerks awakened me. Around two, I gave up even trying to sleep. I couldn’t get comfortable, the acetaminophen I had taken had worn off, and Wyatt’s last flail when the wind slammed the broken door at the bottom of the stairs had been the final spasm. I was spooned into his back.

“Sorry,” he exhaled into the night.

I dropped a gentle kiss on the back of his neck. “It’s cool,” I replied, burrowing deeper into the covers as well as his toasty back. We were both fully dressed, sweats tops and bottoms to help stave off the cold seeping into the poorly insulated room. “I doubt he’ll find us here. Wyatt, you ever think about filing a restraining order?”

“Only every hour.”

We were sharing a pillow. Well, we were fighting for space on my lone pillow. That describes things better. My nose was now comfortably resting on his neck, my lips on the fine hair covering that sensitive span of skin. I felt that hair rise to tickle my lips.

“You’re afraid to?” I asked, then rubbed my mouth over those stiff hairs to entice them to lie back down. His body had grown rigid. Yep. He was scared.

“Sort of.” The admission came a full moment after the question had been asked. Wind caterwauled around the second floor of the old house we called home. I called home. Let’s not start down that primrose path, Heath, old boy. “Not for the reason you think, though.”

I wiggled closer. He was so warm, so solid, and so perfectly built for this.

“Now you’re a mentalist as well as a goalie?” I enquired, nuzzling his neck softly. The rigidity was leaving his muscles. Good.

“I don’t know what I am right now, Heath,” he whispered, then reached back to try to pull me closer. I wasn’t sure there would be space for a breath between his back and my chest, but I moved closer, hissing through my teeth when his hand brushed my side.

“You’ll figure it out,” I told him. “So here’s what I think,” I said before he could argue with me. “I think that you haven’t gone to the cops because you’re embarrassed.”

He didn’t say aye or nay. He just lay there, my leg resting between his, my arm around his middle, breathing.

“What kind of man allows another man to do that to him? I might be gay, but I still grew up with the same bullshit rules about being tough.”

“I can relate,” I murmured into his coal-black hair. My father raised me the same way. Real men don’t cry. They stand and fight. They don’t take shit from anyone. And if you were hurt way down deep in the feels, you were told to grow a pair.

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