Finding You: The Complete Box Set (a contemporary MM romance series)

by Ana Ashley

  “Okay, well, I want to make my LGBTQ Youth Center into something that fits in more with the local community and also gives more support to those who are in need. I just secured some significant funding, so part of the reason I came here was to learn from Dorian and Jean-Paul so I can make the best use of that money.

  “They were so kind to me, showing me around and sharing how they set up the Liberty Center. I am hoping to do justice to everything they shared and keep the connection between both centers.”

  My center was everything to me, and I was determined to do whatever I needed to make it all work.

  “That is a fantastic aspiration, and I have all confidence that you will succeed,” Max said. “You seem like the type of person who will fight, even in adversity.”

  Max’s validation of my goals made me feel a mix of warmth and excitement. I think I could keep talking about my center for hours, except I’d have no pizza left.

  “You’re a pizza thief!” I slapped his hand as he was reaching for a second slice.

  The bastard pouted. How could I resist a pouting Max? Well, I didn’t think I could resist any version of Max, so I gave him a slice after I took a bite out of it. Yeah, two can play this game.

  “Tell me about your brother Alex,” he said.

  “Well, there’s just the two of us, and I’m two years older. He met his wife Joana at University and they’ve been inseparable since. She’s like a little sister to me. Now they’ve given me the best gift in the world, Sofia.” I beamed at the thought of meeting the little bundle of joy. I was determined to be the best uncle in the world.

  “Oh no,” Max laughed. “I know that smile. You’re going to spoil that little girl rotten, aren’t you?”

  “Yup. And I’m not even going to feel guilty about it.”

  “How about you?” I asked. “What do you want when you grow up?”

  “I want world peace, of course,” Max declared as he stole back a prawn I was about to eat from his plate.

  “Hey!” I poked him in his ribs and discovered he was very ticklish. “Oh! This is an interesting development,” I said. “Now answer my question, or else…” I pretended to tickle him.

  “Okay, okay.” He put his hands up in defeat. “I became a nurse because I wanted to help people. The job at the hospital is great, and obviously, pays my living, but my passion is to help those that don’t have access to medical care.

  “A lot of the kids at the Liberty Center are vulnerable to STIs, and it’s important to educate them as much as acknowledging we can’t control what they do when they’re not in our care. It’s all about equipping them with the right information…and a big pack of condoms!” He laughed at his comment, but I felt there was something more he wasn't saying.

  We seemed to have the same passion for helping LGBT kids. After all, Max spent so much time volunteering at the Liberty Center, I wondered if there was a story behind that.

  “How did you come to volunteer at the center?” I asked.

  He took my hand and started playing with my fingers as he answered.

  “I’ve known Dorian for a long time. He came from a wealthy but very down to earth family. Both he and his sister have hearts of gold. When we were young, some kids at our school struggled to come out to their parents.” Max went silent for a moment and then took a breath before he carried on.

  “Some of the kids were kicked out of their homes and ended up on the street. Fast forward a few years, and Dorian decided to use his business degree and trust fund to open the Liberty LGBTQ Youth Center and Shelter.”

  Max had no idea how much that story resonated with me. For all the questions I asked Dorian and all the things he told me about the center, it never occurred to ask how it all started.

  “So you volunteer because you want to help the kids,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  Max’s answer felt final like he didn’t want to expand on it, which I was more than happy with. We were having a fantastic time together, and I didn’t want to go down the road that led to memories of my own past, so I decided to change the subject.

  “Do you date a lot?” I asked, and almost immediately regretted asking. “Shit, sorry Max. You don’t have to answer that. I don’t even know why I asked.”

  He chuckled.

  “No, not really. At least not near as much as I let people assume I do.” I could tell this was something he probably didn’t share with just anyone.

  Not knowing what to say, I just kissed him, and with our tongues dueling for domination, we were back to shielding the world away from our bubble.

  I cleared the plates, grabbed the cookie dough bag, and jumped back on the bed.

  Despite the cold weather outside the hotel room, it was lovely and toasty warm. The TV was showing footage of a roaring fire and put out sounds of wood crackling, which added to the cozy feel.

  12

  Max

  For a moment earlier, our conversation had taken a serious turn, and I wasn’t sure I was able to deny Isaac any information. I didn’t want to talk about my past, but I felt in my bones that I would be incapable of lying to him, so when he’d ended the conversation with that kiss, I was immensely grateful. And now I also wanted more than just a kiss.

  Seeing my predicament, Isaac left the bed to dispose of the dinner plates and bring us dessert. He grabbed the cookie dough bag, and when he turned around, there was a beautiful crimson color washing over his skin and he was half-hard under his boxer shorts.

  Isaac sat cross-legged in front of me and started taking out the small jars from the bag, so I held his chin up to make his eyes meet mine. He blushed even more.

  “Why is the cookie dough making you blush, Isaac?” My face was only a few inches from his.

  “Oh, erm… it’s not,” he shrieked. “I mean, it’s cookie dough. Why would it—”

  I interrupted him with a kiss that made him melt against my lips.

  “Tell me,” I coaxed.

  He sighed, and for a moment, he wouldn’t meet my eyes, but then he spoke. “Earlier, when we were in the cab, I had a slight fantasy about you spreading the cookie dough on me and licking it clean.” The words rolled out of his mouth quickly, and the volume of his voice decreased as he finished the sentence.

  I groaned and grabbed Isaac’s hand, placing it where he could feel the effects of his words. His eyes opened wide with the understanding that what he said wasn’t embarrassing. In fact, it was hands down the sexiest thing I’d ever heard, and my body was in complete agreement.

  I opened the small jars and lined them up next to me.

  “We’re going to play a game. I need you to close your eyes until I say you can open them,” I explained. “Open your mouth.”

  Isaac obeyed, and I fed him a spoon of chocolate-chip cookie dough.

  “Mmmm, this is delicious.”

  Using the same spoon, I smeared a small amount of the same flavor on his left shoulder blade and then licked it clean. Isaac shivered when I blew over the patch of skin I had just licked.

  “I agree,” I said.

  Isaac still had his eyes closed. His arousal was visible all over his body. His skin was beautifully flushed, and his erection didn’t lie; he was enjoying this.

  “That was chocolate chip. Can you guess this next one, Isaac?” I followed the same procedure, taking my taste from his right shoulder blade. This time, I bit him lightly.

  “Fuuuuck.” Isaac squeezed his erection through his boxers, unable to contain himself.

  “None of that.” I slapped his hand. “Flavor, Isaac.”

  “Peanut butter, chocolate chips, and something else I can’t tell,” he said, his voice thick with lust.

  “Good boy. It was marshmallow.”

  We carried on with this game of me feeding him. I pressed Isaac back on the bed and tasted from his stomach, his nipples, his neck, and back up to his mouth. It was the most erotic thing I’d ever done.

  I was never going to be able to buy or think about cookie dough wi
thout getting hard.

  Unable to touch himself for relief, Isaac was delightfully frustrated.

  “I need you inside me, Isaac,” I whispered in his ear as I sucked his earlobe. I wanted it more than anything, even though I knew it would be the final nail in the coffin, the discard of the last layer in my carefully wrapped heart.

  “After what you did to me? I might just come from you looking at me.” He swallowed hard.

  I placed myself on top of him. “Let’s have another shower, cool you down, and clean you up. Then you can fuck me three ways into Christmas morning.”

  We did as I said, but we didn’t make it back to the bedroom. Thank goodness I had the foresight to take another condom and packet of lube to the bathroom with us, because as soon as we went under the spray of the shower, Isaac was on me like a starved man.

  I was getting my own back with Isaac’s relentless kisses, bites, and touching. His hands were everywhere except where I needed it the most, my aching cock. He turned me around to face the tiled wall. The water was spraying all over my back. It felt like a double attack on my already sensitive skin.

  “Oh, Max, you look so fucking sexy like this.”

  I turned my head to see Isaac put on the condom and open the lube to prep me with his fingers. One, then two, and when I didn’t think I could take any more, I felt the head of his cock seeking entrance. The slight burn soon gave way to a feeling of fullness and exquisite pleasure.

  “Isaac, oh fuck. Feels… so good,” I gasped.

  Isaac was gentle, but I wanted more, and I don’t know at what point he became a mind and body reader because he gave me everything I needed, and then some.

  I was like a coiled spring ready to explode at a moment’s notice, so when Isaac’s cock hit my prostate, it was game over. I came all over the shower tiles with Isaac following soon after, as though he’d been hanging by a thread just waiting for me.

  It was a good thing we were already in the shower because I’m not sure either of us would have had the energy to get up if we had been in bed.

  Suddenly, I felt exhausted, and I could see Isaac was, too. I needed to sleep because it was the only way to consciously avoid the thoughts in my head. The dread that was starting to creep up, along with the feeling that my life wasn’t going to be the same once Isaac was gone.

  All cleaned from the shower, we slipped under the bedsheets, not bothering with underwear. I laid on my side pulling Isaac against me, his back to my front.

  “Let's sleep,” I said, kissing the back of his neck and smiling when his curls tickled my nose.

  “Mmm, we need to talk,” Isaac yawned.

  “It can wait for the morning.”

  “Okay.”

  It took less than a minute for Isaac to fall asleep, his chest rising and lowering with his soft breaths under my arms. This was perfection, right here. And with that thought, I felt myself drift off, too.

  13

  Isaac

  I woke up feeling warm and comfortingly weighed down. Max took his big spoon job a little too seriously in his sleep because I wasn’t sure there was an inch of separation between my body and his, not that I minded. I could have stayed like this for a very long time. Except… I had a flight to catch in a few hours.

  “Max,” I whispered.

  “Mmmm, shh,” he mumbled in my ear, and I chuckled. “No laughing. No moving, shh.”

  “We have to get up. I have to pack,” I said lacking conviction.

  “Kidnap…you…”

  I couldn’t help laughing out loud. He was so cute when he was this sleepy.

  I turned to face Max. He opened his eyes, and even though he was still dozy from sleep, he looked so handsome with his light blond hair sticking at all angles, his brown eyes shiny, and his lips swollen from being kissed.

  I wondered how long I could stare at him before we had to move.

  “I’ve never seen eyes like yours before,” Max said. “I’m not sure I know the right words to describe what they look like to me. It’s not just that, though, there’s more. There is something in your eyes.” He lifted his hand to cup my face, his thumb gently caressing my cheek.

  “I don’t want to go home,” I confessed. “I don’t want to say goodbye.”

  “Shhh, not yet,” Max said, taking my mouth in a kiss that made my morning semi into a ready-to-play erection.

  “Mmm, you’re naked,” I could feel his smile against my skin, apparently feeling my predicament against his thigh.

  “What are you going to do about it?” I challenged.

  I felt his answer first against my stomach and then as he kissed his way down my body until he reached my aching cock. The heat of Max’s mouth felt heavenly as he sucked and licked and applied just the right amount of pressure on the base of my cock to stop me from coming.

  Max came back up to kiss me, replacing his mouth with his hand on my cock, except he now had both of us trapped in a vice-like grip, motioning up and down with his hand and rocking his body against mine. We came within a few strokes, almost at the same time.

  He collapsed on top of me, kissing me like he needed to leave his mark. I was confident he didn’t need to make much of an effort. Max had already left his mark on me, on my body, and I was pretty sure on my heart, too.

  Afterward, we had a shower, but unlike the one from last night, this one was silent. We didn’t speak a word, allowing our hands to wash each other with so much tenderness and care. They were doing a job, memorizing all the details so that when we were apart, we could still remember how the other felt.

  We looked into each other’s eyes while the water cascaded around us. I would remember those brown eyes forever, the flecks of black and gold, the long blond eyelashes, and the person behind the look.

  I was reluctant to end the shower, but I still needed to pack. Max ordered a light breakfast from room service and helped me get my stuff ready to go.

  He insisted on taking me to the airport, saying he could help me carry my suitcase on the subway. I didn’t discourage him. As much as I could easily have taken the suitcase on my own, I also wanted to spend every single possible minute left in New York with him.

  Yesterday morning, I felt attraction and lust. Yesterday morning, I could have walked away from this trip knowing I got what I came for.

  Today, I felt so much more. Today, I knew I was in love. Today, I knew I wasn’t going home unscathed.

  14

  Max

  As we sat on the subway train heading toward the airport, I thought about the time I spent together with Isaac. The rescue, although only just thirty-eight hours ago, felt like a lifetime in the past. That first time I looked at his face. How his eyes, piercing and deep, showed so much strength.

  I didn’t know what kind of person Isaac was at home, but the way he threw himself heart and soul into all the things we did yesterday told me he had an adventurous spirit that probably didn’t come out much.

  I had to come up with a plan to see Isaac again, and the only way to do it was to spend the night at Joel’s drowning my sorrows with ice cream and… fuck. I laughed, and Isaac looked at me with a raised brow. Even while considering the current state of my heart, my dick still got hard at the mere thought of cookie dough.

  “What are you laughing at?” he asked.

  “Kryptonite.”

  “Say again?”

  “Cookie dough is my Kryptonite,” I murmured, shifting in my seat so my bulge wasn’t noticeable. "Or maybe it's you that’s my Kryptonite." I grabbed his hand, lacing our fingers together and placing them on my lap.

  Isaac chuckled next to me, his free hand on his mouth. Nope, he was downright laughing at me. For a moment we lost ourselves in that silly moment, and it was like we were just two commuters, like everybody else on the car, using the subway to get to our destination.

  We made light conversation about his plans for Christmas with his brother, sister-in-law, and his baby niece. Isaac showed me a photo of Sofia, and I couldn’t deny she was ad
orable, and the resemblance to her uncle was undeniable. She had the same eyes and the same nose.

  “What will you do for Christmas?” Isaac asked.

  “I’ll spend it with my friend and his parents.”

  Joel and his parents were the closest thing I had to family, so there wasn’t any question that I would be spending the holidays with them.

  The train arrived at the airport too quickly. My hands were suddenly shaking, and every cell in my body was screaming against this. I didn’t want to say goodbye. I didn’t want to let go of Isaac.

  It seemed ridiculous that spending such a short time with someone had had such a significant effect on me, but maybe it was because it had been such a short time that I felt it hadn’t been enough.

  The line to check in at the counter also moved ridiculously fast. It was like the world just wanted us to be apart. We’d had our time together, and that was that.

  Isaac would need to go through security, so I knew we didn’t have much time left to say goodbye.

  We stood by the doors to the departure terminal facing each other. I held his hands and pulled them up to my mouth kissing his fingers one by one, and then his palms.

  “This is...fuck! This is hard, Isaac,” I struggled to get my words out. “I don’t even know why. I can’t explain why I feel the way I do. Fuck.”

  Isaac had tears streaming down his face. His eyes seemed bigger, but sadder, too. I held him with his head on my chest and his arms around my waist, while my arms went around him as tight as they could be.

  “Thank you, Max,” Isaac said between deep breaths.

  “Thank you for saving me,” he said as he kissed my left cheek.

  “Thank you for showing me your New York.” And then he kissed my right cheek.

  “Thank you for last night.” He kissed my lips briefly.

  “And this morning.”

  I grinned, hopelessly trying to make this better.