by Ella Frank
“I didn’t say it was a problem. I asked if you were going to help.”
“Then yes. That was the plan.” I should’ve been able to tell by his wicked grin that he was up to no good.
Something he confirmed when he said, “Then I’m all in. As long as I get to help you too.”
8
Sean
OKAY, SO MAYBE somewhere in the back of my mind I’d had the fleeting fantasy of Xander playing nurse to me when he’d volunteered to bring me home. But never in my wildest dreams did I actually think it would happen. So when he told me to grab some clean clothes and meet him in the bathroom, I all but ran to obey.
For a minute there, I thought I’d completely ruined dinner. The conversation had gone from flirty and somewhat normal back to awkward and strained when I’d gone and made light of what happened to me the night of the awards.
So that was his trigger. I’d guessed as much after what he’d said back at the hospital about this all being his fault. But I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that Xander actually believed that, and I was going to do everything I could to make sure he understood this was the fault of no one except the crazy lunatic who’d been stalking him.
I grabbed a pair of loose cotton basketball shorts and a tank to wear to bed, and when I stepped out of my room to head to the bathroom, I caught sight of Xander coming down the hall with the overnight bag Ryan had packed for him.
He stopped and gestured to it. “Do you mind if I put this in your room?”
I shook my head and moved aside for him to walk by. “Put it anywhere you like. Sleep on any side, too. I don’t have a preference.”
“I remember,” he said as he looked past me toward my bed. “And thank you.”
Okay, Xander had one of the best poker faces out there. I had no idea what was going on in that head right now. I reached for his hand before he could walk into the bedroom.
“Just so we’re on the same page before you meet me in the bathroom and then we climb into that bed together—I still want the hell out of you. I might not be able to act on that right now, but that hasn’t changed for me. Not even a little bit.”
“For me either,” Xander said, and it was like a lightning bolt straight to my balls. “But I’m not about to rush your recovery. You need to get better.”
“Understood.”
“Good. That’s good. But until then, why don’t you and go wait in there for me, and I’ll help you get undressed.”
The smile that hit my lips was so wide that I was shocked it didn’t slide right off my face. But come on, what Xander had just said was the best fucking thing I’d heard all week. “And you?”
“What about me?”
“Are you going to get undressed too?”
Xander grinned and pointed over my shoulder. “Go and wait for me in there.”
As he walked into my bedroom, I called out, “That wasn’t a no.”
“It wasn’t a yes, either,” he called back, making me laugh as I sat on the edge of the bathtub and waited.
“I mean, it’s only fair that the first time you see me fully naked that I get to see you too…” My words trailed off as Xander stepped inside the bathroom and shut the door behind him. “Don’t you think?”
“It might be fair, but it’s probably not smart.” Xander held his hand out to me, and I carefully got to my feet. “The last thing we need is for your blood pressure to go up.”
“My blood pressure is perfect, and you know it.” I fingered his top button and looked him dead in the eye. “If I get naked, you get naked. That seems fair to me.”
Xander slicked his tongue along his lower lip, and I groaned.
“Come on, Xander. We’d be way past this point if we’d left that awards dinner and gone home together.”
He reached up and covered my hand with his, and for a second I thought he was going to tell me no.
Instead, he nodded. “Unbutton it.”
That was a yes. Well, not exactly a yes, but a promising step in the right direction. My dick kicked with excitement at the permission I’d just been given, while at the same time my hand shook at the enormity of what was about to happen.
Xander and I had been getting pretty hot and heavy in the last few days I’d been staying at his place, and while I’d had my hands on almost every inch of him, I hadn’t actually seen what I’d been touching. We’d always had the lights off or clothes in the way.
This would be a first for us. Skin to skin. And I couldn’t wait. But suddenly, I was really fucking nervous.
“Sean?” Xander said as I stood there trying to get my shit together. “Are you okay? Maybe we should—”
“I’m okay. I was just… Fuck.” I squeezed my eyes shut and then reopened them to see Xander frowning. Not wanting him to get the wrong idea, I said, “I’m nervous.”
A light dawned in those beautiful eyes, and when Xander took a step back, panic began to set in.
“Where are you going? Don’t leave.”
Xander’s sensual smile did all kinds of crazy shit to my heart.
“I’m not.”
“Good. Because if you think for one second I’m going to let you walk out of here, you’re crazy. I’m nervous, not stupid.”
Xander was popping his shirt buttons free from the bottom up now, and that smile turned arrogant. “I know that. But you don’t need to worry. I’m not going anywhere.”
When he reached the top button and shrugged out of the material, I reached down and rubbed a hand over my growing erection. Damn. He looked so good in his shirt that I’d almost forgotten how good he looked out of it.
“Should I keep going?”
“Definitely.”
The desire swirling in his eyes reinforced what he’d said out in the hall—Xander wanted me. He might be dealing with guilt, shock, and a whole slew of other emotions he hadn’t yet told me about, but the one emotion that remained the same was desire.
He quickly unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans, then stripped out of the denim and his boxers. As he straightened to his full height and kicked the clothes aside, my breath caught, because holy shit—Xander naked was a beautiful thing.
Those long, lean legs he’d wound around me a couple of times now were lightly dusted with a fine sheen of hair. His cock was thick and erect, and when I finally managed to pull my eyes up to his tight abs and gorgeous face, I let out a shaky breath.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Xander.”
If I’d thought my hands had been shaking earlier, that was nothing compared to now, as Xander stepped in close to me—close enough to touch.
“You okay?” I trailed my fingers down the center of his chest and nodded, and he said, “So… I’m naked—”
“Yes, you fucking are.” Feeling more confident now, I brushed my fingers over the plump head of his dick, curious and turned on all at once.
“Well, according to you, that means it’s your turn to get naked.”
That was what I’d said. But now that I had him here, I really wanted to—
“Ahh, shit, Sean.”
—feel him in my hand.
Xander’s cock was hot, hard, and throbbing. When I gave him a nice, slow stroke, he gripped my arm.
“Sean.”
“Mmm?”
“You need to stop.”
I couldn’t help but grin as I gave a second, harder stroke. “Doesn’t feel that way to me.”
Xander’s jaw twitched and his hips punched forward. “You’re not well enough for this yet, and I’m not about to take advantage of you while you’re—”
“Take advantage of me?” I leaned in and put my lips by Xander’s ear, and then tightened my grip. “Does this feel like you’re taking advantage of me?”
He cursed and pulled back to look me directly in the eye. Then he reached down and wrapped a hand over the top of mine. His blue eyes were now a steely grey, frustration riding the sharp edge of his desire.
“No. It feels like you’re starting something neither of us
can finish tonight.”
He was right, damn it, and while I hated the idea of letting him go, it was a little less painful when he said, “Plus, it’s my turn to see you now. All of you.”
Reluctantly, I let him go, and Xander reached for my shirt.
“Be careful, okay? Raise your arms, but not too high.”
Being this close to him and not being able to do anything about it was torture. So the slight discomfort I felt from the small stretch was nothing I couldn’t deal with.
With my shirt now gone, Xander tugged at the drawstring on my sweats, loosened it, and then pulled them, along with my boxers, to my feet. With him practically on his knees now, there was no way to hide my erection, so I didn’t even bother trying.
He was hard, I was hard, and if it hadn’t been for the lovely bandage on my side, we probably would’ve been going at it up against the bathroom wall. But the truth of the matter was that I just didn’t have it in me right now—such a fucking shame.
“Wow.” The awe in that word made me stand a little taller. “Even after a week in a hospital bed, you look…”
When Xander came up with nothing, but reached down to pinch the head of his dick, I grinned.
“I’m gonna take that as a compliment.”
Xander nodded and got to his feet. “You should.”
I went to reach for him again, but Xander stepped around me into the shower stall and flicked on the water. As his back took the brunt of the spray, he looked to me and crooked a finger.
“Take the compliment and then get your ass in here. I think we could both do with a cold shower.”
9
Xander
“SO WHICH SIDE do you want?” Sean asked. “Left or right?”
I looked to him standing beside me just inside his bedroom door, and I had a feeling that tonight might go down in history as one of the longest and most frustrating of my life.
The shower, whilst completely clinical after the initial strip-down, had been a lesson in self-restraint. As I stared at the bed in the center of Sean’s room, I had a feeling my self-control was about to be put to the test for the second time tonight.
“Are you always this accommodating?”
“Never.” Sean’s lips curved into a playful smile. “But I’m willing to make an exception if it means getting you in my bed.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be necessary. It looks like you sleep on the right side. I’ll take the left.”
“Perfect.”
I wasn’t sure perfect was the right word for it, because unlike my king-size bed, Sean’s queen was going to be a tight fit, to say the least. We walked to our respective sides, and as we tossed the top pillows to the floor, Sean laughed.
“Have to say, if you told me three weeks ago that we’d be climbing into my bed together right now, I’d think you were out of your fucking mind.”
As he slowly lowered himself to his back, I slipped in under the covers and turned on my side to face him.
“I would’ve been right there with you.”
Sean turned his head on the pillow until his eyes found mine. “You are right here with me.”
“Yes, I am.”
Sean took my hand under the sheet and brought it up to rest over his heart. Then he took in a deep breath and let it out on a sigh. “I want to talk to you about what happened that night.”
“Right now?”
As I went to draw my hand free, Sean’s tightened, and he brought it up to his lips and pressed a kiss to my palm.
“Yeah, right now. You don’t have to go into details if you don’t want to. But talk to me. Help me understand the pain in your eyes. Tell me what happened after I was—”
“Don’t,” I whispered, snapshots of that night flashing in my mind. “Don’t say it.”
“That’s not how this works, Xander. You need to be able say it. You need to be able to talk about it. Otherwise it’ll build until it turns into something ugly. I don’t want that for you.”
I squeezed my eyes shut in an attempt to erase the memories flooding back in, but it was no use.
“Tell me.”
I opened my eyes and sat up in the bed, trying to think of the best way to explain the sheer terror I’d felt kneeling by his side and watching the life drain out of him. But there was no way to explain it, no words that were powerful enough to convey the absolute desperation you felt when you were praying to a God who doesn’t give answers by way of words.
“When I think of that night, all I can see is blood—your blood—on my hands, all over my shirt, pooling on the floor beneath you. There was so much of it that I’m not even sure how you’re still here today. One minute you were hugging me and telling me to go and get my award, and the next you were on the floor drifting in and out of consciousness. God, Sean, I thought I was watching you die. I was watching you die, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.”
My breath hitched, and I sucked in a gulp of air, trying to compose myself. “I’ve never felt more scared or helpless than I did that night, watching you fade away. It all happened so fast, but when it plays over in my head now, it’s as though it’s in slow motion.”
I brought my hands up to look at them, and when they shook, I curled them into fists. “You were there that night because of me. You were almost killed because of me. And every time I think about that, I—”
“Hey.” Sean’s voice was gentle, like that of someone trying to soothe a skittish animal. “I’m right here, right beside you. I wasn’t killed, and we caught the bad guy.”
“I know.” I shook my head. “Logically, I know that. But I can’t stop seeing it, can’t stop seeing you that way. And every time someone talks about it, I’m right back there wondering if I’m ever going to see you open your eyes again.”
Sean took my hand, and I moved in close until my body was aligned to his.
“What you’re feeling is completely normal. You’ve had more stress in the past three weeks than most have in a year. No one should have to deal with all of that shit, especially not on their own.”
I took in a couple of breaths then rested my forehead to his temple. “Good thing I’m not alone anymore, huh?”
“Damn right.”
“Sean?”
“Hmm?”
“Don’t ever scare me like that again, okay?”
Sean ran his hand over my hair and kissed the top of my head. “I promise, anchorman. Never again.”
10
Sean
IT WAS AMAZING how much could change in such a short amount of time. How a person you’d known your entire life could suddenly go from being a friend to a lover in the blink of an eye. But as I lay there in bed, Xander’s warm body pressed up against mine, I realized that was exactly what was happening, exactly what I wanted to happen.
Three weeks didn’t seem all that long in the scheme of things, and I’d never put much stock into all that love and happily ever after mumbo jumbo.
I’d always assumed I’d be the single guy married to his job, who saw his family whenever he could find the time. But lately, that scenario felt lonely as hell. Especially when I had Xander in my arms the way he was right now. He felt good there, like he was made to fit perfectly into my side, and I never wanted to let him go.
That probably should’ve scared the hell out of me, but it calmed me.
“I like this,” I said. “Being able to touch you again, whenever I want. Strange, huh, that only weeks ago it never would’ve even occurred to me that holding you would feel this good.”
Xander ran a hand down my chest and nodded. “I know. I feel the same. Can I…can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“That night? Do you remember any of it?”
“I remember some. The waiter tackling you to the floor. Me, hauling his ass off you and wrestling with him, and then the searing pain in my side. I remember that.”
Xander gently brushed his fingers over the material covering the jagged scar decorat
ing my torso.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you. I should never have asked you to—”
“Don’t say it.” I wrapped my fingers around his and brought them back up to my chest. “Every time you say, I never should’ve asked you to do this, you know what I think?”
Xander pushed up on his elbow to look down at me, his thick hair flopping down across his forehead. “No, what do you think?”
“That I would’ve done this a million times over if it meant having you exactly where you are right now.”
Xander’s smile was slow and almost shy, and when he lowered his eyes, I traced a finger along the strong line of his jaw.
“You held my hand that night, I remember that. You rushed over to me, held my hand in yours, and told me we weren’t going to do goodbyes.”
Xander nodded, a tormented look in his eyes.
“I was so scared, Sean. I didn’t know what I was doing, and…” A tear slipped free, and I swiped it away. “All I could think about was, what if this is it? What if I never get to talk to him again, touch him again?” Xander brought his fingers up to my mouth and gently traced my lips. “What if I never get to kiss this mouth, tell you that I’m so glad that I got to see what you don’t let anybody else see…”
He bit down into his lower lip to stop it from trembling, and I ran my hand around to the back of his neck and pulled him down over me. “I’m right here,” I said against his lips. “Tell me now.”
Tears flowed freely down Xander’s face as he stroked his fingers through my hair. “Thank you for showing me the real you. I had no idea what I was missing.”
“And what was that?”
“Someone truly magnificent.”
Xander’s mouth met mine in the sweetest, most soul-fulfilling kiss I’d ever had, and when my tongue slipped out to tease his lips apart, the salty taste of his tears made my heart ache.
God, how was it possible to miss something so bad when I’d only ever had it a couple of times in my life? But that’s exactly how I felt as Xander’s lips moved over the top of mine. Like I’d been missing something vital by not being able to kiss him.