4

Noah shrugged, his lids going to half-mast. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Adam echoed, his thumbs pulling at the skin just beneath Noah’s eyes, like he’d tattooed the answers under the skin there.

“I told Bailey to surprise me. I have to admit, I’m surprised,” Noah confided, his hand reaching out to cup Adam’s face the way he was cupping his. “What are we doing?”

Adam snorted. “I’m trying to make sure you don’t die of a drug overdose. What are you doing?”

Noah splayed his fingers over Adam’s knife-sharp cheekbones. “You’re really pretty. Has anybody ever told you that?” Noah asked, examining him for even a single flaw but finding none.

Adam snorted. “Yes.”

“Oh,” Noah said, letting his hands fall. He hated how defeated he sounded.

Adam didn’t drop his arms, though, just continued to cup Noah’s face in his large hands.

“You’re really…big,” Noah said, letting his gaze roam from Adam’s booted feet to the top of his head. Well, as much as he could while Adam held his face hostage.

Adam tilted his head once more. “No, I’m average in size. You’re just kind of small.”

Noah scoffed. “Not where it counts.”

That wasn’t really the truth either. He was pretty proportionate in every way. He didn’t know why he said it, but Adam grinned and Noah’s heart tripped in his chest. What was wrong with him?

Noah couldn’t help but notice Adam’s pointy incisors. He pressed a finger to the sharpened point. “Are you secretly a Cullen? You have vampire teeth. Is that why you’re so pretty?”

The grin slipped from Adam’s lips, and he closed his mouth, trapping Noah’s finger between his jaws briefly, just enough for Noah to feel the pointed tip press into him. Not hard enough to break the skin but hard enough to leave an indentation. Still, Noah’s dick took notice.

When Adam released his finger, Noah ran his thumb over the mark. Adam had marked him. Like an animal. Adam was an animal. A predator. A killer. A killer who was still holding his face. “What are you doing?” he asked again.

“You have stars on your cheeks,” Adam mused, a strange look in his eyes, one that made Noah’s half-hard cock thicken behind his zipper.

“Bailey’s girlfriend turned my freckles into stars,” he said, hand raising once more against his will, this time to drag a thumb along Adam’s bottom lip, gasping when he felt Adam’s tongue against the pad of his finger. “Your lips are so red,” he said, voice full of wonder. “Are you wearing lipstick?”

Adam shook his head. “No.”

“Why are you following me?” Noah asked again.

“Because I can’t stop thinking about you,” Adam said, sounding confused, like he hadn’t meant to say it.

Noah’s eyes widened at the words. “Am I… Are you a hallucination?”

Adam shook his head, leaning into Noah’s space. “I’m real.”

Noah’s head tilted closer, until he could see the pale blue pools of Adam’s eyes in the barely-there moonlight. “Nothing about this feels real.”

Adam’s fingers traced the stars on Noah’s cheekbones. “Does that feel real?”

Noah’s tongue darted out to lick over his bottom lip. “Yes. Your hands are so warm.”

“I run hot. Always have,” Adam said, kneeling on the riser just below the one where Noah sat, forcing his legs wider.

“Are you going to hurt me?” Noah asked, voice almost hopeful.

Adam scanned his face for a long moment. “Probably, yeah. But you might like it.”

Noah surged forward, crashing their mouths together. For a second, Adam’s lips were unyielding, but then they softened, and the hand on Noah’s cheek slid to his chin, tugging it down so he could slide his tongue inside.

Noah didn’t know what he’d been thinking but he wasn’t sorry. None of this seemed real, not the metal risers digging into his back or Adam’s thighs parting his or the heat of his body trapping Noah in place against the staircase.

Adam controlled the kiss, tilting Noah’s head however he wanted, lazily exploring his mouth like he had all the time in the world, like he had a right to take what he wanted. Maybe that should have made Noah mad, but it just turned him on. He finally let himself bury his hands in Adam’s silky tresses, whimpering when Adam shifted and their hips met. Adam was just as hard as Noah, maybe harder. Definitely bigger.

Noah didn’t think anybody had ever kissed him like this before. Kissing—when there even was kissing—was always just a precursor to the main event, it wasn’t ever the goal. The more they kissed, the more Noah thought this was just a vivid fever dream. There was no way he was kissing the man who killed his father in a dirty, deserted warehouse. He was probably passed out in that disgusting club bathroom.

“You smell good,” Adam growled against his lips.

“That can’t possibly be true. I smell like sweat.”

“Yeah, but beneath that…you smell different. Something that’s just you.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Noah whispered before kissing him again.

Noah startled as his body vibrated. In his haze, he thought he’d been tazed. Then he realized it was Adam’s phone buzzing in his pocket. He ignored it, his hands threading in Noah’s hair, holding him in place so he could bite at his lips, his chin, his earlobe.

Once more, the phone began to vibrate. Adam dropped his forehead to Noah’s, breathing hard, before sitting up and retrieving his phone. “Yeah?” Noah couldn’t hear what the voice on the other end was saying, but they seemed just as irritated as Adam sounded. “Busy. Yeah, busy. None of your business?” Adam snorted. “I’ll be there. I said I’ll be there, Atticus. Damn.”

Atticus Mulvaney. Adam’s brother. A doctor. Both MD and PhD. Left practicing medicine to research rare diseases. Another golden child.

When Adam hung up, he examined Noah’s face. “Give me your cell phone.”

Noah frowned. “What?”

“Your cell phone. Give it to me.”

Noah fumbled in his pocket until he pulled out the ugly flip phone. Adam frowned at it like he’d never seen one before. “What? It’s all I can afford.”

Adam didn’t say anything after that, just punched something into the keypad. When Adam’s phone rang, he disconnected the call and saved it, then handed the phone back. “I have to go. I’m calling you an Uber. Text me when you get home.”

“What—”

“Don’t argue with me. Just do it.” Noah opened his mouth to tell him to fuck off but then snapped it shut. Adam pushed off from the bottom riser and walked three steps before turning back around and coming at Noah with enough momentum it triggered an instinct to run. Before he could get his addled brain to comply, Adam’s lips were on his again, kissing him in a way that had his toes curling in his sneakers.

Then he was gone and Noah was alone, wondering if he really had just hallucinated all of that. What the fuck was happening?