Griff opened his eyes in surprise as Pierce put his hands on either side of Griff’s head, tilting his face up. His touch was warm and uncharacteristically gentle. “Well, your eyes are okay. Pupils normal. Are you feeling nauseous?”

“No.”

“Dizzy? Weak?”

“I haven’t eaten since breakfast. So yes.”

Pierce made an amused sound, his breath light against Griff’s face. “Are you experiencing confusion or irritability?”

“Aren’t you?”

Pierce laughed. “I think you’re okay. You should really get a doctor to look you over. But I guess that’s not going to happen. You want me to fix you something to eat?”

“I thought you couldn’t cook?”

“I didn’t say I couldn’t cook. I said I don’t. Would you like scrambled eggs? I think I’ve got eggs. And maybe bread for toast.”

Griff’s stomach growled loudly in response.

Pierce chuckled. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll be asleep in five minutes anyway.” Griff said it apologetically because, as tired as he was, he was pretty sure Pierce had not invited him back for a council of war, let alone scrambled eggs.

Pierce studied him, and then smiled faintly. “Go on. I’ll wake you up.”

He rose from the bed, went downstairs, and Griff undressed and crashed down into the cool sheets.

He did fall asleep almost instantly, but woke when Pierce returned carrying a wooden tray with scrambled eggs, toast and orange juice.

“Just like Mom made,” Pierce said.

Griff smiled faintly and picked up his fork. To his surprise, Pierce undressed down to his black silk briefs, got his laptop out, and settled next to him on the bed to work.

Maybe he’d got it wrong. Maybe Pierce really did just want to talk strategy. Maybe the moment for something else had passed and they had moved on to an uneasy friendship. That would be the best thing because there really wasn’t any future in the other—he wasn’t even sure what the possibilities for other would be with Pierce—anything else was just going to be confusing and maybe hurtful. He was pretty sure Pierce could hurt him a lot without ever trying.

But the funny thing was he didn’t feel relieved. He felt disappointed and let down, as though the hurting had already begun.

“You’ve been on your own a long time, haven’t you?” Pierce was clicking away on his keyboard, not looking at Griff.

All my life. Griff didn’t say that aloud. He shrugged, finished his scrambled eggs.

Pierce said, “I know you didn’t have it easy.” He sounded abstracted, as though he was talking to his laptop. Maybe he was talking to someone on Skype.

“It was okay.” Did he sound defensive? Maybe. But it was surely a strange comment. An astonishing comment. “A lot of kids have it worse. I was never one of your at-risk teens.”

Pierce stopped typing and smiled at him. His eyes were warm, and it was a natural, easy moment. Griff felt the impact of that smile in his chest, in a way that Pierce’s more polished efforts never affected him. It felt as though he and Pierce had spent many evenings lying in bed talking together. It felt comfortable and right in a way it had never felt with Levi, even though Griff had a million things in common with Levi and none, at least that he knew of, with Pierce.

Griff put the dishes on the floor beside the bed. He flopped back, hands linked behind his head, and studied Pierce’s profile. A huge yawn swept over him, though he made a belated effort to smother it.

To try and conceal the fact he was falling asleep, he said, “Your sister says you have trust issues.”

Pierce, tapping away again, said, “I’m a lawyer. Of course I have trust issues. When did you talk to my sister?”

“She invited me to lunch yesterday.” Yesterday? It seemed like a week ago. The night before last he had been in this very bed with Pierce. That seemed a long time ago too. “My ex says I have intimacy issues. I wonder if that’s the same thing.”

“No.” Pierce turned off his laptop and set it aside. He turned on his side facing Griff, propping his head on his hand. “‘Intimacy issues’ is code for ‘I haven’t met the right person.’”

“And what is ‘trust issues’ code for?”

Pierce held his gaze. “I’m afraid to believe I’ve met the right person.”

Griff nodded thoughtfully before another yawn caught him off guard.

Pierce smiled, shaking his head. He reached back and snapped off the light.

Chapter Twenty-Two

He woke to a sense of warm and utter well-being.

Having been fathoms deep in sleep, he needed a groggy second or two to separate pleasant dreams for a still more delightful reality and realize exactly why he felt so good. The room was filled with gentle sunlight and a hot, cherishing mouth moved on him, sucking, sucking strongly, while at the same time fingertips were rubbing deliciously over his anus.

Griff gasped, his cock already flushed and swollen, tingling with anticipation, too far down the road to come back now even if he’d been so inclined. From beneath his lashes he could see Pierce’s face, almost solemn in its attention to him, Pierce’s beautiful, hard mouth wrapped around the thickness of his cock.

A frantic, fraught sound escaped Griff as Pierce changed the angle, changed pressure, let him feel the glide of teeth, instantly replaced by the sweet rough side of his tongue. He bit down on his lip to stop any other helpless embarrassing noises; in a moment he would be mewling, it just felt so unbelievably good.

Better than anything he could have imagined, maybe because it was Pierce, Pierce doing this for him.

Griff’s hands knotted in the sheets, he dug his heels into the mattress, rocked his hips up, wanting, needing more, he was so close now, so close that the idea of Pierce stopping was frightening...

There was something silky and slick on Pierce’s fingers, and he pressed inside Griff, touching him with intimate and devastating authority. It was overwhelming, that duality of pleasure, the blaze of sensation sliding up and down his cock while at the same instant a gentle, steady friction was applied to his prostate. Something had to give or his entire frame was going to fly apart, nuts, springs, wires, bolts flying across the room.

A strangled sound ripped out of him and he managed to give fair warning. “Oh God. God, I’m going to come.”

But instead of backing off, Pierce’s fingers twisted, sending red sparks dancing behind Griff’s eyes. Pierce’s tongue dipped and traced the frantic pulsing vein beneath Griff’s heavy cock, and his mouth closed a final time over the throbbing head.

Flashpoint. Griff began to come in spurts of blood-hot salt. And Pierce swallowed it down, making Griff come harder still, sobbing with the joyful relief of it.

* * *

“Am I redeemed a little?” There was a faint smile in Pierce’s voice.

He was still holding Griff, had been holding him for some time, now that Griff was awake, alert enough to take notice. He was embarrassed because he had cried. Wept on Pierce’s manly chest like some Victorian maiden experiencing her first orgasm. It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t that he hadn’t enjoyed sex before. He always enjoyed sex. As a matter of fact, sex had been the one thing that had always been very good between him and Levi right up until the very end.

It was hard to say why this had meant so much. It went beyond the physical pleasure, though there was no question Pierce’s talents in that arena were considerable. In fact, Griff was sort of afraid to explore his intense reaction. He was so emotional these days. It was weird.

So instead of answering, he said, “Do you remember Matthew’s dog Corky?”

Pierce raised his head, inspected his face, gave a funny laugh and said, “Sure. He was a yellow lab. Not too smart but a nice disposition.”