The domesticity of it hit harder than sex had. Harder than Landen's hands on his body. Harder than his mouth on his skin. Harder than the sounds he'd pulled from him in the dark. Because this was morning. This wasafter.
And Adriel didn't know what to do with that.
He hovered in the doorway, wrapped in uncertainty. He felt exposed. Like Landen could see right through him; the want and the fear and the desperate hope he was trying so hard to hide.
This felt too much like something real. Something that stayed. Something that would hurt when it ended.
Landen glanced up from the coffee maker. His eyes softened. He set the mug down. Crossed the space between them slowly.
"Hey," he said quietly.
Before Adriel could find words he didn't have, Landen kissed him.
Slow. Unhurried. His hand came up, cupped his jaw, thumb brushing along his cheekbone.
Adriel exhaled shakily against his mouth as Landen deepened the kiss just enough to steal his breath. His tongue traced Adriel's lower lip, asked entrance, slipped inside when Adriel gasped.
Adriel melted despite himself. His hands came up, curled into Landen's shirt, fisted in the wrinkled fabric. His knees went weak. Landen's other hand found his hip, steadied him, held him up.
When Landen finally broke the kiss, it was only because Adriel had started to shake. Small tremors running through him.
They stood like that for a moment, foreheads pressed together, breath mingling, the coffee machine beeping softly in the background, ignored.
Then Landen stepped back. "Coffee's ready. Make sure you eat something. I need to go home and change before the office."
Adriel stared at him. Nodded. Small and jerky, his cheeks pink, the flush spreading down his neck.
Landen smiled and stepped back in. One last kiss, short and soft, a brush of lips, a whisper of contact.
Then he was gone.
∞∞∞
That day at the office was almost unbearable.
Adriel stepped off the elevator at 8:47 and the weight of it hit him immediately. The same floor. The same cubicles. The same pale gray walls and fluorescent lights and the low hum of a publishing house waking up. He'd walked this path a hundred times.
Today, everything was different.
He could feel it in his skin. In the way his nerves fired at every small sound, every approaching footstep. In the way his pulse jumped every time a door opened, every time he caught movement at the corner of his eye.
He made it to his desk. Sat down. Did all the ordinary things he did every morning, while his mind raced somewhere far behind.
The manuscript in front of him was the same one he'd been working on before. He picked up his pen. Tried to focus.
Failed.
The words blurred. He read the same sentence three times and couldn't have said what it was about if his life depended on it.
His eyes kept drifting to Landen's office. Through the glass walls. To the man moving inside; jacket off already, shirtsleeves rolled to the forearm, talking on the phone with that easy confidence that made Adriel's chest ache.
Landen didn't look at him. Not once.
He took his calls. Made notes. Reached for another file. Did everything exactly as he always did.
Adriel watched and wondered.
Had he imagined it?Maybe his mind had constructed it from want. From years of loneliness. From the desperate need to be wanted.