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?
Adam’s lip curled as he heaved the bloody corpse towards the drain in the middle of the floor. He’d thought he was in really good shape before he’d had to haul his brother’s latest victim—a six foot four, three hundred pound rapist—from said victim’s car to the center of the abandoned slaughterhouse. While Adam was fit, his brother…wasn’t.
Atticus was tall and fair with a gym body and ginger hair. He looked like a Mormon and a tax attorney had a baby with shitty eyesight. Even now, while they were attempting to dispose of his brother’s fuckup, he was wearing a pair of seersucker pants and a white button down shirt, though both were covered in blood.
“Seriously, dude? Wet work is not my thing. How could shit go this completely sideways? And what the fuck are you wearing?” Adam finally asked after they got the man where they wanted him.
Atticus gave him a pissy look, using the back of his hand to push his glasses up his nose. “I had a work thing.”
“A work thing?”
“Yeah, you know work? That shit you do and they pay you for it? Oh, wait. No, you still live on Dad’s dime.”
Adam snickered. “You need to let that go. You might have a medical degree, but you work in the sciences. Dad pays your bills, too. You can’t afford that luxury mom car you drive playing mad scientist at the research center.”
“Fuck you,” Atticus said, voice testy.
After a minute, Adam sighed. “What was your work thing?”
Atticus brightened a bit. “The research center threw me a party because I scored a grant that will fund our program for the next five years.”
“Congrats. But don’t forget our real job.”