That the chess match between them hadn’t even started untilafterthe kiss.
He abandoned his half-finished beer on the table and took off. He was out the front door in seconds and glanced wildly back and forth on the street. It was a warm summer evening, the sidewalk full of people. But he spotted Ramsey’s blond head, halfway down the block.
Ramsey couldn’t catch his breath.
It came in short fits and pants as he strode down the street. He didn’t even think this was the right way to Wes’ building, but it didn’t matter. He just needed to get away. To try to gain his normal composure.
He shouldn’t have kissed Nate. And he definitely shouldn’t have fuckingadmittedto Nate that it had been a mistake. That was exposing, in a way that Ramsey hadn’t been in ages.
He should’ve stayed away.
The last time this had happened should have been a cautionary tale.
But Ramsey had been bored, and boredom was always the enemy.
Out of nowhere, a hand gripped his shoulder and he whirled around, ready to tell whoever had just grabbed him to fuck off, when he realized, a second before a softer touch cupped his cheek, it wasn’t a stranger.
It was Nate.
He hadn’t wanted Nate to come after him. That hadn’t been why he’d run away. He’d run away because . . .well, for a lot of complicated reasons.
But Nate had come after him, anyway.
That was all the thought Ramsey got before Nate was kissing him.
People flowed around them, but Ramsey barely registered them. It was just Nate, his big body, warm and real, pressed against him. Mouth on his, like the deeper he kissed Ramsey, the deeper he could insert himself into Ramsey’s world.
Ramsey was rarely interested in letting anyone even try. Rarely interested beyond a cursory and often ultimately unsatisfying exploration in the other direction.
But Nate intrigued.
They broke apart.
Ramsey’s breath came in shuddering pants.
It was the kiss. It was something else too, a feeling he’d only brushed up against a handful of times in the last ten years. It was terrifying, but it made him feel alive, too, and that was hard to resist, especially these days.
“I changed my mind,” Nate said quietly, the seriousness in his dark eyes making that very clear.
Ramsey considered telling Nate that he hadn’t. Because he didn’t think Nate really had. Nate was just hoping, despite everything they’d said to each other, that Ramsey didn’t really mean it. That with more time, with a whole night, he might be able to change Ramsey’s mind.
Ramsey could call him on it. Could tell him the truth that Ramsey could see so clearly lurking in his expression. All that painfully earnest hope.
By this point, Ramsey should have found it unappealing. He normally would. But he didn’t. Not today.
“I didn’t change mine,” Ramsey said steadily. He didn’t add,and I’m not going to, because he thought that was pretty damn clear.
But Nate only nodded in agreement, accepting, at least at face value, what Ramsey was offering. “My place is only a few blocks away,” he said.
It was definitely not the first time he’d gone over to a guy’s place, and it wouldn’t be the last. No question—Ramsey knew how to do this. How to be normal about it.
But his pulse was beating faster as Nate took them to one of the apartment buildings dotting the waterfront. It was one ofthe nicer buildings, and after seeing the Rolex on Nate’s wrist, Ramsey wasn’t particularly surprised when he hit the button for the second highest floor.
The guy wasn’t managing Tim Horton’s, that was for sure.
But when they got to Nate’s door, he didn’t turn any lights on, let Ramsey see just what kind of view several million bucks bought him.
Ramsey opened his mouth to lightly bitch about that, but before he could, Nate was on him, pressing him to the nearest wall, tongue in his mouth and hands tangled in his hair.
