They had both marked each other.
“I need you,” Lawson grated out, kissing him along the edge of his neck again. “Fuck, that was so fuckin’ hot. I need more…”
The desperation in his tone was so sexy, so needy. John hummed, greeting his lips with his own, tonguing him into submission.
“Tomorrow night,” John muttered between their lips. “I’ll text you the hotel.”
“Thank god,” Lawson whimpered. “Sunday, too.”
John smiled, “You’re pushing it.”
“Do you have any idea the crazy amount of gay or bi-men who would climb over hot coals just to hear you call them ‘baby’? Fuck, John. You are a daddy-wet-dream.”
John leaned back, tensing. “Daddy?”
Lawson’s hands moved up and down his chest, breathing hard, sucking on his bottom lip, and John couldn’t help but reach out and place his thumb there instead. Lawson moaned, sucking in the pad of his thumb.
“Has no one called you that before?” Lawson asked, astounded.
He shook his head, thoroughly confused, and yet the way Lawson was looking at him seemed to short-circuit a part of his brain that logically told him that they were both actively, if not aggressively, crossing the lines and making plans to cross them again. It was electrifying and terrifying all at once.
“I can’t imagine taking you to the gay club by my apartment, you’d be mauled. Daddies in our world are older men who date younger men—they're more dominant, powerful, sometimes mentors, and usually cooler.You, in every, single, fucking, way.” Lawson sighed, taking his thumb and opening his palm over his mouth, kissing the heartlines. “Daddy is praise in the highest form.”
John suddenly laughed and released him. “I need to get out more.”
“Only after you're done with me,” Lawson whispered, gaze averted.
His stomach clenched. “Done with you?”
“I think we both know that those rules you made were to keep people away, John,” Lawson unexpectedly blushed. “Especially someone like me.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, tone unexpectedly gravelly.
Lawson’s eyes softened and he stepped back, looking more like a man to him than ever before, capable, sure and strong, even with the vulnerability reflected on his face. He picked up his hat and brushed off the rain and leaves on his jeans, raking his fingers through the gorgeous dirty blond locks before slipping it back on. “I’m just a page in your book. Not a chapter of any meaning. And when you’re done having fun with me, I just hope to hell that I can let go, too.”
Lawson had just admitted to what John had been worried about almost the entire evening. The only difference between them was that John was too afraid to say it in return.
Chapter 11
Wyatt
The monitors beeped incessantly, drilling into his skull like needles in his brain. Wyatt's gaze was riveted to the little girl's face. Black ash and soot covered her pale lips. Her skin was gray and turning whiter by the second. She wasn’t breathing, and her heartbeats were stuttering to a stop. Everyone in the room seemed to be holding the same collective breath every time Wyatt stopped chest compressions.
The monitor blinked and then flatlined.
She had been alert for less than a minute when she was wheeled into the ED.
But sometimes it happens that fast.
Sometimes they’re here.
And then gone.
Trembling, forehead slick with sweat-induced adrenaline, Wyatt resumed compressions.
An old movie theater had caught fire during a movie, trapping at least two dozen people inside. The fire spread so quickly that most people didn’t have time to get out. Including her, the six-year-old little girl in a pale pink dress with blue leggings. One of her pink rainbow boots was missing and her hair was tangled with the pink bow someone had put in it earlier that morning. Her big brown eyes were open and scared when she came in. She looked so damned scared, and when Wyatt saw her, everything in his body compelled him to move—to act—to save. To do everything in his power to save her life.
She blinked, tears dried on her face and mouth gaping open like a fish drowning. Their eyes locked and held, and everything stopped.
