Page 27 of Toren

“Are you?”

The corner of his mouth quirked up. “No.”

“Good,” Andrew agreed.

Toren glanced at him, blowing smoke toward Andrew instead of away from him. Andrew breathed it in and made a pleased sound, relaxing into the chair and stretching out his legs.

“How was your week?” Toren asked.

“You just want me to tell you about my ex-boyfriend so you can get hard over being the other man again.”

“Is that such a bad thing?”

They stared at each other, breaths passing between them and smoke from Toren’s cigarette hanging in the air.

“He tried to stop me from doing it,” Andrew said softly. “Caught him with another man and he still tried to tell me no.”

“Did you tell him we fucked again? After you agreed to be monogamous?”

Andrew’s cheeks turned a very pretty shade of pink, and he rolled his eyes. “No.”

“I won’t lie, the cheating part did really turn me on,” Toren confessed. “Once I knew about it.”

“The thrill of it,” Andrew agreed.

He drew in a drag of the cigarette and held the smoke in his lungs, counting to ten before blowing it out. “My best friend suggested we chase our adrenaline elsewhere by fucking in public.”

Andrew’s eyebrows went up, but his expression was anything besides unimpressed with the idea. “I would fuck you anywhere.”

Toren nodded.

“Did you make that list?” Andrew asked, head cocked to the side. “All the things you’d ask me to do to you? For you?”

There was such a curious dichotomy to Andrew, the way he went from dominance to concession in a single breath. Toren had never imagined himself as the sort of person who felt confident taking control in sexual situations—or any for that matter—but Andrew made him wonder if maybe he could. Toren, who tried so hard to avoid conflict that he’d cut his brother’s husband out of his life for three years, too blinded by his own grief to see anyone or anything else. Toren, who only ever really confided his truths in Donovan because he knew he’d never be judged. Toren, who let this man make him a cheater, who welcomed the indiscretion.

“Honestly, no,” he said. “Every time I tried to, all I could think was everything.”

“I don’t hate the sound of everything.”

Toren’s plans for conversation were quickly going out the window. He needed to get a handle on the night. He needed Andrew to get a handle on the night.

“I do have one thing,” he said.

Andrew perked up, smile deviant. “Anything.”

“I want us to finish these drinks. I want…” God, this was terrifying.

Andrew reached across the small table and grabbed Toren’s hand, threading their fingers together and nodding his understanding.

“Tell me about this friend of yours,” Andrew proposed. “The one who found me on One Night Stand.”

“He’s nosy, but he means well.” Toren smiled to himself. “He knows all my secrets and would never judge me about anything we do together. He just wants me to be happy.”

“And are you?”

“So far,” Toren said. “If I ask if you’ve told anyone about me, am I going to be disappointed with the answer?”

“I told my friends about you. Sawyer and Holt.”