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“Aren’t you supposed to be in awe of me and my”—a weighted pause—“skills?”
“No, that was three weeks ago. Keep up.”
“Cruel and unusual.” Adrian’s voice was bright.
“Yep,” Eric said. “That’s me.”
“It’s really not,” Adrian told him.
Since Eric didn’t have a good response, he settled for a smile and pretended the warmth in his cheeks was down to the car vent blasting hot, dry air at him.
Not a date.
Seeheim wasa small town—three-thousand inhabitants, and Adrian knew a good many of them.
They parked a couple of blocks away from the church that hosted the concert. The closer they got, the slower their pace because when Adrian had told Eric this was the place to be this evening? He had not been exaggerating.
After the fifth time they’d been stopped, Eric chuckled softly, breath coming out in a visible cloud. “I almost forgot what it’s like to live in a town like this.”
“Good or bad?” Adrian asked, and Eric paused before he shot Adrian a bright look.
“Good, I think. Mildly exhausting when everyone’s all up in your business, but I think most of them mean well.”
“Most of them do,” Adrian agreed.
They ran into a small group of his school friends right in front of the mediaeval church, its grey stone facade lit against the nighttimesky. Adrian wasn’t surprised that Eric hung back a little, hands shoved into the pockets of a winter coat that nearly swallowed him.
Well, that wouldn’t do.
Adrian grasped Eric’s elbow and drew him into the circle. “Everyone, this is Eric. He’s from London, so it would be great if we could switch to English.”
Some welcoming noises and curious looks—just what Adrian had expected. The last guy he’d brought to a town event was Martin, so in a way, he should have seen it coming when Niklas gave Eric an assessing once-over. “Are you another one of Adrian’s old colleagues?”
Eric’s eyes widened before he grinned, a slightly bashful air about him. “I don’t think I’ve got what it takes, no.”
“A big dick?” Niklas asked, and Adrian was about to interfere when Eric laughed.
“No, I meant the guts to put myself out there, and any acting talent to speak of.”
Adrian wanted him.
It was a sharp, bright burst of certainty. He wasn’t sure when he’d made up his mind, but there it was—he wanted Eric. Even when Adrian had disguised his own interest as a way to prod at Eric’s tightly wound defences, he’d been intrigued by this objectively gorgeous guy who mixed sparks of sudden cheek with a confusing lack of confidence. Now, though? It wasn’t a low-stakes game anymore. At some point between hearing Eric play the piano and Adrian unpacking his own hopes and worries about the Gletscherhaus, Adrian had started to care.
He was still Eric’s boss, though. While Eric had given him permission to make a move… Well, it was a matter of principle.
Adrian and Martin had been lucky because John, their boss at ErosElite, had believed that happy models made for happy wallets. Adrian’s closest brush with sexual harassment had been a photographer who’d opted for hands-on instructions, dick positioning included. Once John had caught wind of it, the photographer and his stellar portfolio were gone faster than the bloke had been able toclaim that he was a tactile creator. So, yeah, Adrian had been lucky because he’d heard stories from others in the industry that suggested it wasn’t the norm. And he himself wasn’t going to be the kind of boss who ignored boundaries.
Not that his interactions with Eric were guided by hierarchy. But what it came down to was that Eric slept in a room that Adrian owned, and at the end of the month, Adrian would pay Eric’s wages. So the first move? It was on Eric.
And maybe Adrian wanted to see what it looked like when Eric cracked.
While Niklas playfully disputed the acting part of Adrian’s film career, Adrian kept his attention on Eric—the slight smile that played about his eyes and mouth, the way he seemed to relax more by the minute, especially once Lara took the discussion to safer ground. How did Seeheim compare to London? No smog, and traffic jams were caused by a single tourist car that didn’t know how to make room for the bus.
“Have you all lived here your whole lives?” Eric asked the group at large, and it spurred a variety of answers, with most of Adrian’s friends having left for a while before they’d found their way home.
“Like frogs returning to the pond where they were born when it’s time to breed,” Niklas threw in, and Lara sent him a sharp look.
“Not until you learn how to wash my sweaters without shrinking them.”
