And Summer’s hands were on his waist, fingers strong and warm through his shirt, teasing against his skin in sensitive shudders as Summer’s soft luscious mouth begged with its wetness, with its warmth, with the delicious low sounds that slid between them each time their lips came together, locked, parted again before twined tongues drew them back in to taste deeper and deeper still, breaths lost between them and everything in Fox burning.
This was hell.
This was hell, and he was combusting in this damnable flame, and he wanted to hate every minute of it—the betrayal of it, the riot of his body and this quiet buried starved need for contact, for affection, for heat, the guilt of his traitor heart that wanted so much it almost didn’t care who even if the who wasn’t her.
No—no, that was the even deeper curse of it.
He did care who.
He just didn’t want to care that who was this young man who brought the same brightness as his name, this heat that illuminated everything beneath a wild and singing summer sun.
Gasping, Fox tore his mouth away from Summer’s, threading his fingers into Summer’s hair just to stop that needy, seeking mouth from following his; he didn’t remember closing his eyes, didn’t remember losing himself in the dark, but now he opened them, looking at Summer and that mouth turned into a bruise and a bloodstain and a bursting ripe fruit, glistening with Fox’s own touch.
Summer looked...
He looked like everything Fox had forgotten how to feel, captured in the graceful line of his jaw and the flutter of his pulse making his throat move in quick-sharp tremors and the way he looked at Iseya with eyes that were midnight in the brightness of his day, full of all the secrets and promises and intimacies that midnight could bring.
Too much.
Summer was too much, and even if Fox’s body hurt with how electrified he was, how hard, how hungry...
He let go, leaning back against the desk, letting his hands fall to brace himself as he turned his face away, staring off to the side at one of the hanging honeysuckle plants without really seeing it.
“That’s all you’ve earned for today,” he managed to say. His voice felt like a thick strange thing in his throat, sticking to its inner walls. “Enough.”
Summer didn’t move.
Not at first...until a hint of color intruded on Fox’s peripheral vision. Just the lightest touch, a ticklish skim, tracing his temple, tucking a loose strand of his hair back past the frame of his glasses, and Summer let out a deep, contented sigh.
“Well,” he said softly, warmth rolling into the throaty edge of his voice. “I think that answers the question of whether or not you like men.”
Fox’s heart skipped oddly.
Everything felt odd to him, as if he were an ancient and rusted machine whose circuits and pathways had gone dormant for so long that the first surge of sizzling lightning pouring through them was just a painful rush, electricity searing and burning and singeing fine and fragile things to ash because they just couldn’t handle it anymore.
Fox just couldn’t handle it anymore.
He didn’t know how to feel these things, and more than his body...
His mind, his heart didn’t know what to do.
“Don’t be impertinent,” he bit off, refusing to look back at Summer.
“I think you like me impertinent.” A smile in that voice, gentle, deepening it. “I think I’m the only person in this school who isn’t afraid of you.”
Fox arched a brow, leaning farther away from Summer—his body heat, his allure, that firm pressure still caught between Fox’s spread thighs. “Don’t lie. You are still absolutely petrified of me.”
“That’s one way of putting it.” Summer coiled that captured strand of hair around his finger, then let go, stepping back. Air rushed into the space where he’d been, cooling Fox’s body, leaving him...annoyingly bereft. “Maybe I like that little thrill.”
Sliding off the desk and rising to his feet, Fox did everything he could to comport himself with some semblance of dignity, smoothing his clothing and tucking that loose strand of hair back into the knot bound against the back of his head.
Lifting his head, he looked somewhere over Summer’s head—because if he looked at Summer, those dark, hungry, longing eyes would draw him in, asking a question Fox just...
Couldn’t answer.
So he only shrugged, turning away, stepping around the desk again. “There’s a diagnosis for that.”
“I don’t need a diagnosis,” Summer murmured. “Though I wouldn’t mind another kiss.”
Fox froze, shooting a look over his shoulder. “One, Mr. Hemlock. One per day, and that one is more than enough.”
“Summer,” he pleaded softly, his voice catching, that little hitch of his breath strangely arresting, erotic. “Call me Summer again.”
“...finish reviewing the syllabus... Summer.”
He shouldn’t have said it.
Not when that small thing, that intimacy that was intimate only to him and yet that joined the quaking in the pit of his stomach, left him feeling more unsteady than he had in over a decade.
Squaring his shoulders, adjusting his suspenders, Fox continued, forcing his voice to remain stern. “And save your boldness for tomorrow. It’s not even noon, and I’ve had quite enough of your impertinence for one day.”
Summer didn’t say anything for several moments—though Fox caught a faint hint of movement.
Movement, and then warmth...as Summer drew closer, almost pressing against his back.
Leaning in.
And whispering against his ear, as curls of warm breath shivered over Fox’s skin and threaded like caressing fingers into his hair.
“Have you?” Summer rumbled.
Before his fingers grazed Fox’s hair, touching, pressing...tucking something in between the strands. Fox tensed, a little shimmer of sensation rushing through him—but Summer was already pulling back, retreating.
“I need some air,” Summer said. “But I’ll be back in time for class.”
Before he was gone, and Fox turned just in time to watch the door close.
And reached up to touch the delicate, cool honeysuckle blossom Summer had tucked into his hair, plucked from one of the trailing vines and left with its petals, its nectar-damp stamen, just barely
