Just Like That (Albin Academy, #1)

by Cole McCade

Summer’s gaze darted back and forth, searching, deep, his lips parting, red suffusing his cheeks, the tips of his ears. “Fox,” he said again, and Fox’s stone heart beat hard enough for its outer granite shell to crack.

Being loved shouldn’t feel like heartbreak. And Fox knew exactly how broken he was, now, that he couldn’t say those words back. Couldn’t say anything to them at all. Couldn’t find his voice past the shattering, cracking feeling inside him, and so... Rather than speak, Fox kissed him. Lingering, slow, he kissed him as if this was the first time and would be the last; as if he had to make this kiss count for every kiss

he might never know again in the future. He tasted every tiny crease in Summer’s lips, pressed his teeth gently against the soft giving flesh of his mouth, suckled softly at his lower lip and stole inside where Summer always seemed filled with some intoxicant that rode his breath and slipped into Fox and took him over until his senses were full of Summer and only Summer. He didn’t have words for these feelings inside him. He couldn’t stand words for them, when words would make them real. Real enough to hurt. Real enough to be torn away, to become something fragile he could break or crush or ruin the same way he kept ruining those soft feelings Summer dashed against Fox’s walls again and again. No...he couldn’t tell Summer what he felt. So he showed him.