Fae Schooled

He touched the human’s cheek and felt the small amount of stubble. Adam had shaved before the Beltane dance. Brett liked that about him. Adam had a sense of clean-cut, hometown boy about him that nothing could change. Even after living in Washington, DC, in an off-campus apartment for almost two years, he was still a farm boy. In the best possible way, Brett thought as his palm against Adam’s cheek grew warm. He smiled into his boyfriend’s eyes and wondered how Adam beguiled him just by standing there.

Of course, tonight had been all about seduction. Brett had been planning to romance Adam one last time, have something wonderful to remember, and then cut ties. Not because he wasn’t over the moon in love but because others would take advantage of that love. As others had taken advantage of the humans and other confined magical creatures back in February.

Did that mean he’d have to go without love? Brett thought that was probably true, unless he could find something powerful that could protect itself.

Thinking of the attack that had been perpetrated against SearchLight’s DC campus, against over fifty students from the second and third floors of the main dormitory, Brett’s ardor cooled a little. He’d been on one of those floors, captured and forced to wear a metal and leather collar that had repressed his visionist powers.

“What’s wrong?”

Brett cursed silently as Adam’s gaze drew the truth from him. Or at least as much as he could find it in him to confess. “I was thinking about those damn grand Fae and bloodsucking vamps.”

“What brought that on?”

“Nothing, I guess.” He didn’t quite dare to explain. “Except I was thinking how the annual Valentine’s/Frost Thaw dance was cancelled because of those dangerous idiots.” He smiled a little to dispel the sense of impending doom. “I could have seen you dancing like tonight months ago.”

Adam flushed. His cheeks were a striking pink, showing just two acne scars from his adolescence, which was only a year gone.

Brett remembered how others at school had teased Adam for being so slender and slight with “so many zits.” If they could see how Adam was filling out, developing muscles where he’d had few before, the girls and those guys courageous enough to admit their gayness or bisexuality would be all over him. Adam had discovered swimming, and although he’d never had a chance to learn in corn-fed Kansas, he’d taken to it like a baby seal, making tons of mistakes at first but being miserable until he’d learned to embrace the water. He had lean muscles in his arms and legs, and a six pack was well on the way to forming beneath the baggy T-shirts he almost always wore.

“Now where did you go?” Adam asked, stroking the side of Brett’s face with two fingers.

“Lost in staring at you,” Brett confessed. Then he spoiled it by laughing. “Corny, right?”

“I like it,” Adam said softly and he kissed Brett’s parted lips.

The kiss was nothing like the tentative pecks they’d exchanged when they first became interested in each other back in high school. This was instantly hot. Brett surrendered before Adam’s passion, loving the way Adam dominated many of their kisses. The shy, fumbling guitar player had given way to a confident painter and sketch artist who knew what he wanted. In some ways, Brett missed the cautious young man he’d fallen for when they were both seventeen. Because that version of Adam would have given Brett up. Not willingly but he’d have been too shy and restrained to express how he really felt.

And, damn, that was selfish.

"Wherever you keep going, get back here," Adam whispered fiercely.