Chapter Twelve
SKYLAR DIDN’T KNOW what to do.
This was the second time in his life he was faced with a situation he couldn’t Silver Stone his way out of, once again it was with Xander, and he had no idea how to fix this. His mind whirred like a top, searching for the words that would smooth this over, the explanation to erase the acerbic tone from Xander’s voice, but no matter how he wracked his brain, he came up with nothing.
Not without telling him everything. Skylar couldn’t. He didn’t want Xander upset with him, but he couldn’t tell him the real reason, not…not yet. Certainly not right before he had to put on a show for his mother. He couldn’t bare himself like that and then put on a facade again so fast.
But he hates you. It’s coming off him in waves. He’s disgusted by you. He opened up to you beyond your wildest dreams, and now he’s more closed off than he was the day you met him. You have to fix this.
His hands trembled, something he could hide while he was driving, but every time he lifted them from the wheel, he looked like he had Parkinson’s.
Xander noticed. “Jesus. We’re going to die on this goddamned highway.”
Skylar’s gut was so twisted he was nearly doubled over. “You’re angry.” Shut up. That’s not going to help, pointing out the obvious.
“No shit, I’m angry. You’re driving like an idiot.” He glanced at the dashboard clock. “What time does your mom’s thing start again?”
“Four.”
“Pretty sure we’re going to be late.”
Yes, they were. And they were going to be later, Skylar decided, spying a turnoff to a beach he remembered from high school. He gripped the steering wheel tighter as he sent his mind through his mental database again, determined this time to find an explanation that would stop Xander from hating him without making him feel like a peeled prawn.
He couldn’t come up with a goddamned thing, and now he was pulling into the parking lot. Shit. Fucking shit.
“What the hell? This is a beach, not your house. What’s going on?”
Skylar parked the car, shut his eyes, and took a breath. “I need to explain. Before we get to the house. I don’t like that you’re angry at me.”
“I’m not angry.” Xander had never sounded more angry.
You can do this. Deep breaths. You can do this. But he couldn’t take a deep breath. Only small, desperate ones. “I’m not dating that girl.”
“Don’t care. Not my business.”
But I want it to be your business. Skylar pressed his hands together like a prayer and held his fingers against his lips. “Re…regardless. I don’t…want you to think of me that way. That I would…”
“Would what? Date?”
Please stop being mean.
Skylar bit his lip to stop the words. Swallowed. He managed one deep breath, finally, then another. Get your footing, man. You can do this. “I told you before that my father has political interests. When…when I go on these dates, I’m not really going on dates. I’m gathering information.”
“Hold up. You’re telling me—you’re saying that date was…what, some kind of spy mission?” He rolled his eyes. “Come on. I’m not stupid. Don’t bullshit me. I don’t fucking care. So you’re dating her. Congrats. She sounds like a great time.”
Xander practically spat the last two words across the car, and they landed like the knives they were meant to. They made Skylar desperate, made him lose the last of his good sense. “I’m not bullshitting you. I’m telling the truth. It’s not a spy mission, it’s more like…I don’t know, fact-finding? It’s always a trade. They need cover. Usually they don’t come out and say it outright, but everyone knows what the arrangement is. A nice guy to put on their arm for some event or other, or to snow their parents—it’s always something, and in return, I get to mill around an event where I can gather information for my dad—”
Xander’s eyes went as big as his head. “Jesus Christ—you whore yourself to these fuckers?”
Skylar’s stomach lurched so hard he seriously thought he might vomit. “No! No, I don’t—It’s not—”
“Oh, please. It’s not whoring? Then what the fuck is it, Silver Stone? You’re selling yourself, yes? I hope they’re good lays at least. Christ.”
“No, I don’t have sex with them—”
Xander rolled his eyes and folded his arms over his chest.
Skylar, heart in his throat, tears in his eyes, bile at his teeth, put his hand on Xander’s arm and squeezed it tight, desperate to make him understand. “I don’t. You have it all wrong—you don’t understand—I don’t have sex with anyone!”
Inside Skylar’s head, all the glass in the universe shattered.
ONE SECOND SKYLAR was in the car, staring at Xander, his face white as a sheet, his eyes wide and terrified. Then Skylar flung open the driver’s door and burst onto the beach, where he threw up his lunch, gasped for air, then dry heaved until he was too weak to do anything but collapse in a heap onto the sand.
Xander stood beside him, head swimming, no idea how to respond. He couldn’t decide why Skylar had freaked out. He was fairly certain that’s what this had been, total panic, but he couldn’t be sure of anything at this point. It didn’t make tons of sense to him—this was Skylar’s reaction to coming out as asexual? Or that he was a virgin still, which—welcome to the club? What the hell? No way, it had to be something more complicated. It had to be the batshit thing where he whored himself for his family’s political bullshit—which, holy fuck. What the shit was that? It had to be that.
Except when Skylar finally recovered to the point of speech, it turned out, no, it wasn’t.
“I didn’t mean to tell you that.” Skylar whispered this to the sand, kneeling over his pile of vomit, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth. “I didn’t mean to tell you that. I’ve never told anyone. Anyone.” He rocked back and forth, like he was in shock. “Even when I took them on dates, when I wouldn’t so much as kiss them, they didn’t know. I made sure of it. They all thought I was a player.”
Xander found this hard to believe. “All of them?”
“Yes. I gave them what they wanted—their favors—and they left happy. They didn’t ask questions. People are ridiculously easy to manipulate. Except for you.”
Xander couldn’t decide if he was empathetic or annoyed. “This is a ridiculous reaction, to be honest.”
Skylar’s laugh was scary. “I don’t think you understand how upside down I am right now. I barely have my own hands around it. I didn’t realize how much I was hiding who I was, how bad it had gotten, until you.” His breath hitched, and he doubled over, dry heaving again.
Xander crouched beside him, put a tentative hand near his back, then pulled away, unconvinced touching Skylar was the best plan. Nuclear bombs seemed more stable. He didn’t understand what was happening, but he did know he’d misunderstood everything—what that text had been about, why Skylar was upset…he wasn’t even sure he knew anymore why Skylar had been so excited to bring him on this trip. What he did know was despite his hurt feelings, his confusion, his affection for the man in front of him hadn’t changed.
And despite being certain he hadn’t done anything wrong, he knew he’d still managed to be the cause of this deep, intense pain.
He put a hand on Skylar’s shoulder. “Gomennasai.”
Skylar’s shallow, panicked breaths skipped, and he turned slightly. “What?”
He increased the pressure of his hand, to reassure Skylar or steady himself, he couldn’t say. “Gomennasai. I’m sorry.”
Skylar reached over his shoulder to put his hand on Xander’s. “You didn’t do anything. This is all me. I’m the one who needs to apologize.”
Xander didn’t agree with him, but this wasn’t the time to argue. Nor, he thought, glancing around at the small audience peering at them and whispering, was this the place. “Let’s get back in the car. I’ll drive. Tell me the way to the beach house, and I’ll get us there.”
Skylar looked ready to vomit again. “I can’t go there. Not now. Not like this.” He shook his head. “Not until I can pull myself together.”
“How long do you need to pull yourself together?”
“I don’t know.”
Well…what now? “Where should we go, then, until you can figure that out?”
“I don’t know.”
Fuck. When Skylar melted down, he didn’t mess around. Xander shoved his hand into his hair and tried to think. More people were watching them now. It was pissing him off.
Right, he was starting with that. He took Skylar by the elbow and hefted him to his feet. “We’re getting in the car. And you’re giving me the keys.”
“You don’t actually need them. It’s one of those push-button things. They just have to be in the car.”
Wise guy. “Fine. You keep the keys. I’m driving, is the point. You’re sitting in the passenger seat. And you’re not throwing up.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Xander tucked Skylar into the seat, going so far as to fasten his seat belt for him, which in hindsight was a bit intimate, but Skylar had become as helpless as a baby, so he went with it. Once he was settled into the driver’s seat, everything adjusted and his own belt fastened, he put the car into drive. “Okay. Now we have to figure out where to go.”
“Not the beach house.”
“Well, I don’t know where it is, so you’re in luck there.” He glanced at the dashboard clock, did the math. “Do you want to head back to Takaketo?”
Skylar shivered. “No.”
“What about a hotel?” He felt creepy suggesting it, but he couldn’t think of anything else that gave them privacy and somewhere to go.
“They’ll see the credit card charge and want to know why I was here in a hotel. Or more to the point, Mom’s secretary will.”
This was getting ridiculous. Never mind, this was well past ridiculous and into insane. But then Xander remembered the way Skylar had come apart on the beach.
I didn’t realize how much I was hiding who I was, how bad it had gotten, until you.
“What if we tell them you got sick?”
Skylar lifted his head. “What?”
Xander was on the main road now, looking around for any hotel that seemed legit, but he cut a glance Skylar’s way. “It’s not a lie. You got sick on the beach. What if we told them you had the flu? It happens. People get sick. What if we told them you were almost here and threw up? That you pulled into a hotel—” Xander saw a likely suspect and switched lanes. “This hotel over here, and checked in so you didn’t make any of your mom’s important guests sick?”
“It’s…not a bad idea. But I don’t have it in me to lie right now. I wouldn’t be able to sell it.”
Xander pulled into a parking space, killed the engine, and held out his hand. “Call your mom and hand me the phone.”
Skylar regarded him blankly.
Xander made an impatient motion with his hand. “Come on. Dial it. I’ll take care of it. Trust me. I’ve been taking these social lessons. I’ve got moves now.”
That made him smile a little. He punched in a number on his phone, wearily, and passed it over. “This is Patricia. My mother’s secretary. I’d never call my mother for something like this.”
That was all kinds of weird, but Xander didn’t litigate that, not with the ringer going in his ear and a nagging voice in the back of his head asking if he had just written a check he couldn’t cash.
A cultured, harried woman answered, not with hello, simply launching in demanding to know where Skylar was. Xander looked at Skylar’s devastated, weary face—Skylar could clearly hear her, she was that damn loud—and something took over Xander.
“Yeah—hey. Um, sorry, this isn’t Skylar.”
The woman paused mid-rant. “Who is this, then?”
“This is his friend, Xander. I came with him for the weekend.”
“Well, where in the world are you? And why are you using Skylar’s phone?”
He decided the role to play here was dumb friend, since it was what she expected. “So, uh, we’re at a hotel. I don’t know where exactly? Not far from the beach I don’t think. But Skylar got really sick all of a sudden. I mean, he threw up everywhere. It was pretty gross.”
“What?”
“Vomit? He was vomiting.” Beside him, Skylar had his hand over his mouth, trying not to laugh. “I guess stuff was going around his frat or something. Anyway. He’s in the bathroom again. He says he’s going to stay here tonight and see if he can get better by tomorrow. But I dunno, man. I don’t think puke’s supposed to be that color.”
“He can’t stay at a hotel. Mrs. Stone is expecting him tonight. She’s been looking for him for the past hour.”
This time Xander’s hesitation was legitimate. “You seriously want him to come to a houseful of guests when he has a contagious virus?”
Skylar raised his eyebrows. Told you so.
The woman on the other end of the phone was getting increasingly hysterical. “He needs to take some anti-nausea medication and tough it out. Look, kid, I don’t know who you are, but—”
Xander was done playing. “I’m the guy who rode five hours in the car with him and just held his hair while he puked for the seventh time and told him no way, nobody would expect him to go to a party in his condition. I don’t know what kind of flu you get, bitch, but anti-nausea medicine isn’t a fucking cure-all. He’s staying in a hotel tonight, because he’s too weak to drive, I’ve got the keys, and now I’ve got his phone. So if you want him at this lobster fuckfest, you can figure out where we are, come kidnap us, and bring us to the party yourself. Otherwise you’ll see him when he’s got a fever lower than 103 and can at least keep down a saltine. Have a nice fucking evening.”
He lowered the phone, fumbled for a second with the unfamiliar controls, then finally hung up on the woman shrieking obscenities into the car.
Xander placed the phone carefully on the seat between them, as if it might begin spontaneously shouting again at any second. They both stared at it for a few heartbeats, until eventually Skylar broke the silence.
“They’re going to be angry with me.”
Xander turned to look at Skylar, whose profile was backlit by the sunset. “I’m sorry.”
Skylar shook his head. “No. Thank you. I think.” He stared at the dashboard. “I mean…I don’t know why that isn’t upsetting me more. Usually I care a lot about what they think of me, but right now I don’t. I’m a lot more concerned about what you think.”
Xander froze, unsure what to say.
Skylar didn’t seem to expect him to speak. He shut his eyes, taking long, slow breaths. “I feel lightheaded. Like I’m in a dream. If I think about it too much, I start to panic again. Telling you wasn’t part of my plan.”
Now Xander did know what to say. “Do you really think your orientation matters to me?”
Skylar’s face flushed, and he waved his hands in distress. “It’s not—I don’t know what orientation you think I have—”
Xander held up a palm, trying to soothe his skittish colt. “I’m not labeling you. I’m saying it doesn’t matter what you just admitted to me. I’m saying I’m hurt you’d think that would affect my feelings about you.”
This attempt at reassurance, however, only seemed to agitate Skylar more. “But…but I told you…” He cut a nervous glance to Xander. “I thought…I thought you were…that you…?” His eyes widened, and he withdrew. “Oh God, was I wrong?”
Xander decided of the two of them, he was in a better position to be brave. “I’m attracted to you, yes. But that doesn’t mean if you aren’t attracted to me back, I stomp off in a huff. I’m not twelve. Honestly, I wouldn’t even have done that at twelve. At that age I could never have spoken to you at all, especially if you were nice to me.”
He kept waiting for one of these speeches to start soothing Skylar, but he continued to slide sideways into different agitations. “It’s not…it’s not as simple as that.”
Xander rewound the last thing he’d said, wishing he hadn’t babbled so much because he couldn’t figure out what that wasn’t so simple as. “I don’t get what you mean.”
God, but it was never going to stop being weird to see Skylar fidget and fret. “I mean… I mean that…it’s not that I’m not attracted to you.”
Xander went very still as the universe he thought he knew tilted sideways. He wiped his hand over dry lips. “You…you mean you’re not asexual?” On cue, a mini Zelda began to scold him in his head about asexuals and attraction and how not all aces were aromantic, and he tried to cover his tracks. “I mean…or demi…or…spectrum…” Fuck, he was screwing this so bad.
“I thought you weren’t going to label me.” The quip was acerbic, and Xander blinked, unsure how to respond. Skylar sighed and rubbed his temples. “I used to think I was ace. Or rather, I told myself I was, because I wanted a hat to wear the same as everyone else. But even inside the privacy of my own head it felt off. So I told myself I was sexless. That I was nothing.”
That’s not how it works. That’s not the way you describe yourself, not with that derogatory tone. Xander kept quiet, however, and let Skylar finish his story.
He looked pained, world-weary, but determined to see this through. “It didn’t make me any happier, calling myself that, but it felt more accurate, or safer, or something. I don’t know why. What I did know was I had to hide it.”
Okay, so much for keeping quiet. “But why?”
“Because the world you slapped down on the phone tonight doesn’t have room for whatever I am. Not in an open and honest way. So I tucked it away and tried to find a use for myself.”
The dating. Xander winced. “Shit, I’m so sorry.”
Skylar’s laugh was bitter. “What, for calling me a whore? Where was the lie?”
“Yeah, still gonna feel like shit for the rest of my life for that, thanks.”
Skylar tipped his head against the headrest. “I never enjoyed it. It always made me feel dirty after. I usually showered or bathed multiple times, and I never slept well. But I kept doing it, thinking at some point I’d pass on information that made it worth the effort. I was able to tell myself it was worth it, until recently. Until you.”
Xander’s heart broke and soared at once. He wanted to fold Skylar into his arms, but he hadn’t entered that zone yet.
I didn’t say I wasn’t attracted to you.
His heart fluttered again.
Skylar drew his hand close to his body, fist to his abdomen. “Sorry if this is…too weird.”
Xander had never been so on tenterhooks in his life. “No, please.” He wanted to touch Skylar’s arm so badly, but he didn’t. Didn’t even touch the armrest between them. He kept his hands still, his whole body as immobile as possible, as if Skylar was a wild animal he dare not spook. “Please…it’s not weird.” When Skylar remained quiet, he thought maybe some tit for tat would help. “I thought you were handsome the day you took my painting, but I kind of resented you for it. I was attracted to you in the way I’m attracted to any hot guy, but I’d never have told you. You could have openly cruised me and I’d have told you to fuck yourself.”
Skylar blinked at him. “You’d have turned me down, seriously?”
“Hell yes.” His face went hot as he realized what he was about to confess, but again, he was never going to get anywhere without laying down his own cards. “I…haven’t been with anyone either. Though for different reasons than you.”
For the first time since his accidental confession, Skylar seemed like his old self: confident and put together, except this time there was an extra brightness to him that made Xander melt internally into a huge puddle. “You’re serious, aren’t you? You didn’t say that to make me feel better?”
Xander shut his eyes on a slow blink and swallowed in self-defense. “Um, hello, do you think I could lie about something like that? And blush this hard over it?”
“I don’t know, you were pretty slick with Patricia.”
“I could never be slick with you.”
He realized the double entendre in what he’d said, yelped in dismay, and covered his face with his hands as his skin burst into flame.
Skylar laughed, and Xander mumbled into his palms about how this wasn’t fair. Then he froze because he could feel Skylar’s hand on his thigh, his breath brushing against his ear.
“It was when you drew me in the cherry blossoms. That’s when I started to realize I felt more for you.” Skylar withdrew his hand as Xander lowered his, but he remained close to Xander as he confessed the rest. “At first I was confused, then a little scared. Of what it meant that I’d been wrong about myself. Mostly, though, of what it would mean if…” his voice hitched as he went on, “…if you couldn’t be patient with me.”
Xander turned toward him slightly, speaking even more softly. “You mean, you’re worried what happens if something starts between us and I want to go further sexually than you do?”
The tension was coming off Skylar in waves. “I don’t know where the edges are for me anymore. But yes. I worry about that.”
“You don’t need to.”
Skylar clearly didn’t like this answer. “Why not? It’s hardly fair to you.”
“So you’re saying it has to be unfair to you?” Xander gave him a be serious look. “What about me, exactly, gives you the image that I am a rampaging sex maniac? I just told you I’m a virgin. And I’m not a cranky hermit because of that, either. That’s a lifestyle choice. And frankly, so is the virginity. So yeah, if my choices are with you but with a different kind of sexual experience or not with you, I’m going to give with you a try, all right?”
“Even if it’s really limited?”
“Even if.”
Skylar regarded him with hope and suspicion at once. “Because if this were a television movie, right now we’d be kissing. And I’m not ready for that.”
“Not to put too fine a point on it, but you legit vomited half an hour ago. I’m not kissing you until you brush your teeth.”
Skylar drew back, eyes wide, putting a hand over his mouth. “Oh my God, does my breath—?” He exhaled against his hand, frowned. “It’s fine. Isn’t it?”
“Yes, but the part to focus on is you have something you’re fussy about, and so do I. And to be honest, I would be too freaked out to kiss you even if you hadn’t decorated the beach with your stomach.”
Xander wasn’t sure it was entirely a positive how easily Skylar slid back into his confident mode. “Why in the world would you be freaked out?”
“Because I would be, all right? I guess that’s my way of saying I’m not ready, either.”
“But why freaked out? It’s just me.” When Xander gave him a death glare, Skylar tipped his head back and laughed, a trill that reverberated through the small interior space and down Xander’s spine. “So, what, you’re saying if I did make a move on you—”
“—after you brushed your teeth—”
Skylar blushed, some of his smoothness eroding away. “—after that, yes. You’re saying you’d reject me?”
Xander did his best to push past his internal freak-out to give the matter serious consideration, but discovered there was only more internal freak-out. “I think I’d try not to let you know I was nervous, which would make me more nervous, and then you’d probably get super smooth or something, and then I’d snarl to keep you from noticing I was exceptionally nervous, and it would end in a mess.”
Skylar wasn’t laughing anymore. “Except I couldn’t ever do that. There is no Silver Stone, not in that department. A girl kissed me once in junior high, and I’m still not over it. It was on that beach where we just were, in fact. I don’t know when I’ll be ready, to be honest.”
Xander wasn’t freaking out anymore. In fact, he felt a small thread of…anticipation. Hope. “You know…this could work.” Except even as he said that, he felt the same pull of longing he’d been denying for a month now, the one his instinct had been warning him to resist. And now he knew why. He sighed. “It is hard not to touch you, though.”
“When did I say anything about you not touching me?” Skylar held out his left hand in the space between them, splaying his fingers. “By all means. Please don’t hold back.”
Xander all but recoiled. He was angry, rattled. “You can’t just whip it out like that, for fuck’s sake. That’s not what I mean by touch you.”
“Well, what do you mean, then?”
Jesus, he never would have guessed the slick magazine ad could be this clueless. “Forget it. You have sufficiently killed the moment.”
Now Skylar looked wounded. God, they were a pair. What idiot had thought this could work again?
Skylar, apparently, because he wouldn’t let it go. “Don’t. I’m serious. I want to know.”
“I don’t really know what I meant, all right? Just that I want to touch you. A lot.” This time the blush started from the center of his chest and ran up his face like a rash. “Fuck. Please, drop this.”
“Xander.” Skylar’s voice was a siren’s lure. He held out his hand again, this time with the same gentleness as his speech. “Onegai. Onegai…shi…”
The parking lot faced the setting sun, and Skylar was cast in warm fire, his cheeks stained with blush, his skin lit by the refracted light against the clouds. He was beautiful and perfect, achingly so.
He has never felt attraction for anyone. Until you.
Xander couldn’t trust in that. Or rather, the thought gave him no comfort. But Skylar’s softness did.
“Onegaishimasu,” Xander finished for him, surrendering.
Pinning his elbow to his side to keep his arm from trembling, he reached for Skylar’s hand.
He didn’t grab it or even lace their fingers together, though that seemed to be what Skylar anticipated, the weirdo. No, Xander didn’t want to hold hands. He wanted to touch Skylar’s hand. So he did. He traced along the sides of Skylar’s palm. Down the center of his wrist. Ran his fingernails gently up the center, teased up to the tips of Skylar’s fingers.
Skylar gasped, shivered, nearly pulled away.
Xander paused, glancing at him, breaking out of his own trance for a moment of self-consciousness. “Is it too much?”
Skylar shook his head, but he looked…breathless. “It’s…it’s not what I expected, is all. But…but it’s good.”
Xander searched Skylar’s face for a sign he was taking one for the team. “You’re sure?”
Skylar nodded, unable to take his gaze from the place where Xander’s fingers hovered over his own. “It makes me…dizzy. I feel like I’m being tugged. And spun around. It’s almost too much, but it’s…good.” His cheeks stained red. “Would…would you do it again?”
In a heartbeat.
Xander moved more boldly this time, though he still kept his touch light, since it clearly thrilled Skylar. His blood rushed in his ears, his heart thumping at his throat as he forced himself to move slowly, carefully adjusting the pressure so he wasn’t tickling, not quite, but still ghosting over Skylar’s flesh. Because he was starting to live for those tiny gasps Skylar gave, the quivers his long, slender, manicured hands made under his. Xander felt a rush, but he felt calm too. Like he was a hunter with all the time in the world to pursue his prey.
Except Skylar wasn’t his prey. Partner.
Play with me, Skylar Stone.
“Turn your hand over.”
Was it wicked of him to like that Skylar trembled so much? He took extra time to gentle him, smoothing the back of his hand, folding their fingers together briefly so he could stroke Skylar reassuringly. Except Skylar didn’t seem to want reassuring. His breathing was quicker now, and when Xander didn’t pick up the pace again, Skylar took over, leading the tease against Xander’s hand.
It sent his nerve endings sailing, made him heady and breathless too, but nothing quite like it did for Skylar, so he quickly turned the tables, and soon he had Skylar quaking once more, shifting in his seat, making gasps and whispering, “Xander,” every now and again as he was caressed.
They were building toward something, Xander could feel it, a tightness in his chest that made him want to lean in closer and press his forehead to Skylar’s and turn up the friction. But his whisper of instinct was back in action, and he heeded it without question. Instead of following the foregone path to the pinnacle, he eased them slowly down, despite the fact that he had to coax Skylar into going there.
When Skylar resisted, trying to push him back into play, Xander deflected with a teasing brush of his thumb alongside Skylar’s. “Hey, Skylar Stone. You know what you just did? You just made out in a car.”
Skylar went still.
He withdrew his hand from Xander’s, pressed it against his mouth.
His eyes went wide, and he turned his gaze for a fraction of a second to Xander’s. The look was so raw, so full of emotion, Xander couldn’t breathe.
Skylar shut his eyes, not tight, but enough that a few tears leaked down his cheeks. When he opened his eyes again, he took Xander’s hand in his once more, firmly. Drawing it to his mouth, he brushed a chaste, reverent kiss against his knuckles. “Let’s go home.”
Now Xander was the shaken one, Skylar’s simple kiss burning all the way to the center of his body. “You mean to Takaketo? Tonight? Now?”
Skylar nodded. He let go of Xander, wiping his eyes with his fingertips. “I don’t want to see my family. I don’t want to be in a hotel where they could find me, or where I might feel guilty and decide I should go over and see them in the morning. I don’t want to go to the fundraiser, even though I know it’s going to end in a lecture for me at some point. I want to get away from them right now. I can’t escape forever, but I can for tonight. Will you help me? Please?”
“Okay.” Xander tentatively captured Skylar’s hand again, this time simply lacing their fingers together. “Hey…no more dates with people for favors, okay?”
“No more dates for favors.” Skylar squeezed Xander’s hand gently. “Can…can I have one with you, though?”
Xander’s heart fluttered, grew wings, and sailed lazily into the sky. “You can have as many as you want.”