STORY EXCERPT

“I should’ve never agreed to meet with him,” Flynn muttered as he glanced out the front window of Dusty Spine bookstore. “Who meets their half-brother for the first time at their job?”

Apparently, people who had zero concept of personal boundaries, that’s who. Or maybe just idiots. Flynn was leaning toward idiots, considering he’d said yes in the first place.

Against every survival instinct screaming at him to fake a medical emergency—appendicitis seemed believable. Heart attack was even more plausible since his ticker was already in full-blown rehearsal—he stayed rooted behind the counter.

Around him, dust motes drifted through beams of morning light that cut across the bookstore in golden slashes.

Old paper and leather binding mixed with the faint vanilla scent of aged pages, a smell that usually calmed him but today just made his stomach twist tighter.

Books lined every available surface—floor-to-ceiling shelves along three walls, stacks on the counter, precarious towers near the register that threatened to topple if anyone so much as sneezed wrong.

His boss’s idea of organization was “wherever it fits,” which meant Flynn spent half his shifts hunting down titles' customers swore they’d seen “right over there” last week. Romance novels were nestled between pregnancy books and toddler sleep training, as if the bookstore were providing a step-by-step roadmap for a life sentence.

Taxidermy books were propping up a wobbly shelf leg. The cookbook section had somehow migrated to the back corner near the bathroom, which seemed like a health code violation waiting to happen.

Still, the chaos felt familiar. Safe, even. Unlike whatever fresh disaster was about to walk through that door any minute now.

“Excuse me!” A woman who looked in her early thirties but dressed like she never left her teens waved at him. “Where are your self-help books of the naughty variety?”

Flynn faltered on his way to her, praying like hell this didn’t turn into a “naughty” conversation. He wasn’t a prude, but he also wasn’t talking about sex to a… well, a woman. Not just a woman, but one who, despite her fashion tragedy, looked like a mom. He was weirdly good at spotting one from a hundred paces away.

“I’m sorry, but we don’t carry adult books.” He forced himself to smile instead of hiding out with the cookbooks until she was gone. 

“But this is a bookstore.” She waved her hand around like she was scattering the dust motes around. “There has to be at least one.”

End me, preferably via space rock. 

“Ma’am, I assure you, we do not carry self-gratification books,” he replied in a high-pitched, panicked squeak just as someone walked into the store on the ass-end of his reply. “Brows around. Holler if you need me.” 

Preferably within the next five seconds before the middle-aged tween gave him a legitimate medical condition. Could you actually die of mortification? 

You would’ve kicked the bucket when you were ten if that was possible. The image of his mom showing up on parent night in white go-go boots and smelling like her perfume carried notes of Jack Daniels would be forever burned like blisters into his memory.

“Well, what would you call them?” She blinked expectantly at him. 

“Chicken Soup for the Soul!” His volume kept squeaking into higher decibels. If he didn’t get rid of her, windows would shatter. 

She met his tone. “Well maybe you should try it!”

I work here. I have to stay. I cannot legally evaporate.

Glancing over his shoulder, Flynn felt his soul leave his body. Zack stood there, watching the exchange with an amused smirk.

You had only one shot at first impressions, and Flynn had used his yelling about erotic books to a lady who seemed slightly unhinged.

Whipping his head back round, Flynn voice reached maximum squeak volume. “We have cookbooks!”

I’m just gonna fall on the floor, fake my heart attack, so when I really do die of mortification, I’ll already be in the emergency room.

Should he clutch chest or just drop? Was there a way to make it look convincing but not too convincing? Were you allowed to have an ambulance on standby?

Wait. If Flynn fainted right now, everyone would think it was because of the self-gratification comment. 

You will not faint. 

You have lost fainting as an option.

Remain upright.

Remain conscious.

Never recover. 

Spinning to face his next crisis, he finally faced Zack. “Hi. Welcome to…this is not a good first impression.” His hand fluttered like it was trying to escape the disastrous moment. “So. That’s…a customer. We have those. They come in. Sometimes they leave. Sometimes they suck out your soul. Mine floated past you a few minutes ago.” 

I need to lie down on the floor and become a part of the linoleum.

“If you’re looking for books, we do have those.” Flynn crossed, then uncrossed his arms, unsure where to put them. “Regular ones. Very non-gratifying. I mean books can be, just not the naughty ones. Not that I’m against those kind and oh god, I can’t shut up.”

Zack’s smirk widened. Flynn’s brain derailed.

ADULT EXCERPT

Flynn’s throat worked. “That’s very rude to say while I’m sitting here half naked and underprepared.”

Zavier hooked his fingers in Flynn’s waistband and drew him closer until Flynn’s knees framed his hips. “Then let me fix that.”

With a soft sound, Flynn leaned in and kissed him again. The mattress dipped as Zavier eased him back onto it, stretching over him without dropping his full weight. He kept the contact deliberate—chest to chest, thigh between Flynn’s legs, one hand sliding under Flynn’s back to unhook him from the bed and hold him there while their mouths moved together.

Flynn moaned more openly now. Little helpless sounds. Wet breaths. A startled gasp when Zavier sucked gently at his bottom lip and then soothed it with his tongue.

“Zavier,” Flynn whispered.

The sound of his name from Flynn’s mouth went straight to his dick.

He kissed down Flynn’s throat, slower again, giving himself time to breathe through the urge to strip him bare all at once. At the hollow of Flynn’s throat, he lingered. At his collarbone, he kissed and licked. He took one nipple into his mouth and sucked lightly until Flynn arched under him with a broken moan and his fingers tightened in Zavier’s hair.

“Fuck,” Flynn breathed. “That—fuck.”

Zavier smiled against his skin and worshipped the other one too, using his hand to stroke down Flynn’s side, amazed by how narrow his waist felt under his palm. His mate squirmed beautifully, laughing once under his breath at himself when his hips jerked up.

“So much for cool,” Flynn said, voice thin.

“You were never cool.”

“That’s hateful.”

The insult dissolved into a gasp when Zavier dragged his hand lower and palmed Flynn through his sweats. Hard already. Heat soaked through the fabric. Zavier groaned, forehead pressing briefly to Flynn’s ribs while his own cock strained painfully behind his fly.

He wanted all of him.

Working Flynn’s pants down inch by inch, Zavier kissed the skin he uncovered. His hipbone. The soft place just below his navel. The lean inside of his thigh. Flynn’s breathing turned ragged above him. Every time Zavier got close to his cock and then moved elsewhere, Flynn made a frustrated little sound that made Zavier’s mouth twitch.

“Mean,” Flynn muttered.

Zavier looked up from between his thighs. “I’m admiring.”

“You can admire faster.”

A laugh left him then, low and helpless. He pulled Flynn’s sweats and underwear off fully and sat back for one burning second just to look.

Flynn’s cock stood flushed and hard against his stomach, damp at the tip. His thighs parted for Zavier without hesitation, slim and tense, and the sight of all that bare skin spread on Flynn’s bed nearly drove him feral. Zavier ran both hands up his legs, slow, feeling the muscles jump under his palms.

“So fucking pretty,” he said, mostly to himself.

Flynn covered his face with one hand. “I was hoping nudity would make me more eloquent. It has not.”

Zavier caught his wrist and kissed the inside of it. “You don’t need eloquence.”

Then he bent and licked a stripe up Flynn’s cock.

Flynn’s whole body jolted. A sharp gasp broke out of him, followed by a helpless moan when Zavier did it again, slower this time, savoring the taste. He mouthed the head, sucked lightly, then flattened his tongue underneath and listened to Flynn unravel above him.

“Holy shit,” Flynn said weakly.

Zavier loved that Flynn couldn’t stop talking even now. He loved the tremor in Flynn’s thighs when he opened his mouth and took him deeper. He loved the way Flynn’s hand came to his hair and then immediately loosened, as if remembering himself.

No need for that distance. Zavier wrapped his fingers around Flynn’s hip and held him still while he sucked him with patient, deep pulls. Wet sounds filled the room. Flynn’s breathing turned into a string of gasps and wrecked little moans, the mattress shifting under him every time his body arched.

“Zavier, fuck, that feels—” Flynn cut off on a broken sound.

Heat coiled harder in Zavier’s gut. He loved making him fall apart. Loved the taste of pre-cum on his tongue. Loved the sight of Flynn’s stomach pulling tight with strain, his chest heaving, his cock sliding hot and heavy over Zavier’s tongue.

When Flynn got too close, Zavier eased off just enough to keep him there, panting and shaking. He kissed his way back up Flynn’s body instead, licking the salt from his skin, taking his time until Flynn looked glassy and ruined already.

By the time Zavier stripped out of his own clothes, his dick ached. Flynn looked at him and made a helpless little noise that went straight under Zavier’s skin.

“Well,” Flynn said faintly, staring hard and not pretending otherwise. “There goes my remaining dignity.”

Zavier climbed back onto the bed and settled over him, enjoying the slide of Flynn’s thighs against his hips, the direct hot press of their cocks between them. Flynn’s lashes fluttered and his mouth fell open. He reached down, wrapped his fingers around Zavier’s dick, and stroked once.

That nearly ended him.

“Flynn.”

His mate looked up through tousled hair, lips swollen, expression soft with want. Then Flynn shifted lower on the bed and pushed at Zavier’s shoulder until Zavier sat back against the headboard.

Zavier understood only a second before Flynn pressed a kiss to the inside of his thigh.