Page 61 of Resisting You

“Beautiful,” Renato murmured. “Bello.”

Frey shivered. Renato mumbled in Italian a lot, but he’d never understood a word until now. And he wanted to argue because he knew he was beautiful on the outside, but his insides? He wasn’t so sure.

“Come here,” Renato said after another beat of silence. He walked backward, forcing Frey to follow by the hand on his neck. Frey’s feet shuffled along the hardwood floors, and his pants dropped to his knees. Renato stopped him just short of the bed, then dropped to a crouch.

“Don’t—” But the chastising look Renato gave him glued his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

“You don’t want me kneeling for you?” Renato asked as he did just that. He lifted Frey’s leg and removed his shoe, then his sock, then did the same for the other. “You don’t like me looking up at you?” He pulled Frey’s jeans down, then off.

When he stood, he took the hem of Frey’s shirt, and his arms lifted as Renato peeled the cotton away, leaving him stark naked and on display. Renato hummed with pleasure, running his hands over Frey’s chest.

“Tell me why you don’t like it.”

Frey swallowed heavily and forced himself to answer. “I do. I like it too much.”

“Ah.” Renato leaned in and nipped the side of his neck. “Vulnerability. It’s terrifying, no?” His hand spread out along Frey’s lower stomach. “Exposes all the tenderness. All the places you can be hurt.”

Frey shivered. “Yes.”

“Because you’ve been hurt. You trusted, and he reached in”—Renato dug his fingers into Frey’s warm skin—“and he pulled your heart out.”

“He tried,” Frey answered, his voice small. “I didn’t love him enough to let him take it. But he left some decent-sized bruises behind.”

“And now you’re afraid.”

Frey wasn’t sure that was the truth, but it wasn’t something he wanted to explore right then. He took a breath, and then he took a chance. “Help me not think for a little while. Please.”

Renato licked his lips, then nodded and grabbed Frey’s hands, placing them on his shirt. “Undress me.”

Frey did. One by one, he undid the little buttons on the ridiculously soft shirt that definitely belonged to a suit. He exposed flesh—olive-tan, covered in black hair peppered with silver. He was soft in places that Frey wasn’t yet, and that made him so much more beautiful.

Frey was pretty sure he was going to age like raw milk.

“You have a frown.” Renato punctuated his sentence with a soft touch to Frey’s right eyebrow, and he blinked quickly, chasing away the strange thought spiral. “Why are you unhappy?”

Frey looked up at him and found his smile was easy. “I’m not. I’m really not. I swear.”

Renato hummed, then gently pushed Frey’s hands away and made quick work of his clothes. Frey’s heart skipped a beat, wondering if maybe he had failed some sort of test. He wanted to fix it. He wanted to not think, God damn it. Just for a little while.

“Come here,” Renato said. He didn’t give Frey a chance to obey. He reached for him, dragging him close, curling a firm hand around the back of his neck.

The next kiss he took was demanding, fierce, possessive. His tongue pushed thick into Frey’s mouth, his hands roaming all over his body. He pinched at Frey’s nipples, then scratched down his stomach, cupping his balls carefully in his warm palm.

Frey started to lose himself in all the gentleness, which wasn’t what he expected, but that was sort of the beauty of Renato. Every time Frey thought he’d figured him out, something would change. He let out a shuddering sigh, and Renato swallowed that down as he used his strong and delicate hands to lower Frey to the bed.

“Spread your legs,” Renato ordered.

Frey felt overly exposed like this—different from the way he felt exposed when Renato had him in public. He was on display for Renato only, and that was both better and worse than being seen by strangers. He felt a warm flush creeping from his stomach to his throat as Renato stared down at him.

His face was unreadable.

“Please,” Frey started to beg.

Renato pressed a single fingertip to his lips, then pulled his hand back and leaned over toward the nightstand. Frey heard the rustling of plastic, and then Renato straightened back up with a small bottle of lube in one hand and a condom packet pinched between the fingers of the other.

Licking his lips, Renato met Frey’s eyes and held his gaze. His lips moved, and words came out, but Frey couldn’t understand them. He was speaking in Italian, the words lyrical and flowing over his tongue.

“I—I don’t,” Frey started.

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