Page 5 of Kiss Me Honey Hone

“Outside. Five minutes.” Kenny marched off, the communal door slamming after.

Taylor shut his room door. “What the fuck was that about?”

Aaron inhaled more vape. “Forgot I had an appointment with him.”

“Your professor?” Taylor threw the T-shirt covering his modesty to the floor, dick now wilted, and found his discarded boxers to step into them. “Uni hasn’t started yet. Not til next week.”

“Extra credit.”

“Extra credit for what? You’re already sailing through the course.” Taylor stepped into his clothes. “Extra credit is lit not a thing.”

“I said I’d do this research with him.” Aaron threw the vape on his desk, then got dressed. Ripped jeans. New T-shirt from the wardrobe. And the hoodie still weirdly smelling of Kenny despite him having never worn it, only bought it for him after all the mess of last year.

“Oh.” Taylor sat on the bed to pull on his socks. “What time you finished?”

“Late.”

As much as he spent time with Taylor, he hadn’t told him who he was. Or how he had some weird fucked up thing going on with Dr Kenneth Lyons, which really only amounted to Kenny driving him to and from the therapy sessions of which Taylor knew nothing about. Taylor knew very little about Aaron at all. Yet he still wanted his arse.

And they say romance is dead.

Love is.

Taylor huffed. “I start placement tomorrow. I’ll be working nine to fucking five all year. Wanted to spend the day with you. I’m gonna be so tied up with this internship as they’ve already told me I have to up their click throughs.”

Aaron sighed. Then stood in between Taylor’s legs and cupped his chin, forcing him up to look at him. After a moment’s contemplation, Aaron kissed him. Maybe because of the guilt. But mostly, Aaron knew fully well, it was to keep him warm. Taylor glided his hands up Aaron’s legs to his arse, holding him there. As if he had the ability to do that.

“Come round mine later?” Taylor asked as Aaron stepped away from him and into his boots.

“Maybe.”

Taylor stood, grabbing him again and twisting him into another kiss. “It’s your birthday next week.”

“I’m aware.”

“Got you a present.”

“If it’s your dick…”

Taylor laughed. “That extra credit paying off, then?” He kissed Aaron’s nose. “Youcanread minds.”

Yeah. He could.

He could read Kenny’s, too. He was livid.

Aaron grinned.

Chapter two

Kiss Me

Kennywaslivid.

And he let it be known by slamming the car door then thumping the steering wheel.

His frustration, hisanger, wasn’t just about Aaron’s complete lack of punctuality, though. Nor his flippancy about it. It was because Aaron hadplannedthis. Was making Kenny work for it. Forhim. Three weeks of distance, the exact distance Kenny had prescribed himself to get over this, overAaron, and untangle himself from his growing obsession with the man he couldn’t have, and the second he saw him, it all unravelled. He’d considered the call to deliver the keynote at the conference in Crete as a Godsend, adding a holiday tacked on the end to give himself time to recuperate, yet it had tumbled them intothis.

He punched the steering wheel again, then rubbed his fingers over his forehead.

---