Hot as Heller (Aster Valley 3)

So I did exactly that. I carefully moved him under the covers and stripped myself down before joining him. I pulled him against me and held him close, pressing kisses into his clean hair and murmuring my gratitude that he’d felt comfortable enough to let himself fall asleep in my space with only a little help from the simple meditation I’d given him. But he’d seemed so tired lately, I wondered if there was something else to it than merely exhaustion from work.

My mother had called it “burning the candle at both ends.” Was that all this was?

Dark smudges lay hidden beneath his lashes, and his skin looked unnaturally pale. Was he eating enough? Sleeping enough?

I stayed awake for a long time, reviewing the things I’d learned about Finn so far.

He’d been working in secret on a graduate degree involving Shakespeare. He certainly didn’t need a graduate degree in anything to continue on his current career path. Unless… unless he wanted to transition into directing or producing? He was still so young, though, and his experience seemed to be mostly television. He had several movie credits to his name, but they’d been either teen flicks, the SEAL movie, a family holiday movie, or the Hallmark romance-type ones. Nothing even remotely like a Shakespeare film.

And why keep it secret? What was he afraid of?

Suddenly, I remembered what he’d called his Shakespeare program. “The treasure of my fucking heart.” It was the one thing he kept just to himself. Something for him and him alone.

Solomon and his friends had been holding paperback copies of Hamlet.

“No wonder you looked so damned happy,” I murmured against the warm skin of his temple before pressing another kiss there. God, he felt good in my arms. In my bed. I wanted to keep him there forever. Let him rest and then wear him out again. Over and over again.

I reached for my phone on the bedside table and searched one-handed for articles about Finn. I’d been avoiding looking him up online since he’d come to town, but now I was desperate to know more. It only took a few minutes before I was disgusted on his behalf. The invasion of privacy, the ridiculous speculations about his personal life, the insistence he was a one-note, that he only knew how to be Chip Clover and couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag, forgetting or ignoring completely that he’d actually won an Emmy Award for his guest appearance on Saturday Night Live at the age of sixteen in addition to the Emmys he’d won on Cast in Clover.

I had to laugh at myself. It had only taken a week or so for me to go from thinking he was the most spoiled actor on earth to defending not only the man himself but also his acting skills.

“Wha’s so funny?” Finn slurred against my chest.

“You’re good at what you do,” I admitted sheepishly.

“Drooling?”

I brushed his hair back so I could see his eyes. He was adorably sleep-dazed, but he had more color in his face now. “No, acting.”

He leaned back and narrowed his eyes at me. “How would you know? You didn’t even know who I was at first.”

It was time to come clean. “That’s not entirely true.”

Finn scrambled to sit up so he could face me. I missed the warmth of his skin against mine, but the view was spectacular. His hair was a rumpled nest, and his face was pink where it had been pressed against my chest. “You’ve watched my stuff?”

My face was probably pink, too, if the heat in my cheeks was any indication. “Is there anyone alive who hasn’t seen Cast in Clover?”

I sounded like an ass, so I quickly continued. “Yes, I’ve seen it. All million seasons. I also watched the Hallmark movie. The gay one you did for them.”

His face lit up, making my stomach swirl a little. “You saw me in The Holiday Hiccup?”

I nodded. “You were so fucking hot in that movie, I’m surprised Hallmark released it. I…” My face heated even more. “I may have ah… used one of those scenes as inspiration when I jacked off that night.”

Finn moved over to straddle me. Our cotton-covered dicks brushed against each other before he settled his ass on my thighs. I clutched at his hips before running a hand up the sexy bumps of his abdomen.

He grinned. “Tell. Me. Everything. What scene? And if you say Derek Wooten was hot, too, I’ll have to school you on what an ass he is in real life.”

I licked my lips as the image came screaming back into my mind. “No. Not him. You. It was… god. You were sitting on a bench in the snow. Your cheeks were pink from the cold, and your eyes were bright. You… you had this crinkle between your eyes.”