The Air That I Breathe (The Game 3.5)

He kept his expression composed. “I prefer it when you ask nicely.”

“I prefer it when you don’t treat me like a sub.” Fuck patience. I grabbed his hand and brought it to my junk, then closed the distance and slanted my mouth over his, easing my tongue between his lips.

He exhaled and smirked into the kiss but thankfully left any arrogant comments out of it. Instead, he wrapped his fingers around my cock and stroked the skin expertly, the touch so intimately familiar yet always excitingly new. Being as close as possible had always been the ultimate goal for us, even before we’d figured it out.

“Say it,” I muttered, cupping the back of his neck.

“The air that I breathe.”

I kissed him harder and stifled a groan when he gripped my cock tighter.

“Say it back,” he demanded.

“The air that I breathe,” I sighed in pleasure. “Always, twin.”

“Good.” He released me and smacked my cheek. “I’m fucking him first.”

I exhaled a chuckle. “Okay.”

Together we walked over to the bed, and I let River set the pace. I wanted to watch him with Shay. The way they’d made out on the couch earlier today had stirred something in me. I hadn’t identified it yet, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t go away anytime soon.

Shay was different.Outtake 3 from BreathlessFrom Chapter 11Reese TenleyOne week. Tonight, specifically, would mark one week since Shay had approached our table at the White Rose event. Seven days.

I shouldn’t have bitched about the pressure in my chest yesterday. Shay had sent a picture of himself and his brothers on a baseball field, and it’d left me feeling all weird and irritated the rest of the day. Then leave it to River to smack me in the chest and go, “It’s called developing feelings, you moron. We miss him, that’s all.”

So now I had to deal with that shit.

Feelings. What the fuck.

I was good with affection, care, and platonic love. It separated things very clearly from the only bone-deep, all-consuming attachment I’d ever felt, and that was to my brother. The rest could be categorized into family or friends. But Shay was hovering somewhere in his own space and causing reactions in me I didn’t know how to handle.

He was a game changer.

River stirred next to me, and I glanced over as he checked his phone on the nightstand.

“Christ,” he whispered groggily. “It’s five thirty in the morning. Go back to sleep.”

I frowned at the back of his head. “I haven’t said a single word.”

“I can hear you thinkin’,” he grunted.

I rolled my eyes and moved closer to him. “How are you so chill about all this?”

He knew what I was talking about.

“Why freak out about something I have no control over?” He yawned and pushed down the duvet past his hips, and I shivered in contentment when I pressed my chest to his back. He was perfectly warm. I tended to kick off the covers in my sleep.

“Walk me through your own realization.” I pressed a kiss to his shoulder, needing his input. His perspectives never failed to center me, because we were almost always on the same page.

He joked about being “six minutes” faster than me sometimes. Six minutes faster at running—which was horseshit, for the record—six minutes faster at drawing conclusions, six minutes faster at noticing when someone did something out of character, and so on. Six minutes faster at being born…

“I guess it was two things,” he responded sleepily. “The other day, I refrained from getting in the shower when you were there because I wasn’t sure how Shay would react.” Understandable. It wasn’t normal for two grown brothers to shower together, to share a bed, to lie close like this, to hug as often as we did, to share a home, a life.

We’d heard it enough growing up.

Which… Ah, I got it. We’d become excellent at not giving a shit about what other people thought about us over the years, so the fact that River had cared about Shay’s reaction said it all.

“He wouldn’t judge us, Riv.”

“I know.” He drew my hand around to his front and held it to his chest. “The second thing was when I realized I wanted to get into more D/s with him.”

I’d reacted to that too. River had never shown any interest in subs for the sake of their being subs. He liked masochists and adrenaline junkies, end of discussion.

Ironically, we both liked to preach to community members that all it took was the right attraction to a person for a new kink to develop. Fetishes weren’t cut in stone. The chemistry had to be right. I’d been with men who’d sent the Daddy Dom in me in hibernation. Yet, it’d evidently smacked us in the face to discover how our kinks had evolved after a single week with Shay.