Page 28 of The Aster Valley Collection, Vol. 2

DECLAN

I took my time cleaning up the dinner dishes and putting the leftovers away. The puzzle pieces of Finn were starting to snap together one after the other, and I finally felt like I could see glimpses of the person he was underneath all the pretense.

He was terrified and lonely. Exhausted and unsure.

He’d been trying to navigate this life as a grown adult since the age of ten, if not younger.

He’d been the primary breadwinner in his family at an age most kids were learning how to throw a baseball or ride a bike.

Thanks to his young mother, he’d been the man of the family long before he’d been a man at all.

Finn Heller needed to let go. He was holding this crazy life together with paper clips and string, and it was wearing him down to the bone. Something had to give, or there wasn’t going to be a Finn Heller left underneath the Hollywood celebrity profile much longer.

He was begging for help, only… he didn’t realize it. Everything he did seemed to be for other people’s happiness. What did he do for his own? And how could I help him see he deserved to start living his life and making his choices for his own happiness instead of everyone else’s?

When I finally made my way upstairs to my room, I found him dead asleep as I’d suspected, sprawled out like a sexy half-naked starfish on my bed.

I loved seeing him there among my things.

His body was the hottest thing I’d ever seen, but his face in sleep was…

breathtaking. The freckles scattered across his nose.

The sooty eyelashes brushing his cheeks.

The full lips completely relaxed instead of pursing in concentration.

I wanted to kiss him and hold him, protect him from the harsh, judgmental world he lived in.

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.”

Finn’s face softened. “I was worried about my little sister. She was lost in the woods, and I couldn’t find her. My parents were going to kill me if she didn’t come back by Christmas dinner.”

“You looked lost and so fucking sweet. Then you shifted on the bench, and I saw the outline of your huge fucking dick.” His jaw dropped, and I started laughing.

“I pictured stripping you down, throwing you over the back of that bench, and railing you right there in the snow with my hand around that big cock.”

“Oh my god, you pervert! There I was worried about poor Polly, and all you could think about was getting your dick wet.”

He was so damned cute, I couldn’t hold back the bubble of laughter at his indignant pout.

“I think her name was Molly. How worried could you have possibly been if you didn’t even know your own sister’s name?

Besides, I was offering you a comfort fuck.

Like a special kind of Saint Bernard. Offering dick aid in the snowy woods. ”

Finn snorted and tackled me, throwing me backward on the bed. We laughed and wrestled around until I’d wrapped my bigger legs around his and pinned him to the bed. One of my hands held his wrists above his head, and the other grasped the front of his neck gently.

“I want you,” I breathed. “I’ve never wanted anything more.”

We were both panting from the exertion. I could feel the flutter of his heart beating beneath my fingertips. His eyes flared at my words. “You offering me dick aid, Sheriff Stone?”

I leaned in and licked along his collarbone with the tip of my tongue. “You seem like a man in need,” I murmured against his damp skin. “And I’m here to protect and serve.”

Dropping open-mouthed kisses down the center of his chest, I moved slowly down his body. As soon as I released his wrists, his hands came down to thread through my hair. “That feels incredible,” he whispered.

All I wanted was to make him feel good. To make him feel like the most important person in the world. He was used to being in the limelight, but that wasn’t at all the same thing as being treated as special just for being himself.

When I got down to the band of his short navy blue boxer briefs, I noticed several spots of precum had soaked through, making the fabric even darker.

The sight of it made me grab my dick and squeeze.

Fuck, he made me desperate for him. Just the sight of that bulge behind the blue cotton had me salivating.

Finn’s fingers tightened in my hair as I nuzzled my face in his junk and inhaled.

I reached around and grabbed the elastic band over his ass, yanking the underwear down until he was naked underneath me.

There was his tidy little patch of pubic hair that made me want to laugh, as if his fancy Hollywood stylist would consult with him on even this part of himself.

I traced the shape lightly with my fingers.

Goose bumps came up on his inner thighs, and I dropped down to kiss the tender skin there before sucking one of his balls into my mouth.

His gasp filled the room, quickly followed by a groan as I worked my tongue around it.

After licking and sucking and exploring for a little while, I lifted my head up to meet his eyes.

They were glazed over, and his cheeks were flushed blotchy red.

His hair was still a mess, and his lips were wet.

Fucking Christ.