“Alpha?”

“Yes. Perfect word.”

“You admire him.”

Nick shrugged.

Adam smiled. “You do. I can hear it in your voice.” He paused. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen. How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

Two years. It felt like twenty. Nick didn’t know how to explain that it wasn’t just his brothers, that school would take on an entirely different feel if he had to walk down the halls with all his classmates knowing the truth. Adam could be himself, and he had a safe place to go if the world started to crumble around him.

Nick wasn’t sure he had anything. He didn’t think his brothers would throw him out of the house, but he didn’t want to live there feeling their resentment, their unease. Their judgment.

And he couldn’t stop going to high school. Education was his only way out of this town.

But he still couldn’t bring himself to tear open those college letters hidden in his desk. What if they didn’t want him, either?

“Do your parents know about you?” Nick asked.

“Yes.” Adam smiled. “I was obsessed with dance from day one. I used to make up routines to show tunes in my living room. I asked my parents for hot pink legwarmers for my ninth birthday. I’m a walking cliché. I think they knew before I did.”

“And they were all right?”

“They were all right until I got hurt. They wanted to send me back to school, but they wanted me to pretend to be straight—like anyone would believe that, right? I mean, I get it, they were worried. I spent two weeks in the hospital. They’d seen what those idiots had written all over my Facebook page. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t pretend, and I didn’t think it’d do any good. So I got my GED, I got a job, and I moved out.” He paused. “We’re all right.

They help me with rent sometimes, since I’m going to school part-time.”

But Nick heard it in Adam’s voice. His parents had asked him to pretend, and that had created a gap that time wasn’t fixing.

Nick spent so much of his life pretending not to be an Elemental, risking persecution for something he couldn’t control.

What if he came out and his brothers told him to keep pretending? This felt like a double whammy.

Nick looked into the warm depths of Adam’s eyes. “You spent two weeks in the hospital?”

“I might have played the patient a little more than necessary.

I had a hot male nurse.”

Nick smiled and found himself reaching to trace the line on Adam’s face, before realizing what he was doing. He started to pull away.

Adam caught his wrist. “You can touch me.”

But Nick didn’t move. His pulse was choking him. This was so different from the first night they’d come here. Then, he’d been so confused and desperate that he hadn’t even admitted his feelings to Adam until he leapt out of his chair and kissed him.

Now there were too many thoughts in the way. Too many fears. No Quinn to break them up if things went too far. He felt like he was falling, scrambling to find purchase, and the only rope he had was fraying strand by strand.

“What do you want?” said Adam, his voice a bit lower, the sound curling through Nick’s thoughts. “Something like this?”

He traced a finger over Nick’s lip, slow and deliberate.

Every nerve ending in Nick’s body responded to that touch.

His breath shuddered before he could stop it.

Adam smiled. He shifted closer, putting his palm against the side of Nick’s face, sliding fingers through his hair. He leaned in to breathe along Nick’s jaw. “Or something like this?”

If Nick turned his head, their lips would meet. Adam’s weight pressed into his side, warm and solid and masculine. Just from those simple touches, Nick’s body was responding more forcefully than it ever had with any girl. Heck, once Quinn had climbed in his lap and unbuttoned his pants, and his body hadn’t stood at attention the way it did for Adam’s palm on his cheek.

His brain might have been a hot mess, but his body was definitely not confused.

Adam moved closer still, pressing his lips to the hollow below Nick’s jaw, sliding his hand out of Nick’s hair and down his neck. His movements were strong, confident, nothing like the feather-soft touches of a girl. Adam’s hand slid lower, squeezing Nick’s chest through the T-shirt.

Nick swore and grabbed his face, bringing their lips together because he couldn’t take it. Adam kissed him back with equal force. Nothing hesitant, tongues and heat and strength. Nick’s hands found Adam’s neck, his shoulders, the muscled planes of his chest. Tugging at his shirt yielded the smooth skin of Adam’s waist, the curve of his rib cage.

Adam grabbed the waistband of Nick’s jeans and jerked him closer. Nick’s breath caught. His brain stopped working. He wanted to throw Adam down on the couch.

So he did just that.

But when he followed him down, Adam put a hand against his chest. “Easy,” he said between breaths.

“The hell with easy.” Nick knocked his hand away and kissed him again, pinning his wrist against the cushion.

Adam smiled and yielded, kissing him back before putting his free hand against Nick’s shoulder.

Nick grabbed his hand and pinned that one, too. But then he realized Adam had tried to stop him twice. He broke the kiss.

Their breathing turned loud in the space between them.