Lone Werewolf Duology (bxb)

30. The Will and the Way

AN: The age of consent in Montana is 16. Volya is 17. Volya kisses Liam, Liam hugs him and Volya thinks sensual thoughts, but there is no intimate scenes beyond kissing that take place.

***

Maybe Volya kissed Liam, because their faces were already a few inches away, and it would have been lazy not to.

Maybe he kissed him, because his hunger transcended into the other appetites.

Maybe his reason was even more obvious. Liam was so hot, that Volya was just like thousands of people all over the globe, dying to kiss Liam. The only difference between them and him was that he had the opportunity.

He didn't know what anyone of those thousands would have done in his place, but Volya had chickened out. At the last moment, he replaced the demanding kiss he'd imagined with nary a taste of Liam's skin. As tenuous as the contact was, it stopped the world in its tracks for him.

"Oh, no, no, no..." Liam whispered, "I'm not your grandpa to kiss me on the forehead. Kiss me properly or not at all."

If it wasn't on the lips, technically it didn't count as his first kiss. Volya ran his tongue along his upper lip. Liam tasted and sounded tempting. Liam was close. And...

"I can't do it. I can't kiss you."

Liam quirked a brow. Such an infinitesimal movement—and Volya's heart somersaulted in his chest.

"I'm in love with someone else," Volya rasped. Toshka, he was in love with Toshka, his soulmate.

Liam didn't make any suggestive movements, his glance didn't dart to Volya's midsection, nothing like that. His expression, however, implied that he could have done it. It also implied that he knew that Volya's reluctance would have melted faster than an ice-cream cone left in the sun if he did. Or maybe Volya was just imagining it. 

Volya shut his eyes for a second, picturing Toshka's gaze, blue like bachelor's buttons, his red curls, and the stubble above his lip. Mid-fantasy, his heart hitched in fear that Liam might kiss him while he wasn't looking.

His eyes flung open. He expelled a breath. How stupid! Liam would never do that.

It wasn't fear that rattled his chest. No, he had hoped that Liam would sneak upon him with a kiss. Make him do what his treacherous lips wanted. Not just lips, his heart too. So fickle his heart, it made him sick.

Volya raked his hair with his fingers. "I am in love with someone else."

"And does this someone else return your feelings?"

Was Liam amused or solicitous? Curse the nuances and undertones that laced his rich baritone!

"It's not that simple." Volya's response was as generic as they came, and it was all he could manage in the aftershock of what he'd just said. He'd never confessed his love out loud. Not even to Toshka, or at least not beyond the ambiguous stuff like, I love you, man.

Liam's breath, spiced with alcohol, tickled his ear again. "But it's not particularly complicated either."

Volya's fingers untangled from his curls. His arm fell lifeless, landing on the tiny patch of blanket that didn't have any of Liam's body parts sprawled on it. Jeez, the guy was all limbs.

Liam studied the bangs that now hung into Volya's eyes. "What a mess... let me get it for you."

One hand deftly combed through the curls, while the other traced his back, up and down, applying the tiniest pressure.