Exclusive Excerpt from Watch Me Fall

by Riley Parks

They kissed their way to Gideon’s bedroom with Elijah stealing glances at the state of the Valsecchi house as they did. It was worse than he’d imagined. It was filthy, with one room more disgusting than the next; from the soiled furniture to the stained carpet, it looked uninhabitable. Though he found it all repulsive, it wasn’t the stench, the rotting floorboards, or the baseball-size dust bunnies that got to him. Instead, it was the numerous holes in the walls that told stories of the violence and rage that no doubt had occurred under that roof for years. He felt his own anger begin to rise at the thought of Gideon living in a place like that and wondered if his parents were as awful as Eli’s. Gideon deserved better than what Eli had.

“It’s a fucking mess,” Gideon stated, his voice tinged with apology as he closed the door behind them. He was right; it was. Dirty clothes were shoved into multiple piles, and empty beer bottles lay on every flat surface. Band posters hung haphazardly on the walls with tape curling up on their corners, while towels held up by thumbtacks hardly blocked the light from streaming through the cracks of the broken window. The bed was directly on the floor; a single sheet sprawled on top of it was barely able to cover the exposed mattress’s gradient shades of yellow.

“Don’t care,” Eli assured with his face buried into the crook of the soccer player’s neck. Gideon’s scent got him high and he couldn’t figure out why. It wasn’t his cologne or the smell of his soap that was so goddamn heady, it was him; a natural fragrance that completely inebriated Eli and left his mouth watering. Digging his fingers into dark hair, Elijah yanked Gideon’s head back so he could lick along the curve of his neck, letting his hot breath dance across skin that tasted as delicious as it smelled.

“Shit,” Gideon sighed as Eli kissed along his jaw line. He let out a stuttering exhale, which Eli caught in his mouth, swallowing it down as he pressed their lips together.

“Gonna make you feel really good,” Elijah guaranteed, backing off Gideon’s mouth for long enough to pull his black t-shirt over his head. Noticing how wide the pair of blue eyes staring back at him were, Eli asked, “Are you all right? Do you want me to stop?”

“What? Fuck no,” Gideon promised, shaking his head vehemently. “Keep going. Want you to keep going.”

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