Ex Army Trauma surgeon Phupha Viriyanon lost everything the day the man he loved was stolen from him in a brutal attack. He turns vigilante with a group of expertise who came from various background such as special forces, hacking, armory and others...
I wasn't expecting Phupha to put his hands on me after I shout for him to follow Luke and leave me alone. And I definitely wasn't expecting the rush of the lust that went through me when he shoved me hard against the wall and held me there with his body.
My anger was supposed to have made me immune to the need I'd had for him from the time I was old enough to realized that's what the emotions churning through me were, but it hadn't.
My fury, my hurt - all they did was ratchet up the intensity of what I was feeling.
I should have done a lot of things as he held me there.
Pushed him away.
Cursed him.
Admitted that he'd destroyed me when he'd walked out on me three years earlier.
But all I could do was stand there and relish the feel of his strong fingers wrapped around my wrists, pinning my hands to the wall.
I welcomed the heat that wafted off his big body and warmed me in a way that nothing else could. And when I dropped my eyes to his lips, lips I knew from experience were softer than they looked, I felt the slightest shudder roll through his body.
I didn't know how long he held me there for and, in truth, I didn't care.
I'd wanted for so long for him to see me as something other than his boyfriend's pesky, desperate little brother, that I needed to get as much out of this one moment where he was seeing me as a man that I could, because I suspected it would have to sustain me for a very long time.
I'd met Phupha for the first time when I was sixteen and my brother, New, had brought a then 26-year-old Phupha home to meet our parents after they'd met at the military hospital where Phupha was completing his residency.
Even at my young age, I'd been fascinated by Phupha. He's had a certain cool confidence to him that had drawn me in, but it was the way he'd laughed and joked with me that had had my hero worship turning into something more within a couple of visits.
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I'd fought to keep the fact that I was falling for my own brother's boyfriend a secret, but New has easily picked up on it and hadn't wasted time in teasing me every chance he got with jokes about not trying to steal his boyfriend out from underneath him.
And he'd never failed to make sure Phupha was around when he'd made that comments. I'd known that my brother ribbing was meant to be harmless fun, but my feelings had run so deep that every joke he'd made had caused pinpricks in my soul, because I'd known I'd never have what he had.
I'd known even then, that I'd only ever want Phupha and any man who might come my way in the future would always pale in comparison.
Maybe it would have been easier if Phupha had shared my brother's penchant for making light of the way I felt. But he'd only fanned the flames of my burgeoning want, by protecting me from my brother's unintentional cruelty, and he'd never allowed awkwardness to change the way he'd treated me.
