Hidden Depths Read Online Free PDF Page A

attachments. Ty was a good friend - not perfect but as dear to him as a brother.
    Anso felt more at ease walking down the hall in his company than he’d have felt if he were alone. They followed the march of electrum-rimmed porthole windows that provided ever changing underwater views into the courtyard. Like the city around it, the royal palace was octagonal. As rulers, the Vituls commanded its central ring. Beyond that ring, each noble family had a wedge-shaped portion where members lived. They had their own coral gardens, their own decorative fisheries, but the courtyard Anso’s father nurtured was best of all.
    The sound of bubbles rising through the sunlit waters was a balm to his wound up nerves.
    “How is your father?” Ty asked as they reached the final turning to Anso’s rooms.
    Anso shoved his hands into his pockets, not wanting his friend to see how they shook. “Close to the end, I think. I’m not certain he’ll last the night.” Ty stopped and turned to him. “Do you want to go back? You know I made up that bit about needing you for guard business.”
    “I know.” Anso smiled at Ty, their faces perfectly level. Ty was as muscular as Anso and just as tall. He was better looking, Anso thought, with shining sand-colored hair and thick-lashed yellow eyes. His skin, which always looked like he’d been sunning, bore a barely visible pattern of darker spots - as if his bloodline ran back to leopard seals. Like Lobodon’s illness, the coloration was a symptom of inbreeding. Fortunately, the Otaris didn’t suffer from health problems.
    Ty didn’t shy from Anso’s gaze, though a pain he didn’t usually let show darkened his yellow eyes. “You’re lucky,” he whispered, “to have a father you’re going to miss.”
    Ellice would have clucked her tongue and called him insensitive, but Anso understood. Ty’s father was a drunk - and a mean-natured one at that. His mother could have counterbalanced her spouse’s failings, were she not so caught up in trying - endlessly, it seemed - to establish herself as Someone Who Mattered in were society. Anso occasionally clicked past the Real Housewives of New York City on the Import Channel. From what he could tell, Sabra Otari would have fit right in.
    Understanding what her shallowness did to Ty, Anso squeezed his friend’s hard bicep. “I know I’m fortunate.”
    “I shouldn’t have called you away. You should go back. Spend every minute that’s left with him.”
    Anso shook his head. “He’s in pain. He doesn’t want me to see it. We -” He swallowed his emotions back as they rose. “We said what we needed to.” Ty covered the hand he’d put on his arm. The deep furrowing of his brow gave him a haunted look. “Tell me how to comfort you.” His offer wasn’t so different from Ellice’s, but Anso’s response to it was. Heat flashed through him and his pulse quickened. His cock had only been half retracted, but it slipped from its protective sheath in a long smooth thrust, thickening fast with the blood that pumped into it. The very speed of its emergence supplied a sensual pleasure. Anso was fully erect in seconds, the throbbing head tenting his snug hide trousers.
    Ty read his blush of course. “Well,” he said with a sexy chuckle. “If that’s all it takes to make you feel better ...”
    “Shut up,” Anso laughed, smacking his friend’s shoulder.
    “Only if you open up,” Ty ran his tongue around his full upper lip, causing Anso to blush harder.
    They were both laughing by the time they barred Anso’s door behind them.
    The instant their privacy was assured, Ty kissed him, deep-tongued and hot.
    Men who slept together didn’t always do this, but he and Ty liked it. Their saliva contained a mild aphrodisiac that added oomph to their encounters. Happily, they liked lots of things in common. Every inch of Ty’s tall hard body pushed Anso’s back into the wood. Anso stood that for about five heartbeats, then started tearing at Ty’s