Be Loved (At Last, The Beloved Series Book 3)

  Be Loved

  At Last, The Beloved Series - Book 3

  Stella Starling

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Also by Stella Starling

  About the Author

  If you enjoyed this book…

  Be Loved

  Be Loved © Stella Starling 2017

  Amazon Kindle Edition

  Edited by Elizabeth Peters

  Cover design by SilverHeart Publishing

  All rights reserved. No part of this story may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the copyright holder, except in the case of brief quotations embodied within critical reviews and articles.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  The author has asserted his/her rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book.

  This book contains sexually explicit content which is suitable only for mature readers.

  Prologue

  Brandon, Ten Years Ago

  “Do you need me to repeat the question, Brandon?” Mrs. Potts asked from the front of the room, lip twitching in amusement. “Or do you see something up here more interesting than today’s specimens?”

  Mrs. Potts gestured at the front row of desks, and Cynthia Jensen whirled around in her seat to grin at him, cheeks going pink with excitement at the biology teacher’s insinuation that he’d been staring at her. The class tittered, and Brandon looked back down at his desk. He could feel his ears heat up the way they always did when he was embarrassed, and, as Mrs. Potts brought the class back to order, he risked one more look around the room to see if anyone had caught on to the real reason for his distraction.

  It looked like he was in the clear. Thankfully, Mrs. Potts must have considered calling him out enough torture, and she didn’t press him to answer whatever question it was that he’d missed. Brandon didn’t really think he’d be needing any biology for his planned career path, but still, the reminder to get it together was probably a good one. He had too many classes with the new kid, Shane Allen, and it was starting to mess with his concentration.

  He leaned back in his seat and forced his eyes to stay where they belonged as Mrs. Potts slapped another transparency onto the projector. She fiddled with the slide to get it centered, then stood back and extended her yardstick at the image it displayed.

  “Compared to the starfish and mice we’ve previously dissected, dogfish shark specimens offer an insight into the natural world unlike any we’ve seen up until this point.”

  “Oh my God,” Cynthia squeaked, making Brandon want to roll his eyes. “We’re dissecting a shark?”

  Um, yeah. Where had Cynthia been?

  Even if Brandon had been a bit distracted himself, he was pretty sure that the shark dissection had been universally anticipated as either awesome or horrifying by everyone all week. Apparently Cynthia had managed to miss the memo entirely, though.

  His eyes drifted to Shane again, and he tried to figure out whether Shane fell into the awesome or horrifying camp. From behind, he looked relaxed, neither slouched in his seat nor tense with awe or horror. His brown hair was so dark it was almost black, and even though it was obvious he used some kind of product to keep the longer part on top styled, the back looked soft and natural as it lay against his neck. About two inches of bare skin showed between his hair and the collar of his shirt, and Brandon’s fingers twitched, wondering if it would feel as soft as it looked.

  Brandon blinked, looking away. It was weird to look at another guy’s neck, or think about how soft his hair and skin looked, wasn’t it? But then again, Shane had drawn more attention than most other new kids, so maybe thinking a little extra about him was normal, after all.

  “Dissections are an extremely effective way to get a firsthand glimpse of the inner workings of an organism,” Mrs. Potts continued with a long-suffering look at Cynthia.

  Brandon grinned. He often felt the same when it came to Cynthia. And see? Maybe Brandon was weird, after all. What normal seventeen-year-old boy felt any sort of kinship with his middle-aged biology teacher?

  At the desk next to Cynthia, Shane shifted in his seat, turning just enough to catch Brandon’s eye. Shane smiled like the two of them were sharing a joke, even though they weren’t friends and had never really talked, and Brandon jerked his eyes back to the front of the room, his ears feeling hot again.

  It had been a few months since Shane had transferred to Budlong High School, and it wasn’t just his good looks and upbeat attitude that had made such a splash.

  Shane was gay.

  Super gay.

  Gay gay.

  And not just gay, but, as far as Brandon could tell, totally unfazed by being gay. Shane had moved from California where he claimed everyone was much more liberal, all dark hair and big smiles and unapologetic flamboyance, and even though Brandon had always considered Chicago a pretty easygoing place, when it came to guys like Shane, maybe it wasn’t easygoing enough.

  Shane may have acted totally comfortable in his own skin, but his sudden appearance in the midst of the student body had been met with a wide variety of reactions… not all of which had been welcoming.

  “As always, you’ll do the dissection with a partner,” Mrs. Potts was saying from the front of the room. “We’ve got enough specimens this time that we can keep it at groups of two, with one group of three.”

  Brandon immediately cut his eyes over to his two best friends, Hayden and Zak, but before he could even catch their attention, Brianna Masterson’s hand shot up in the air.

  “Mrs. Potts, can Emery and Scott and I be the group of three?” she blurted without waiting to be called on.

  Mrs. Potts nodded. “Yes, Brianna, but keep in mind that the dissection will last the entire week and will count as twenty percent of your final grade. And even though you’ll be working with partners, you’ll each be responsible for your own lab reports.”

  The class tittered again, and next to Brianna, her boyfriend, Scott Parker, blushed. It was no secret that they’d been busted twice for turning in identical work. Still, Brianna didn’t back down from her request to team up with her boyfriend and her best friend, which meant that if Hayden and Zak teamed up, Brandon was going to have to find a partner of his own.

  He stared fixedly at the diagram Mrs. Potts had left on the overhead projector screen, definitely not looking at Shane again. Brandon wasn’t sure how anyone could be that self-confident when they were just… out there. All alone and different from everyone else. But Shane never seemed fazed with some of the pointed harassment he got just for being himself. In fact, in Brandon’s opinion, Shane didn’t seem concerned enough about just how nasty s
ome people could get.

  Even if they weren’t friends, Brandon had made a point of keeping an eye out for him. He’d stepped in a few times when things had started to get out of hand, but only because Shane was new and Brandon didn’t want him to get hurt. Didn’t want anyone to get hurt, not just Shane.

  Brandon would have done the same for anyone.

  It wasn’t because Shane was the most gorgeous guy he’d ever seen, or because he seemed to have something sort of magnetic about him, something that made it hard to look away, and it definitely wasn’t because Brandon wanted… anything else.

  Brandon wasn’t gay, after all. Other than Shane, no one he knew was. This was the Midwest, not hippie California, and there was no way that sort of thing would have flown with his parents. Plus, he planned on joining the Army after high school, so gay wasn’t really an option.

  “We’ll be taking a careful look at the circulatory system,” Mrs. Potts said, using her stick to tap the diagram on screen. “The differences between aquatic and terrestrial creatures, bone structure—”

  “But we don’t both have to touch it, right?” Cynthia interrupted, belatedly shooting her hand up in the air without pausing for breath. “I mean, if I pick a partner who likes to do all the cutting and… touching… and stuff, that’s okay, right?”

  She glanced over her shoulder at Brandon as she said the last part, grinning again, and Brandon smiled back weakly before shooting Hayden and Zak a look of desperation. Zak wasn’t paying attention, as usual—busy crumpling a piece of paper into a ball and smoothing it back out, over and over—but Hayden caught Brandon’s eye and gave him an apologetic shrug, pantomiming that he and Zak had already sealed the deal.

  Brandon stifled a groan. It was no secret that Cynthia had a crush on him, but Brandon wasn’t interested. He’d dated a few girls, but so far had managed to avoid getting saddled with anything like an actual girlfriend. Hayden and Zak had argued repeatedly that Cynthia’s amazing body more than made up for her clinginess and tendency toward overdramatization, but Brandon just wasn’t a boob man. Or an ass man. Or… whatever it was that Hayden and Zak drooled over Cynthia about. She just didn’t do it for him, and he definitely didn’t want to spend a full week with her gasping and groaning and clutching his arm in disgust as the dissection progressed.

  “Make sure to partner with someone you can work well with,” Mrs. Potts said. “Get to it, class, and check in with me once you organize your groups so I can make note of each team.”

  Chairs scraped against tile, and the room erupted in conversation and laughter as the students started to pair up. The problem was that even if the idea of partnering with Cynthia was like nails on chalkboard, Brandon also couldn’t see himself turning her down flatly. It just seemed cruel. And sure enough, as soon as Mrs. Potts gave the word, Cynthia was out of her chair and in front of his desk in a heartbeat, smiling down at him like he was some kind of dessert or something.

  Before she had a chance to say anything to Brandon, Shane appeared at her shoulder, tapping her arm to get her attention. “Hey, Cynthia,” he said, giving her one of those killer smiles that always made Brandon’s insides feel funny.

  Brandon’s eyes widened in shock as Cynthia turned away from him with a beaming smile for Shane.

  “What’s up, Shane?” she asked, clearly not immune to his charm even though she had to know, like everyone else did, that Shane definitely wasn’t flirting.

  “‘Would you mind partnering with Melody?” Shane asked, gesturing toward a shy girl with glasses who Brandon was embarrassed to realize he’d never known the name of.

  Cynthia frowned, looking back at Brandon. “Actually, Shane, I was—”

  “That’s a great idea,” Brandon said, cutting her off. “Melan—er, Melody really looks up to you, Cyn, and besides—” he ignored the pounding of his heart and tried to act like it was a done deal, since Shane had pretty clearly shown up to save him, “—Shane’s mine. Um, my partner, I mean.”

  Oh, God. Did that sound too gay? Brandon could feel his ears heating up, and both Cynthia and Shane were staring at him as if he was babbling like an idiot. Possibly because, well, he was.

  “My lab partner,” Brandon clarified, sure that the embarrassing heat he was feeling must be making him look as red as a tomato. He cleared his throat. “We’re going to team up for this. You know, for the dissection.”

  “You are?” Cynthia asked, her frown deepening as she looked back and forth between the two of them. “Since when? I got here first.”

  “Uh…” Brandon said eloquently.

  “Since now,” Shane answered, somehow managing to put himself bodily between the two of them without seeming pushy and then ushering Cynthia in Melody’s direction.

  He grinned down at her, doing that thing Brandon had noticed he was capable of where he made it seem like the other person was in on a joke with him. His eyes sort of sparkled and his cheeks creased in a way that wasn’t quite a dimple, and Brandon was one hundred percent sure that no one could resist him like that, not even Cynthia.

  “You don’t mind, do you, Cynthia?” Shane bent down and whispered to her, but not so softly that Brandon didn’t hear. “Help a boy out, yeah?”

  Her mouth fell open and her eyes got wide and she nodded mutely before leaving the two of them alone, and Brandon swallowed hard. Was Shane interested in him? In Brandon? Like, as a boyfriend? Could Shane tell that Brandon was attracted to him? Well, not attracted, of course… but there was something about the shape of Shane’s eyes and the line of his brow and the way he moved that got to Brandon in a way that girls just didn’t.

  Nervously, Brandon fiddled with a loose thread on the arm of his sweater and did his best to distract himself from his thoughts. But then Cynthia was gone and Shane’s hand was on his arm, making it sort of tingle and shiver at the same time, and he was tugging Brandon toward one of the lab benches.

  “Come on, let’s claim one before she changes her mind,” he said playfully. And then, when Brandon didn’t respond, he paused and dropped his hand as a look of doubt crossed his face. “You did want to be partners, right? I mean, you looked like anyone would be better than your own personal fangirl.”

  “Yeah, no,” Brandon said, leaning against the dissection bench and trying to get it together. “I mean, yes. I want to be partners. I don’t want anyone. I mean, I want you. To be my partner. That would be great.”

  He sounded like an idiot, but Shane gave him an easy smile as if he hadn’t noticed Brandon making a complete fool of himself, or at least was just too nice to comment on it.

  “Well, good, because for all the times you’ve saved my ass, I figured I could at least return the favor,” Shane said with a wink. “Especially because I don’t have to worry about you acting like my gay is contagious or something.”

  Brandon’s mouth felt dry. “Um, what?”

  Shane lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug, maintaining his easy smile. “You know, you don’t act like brushing up against me or looking in my direction is going to accidentally make you want to switch teams.”

  “I didn’t think you minded all the… um, them,” Brandon said, stopping himself from using a word that wasn’t normally in his vocabulary.

  Shane laughed, running a hand back through his hair. The sleeve of his Henley pulled back from his wrist, and Brandon saw a thick brown leather bracelet tucked beneath. He didn’t know a lot of guys who actually wore jewelry, but the brass colored metal clasps and subtly patterned leather somehow managed to look both stylish and masculine at the same time, and the thought flashed through Brandon’s mind that wrists were actually kind of sexy, if you thought about it.

  Maybe he was a wrist man.

  “I don’t love them,” Shane answered frankly, shrugging again. “But what do you do?”

  “Maybe not be so, er, open?” Brandon suggested, thinking of some of the harsher jokes he’d heard behind Shane’s back. He’d really, really hate it if Shane were ever to get hurt.

 
; Shane’s expression cooled a little, and he looked away for a second. “Nope. I’m just a normal guy, who likes video games and cheeseburgers and the Black Eyed Peas, and who just so happens to also like other guys, too. It’s never been a problem for me, and if it’s a problem for anyone else, then that’s their problem.”

  Brandon bit the inside of his lip. He admired Shane’s stance, but he also wanted to tell him to be careful. He definitely didn’t like the sudden coolness between them, though, so maybe it was best not to say anything. Besides, Brandon had no problem continuing to look out for Shane. Especially if they were going to become… friends.

  “I’m going to go get our dissection kit,” Shane said abruptly, not meeting his eyes.

  Brandon grabbed his wrist to stop him, the tingling/shivering thing happening again.

  Shane looked down at Brandon’s hand, then back up, raising one of his thick eyebrows as some of the sparkle came back into his eyes. “You want to get our dissection kit?”

  “No. Um, I’ve got an N64,” Brandon blurted. He’d meant to say something to let Shane know that he thought it was cool that Shane was so confident, and that he agreed, on some level, that it was other people’s problem, but when Shane had looked back at him—eyes as dark as his hair, a brown so rich and deep that it was nearly black—Brandon had lost himself in them for a minute. “You ever play Star Fox?”

  Shane grinned. “Played it? I kill at Star Fox.”

  “If you haven’t already checked in with me, please do so now,” Mrs. Potts said from the front of the room, raising her voice to be heard. “We’ve got fifty minutes left to make the magic happen, class. Let’s get to it.”