Author’s Notes
Another day, another book, and another set of bonus scenes for what I hope is your personal enjoyment.
So, for those who have got to these scenes before reading the book, Once Broken, Twice Loved is about two men with a lot of history already established before the book even kicks off. Readers of the series might have already spotted the possibility of this book coming with Cuffs and Commitment, or at least suspected you would see a book with Kyle. So, here’s that book, where Fairlake’s resident paramedic gets his turn in one of the two hot seats.
Once Broken, Twice Loved is an undeniable Second Chances story, and I won’t pretend otherwise. That’s literally the whole point of the book, along with all the drama, misunderstandings, and hurt feelings that come with dealing with your ex that you still have feelings for. When Kyle’s ex, Ian, shows up in Fairlake unexpectedly, they’re both forced to deal with their past relationship and just how they’re going to deal with one another now.
I’m sure you can guess how things will inevitably end, it’s a romance, after all, but the ride along the way is its own tale to tell. Now, as a warning, these upcoming bonus scenes may not always make sense to you without reading Once Broken, Twice Loved first or may spoil things. If you don’t care about that, then by all means, carry on and read what’s coming. Otherwise, bookmark this for later and return to it to get a bit more enjoyment out of it.
That said, I’ll get my butt to introducing what you’re about to see properly, though I warn you it’s going to be a little different than the last few times I did this, so bear with me, writers are fickle creatures, and we follow the whimsy of our muses. Which is just an excuse for us to be weird, if I’m honest.
That said, this first group of scenes are all going to be flashbacks that didn’t make it into the original book. Whether because I had already hammered home the issue that the flashback addressed or because it just was unnecessary for whatever reason that was going on in my head. Either way, taking them out didn’t necessarily detract from the book’s overall storytelling, plot, character arcs, or any fancy book-related terms you want to throw in there.
Still, as I’ve said before, that’s what these bonus scenes are for. They add a little more flavor, and hell, I worked on them. So why shouldn’t I take the chance to show them off?
So here you go, a few scenes from the past when Ian and Kyle were happily together back in their college days...well, and the bad scene, but hey, it wouldn’t be second chances without the first being ruined, right?

*****

With a fine layer of sweat on my body and Ian beside me, his chest heaving but slowing down, I felt great. Sure, the air conditioner in his apartment window was broken, and he didn’t know when it would be fixed, but that sure hadn’t stopped us from enjoying each other. Maybe when we got our breath back and could walk around without lurching like a couple of drunks, I might even be able to convince him to take a cool shower with me. Whoever wanted to believe that cooler showers were perfect for getting rid of being horny had clearly never been faced with a wet and naked Ian standing only a couple of inches from them.
“You alright?” I asked with a chuckle as he continued breathing heavily.
“It’s hot,” he shot back with a loose scowl.
“Well yeah, sex is supposed to be hot. Who wants not hot sex?”
“That is not what I meant, and you know it.”
I rolled onto my side, reaching out to gently run my fingers up and down his chest and stomach. Once upon a time, I had tried to pride myself on not being someone who fixated on another person’s appearance. Looks could only carry someone so far before their personality, values, and behavior made or broke their level of attractiveness. Not that I could dismiss looks entirely. Ours was a species that was both visual and hormonal, so looks would always play some part in our attraction to other people. Well, for most of humanity.
Ah, but Ian was something else entirely. I still wasn’t sure if it was his personality and general...himness that permeated everything about him, even his looks, or if he was just that attractive. Whatever the reason, I constantly found myself distracted by his presence. Even now, a few minutes after sex, I still found myself unable to stop running my hands over his body, fully appreciating the chest he’d been building at the campus gym and the flat stomach with just a hint of lines that he’d had from the moment I’d first seen him wipe his forehead with his shirt.
“What are you doing?” he asked, and I didn’t need to look up to know he was smirking.
“Touching you. I do that.”
“Yeah, and you’re getting hard again.”
I laughed, finally looking up to grin at him. “I was thinking about the first time I realized just how hot you are.”
“Oh God, what did I do? Was it something completely normal that you just latched onto?”
“I’m not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, I’m uncomfortable with you thinking I’m that predictable. On the other, that’s exactly what happened.”
He laughed, running his hands through my hair despite the sweat making it gross and damp. “Alright, go ahead and tell me what it is.”
“What? So you can accuse me of being predictable? Forget that!”
“Aww, c’mon,” he all but purred, twisting around to nuzzle his mouth into the back of my neck and kiss it. “You and I both know you feeding my ego just makes me all horny and feeling good about myself.”
“And what makes you think I want to make you horny?” I shot back at him, proud that I could keep the frown on my face for effect. When in fact, the idea of seeing his cock, which was still half hard and lay against his thigh as he rolled over to face me, was appealing to me more with every passing second.
“Mmm, probably because you’re the only partner I’ve ever had who was ready to go again within minutes of already having had sex…like I can.”
“Really? It just occurred to me that we’ve never had the ex’s conversation.”
“Uh, you’ve heard me talk about Isabelle.”
Well, ‘talk’ wasn’t really an accurate description. What little I knew of their relationship was tinged with bitterness, anger, and some pain. They had started dating a couple of months before their last year of high school, and while things had been good for a while, they had gone sour with surprising speed. I didn’t know the exact details, but when she found out he was going to college and not staying in their hometown to pick up a minimum-wage job or work at a local factory, she had lost her mind. They had separated a couple of months before he moved, and then he met me a few weeks later.
His relationship with Isabelle was precisely why things had moved so slowly for the both of us. He had still been working through his emotions from a previous partner, and I wasn’t interested in throwing myself into anything serious if unresolved issues in his head would get in the way. I’d known very early on he was a guy I could easily fall for, and I didn’t want to risk throwing myself into a mess that would chew me up and spit me out because I fell too hard, too fast.
And I had been right on both counts, he had needed time to get himself in the right headspace, and I had fallen hard for him when I finally felt allowed to do so.
“Other than her,” I said, knowing better than to push too hard on that particular topic. He might have long since been ready to try another relationship, but the subject was still touchy as far as Ian was concerned. Since Isabelle hadn’t become an issue in our relationship, I was okay with letting him keep details to himself. I might not want him to suffer working through things alone, but I wouldn’t force him to talk about it, either. My parents’ lessons about personal freedom might have gone too far for my liking, but some of it had stuck, and if he wanted to talk about things, he would.
“I only dated one other person,” he said with a shrug. “For six months before she left me for some other guy.”
“Wow, ouch. That’s a special kind of ouch.”
“Yeah, we were fifteen, going on sixteen. Still figuring things out as we went along but didn’t really have it all together.”
“Never dated a guy?”
“Uh, no, never dated any.”
I had to laugh at that. “Which is your very polite way of saying you slept with at least one before me.”
“A couple,” he said, looking a little uncomfortable. “Trying to date while living with my mother was hard enough as it was. Trying to date a guy while I lived under her roof was next to impossible.”
“You really think she’d have a problem?” I asked, feeling a flutter of worry drift into my gut.
“Oh, I’m sure of it. Anything that doesn’t fit her very narrow view of how things work is something she’s going to harp on until you either tune her out or you give up and give her what she wants.”
“Oh.”
“But being able to do the first thing has been a lot easier now I’m not living with her,” he said, throwing an arm over my waist and smiling. “So get that worried look out of your eyes. I’m not as worried about what my mother has to say about my life as I used to be. And so long as I don’t have to go back under her roof, I’m working on caring less and less.”
“I didn’t have a look on my face,” I said, knowing full well I was lying. Despite what he professed, he still tended to listen intently to what his mother did and didn’t want for him. I knew all too well what it was like to be unable to escape the effects of your childhood, and while I didn’t want to say it aloud, I wasn’t nearly as confident in his ability to ignore what came out of her mouth. “It’s just weird to think about, I guess.”
“That’s because,” he began, pushing me onto my back, “you were raised by ultra-liberal, hyper-hippy parents who considered it a cardinal sin to interfere in other people's love lives.”
I laughed. “I wish I could say you were wrong, but they really are that dramatic about that sort of thing.”
He snickered. “So, since we already knew my mom would be a giant pain in the ass if she figured out I’m just as happy to be with guys as I am with girls, and despite knowing your parents are about as hippy as they come, how did they take it when you told them?”
“I didn’t tell them,” I said with a shrug. “They figured it out.”
“And how did they figure it out?”
“Well, they found me with my hand under my girlfriend’s shirt once. And then a year later, they found me in a much more compromising position with a guy I was sort of, kind of with at the time. They asked if I was gay, tried to get all the assurances that they’d love me all the same out before I told them I wasn’t gay. They put the pieces together and threw me a party.”
“I have two crucial questions in desperate need of answering,” Ian said with a grin.
I sighed. “What was the compromising position, and what kind of party?”
“Oh yeah.”
I groaned. “Fine. I may or may not have had his dick in my mouth.”
“Holy shit and one of your parents saw that?”
“Both.”
“Both?”
“That is what I said, yes,” I sighed. “They weren’t supposed to be home for, like, four more hours! I thought I had plenty of time to have a little bit of fun, some post-fun cuddling, and then send him on his way before they got back and suspected anything.”
Ian’s face twitched, and I knew he was trying to hold back laughter. “Why, uh, why were you so worried about them finding out that something might be going on?”
“Did you not hear the part about the party?” I asked because that should have been obvious. “They threw a party. Because I was bi. They called it my Good Bi party before I left for college.”
As I expected, that was far too much for Ian to handle, and he pressed his face into a pillow that did absolutely nothing to conceal his hysterical laughter as his back and shoulders shook. I glared at him, wondering just how long it would take him to recover from this “hilarious” revelation. What did it matter to him that I was the one who, at nearly eighteen, had to make eye contact with my parents while I had someone’s dick in my mouth?
“There was a small boob cake and a small dick cake at the party,” I told him because, at this point, why not just try to see if it was possible to murder someone with laughter?
“Was...was it a cream-filled dick cake?”
“Yes.”
It took him almost five minutes to stop laughing, heaving and gasping the whole way through.
“You good?” I asked dryly, no longer thinking he was the sexiest man alive and instead wondering if I could find a way to ship him back to his mother.
“Whew, I am now,” he chuckled, wiping his eyes. “God, I was not ready for that one.”
“Yeah, neither was I. You’d think I would have been braced for something like that, considering how they acted my whole life, but nope, dick cake.”
“Stop,” he chuckled, pressing his forehead into my shoulder. “There’s only so much of this I can take before I go back to not being able to breathe.”
“Your sympathy for my plight is both noted and appreciated.”
“Aww, c’mon. You have to admit it’s pretty funny,” he said as if that was somehow supposed to detract from my embarrassment.
“Maybe for anyone who isn’t me,” I said, trying to push him away before he could get his long arms around me. We were roughly the same size, but he possessed more strength than I did, and I knew full well he could keep a grip on me if he were determined. Worse yet, I knew I would end up enjoying the caveman display of strength as well. “Get off me, you oaf. You aren’t going to sway me from being mad at you because you decided to manhandle me.”
My annoyance might have put others off, but Ian had been around me too much to buy into it and take me seriously for long. And while he didn’t quite manhandle me, he did manage to keep me on my back before I could wiggle away from him altogether. The result was that his face was pressed into my stomach as he continued to laugh while I wiggled, pushing against him, cursing him out for being an ass and a brute at the same time.
And then the dirty bastard went and started pressing his lips against my hips, sucking just hard enough to get my attention before promptly letting his teeth sink into my skin. I still tried to push away from him, though my attempts were halfhearted and weak, and I knew I was undone when I felt his lips slip further down until he took me, half hard, into his mouth.
He never did play fair.

Notes
Alright, so there’s one happier memory that got cut for its own reasons. I mean, really, as cute and funny as it was, I was already covering their relationship enough, and this one felt unnecessary. Maybe, maybe not, but you’ve got it all the same.
Now we move on to another happy memory, and for the first time in a good while, I’ve included something like this in a document that wasn’t the book itself.
Yeah, that’s right, buckle up because it’s about to get spicy.
And yes, this is also a flashback scene.

*****

Kyle grew quieter as the night went on, and I couldn’t help but feel a little more nervous as time passed. It wasn’t that Kyle was the type to fill the silence to avoid it, but he was generally pretty chatty. After a fun and memorable first date, we’d gone on another but that time to a restaurant. The date and the hour or so we’d spend in our free time between classes for the following week had been filled with plenty of conversation.
This time I decided to try something a little different, and even though it had been cheesy to recommend, I had never actually had the chance to go ice skating before, and it seemed like fun. While we’d been there, he’d eaten a burger that probably weighed as much as my head and then proceeded to show me how you were ‘supposed’ to skate. Which just involved him showing off as he explained that he’d done a fair amount of ice skating on ponds while living in Fairlake.
By the time we left, my ass sore from hitting it one too many times on the hard ice, he had been in high spirits and chatting away. We managed to find a quiet little bar to sit in while he had a couple of beers, slipping me some sips when we took to the patio outside, and no one bothered to check my ID from a few sips.
It had all seemed to be going well, but now we were heading back toward campus, I could sense something was eating away at him, and he’d lapsed into almost complete silence. I was busy wracking my brain to figure out what had gone wrong and how I had somehow missed it. Everything had been great, and I wondered how long I could delay his return to his dorm room. He didn’t live in the room alone and wasn’t one for showing off, so if we wanted to get involved in kissing and groping, we had to do it somewhere isolated.
Now that idea seemed completely out the window, and I wondered if whatever I’d done wrong had screwed things up completely.
I sighed, turning toward him. “Hey.”
He stopped, peering up at me. “Hey?”
“Look, if there’s something we need to talk about, like if I said or did something wrong, just tell me,” I said, looking down at my feet. “I can’t...fix anything if I don’t know what’s wrong. And if it’s not fixable, just tell me. My apartment is just a block away from here, and I can leave you in peace.”
His eyes widened, mouth falling open. “What? Oh, oh no. I wasn’t...well—”
For anyone else, it might have been a little jarring to see him whip from quiet and reflective to suddenly flustered and frustrated. Still, I’d spent some time around him and knew he could be pretty emotional when the mood struck him and just a bit mercurial. Whatever had been going on in his head had clearly been bothering him, but now I was starting to think my guess that I had been the source was way off the mark.
He took a deep breath. “No, I-I’ve been having a great time, and you’ve been perfect. Honestly, ever since the first date, I’ve been thinking this is the first time since I got to college that I had a date with a guy, and it didn’t immediately become a one-and-done, fuck around and go sort of thing. Hell, the horniest thing we’ve done was make out and cop a feel.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “Is that a problem?”
“No,” he said with a nervous chuckle. “It’s not. It’s great, and I loved it. Then we were walking back, and I thought we’d probably end up doing what we did before. Say goodnight with a sloppy kiss, a little bit of groping, and then I’d spend the hour after that staring up at the ceiling, daydreaming.”
His bluntness made me smile. “Alright, good to know I’ve been going about things the right way. Honestly, I’ve just enjoyed spending time with you.”
“Same for me.”
“Uh, is it bad that sex hasn’t really happened?”
“No! I mean, not...really?”
“I’m lost.”
“Have...you had sexual thoughts?”
I raised a brow. “Are you kidding me? If you touch me innocently for too long, I get turned on. And that doesn’t even cover what’s been going on in my head during our past couple of goodbyes.”
Kyle looked less uneasy as he gave me a small smile, his body shifting slightly closer. “Okay, that’s that stupid thought demolished in a heartbeat.”
I cocked my head. “Does that mean you have other thoughts in there that you think are stupid?”
”Maybe,” he said softly, looking uncomfortable as he looked away.
I decided to take a guess. “Would one of them be that you’re worried that if you said you wanted to sleep with me, I might somehow lose interest in you?”
His eyes flicked up to me, and he took a breath. “I did say they were stupid thoughts.”
I chuckled, reaching out to gently take him by the arms and turn him toward me. “And what if I reminded you of what I said just a minute ago? That my apartment is just a few minutes from here, and to point out that I live alone. And that after the first date went so well, I went out and got myself some condoms to go with the lube because I wanted to be ready for the moment we were ready to do more than make out?”
“I would...be very impressed with your preparation skills,” he said, eyes widening. “Alright, so we’ve addressed that I’m being a nervous wreck for no reason.”
“Naw,” I said, tipping his head back so I could kiss him gently. “My only question now is, do you wanna go back to my place tonight or come over another time?”
“Tonight,” he breathed against my lips, kissing me back.
As much as I wanted to follow that kiss and see how far we could take it, I didn’t want to make a spectacle of ourselves for anyone who might pass by. Instead, I took him by the hand and led him away, heading toward my apartment building. This time when Kyle was quiet, I didn’t let it get to me as I led him into the apartment complex through the front door. We had barely reached the stairs before I felt his hands shift, and he turned me around, kissing me.
The flash of surprise at the sudden aggressiveness disappeared as my lips parted, letting his tongue in as he ran his hand up my body, untucking my undershirt from my jeans as my back hit the wall. Not to be outdone, I ran my hands down his back, pulling him closer before giving his ass a good squeeze. It wasn’t the first time I’d grabbed his ass, but I didn’t think I’d ever get tired of having it in my hands. The damn thing looked good whether he was wearing a pair of jeans, shorts, or those loose pants he wore jogging.
And very soon, I would see it naked and spread out before me.
He chuckled as he grabbed my shirt and pulled me up the stairs I’d been heading for. “Do you have a preference?”
“Yeah, you, me, naked,” I grumbled as I followed, chasing his lips.
“I meant top, bottom, whatever,” he told me with a smirk. I had no idea where the nervous guy I’d been talking to on the sidewalk had gone, but I wouldn’t complain about this new version of Kyle leading things.
“Uh, either,” I said.
“Ian,” came the warning, clearly hearing the hesitation in my voice.
I pushed him out of the way once we reached the top of the stairs, then pulled him toward the end of the hall. “I’ll do either, but...top is what I prefer.”
“Works for me,” Kyle said, waiting until I stopped at the door before wrapping his arms around me from behind. One hand shot up my shirt, slowly tracing my stomach with his fingertips, while the other slid down the front of my pants and cupped me. “Oh. Yeah, that definitely works for me.”
Maybe with someone else, I would have laughed the comment off. I wasn’t one for taking ‘shallow’ compliments too gracefully. Kyle, however, managed to inject an adequate amount of hunger and awe into his voice that I couldn’t help but let out a low noise of both frustration and arousal as I fought with my keys to get them into the locks. Even worse, Kyle took that as a reason to give my hard dick another squeeze, running his grip down over the outline his hold made in my pants.
When I finally managed to get the door unlocked, thrusting it open, I spun around and grabbed him, pulling him toward me as I stepped back into my dark apartment. I could taste the lingering beer he’d been drinking on his lips as we stumbled around. Kyle had the sense to kick the door shut behind him as he yanked me toward him, deepening our kiss. The next several seconds were filled with us trying to get our jackets and shoes off while minimizing the time our mouths were apart.
“Bedroom?” he asked once we finally got free of everything.
“End of the hall,” I told him, grabbing him to pull him toward me again so we could stumble down the hallway.
Our progress was full of bumps and trips as we tried to work together, but we always seemed to get in one another’s way. We almost went down when Kyle grabbed the bottom of my shirt and tried to force it over my head. When that was finally discarded on the hallway floor, we tried again, but I got a little too eager to undo the button and zipper to his pants as we went, making him bump into me when they fell and nearly sent him to the floor.
“Christ,” I muttered, breaking the kiss long enough to open the door and walk backward, undoing my own pants to start kicking them off. “C’mere.”
Kyle’s eyes were locked on me as he came forward, and I let out a little laugh when he gave me a push, forcing me to sit on the edge of the bed. He stood between my legs, holding my face gently as he kissed me deeply, taking his time as if savoring every second of what we were doing. The only thing standing between us and sheer nakedness was our boxer briefs and his shirt. There was technically one sock I had somehow misplaced along the way, but I wasn’t going to worry about that while he was standing so close, holding me tight and kissing me as if I was the only thing that mattered.
With the confidence and boldness he had found somewhere between the agreement to come back to my apartment and when we reached the building’s front door, he slid to his knees between my legs, fingers curling into the band of my underwear. As his fingers slowly tugged on them, he pressed his lips against my inner thighs near my knee, working his way up to the more sensitive parts, sending tingles up and down my body. Pushing the leg of my underwear up, he managed to get his mouth to the joint of my leg and my hip, drawing a moan as bursts of pleasure rocked through me.
“Jesus,” I said, gripping the edge of the bed. “I didn’t even know that was a spot.”
Kyle smirked before finally pulling my underwear down, forcing my aching cock to spring up in his face. He kept one hand on my underwear while the other wrapped around the base of my dick to keep it steady. I hadn’t turned the bedside light on my desk off when I’d left earlier that morning, and I could see everything perfectly as I watched his mouth slide over my leaking head. I groaned from the wet warmth of his mouth and watched how amazing he looked with me in his mouth.
Another groan shuddered out of me as he rocked his mouth back and forth with smooth, easy motions, going deeper with each movement. His throat worked and squeezed when he went too far, only for him to back away and nurse on the sensitive head. I was forced to hold onto the edge of the bed for dear life, my toes curling into the carpet when he once more went deep, almost the entirety of my dick disappearing into his mouth. I was by no means a monster, but even being able to go that far before having to back off was impressive and arousing.
“Kyle,” I grunted, feeling the familiar pressure building in my gut. “I’m gonna come if you keep doing that.”
Rather than deterring him, he kept up the pace, except now he decided to throw in a deep, wanton groan that sent another sharp jolt of pleasure through me. I reached down to take hold of his hair, unable to help myself as I held him in place, beginning to thrust my hips. His fingers wrapped around my thighs, but he neither pulled away nor pushed at me as my hips shuddered. The pressure built until I was left to cry out, feeling myself pulse against his tongue and down his throat. Another harsh noise was practically ripped out of me when he pushed forward, taking me to the hilt, letting his throat work over my pumping cock as he swallowed me down.
“Sorry,” I gasped when he pulled free. “Didn’t mean to get...overexcited.”
“I think we can safely blame that one on me,” he chuckled, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “You were originally planning on coming by fucking me, but then I realized I wanted to see you get off and taste you, and...well, this happened.”
My brow shot up, and I looked down, pointing. “Do you see that?”
“Your dick?”
“My still very much hard dick.”
“That is true.”
“I’m still fucking you. Get your underwear off and get on the bed, damn you.”
Kyle’s eyes glittered with amusement. He pushed himself to his feet and, without the slightest hesitation, yanked his underwear down and pulled his shirt off to join the heap on the floor. I had been enjoying everything up to that point, but seeing him completely naked before me, his dick jutting out from his body, was too much for me. I reached out, pulled him close, and laid a harsh kiss on his stomach, turning him around so he fell backward onto the bed.
Sighing heavily, he scooted back as I continued kissing him. “Are you really one of those guys who can just...do it again right away?”
“I usually need like twenty minutes,” I told him, my voice muffled against his stomach as I yanked open the bedside drawer and pulled out the bottle and wrapper I needed. “But tonight? I’m making a fucking exception.”
“Mmm, literally,” he said with a chuckle.
I was still riled up, but my orgasm added some much-needed clarity to get through the preparation without being too hasty. At least now I could open the bottle and lube my fingers up without creating a giant mess. And sure, when I pushed into him, it was with two fingers that made him gasp lightly, but the groan that followed told me he was more than simply okay with what I was doing. His grip around my fingers was fierce at first and loosened up enough for me to move easily, even as his ass alternated gripping me and then letting go.
“Are you showing off what you’re going to do when I’m inside you?” I asked with a sudden laugh of understanding.
“Practicing for when you are,” he told me, sounding supremely confident.
Some of that confidence melted away when I added a third finger that made his eyes flutter and then clench shut when my probing fingers found the nerves inside him that had him almost writhing on my comforter. I was pretty sure three fingers would be enough for the moment, but I added a few more strokes, slowly spreading them apart when I slid them into him. He managed to give way every time I tried, though the resistance of his ass was tantalizing as I imagined it wrapped around something a little more sensitive than my fingers.
Content with my work, I pulled my fingers free and grabbed him, flipping him onto his stomach while he was distracted and unprepared for being manhandled. While he laughed and shifted his position into something more comfortable, I busied myself getting the condom on and lubing it up before getting onto my knees behind him. Face-to-face had its virtues for sure, but there was something I loved about taking someone from behind while I could press my body against them, see every movement they made, and for extra fun, even take a gander at what I was doing as I did it.
If there were any complaints from Kyle, he kept them to himself as I shifted his hips to push his ass into the air, gripping the base of my cock and angling it to push forward. My patience in preparing him paid off with just a little more pressure, and I felt him wrap around the head of my cock. Heat surrounded me as I slipped another inch inside him, stopping when I felt him tighten around me. I kept myself steady and upright with my hands on either side of him, waiting until his grip released before trying another couple of inches.
Far enough in that I didn’t have to worry about slipping out, I repositioned myself while he adjusted again. I kept my knees on either side of him but slid my hands up to wrap them around his forearms, leaning my weight into them while I slid more of myself into him. The last few inches sank in, and as soon as he felt my hips push against his ass, Kyle let out a deep groan, pressing his face into the pillow beneath him.
“So, so glad you got me off before this,” I said between clenched teeth. It wasn’t exactly my first rodeo, but between everything leading up to now and how good he felt, I could already feel the ache inside me that begged for release.
“Yeah,” he said in a thick chuckle. “You feel great yourself.”
“I take that to mean you’re okay?”
“Oh yeah, I’m great right now. Move before I start losing my mind.”
Even if I’d been inclined to try and tease him, I don’t think I would have been able to ignore his voice, both pleading and demanding at the same time. The first thrust was slow and shallow as I tested to make sure he wasn’t just being antsy, but it happened smoothly. The next was halfway, and then on the third I nearly escaped the warm confines of his body before pushing back in.
Kyle pushed back against me, turning his head to peer up at me while he moaned. Content that I had done my part to make sure he was comfortable, I began moving in earnest. His arms flexed against me as my hips began to piston, finding the best rhythm that sent alternating waves of heat and electricity through my body and made Kyle moan and push up into my thrusts. It seemed like no matter how deep I went, it was never deep enough for him as his ass met my hips with every thrust.
I began to put more and more of my weight onto his arms as I leaned forward, trying to get as deep as possible inside him, my hips practically melding with him on every downward snap of my hips. Despite how overwhelmed with pleasure he seemed, Kyle never forgot his practice from earlier. He had figured out the timing of my thrusts so that with every other thrust, he tightened himself up when I reared back, building on the pleasure deep inside me.
I knew I wouldn’t last long, and some feral part of my mind refused to let me be the first to get off this time. I pushed myself to my knees and pulled his hips up so he was on his knees while his face remained in the pillow. Reaching around, I gripped his cock, not surprised to find it harder than steel as I began to fuck down into his ass once more, jerking him off in tandem.
Kyle’s arms shot out to grip the top edge of the bed, crying out as his body bore down around me with a ferocity that almost kept me from moving. I gave one more lurch and shoved myself as deep inside him as possible while his dick pulsed against my grip, spilling over the comforter I had mindlessly forgotten about. Even now, he was pushing back against me, keeping me lodged inside him as his orgasm overtook him, leaving him a groaning mess as he made a mess of my hand and himself.
Unable to help myself, I let go of him and pulled free, taking the condom off with a yank and tossing it aside. Using the hand covered in his cum, I wrapped it around my shaft and gave it a few jerks, looking at him face down, ass up, his cum all over my bed and a hand wrapped around myself, him panting and left unable to talk from what I’d done to him. With a shuddering grunt I came once more, covering his ass and the back of his thighs.
With a heavy huff of breath, I let myself sit back on my legs, reaching out and running my finger up and down through the mess I had just made. I tempted myself by pushing my wet finger into him, making Kyle give a weak moan, though not weak enough that I didn’t think I was the only one tempted.
“Christ, is that both of our loads on that finger?” he groaned.
“Uh...oh, yeah, it is.”
“Fuck that’s hot. Give me...a minute.”
I chuckled, getting up to retrieve the towel I had hung on the back of the door. “Does that mean you’ll be staying the night?”
He rolled onto his side and smirked at me. “Are you asking me to stay the night?”
“Well, I’ve said good morning to you before, but it would be kind of fun to say good morning to you in the same bed,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed to begin cleaning him up.
His smirk shifted into a soft smile. “I think I’d like that a lot, actually.”
I winked. “And I was hoping maybe I could repay the favor and give you a blowjob in my shower tonight or in the morning, and then I can make you a mean plate of huevos rancheros.”
“Oh, ho, now that I can definitely get behind,” he said with a laugh, kissing me.
“Good,” I said, feeling a flutter in my chest that had nothing to do with lust and everything to do with the question that fluttered through my head as our lips met.
How could I get him to want to do these nights together all the time?

*****

Well, there’s the spice for you. Before you get too curious, it wasn’t included because I didn’t want to focus on their past more than I was already, the same reason any other flashback was cut. Still, I also wanted whatever was from their past to show who they were, give hints, stuff like that, not show whole moments that could be chapters or half chapters themselves. Plus, I included some pretty spicy scenes in Broken Once, Twice Loved as it was, so I swear I didn’t deprive you!
That said, I do have to apologize for the upcoming emotional whiplash. It’s the last flashback of these bonus scenes, and it’s...well, it’s not a very happy scene. So yes, we’re going to go from sexy times and right into...well, you’ll see.
Without further prattling, here you are!

*****

“What the fuck does that mean?” I hissed, reaching out to take Ian by the elbow and turn him back to face me again.
His expression was a stony mask I had never seen there before, and I felt my heart give a hard thump as I realized there was nothing in his eyes, nothing. He had just told me that not only was he leaving college, but he was leaving me as well.
“I think what I said was pretty self-explanatory,” he said, his tone as dry and barren as his expression.
“I know what you fucking said,” I snapped, voice rising. I was glad we were in his apartment where no one could hear us. Well, his neighbors, maybe, but if the people who thought three in the morning was the perfect time to have a miniature rave and then a brawl in the hallway wanted to complain about a five-in-the-afternoon argument, they could kiss my ass. “Now make it make sense before I lose my fucking mind.”
For a moment something tugged at Ian’s features, something I almost recognized, but it was gone a second later, dying faster than I could mark and measure it for what it was. “We’re done. I’m dropping out, and you and I...we’re done. We can’t be together anymore. This isn’t working for me. Not anymore.”
My head spun as I tried to make sense of where this was all coming from. It had only been a couple of days ago that I had woken up in this apartment, the morning sun peeking through the curtains to wake me up and warm me. Yet nothing had warmed me quite like the sight of the man still sleeping across from me, his features soft and gentle as he snored so softly I could barely hear it. It didn’t matter that he was taking the full sun on his face. He hadn’t woken up until I reached out to touch his cheek, unable to help myself.
Not more than forty-eight hours before, he had woken up to that touch and given me the gentlest smile that threatened to send my pounding heart into overdrive as I watched his eyes crack open. His voice had been rough with sleep as he’d reached across the small space between us, curling his fingers over my shoulder to pull himself in and kiss me. His mismatched eyes had sparkled with more than just sunlight as he’d stolen that kiss and left us so close our foreheads had pushed together.
We had laid there for what felt like forever until our bladders pulled us up, causing jokes about kinks we didn’t have and would never want to involve the bed in. The shower had called to us, and the feeling of his arms when he’d entered me as we stood together had felt like heaven. We’d spent the rest of the morning on the couch until, finally, I had been pulled away because I had a shift at the pizzeria, and we’d texted all day until he’d fallen asleep studying for an upcoming test.
This was not the man I had seen two days ago. This was not the relationship I had been holding onto for two years.
“No,” I finally said with a shake of my head. “This is bullshit, Ian. This makes absolutely no sense, and I can’t believe you’re just going to drop this on me like I’m just...going to accept it.”
“You don’t get a choice,” he snapped, leaning against the doorway. “Relationships aren’t a democracy, not when it comes to ending them...and I’m ending this. So please, don’t make this any more dramatic or harder than it needs to be.”
Fury bubbled up in me as I jabbed a finger at him. “Don’t you dare talk to me like I’m a child. Just the other day, you were completely fine. You were you. And now you’re going to tell me we’re over and pretend this was a long time coming? Hell no, fuck that, Ian, and fuck you if you think I’m stupid enough just to roll over and go with this shit.”
“I never said it…” He stopped, his face tense when I saw his phone light up on the small table in the short hallway. Before he could stop me, I snatched it up, needing to see what had gotten a stronger reaction out of him than anything I had said.
My stomach flipped, twisted, and dropped to my feet as I stared at the name ‘Isabelle’ on the screen.
“Oh,” I said, my voice coming out in the softest whisper, robbed of all its power as I held the phone out and blindly dropped it on the table where I’d snatched it from. “Oh, I see. Now...now things are making sense.”
“Kyle,” he began softly, but I waved a hand at him, not ready or willing to hear whatever crap was about to come out of his mouth.
“Don’t,” I said quietly, my throat working as the reality of the situation began to settle around me. This wasn’t some strange whim that had come from fear or panic or any number of things that could be fixed. “You’re leaving me because Isabelle has come back into your life. You’re leaving me...for someone else.”
“It’s not...” he began and stopped, looking down.
“Tell me you’re not getting back with her,” I said, staring at him. I could practically feel the seconds tick by in my chest. “That’s all you have to do. Tell me you aren’t going to do that.”
His answer was to tighten his jaw and refuse to look up from the floor.
“Exactly, because you can’t say that without fucking lying to me,” I bellowed. “Why? Did she suddenly stop being a crazy bitch? Or what? Is this so you can go out into the world and pretend you haven’t been sucking my dick for the past two years?”
“I was never ashamed of us,” he snapped, eyes flashing dangerously.
“I guess it doesn’t fucking matter, now, does it? Doesn’t matter if you missed pussy, want to pretend to be straight, or just plain want to be mommy’s boy again,” I snapped at him, growing even more furious when his reaction to the low blow was just to roll his shoulders. “You unbelievable fuck. I’ve given you two years of my life and was going to give you the rest of it if I could, and this is what it’s worth to you? Some woman you couldn’t even have mentioned for the past two years? Fuck, it would have been easier to slap me across the face and spit on me.”
“I would never,” he seethed.
It was too much, and I grabbed his door handle, yanking it open. “Yeah, well, it would have been a lot more direct and a lot less painful and humiliating if you had. Because now I get to know what I was worth to you this whole fucking time. So go back to your ex-girlfriend. Go back to the woman who made you so miserable you flinched at her name. I hope she gives you exactly what you’ve just given me, fuck you.”
Pure fury carried me out of his apartment, slamming his door hard enough behind me I wouldn’t have been surprised if I managed to crack the door frame on my way out. The entire trip out of his apartment and then out of his building was a blur as ragged thoughts and the sharp edges of memories whirled around in a screaming dirge. It wasn’t until a constant crackling noise kept intruding into my thoughts that I finally slowed down enough to realize I was standing on some random street corner, rain pouring down around me.
“Motherfucker,” I hissed, finally looking down to see what had made the irritating noise. It was the plastic bag with the takeout I had picked up on my way to his apartment. He had been quiet the whole day before. I thought he might still be stressing about his upcoming exam and might need something to bring a smile to his face and ease the stress a bit. Now the inside of the bag was smeared with the curries I’d ordered.
That was all it took. As I stared at the disaster inside the bag, the reality of what had just happened crashed down around my ears. The sob that rose in my chest choked in my throat, and the bag tumbled from my hand, hitting the sidewalk and finally giving up its last strength as it broke open in an explosion of food. My hand gripped my throat as I felt my breath come in short, heaving gasps.
Not caring about the cold rain, I backed up until I could drop down onto the concrete steps of a nearby building, burying my face in my hands as the first of many sobs to come managed to rip its way out of my throat. My chest ached, my stomach burned, and I doubled over as the tears ran warmly down my face.
It was done.
We were done.

*****
Yeahhhhh, sorry about that.
Now I want to remind those reading this before reading Once Broken, Twice Loved that this is just the past. Which, yeah, doesn’t make it hurt any less for poor Kyle. If you haven’t read the book yet, it wasn’t easy for Ian either, especially in the following years, but that’s all the hints you’re getting! Or for anyone having to witness or write it. Worse yet, it doesn’t get any better for him after that, not for a good while, but that’s life sometimes, isn’t it? Sometimes it smacks you around, kicks you while you’re down, and fights like hell to make sure you can’t get back up.
But we do get back up, don’t we? And Kyle sure does, battered and bruised, but he gets back up and goes on to live his life. Maybe not how he planned it or had hoped for, but he continues to live it anyway.
Which brings me to the final scene of this bonus collection and two things to keep in mind.
The first is the easiest. This scene takes place during the present-day of the book. So, no more digging around in the past of our main characters. We’re getting launched into the main sequence of events. Secondly, I’ve never done this with these bonus scenes in that it’s not a deleted scene, but one that sat in my head, wanting to be written but couldn’t be.
Why, you might ask?
Well, because it’s not from the perspective of our main characters or, in fact, any of the other main characters from previous books. It’s from the perspective of (slight spoilers coming up here) Ian’s daughter as she watches the two of them. To be quite honest, this isn’t the first time I’ve ever had a scene for books that came from secondary characters, but I don’t include them because, well, they would really only be fluff, and it would be confusing just to drop a random chapter from a third perspective and never do it again.
But I can get away with it here, and that’s the joy of it all. So here’s the last bonus scene, where Ian’s twelve-year-old daughter, Ayla, gets to have her own voice for a little while.

*****

Dad had that jumping tic in his jaw, which was never good. But he had been around Grandma for almost two hours for our ‘peaceful’ Thanksgiving. Kyle wasn’t doing much better, he was pretty good at talking about things that didn’t matter, probably hoping Grandma couldn’t find something mean to say, but there wasn’t anything anyone would ever find that she wouldn’t have a nasty comment for. He was doing really good at keeping his anger hidden from her, though, only scowling when her back was turned and leaving the room when she said something mean to Dad.
I didn’t blame him. She wasn’t a good person. She didn’t even try to be nice, which I thought should be pretty easy. I guess I shouldn’t have expected too much, my mom wasn’t a good person, and she was even meaner than Grandma. At least with Grandma, I got the feeling she was just scared like she was afraid of losing control of things. And at least when she said mean things, you could still find a way to make it sound like it was supposed to be helpful.
My mom? She was just a mean bitch.
I tried not to watch Grandma too much after a while. It made it easier to deal with her. I knew Dad wouldn’t mind if I turned my implant off and pretended it was out of battery so I could block Grandma out, but it didn’t feel right anymore. He tried so hard to keep Grandma around, we even moved to Fairlake to ensure she was cared for, but it was never enough. Honestly, if he could put up with the mean stuff that came out of her mouth, then the least I could do was try to deal with it with him.
That didn’t stop me from turning it down occasionally when I needed a short break from her voice. I’d asked Dad if he ever thought you could tell if someone was mean from their voice, and he’d said, “Yeah, tones give it away.” I couldn’t get him to understand that it wasn’t just tones. It was something else. Maybe it was something to do with being born deaf, and I just noticed stuff that people didn’t because they’d been hearing it their whole lives. Dad hadn’t felt comfortable getting me my implants until I was almost seven and said it wasn’t necessary because I could grow up just fine without having to be ‘normal.’
That was just one of many fights he’d had with my mom, but it was one he’d given in on. I was actually glad that I could hear. I liked hearing people sometimes, so long as they weren’t like Grandma or Mom. Dad’s voice was nice. It reminded me of big trucks going by our old apartment, rumbling low and patiently as they drove past. Annie’s voice was sharp and quick, like a whip, but used for entertainment, not to hurt. Adam’s was a lot like my dad, but Bennett’s was light and pleasant like he was always a second away from laughing about something he’d thought of. Chief Price’s probably sounded kind of scary with how it rumbled and boomed, but he only used it to scare Bennett, even if it didn’t work very well.
I picked my head up from my plate, pretending to adjust my hair when I was really turning the volume on my implant back up so I could hear again. I looked up as Kyle stared at me, the corner of his mouth twitching.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was...thinking.”
“You do plenty of that throughout the day. Take a break from it while you eat,” he said, smiling. He always seemed to know when I was up to something, and just the way he was looking at me said he knew I wasn’t just thinking. “Now, are you going to want pie?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, trying to pretend I hadn’t just blocked the whole world out for a while.
Grandma shook her head. “You best be careful, Ayla. Otherwise, all that food and pie will catch up with you.”
“Mom,” Dad said in a low voice, “don’t start on her.”
“I’m just warning her,” Grandma said as if she wasn’t really saying she was right and everyone should know it. “Young ladies need to pay attention to their figure. One day she’s going to want to find herself a man and no self-respecting man is going to want a woman who shovels pie and three plates of food into her mouth.”
“That’s because you never met my ex-girlfriend,” Kyle announced as he returned with plates of pie. “She could eat a burger that weighed as much as a baby and never gained a thing. Then again, she was pretty obsessed with going to the gym. She could probably have bench-pressed Ian.”
“And after everything I ate today, that would be an impressive feat,” Dad said, looking at Kyle with a secret smile.
I really hoped they didn’t think anyone else didn’t notice how they were. I didn’t know anything about dating, but I could sure tell that’s what they were doing. It wasn’t like the first time I’d ever seen Dad date, even if he’d tried to keep that a secret most of the time. And it wasn’t the first time I’d seen him date a guy, something he’d really tried to keep a secret.
It was different with Kyle than with anyone else, though. Dad had never looked at anyone else like he looked at Kyle when he didn’t know anyone else was paying attention, and Kyle had his own look that gave him away. Sometimes they touched each other, it was always something little and quick, but I saw them. It was in the way Dad had a lot of patience for Kyle, even when Kyle was getting worked up over something that seemed silly to me.
Not that it was just Dad doing the work. I could see it happening right now. Dad was starting to relax as Kyle continued to talk, describing some of the things his old girlfriend had done. I was also pretty sure Kyle had touched Dad under the table, like a hand on the knee. I could see how the tic in Dad’s jaw was gone, and it didn’t look like he was clenching anymore. Kyle could calm my dad down, and he did it without really trying. It was just something he was good at it.
And that was okay by me. I liked Kyle. I mean, sure, I guess he’s pretty good-looking, but it’s everything else about him I like. His voice is friendly, it reminded me of the rain for some reason, sometimes, it was nice as it hit the ground and made you sleepy, but when he was worked up, it was like those storms when the rain smashed against everything. But he was good to my dad and made him happy. Kyle was friendly to people because he wanted to be, but like with my grandma, he didn’t let them be mean for too long. And he liked me. He was even trying to learn ASL to talk to me when I didn’t feel like hearing the world anymore, and most people didn’t try to do that ever.
I don’t know why my dad doesn’t just tell people he’s dating Kyle. Actually, I’m pretty sure they’re in love, but I don’t know much about that either. I know they like being around each other and seem really good together. I’d love to have someone like Kyle in our life all the time. It’s been me and my dad for so long, which is great, Dad’s a great dad, but I know he gets lonely sometimes. So if making him less lonely meant someone like Kyle was always around, I’d be happy to choose that.
“Well,” Grandma interrupted the stories. “I certainly hope she doesn’t want to follow that particular path either.”
“What? No self-respecting man would want to be with her then, either?” Kyle asked, and sure, his voice sounded nice, but I could hear the thunderstorm behind it.
Grandma stared back at him with eyes that always reminded me of stones left out in the winter, glaring at him. Kyle didn’t look away, taking a drink of his wine as he smiled. I didn’t know what was happening, just that some silent fight was happening right in front of us. Dad watched them intently, but he didn’t get in the way. Maybe he thought everything would be fine or didn’t want to get caught in the middle.
Grandma let out a huff, picking up her glass of wine. “I’m just worried for her future.”
“Let me worry about that, Mom. Meanwhile, maybe you should start worrying about your own health,” Dad told her, which immediately got Grandma mad all over again, but the kind that made her glare as she ate a thin piece of pie instead.
Over their heads, Kyle waited until I looked at him to wink, motioning to my plate. I giggled a little when I saw two thick pieces of pie, each with two big scoops of the whipped cream he’d made earlier.
Yeah, I kind of hoped he stuck around for a while.

*****
And that is it. That particular bit wasn’t a lot, but quite a lot of bonus material got put into this. Which, I mean, makes sense, this book was the biggest one I’d written out of the series yet, so there was bound to be some sizable extra material.
So for those who made it this far, I hope you enjoyed these little extra scenes. I enjoy putting them together because, by the end of a book, I’m so enamored with the characters I’ve written and their story that being able to write about them a little bit more is just perfect for me. So, whether you’re using this as a primer before jumping into Once Broken, Twice Loved or as your last little taste of Ian and Kyle after reading the book, I hope this was fun for you.
There’s one more book left in the Fairlake series, and you can bet there will also be bonus material for that one. I won’t spoil who the characters are, but if you’ve read the series by now, you can probably make a solid guess. On that note, if you haven’t read any of the other books and this is the first in the Fairlake series for you, go check them out on Amazon! There’s four other books to keep you occupied until I get the last one written, tidied up, and sent out to all of you.
So until the next time I drop a bunch of words in your lap, take care of yourself, and happy reading!

~Romeo Alexander