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It Takes Practice

ISBN # 978-1-78184-287-4

©Copyright Willa Okati 2013

Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright March 2013

Edited by Rebecca Douglas

Total-E-Bound Publishing

This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Total-E-Bound Publishing.

Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Total-E-Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

Published in 2013 by Total-E-Bound Publishing, Think Tank, Ruston Way, Lincoln, LN6 7FL, United Kingdom.

Warning:

This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a heat rating of Total-e-burning and a sexometer of 1.

This story contains 59 pages, additionally there is also a free excerpt at the end of the book containing 7 pages.

IT TAKES PRACTICE

Willa Okati

Let doubters doubt! Fitz means to convince Nathan that seven years isn’t too long to wait for a second chance at the love of a lifetime.

Dr Nathan Rey, general practitioner, has endured a case of broken heart syndrome for a handful of years and counting, after his wild, bad-boy lover disappeared just before he received his licence. Though it’s got easier—one or two flights of erotic fancy a year instead of every night—Nathan couldn’t say it’s got better. He still can’t forget the charismatic Fitz, and no one he’s met since then could begin to compare.

Still, Nathan’s certain he would have someday stopped daydreaming and moved on. He would have found someone else. Filled the empty spots in his life, his heart and his home. His bed.

That is, if his part-time nurse hadn’t eloped overnight. If, unable to find someone local right away, he hadn’t called upon the services of a temp agency. And if the nurse the agency sent to him, certified and licensed, had been anyone but Fitz himself, with far more than work on his mind.

Love isn’t always easy, and it’s very rarely simple. More often than not—it takes practice.

Dedication

To the ladies of the J_A_W Group, with thanks for their support and encouragement.

Trademarks Acknowledgement

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

Jägerbomb: Mast-Jägermeister SE

Jeep: Chrysler Group LLC

Wal-Mart: Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

Prologue

Seven years ago

Nathan stood barely awake beneath the stinging needles of the shower spray. He moaned as the heat began to work on muscles wrenched sore from—good God, how many hours had he and Fitz gone at it? He remembered the sun coming up, and not much else besides. Hot, wet, need. Hungry. More now, now, now.

The cheap rings of the shower curtain rattled along the rod as, still warm and smelling of rumpled sheets, the cause of his sleepless night slipped in behind him and pressed drowsy kisses to his shoulder blades.

“Fitz,” he murmured. “I didn’t think there’d be any getting you out of bed without a crowbar.”

Fitz nibbled Nathan’s nape. “Shows what you know about me.” He sneaked an arm around Nathan and stole the soap, holding loosely and unused in the palm of his hand. “Gimme. You’re going to be late.”

“Mmm.” Nathan stretched, enjoying the slick sensation of soap sliding across his skin, and Fitz’s body close behind his. “Whose fault is that?”

“Not ashamed. I might not be good for much, but you got one hell of a graduation party out of me.” Fitz lathered the small of Nathan’s back and slapped his ass. “Course, you impressed me pretty good. Even before breaking the bed. Think you went deep enough to taste. But those Jägerbombs? That’s how you drink like a man.”

Nathan snorted. “I’m four years older than you.”

“I’m still more of a man. Unless you want to prove me wrong. And just in case I need to spell it out? That’s an invitation.” Fitz’s cheek was as rough as his lips were soft. The swinging tips of his hair tickled Nathan’s back, then his chest when Nathan turned around to face Fitz. Or that’d been his intention. Fitz butted his head against Nathan’s chest with a sigh of contentment.

“I am not your pillow.”

“Says you.”

Not a problem, really. Nathan didn’t have to look to be sure of every detail about his boyfriend, from the gold barbell through the head of his cock and the bristling black tribal tattoos tracing their way from chest to neck. Fitz might not be an easy mouthful for future conservative colleagues to swallow, but Nathan had earned his M.D. and they’d have to like his boyfriend, or they could lump it all.

Nathan could handle them, as long as he could handle Fitz too. The graceful sweep from his broad shoulders to narrow waist, the dip of his spine before the small, tight rounds and the length of his legs beyond. The aching press of fingers hard on his hips and the stretch of his thighs, and the burn of a lover’s bite on his neck where everyone could see.

Fitz laced his fingers through Nathan’s and looked up at him, close enough to kiss the tip of his nose if he’d wanted. He nudged wet locks of hair behind Nathan’s ears. “You’ll cut this soon, won’t you?”

“Doctors can’t usually wear fourteen different colours in their hair and sixteen studs in their ears.” Nathan avoided Fitz’s faux-indignant swat and bent in a fluid wave to bite the tip of his ear, whispering, “You’ll have to do it for both of us.”

Fitz punched Nathan’s arm, playful, the sting only small. He took hold of the circular, stone pendant Nathan had given him the year before, strung on a leather cord Nathan had cut to measure himself, and tugged. The slate gleamed almost glossy when wet. His touch lingered. He drew his bottom lip between his teeth and looked at Nathan in a way that Nathan didn’t know at all.

He didn’t think he liked it, either.

Nathan settled back, shoulders to the wall. “What?”

“Nothing.” Fitz shook his head. “I didn’t know it’d be like this, that’s all.”

“What would be?”

He tapped Nathan’s cheekbone. “Staying over for a night. What did you think I meant?”

“We’ve been dating for months. It’s hardly the first time. I’m the one who got fucked stupid, not you.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.”

“What is it they say about fools and love?” Nathan tossed out. He lifted Fitz’s chin to get a proper look at the man. He might be on the cusp of his last night in the last year of med school, and Fitz might be floating somewhere between sophomore and senior undergrad years, but what difference did that make? “No looking back.”

“You never do,” Fitz said. “Never looking back, always running forward, that’s you.” Fitz’s smile was lazy on the surface. “Takes longer for some of us. But hey. Feel free to keep on being forward.”

Fitz eased back beneath the spray, soap in hand but hands busy, sliding down and slicking Nathan where he was still open, still loose from the last round. Not that he wouldn’t be glad of another go. Usually.

“No. Not right now.” Nathan laid his finger across Fitz’s lips. “I know what you’re up to.”

Fitz’s movements ebbed into stillness.

“And I’m not about to be late for the run-through for graduation.” Nathan lifted himself away from the wall. When faced with a naked Fitz, saying no was no small thing. He’d follow his wild bad boy to the ends of the earth. “I know you’re majoring in beer pong and how many places you can shove metal in your face—” He hesitated. “You are coming for the real thing tomorrow, aren’t you? You promised.”

Fitz pressed the pendant to his lips. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I know.”

“Then do it. For me. I want to see you in the crowd.”

Then he looked up, his shrug easy. Too easy. “You bet. Keep a lookout. I’ll be there.”

* * * *

After all the dust had settled, Nathan was the only one surprised that Fitz didn’t show.

After a while, he wasn’t surprised at all, either.

And in a handful of years, he’d forgotten about Fitz.

Almost.

Chapter One

“Seriously? The temp nurse still isn’t there?”

“Still not.”

Chelle whistled. “How’s your blood pressure?”

“Steadily climbing.”

“I’ll bet.” Chelle, who’d been a friend and colleague long enough to talk to Nathan any way she pleased, was laughing at him while on her way out of town for a girls’ weekend. Nathan could sense the mirth was at his expense. He had an uncanny gift that way.

Also, she didn’t bother to stifle her giggle.

Let it pass, man. He had other things on his mind. Such as clothes, and an increasingly futile search through his laundry room. Apparently, since the exodus overnight of the nurse he’d employed since he opened his practice, Dr Nathan Rey’s housekeeping had also risen up in anarchy against him.

“Who would have thought Ilse had it in her?” Chelle asked, naming said nurse when Nathan really, really would have preferred she hadn’t. Not that she was listening. “If she hadn’t left you in the lurch, I’d call it romantic. Fifty-three and she finds someone she loves enough to run away with?”

“I’d think it was more romantic if she’d given me two weeks’ notice.”

Chelle snorted. “Right. Love works that way—on a schedule. Not exactly, Nathan.”

Nathan returned fire with an equally rude noise, partially drowned amidst the racket of his rustling through dry-cleaning and home-style wicker baskets. Just like being in college again, Jesus. Walking around shirtless, in jeans saved from those days, might have been all right for a graduate student most often found underneath an undergraduate, but not a doctor who had, oh, let’s see, thirty minutes before I need to start my rounds. He had house calls today to his more rural patients.

Come to think of it, some of the elderly folks he’d scheduled probably would enjoy a shirtless doctor, but for heaven’s sake—

“So, you think your temp’s a no-show?” Chelle asked. “Also, do you want me to stop on my way back into town Sunday and pick up your order from the medical supply store?”

“As for the latter, yes please, and thank you. As for the former? He’d better not be.” Nathan had the man’s résumé laid out within grabbing distance of his front door. A male nurse, not quite the oddity it used to be, but it’d still raise an eyebrow or two, especially out there in the hinterlands—which perversely enough, he supposed, he loved. “Mike Smith.”

“Sounds like a used car salesman, not a nurse.” She paused. “Wasn’t that—?”

Nathan clicked his tongue to stop her before she pushed right past the inch he was willing to give when it came to the past, and claimed herself a mile. There were some roads he didn’t care to go down again. Ever. “It’s a common enough name. Plain and sensible.” He upended a basket and shook it until it rattled, watching mismatched socks fall in a perverse resemblance to autumn leaves. Fuzzy, lint-specked leaves. “Honest to God, did the washer and dryer eat all my shirts?”

“Look in the closet. Where clothes usually live. There’ll be at least two you forgot you had from the last time you were on your own.”

Nathan stopped. She was right. He remembered now.

Chelle took his silence for its precise worth and pounced. “You know what you need? A keeper. A wife. Better yet, a wife that’s a nurse.”

“Excuse me?” He slipped the phone out from between ear and shoulder and stared briefly at it. “Chelle, there are so many things wrong with what you’ve just said I hardly know where to start. Besides, wife? Woman?”

“Wife doesn’t have to mean woman.”

“It does if you look in a dictionary.”

“Dictionaries are far too restrictive.”

Nathan pinched the bridge of his nose and lied through his teeth. It wasn’t too difficult. He’d had plenty of practice. “Not that you’re going to believe me, but I swear to you that, wardrobe malfunctions aside, Chelle, I’m fine on my own. I like it this way.”

Her eloquent snort was her only reply. For a moment. He held his breath and hoped.

“You have to get over Fitz sometime, Nathan.”

Ah. Unfortunately, wishes weren’t horses and no one would be getting a ride.

Fitz.

Just hearing his name spoken aloud… Nathan hadn’t thought about Fitz in…years, probably. He’d got better when it came to dreaming about him, too. Once or twice a year. As opposed to, say, every night.

“Seven years is a long time to nurse a grudge. Or carry a torch. I never could tell which.”

You and me both, Nathan thought, but refused to give voice. He couldn’t quite see her letting him live that one down.

She had more to say, but, thank God, necessity picked her moment. Had he heard—? Nathan muted Chelle momentarily to listen. A scratchy sound, not unlike a saw in need of sharpening. Someone on the porch? Doorbell might be on the fritz again. “Leave it alone, Chelle. I’m good the way I am.”

“Alone and celibate? Nathan.”

Oh hell. Her serious tone. He waited for it.

“You shouldn’t be alone. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Not something I have to worry about.”

“Patients don’t count.”

“In what world? Women,” he grumbled, hand on the doorknob. “Forget Fitz. Fitz has nothing to do with this. I promise you, the person doesn’t exist who could be a partner in both senses of the word. Find them, or let them find me, and then we’ll talk. I’m answering the door, by the way.” He spotted the flutter of pale blue scrubs in the glass pane at the side of his front door. Finally. “It’s the nurse. At least, it had better be—”

And it was.

He didn’t recognise the man at first. There was no reason he should have. Not until he grinned, lazy and easy, settled back on his heels, and the surface trappings of a decade’s wear and tear faded away like silk webbing in a strong wind. No piercings. No beard, no goatee, either scruffy or neat. His short hair stood up in artfully dishevelled twists and spikes, the colour a gradient shading of blond and brown that shone red in the sun.

But the eyes. The eyes had it, even without a lining of kohl.

“Who is it?” he heard Chelle asking. “Nathan? Everything okay?”

Nathan licked his lips. “I’m fine. It’s just the nurse,” he said, amazed he could come up with that much, but even those few words emerged rough and raspy.

The man tilted his head back to look up at Nathan, still grinning. Never a care in the world. “Nathan. Long time no see.”

“Nathan?” Chelle paused, then laughed. “Good Lord, how hot is he? Must be something to knock you quiet.”

“You could say that.” Nathan couldn’t feel his lips. His tongue buzzed. Decision made. “I’m going to have to call you back.” He’d snapped the phone shut almost before he’d finished. She’d panic, she’d be pissed off, and she’d call him back to tear him a new one, but that could all wait. It had to.

Because—years later than promised—Fitz was on his doorstep.

Nathan stared. “You.”

“Me.” Fitz settled on the doorstep, his stance wide and his weight balanced. He could hold that pose for hours and there’d be no budging him before he was ready to move. Nathan remembered that about him, and more with every passing second under that frank gaze.

The surface might have changed, but underneath he was the same man. Knowing that helped. Not as much as Nathan would have liked, but he’d take what he could get. Experience, that cruel teacher, reminded Nathan he might think he knew Fitz’s mind, but he could never be sure of his plots and plans.

He could try to find out. Looked like Fitz wanted him to.

Fine. But on his terms.

And he wasn’t letting Fitz through the door to his home until at least one of the questions he’d stored up for seven years was answered. Any of them. Dealer’s choice.

Start with the one that matters most.

Nathan planted himself in the open doorway, one hand on the frame and one shoved in his pocket, calmed himself—or tried to—and settled for a flat, stony mask. It’d do.

“You want to tell me what the hell you’re doing here?”

Fitz shrugged one shoulder, drawing attention to his scrubs. “My job.”

“You. You’re the nurse?”

“Trained and everything.” Fitz cocked an eyebrow. Not spoiling for a fight, but not as calm as a tranquil sea. “I take it you weren’t expecting me.”

“I stopped expecting things from you a while back, Fitz.”

Fitz raised one shoulder. “Fair enough.”

Nathan gave him a deliberate once-over, up and down. He looked…different, the small changes more apparent as this older version of him offset fading memories of who he’d been. Healthier, for one. He must have taken to eating regularly. And exercising. The whipcord of his muscles and sinews had been replaced by sturdy cable. His skin was clear and he had a healthy colour to him.

He looked—not old, but mature.

Nathan could have punched him for that, only the longer he looked, the more he remembered the times that hadn’t been all bad. No. The times when he’d thought himself the happiest man alive, even with Fitz thin, wiry and ready to leap into action at the craziest plan anyone could imagine—

Maybe that last bit hadn’t changed much.

Nathan stood fast in the doorway. “You want the honest truth?”

Fitz shrugged as if inviting Nathan to bring it on.

“I expected that the next time I saw you—if I ever did—it’d be as a sidebar on the eleven o’clock news.”

“That’s harsh.” Fitz cocked his head to the right. “What kind of report? Darwin Award winner? I was a fuck-up back then, sure, but I’d at least have tried to be worthy of a solemn face from the anchor.”

“Not funny.”

“Not really supposed to be.” Now Fitz met Nathan stare for stare. So he was taking this seriously too. It wasn’t as satisfying as Nathan might have thought it would be.

“We need to discuss this.”

Fitz nodded. Nathan could already see him setting his jaw. Stubborn. That was another thing Fitz had been, and it looked like he still was.

“Everything all right over there?”

Nathan’s muscles jerked with the shock of a voice not belonging to himself or Fitz. He’d always heard good fences made good neighbours. If they were seven feet high and soundproof, maybe. His, let the record show, were not. His next-door neighbour Mrs Pinna had put in an appearance when he hadn’t been paying attention, ostentatiously sweeping her driveway free of falling leaves.

Normally he liked her, but the old woman was drawn to gossip. Just in case there had been any doubt about her actual purpose, Nathan couldn’t help but notice she’d accidentally started drawing the broom across the grass.

Nathan exhaled, counting to ten. He was a doctor. He had responsibilities. He did not care to make the news himself, not even the local grapevine, though it might be far too late already. What did she need to stare for? He dated. Sometimes. Every now and then.

At least once since he’d moved in. Hadn’t he?

“Dr Rey, dear,” Mrs Pinna pressed, “don’t tell me this handsome young man is our new nurse? Oh, my.”

In front of him—close enough to touch, to want to kiss despite it all—Fitz’s lips twitched in the hint of a grin that hit Nathan with the force of a fist to the gut. He remembered that smile, as crisp and tempting as late summer apples.

For the love of… Fine. No choice.

“You’re right, we need to talk, but not outside.” Nathan held the door open, making the offer he’d come to believe he’d never give again in this lifetime. “Come in, Fitz.”

Chapter Two

Fitz slipped around him, bags on his shoulder, for all the world as if he were a welcome guest Nathan had invited to crash a few days while his roommates partied too loudly for even his taste. There’s another memory for you. Wasn’t this how he had teased his way in the first time, way back when?

Nathan didn’t move, except to shut the door. If he budged too far from his spot, he didn’t know what he’d do, but odds were it wouldn’t end well for either of them. He could feel the slow, bubbling boil of anger rising—an anger at rapid war with a rush of memories of Fitz’s body moving past him, against him, in him.

If he’d had some warning, he’d— Hell. Nathan had no idea what might have come to pass then.

He pressed his back to the smooth coolness of the door and waited to see what Fitz had in mind. He’d let Nathan know soon enough.

He could tell Fitz sensed his mood—Fitz shifted gears, suddenly far too casual in stowing his bags in a corner of the front room. His glance at the résumé lying in plain sight couldn’t have been more transparent. “I wondered if you’d wondered,” he said. He looked wary.

Nathan waited.

“Guess I can stop wondering. The name didn’t ring any bells for you?” Fitz asked. “Really?”

“Interesting thing about that,” Nathan said, his voice tight. “After seven years you develop an immunity to looking up every time a Mike Smith crosses your path, and funnily enough it doesn’t take nearly that long for you to stop hoping it’s the man who walked out on you.”

“Huh.” Fitz picked up the résumé and flipped through its pages. “There’s a list of all the colleges I went to.”

Nathan’s temper frayed, wearing dangerously thin. “Some things never change.”

“Say again?” Fitz’s head came up.

“This is just what you always used to do.”

“What?”

“Don’t ‘What?’ me. You did that too. Ignore anything you don’t want to hear and act as you damn well please.”

Fitz spread his hands wide apart. “I’m talking. You’re the one who wanted to talk.”

“And you’re the one who misinterpreted that. On purpose. Not for the first time, is what I’m thinking, so let’s start again. What the hell are you doing here? Talk fast and talk good, and don’t unpack, because you’re not staying.”

“Two out of three isn’t bad. I am staying.” Fitz planted his feet firmly on the floor. “You need me.”

Nathan’s mouth dropped open. “Say that again?”

“I read the letters from the agency. You needed me a week ago. You needed someone the night your regular lady ran off. I’m here now. Ergo, you need me.”

“That’s thin, Fitz.”

“So are you.” Fitz gave him a once-over that irritated and inflamed things best left alone. “You’re not eating.”

“I think you gave up the right to worry about me a long time ago.” There. A shirt draped over the top of the couch. Clean? No.

The corner of Fitz’s mouth lifted. “You still have trouble with wandering clothes? Here.” He knelt to dig in his bag. “I’ve got a spare set of scrubs. The pants would be too short, but the shirt ought to fit.”

Nathan refused to take the wisp of blue fabric Fitz held out to him. He had to. Give in once and give in for good. That had been Fitz then, and he doubted it could possibly be different now.

Fitz tossed the shirt at him regardless. “I had my reasons for what I did.”

“Somehow I doubt that.”

“Good ones.”

“Somehow I doubt that even more.”

Fitz nodded at the shirt in Nathan’s hands, waiting patiently for him to take what was on offer. Nathan did not miss the metaphor dropped with all the subtlety of an anvil. Fitz conceded that to him with a slight tip of the head when he said, “You don’t want me here. I get that. Why do you think it took me this long?”

“Ask me why I think you left in the first place.”

Fitz grimaced. “Because I’m an ass,” he said. “I told you, time and again, I wasn’t a good guy.”

“And yet you’re here, to be my nurse now, and I should trust you why?”

“Because that was seven fucking years ago.”

“And that’s your argument?”

“You didn’t let me finish.” Some of the old fire sparked to life in Fitz. Nathan remembered how he used to blaze when he was angry, truly angry…and what the sex had been like after a fight. Swear to God, sometimes he’d picked a fight just for the fun of making up.

Fitz pressed on. “You knew me then. You need to know that I’m good at my job now. That’s why I’m here.”

“If you think I…” Nathan shook his head. “Be straight with me. I’m owed that much. Taking a job isn’t the only reason you’re here now, is it?”

“It was never your fault,” Fitz said, startling Nathan into silence. “What I did, I did for you.”

Right. Nathan could read between those lines. He scoffed. “Hurt me more than it hurt you, is that what you were thinking?”

“I was thinking the last thing you needed was a halfway-to-alcoholic millstone stoner looped around your neck next to your stethoscope, dragging you down. And don’t you dare tell me that thought didn’t occur after I’d been gone a while.”

Nathan’s mouth snapped shut.

Fitz rubbed his face, the only sign of stress he betrayed. Otherwise? Steady and smooth. Hell-bent on pursuing his course. “I wasn’t a good guy. I’ve tried to become one.”

“You—”

Fitz didn’t let him finish. “Here. See for yourself. You got the résumé from the agency, but here’s the stuff that matters.” He unzipped a side pocket on the bag he’d brought in and drew out a fat, manila folder, then tossed the folder at Nathan. Nathan caught it reflexively. “Letters of recommendation. Photos of people’s grandkids. Newspaper articles. Operation Smile. Haiti, after the quakes. I spent a year there. Learning. Becoming the man I wanted to be. For you.”

Nathan paged through the material. His brain didn’t want to process what it saw. He knew he should have been impressed. With anyone else, he would have been startled at how much one man had accomplished. Qualified? Good at what he did? And then some, plus experience with the kind of patients that made up the most of Nathan’s clientele.

It couldn’t be denied he needed a nurse. May Chelle forgive him, but a male nurse would be his choice. His patients might be laid up in bed, sometimes, but more often they were stubborn with age, still surprisingly strong and uncooperative. And then there were the times his Jeep got stuck in the mud after it rained.

Fitz was perfect on paper.

But—

“It wasn’t what I’d planned on,” Fitz said. He took the scrub shirt from Nathan and smoothed out the suitcase wrinkles. “But if I’d walked up to you out of the blue, would you have given me this much, or just slammed the door in my face?”

He had a point. He knew it, too.

“All I’m asking for is a chance,” Fitz said. He offered the shirt a second time, and faced Nathan man to man. “A chance to say this, at least—you’ve never meant any less to me than you did back then, and you meant the world. Understand that.”

Understand that? It knocked the breath out of Nathan, but Fitz never had done anything halfway, had he? “I ought to turn you over my knee.”

“If that’s what you want, I won’t say no.” A submissive-sounding statement, but Fitz was without mercy. He pushed forward, into Nathan’s space. “Anything you tell me except ‘no’ without a chance to prove myself, I’ll be good for.”

“And after that?” Nathan’s mouth had gone cotton-dry.

“If you give me one chance, maybe you’ll give me two. A chance at what, I don’t know. It’s up to you.”

Nathan could smell the cleanness of soap and the ozone tang of winter winds that clung to Fitz’s skin, which seemed as soft and smooth as it’d always looked.

Want. Hunger. More.

His throat dried. “It’s never up to me when you’re around.”

“Yes,” Fitz said, closer still, drawing nearer all the while. God. He took Nathan’s breath away. To look at him was to lust for him. “You might want to kick me out on my ass right now, but you need me.”

Nathan could read between those lines, too.

“Or is that the problem?” Fitz touched him. The past and the present collided. If Nathan shut his eyes he would be able to recall the exact smell of the tile and the soap from that shower. The last time they’d been this close… “I know exactly how you’re reacting to me. I can react to you too, if you want.” Fitz ghosted his fingertips across Nathan’s chest. “Seven years looks good on you, and I haven’t forgotten a thing.”

“No?”

“Oh no,” Fitz breathed, coming as close as he possibly could without—

But of course he didn’t stop there. Nathan shut his eyes tight when Fitz’s lips touched his, and the past burst fully free of the makeshift lockbox he’d sealed it so imperfectly in.

Being with Fitz was the same as Nathan remembered—contained chaos. Playful and playfully dominant, clearly meaning to cheer him up as well as to say Hello, I remember you. I missed you.

Fitz had been a brilliant kisser in days gone by, and he hadn’t lost his touch. His lips were soft, the bow and arch of the top and the velvet fullness of the bottom slipping open on a breath. The way he shivered when Nathan licked at the separation, instinct and memory and impulse his guides, that was the same too.

Fitz’s sensual shudder travelled from his lips to the arch of his throat, and to the width of his firm shoulders. Nathan wanted to follow it with his mouth. He moved his hand, from breadth of chest to sleek side, to the narrowness of Fitz’s waist and the dip and rise of his tapered back, the angel-wing angles of his shoulder blades.

Nathan breathed between Fitz’s lips, drawing Fitz’s air deep inside. He tasted different. Coffee, not beer. Sugar, not hashish. All changed.

The quivering eagerness for him that he evoked within Nathan was still the same.

Fitz raked his hand through Nathan’s hair, tousling it up and laughing when Nathan sputtered, silencing him with a kiss. Pressed so close, Nathan could feel the heat from his body, far warmer than any cosy fire in a country hearth.

Nathan’s knees wanted to give way. He wanted to drop, to… To…

Fitz beat him there. He dropped to his knees, his fall almost graceful, touching down exactly where they both wanted him. He eased Nathan’s legs apart, making short work of catch and zip, drawing jeans and briefs down his hips. Careful, so careful. Almost gentle, even with both of them knowing full well he wouldn’t take no for an answer if it’d been stencilled on Nathan’s dick—his traitorous, stiff dick, pointing at Fitz as if to say, here, have at it.

“Shh,” Fitz murmured, though Nathan hadn’t made a sound. He licked around the crown of Nathan’s cock, then blew a cool stream of air across the path his warm tongue had taken. Nathan bit back a curse. He flattened his hands against the wall.

“I’m not talking,” he said.

“You just did,” Fitz replied. He slid down the length of Nathan’s shaft and drew off far too slowly, torturing Nathan’s over-sensitised nerves. “Don’t be a gentleman. Grab my hair, if you want. Fuck my face.”

Nathan gaped at him.

Fitz laughed, and he should have looked ridiculous on his knees in a set of scrubs, dishevelled from kissing, hard-on tenting his trousers, but he didn’t. Dear God, how he didn’t. “Never hurts to ask. Unless you’re asking to be hurt.” He kneaded Nathan’s hips. “Be rough. Go on. Give it to me good. I deserve it. I want it.”

Nathan did not growl—Fitz would call him on it—but if Fitz wanted it rough, then by God he’d get it rough. He knotted his fists in Fitz’s hair till his knuckles went white and he had to be hurting the man, but, given the pleased noise Fitz made, apparently he didn’t mind.

His wicked, clever tongue underscored the fact. And did away with the last of Nathan’s self-control.

You’re sacrificing too many battles for tactical advantage in a war, Nathan’s logical brain reminded him.

Getting laid now, his lizard brain responded.

Fitz, his heart said in a soft echo, the name repeating, overlapping in ripples. Fitz, Fitz, Fitz, Fitz—

Fitz closed his eyes as he bobbed his head in earnest. As if he wasn’t only trying to get on Nathan’s good side by getting him off. As if he was enjoying this. He sucked wet and messy—saliva dripping down his chin. “Never forgot the way you taste,” he rasped, wiping his chin before going back for more. He nuzzled Nathan’s groin and moaned. Nipped with the lightest touch and drew the flat of his tongue over Nathan’s balls.

What the hell, what the ever-loving hell…? “Oh God,” Nathan gasped. “There. Right there.”

Fitz’s laughter reverberated against electrified nerve endings. Nathan barely held off. Barely.

“It’s okay if you don’t last long,” Fitz said. “I won’t.” His lips were swollen and pink, his mouth debauched, as if they’d been at this all day. Nathan had forgotten how filthy-gorgeous he could be, but now—

Oh, he remembered.

Nathan covered his eyes with one arm. His fingers ached from holding on so tightly. He gritted his teeth to keep silent and fought against the urge to come so soon. He’d show Fitz stamina, he’d—

But there was another thing about Fitz—he played by no man’s rules. With neither a word nor a warning, he took Nathan deep into his throat, humming, or purring. Nudging deeper, Nathan’s cockhead bumping the ridged palate, then the back of his throat, and more, God, more. Tightness constricting around him when Fitz swallowed, working his throat in sinuous motions. And that wasn’t enough for him, no sir. He pressed a finger behind Nathan’s balls, hitting his sweet spot from the outside, and when a man like Fitz with Fitz’s elegant fingers pulled that move—

Nathan knocked his head against the wall when his orgasm punched its way through him and left him gutted, breathless. And still coming, emptying his balls of all the spunk he’d saved up from being too frustrated or too tired to jerk off.

And still Fitz clung stubbornly to Nathan, Fitz’s throat working as he swallowed. He had a hand between his legs, jerking himself off hard and fast.

Nathan didn’t know why he did what he did. Why he let go of Fitz’s hair and gripped his shoulder, and not-quite-groaned, not-quite-begged, not-quite-ordered, but Fitz let it happen. Came willingly as Nathan pulled him to his feet. Hissed at Nathan’s knocking his hand away from his dick and replacing it with a tighter grip. Nathan shuddered. He remembered the feel of this flesh so well. Changed yet not changed. A man, not a boy. Grown into himself, grown no less gorgeous, no less dangerous—

Fitz panted, butting his head against Nathan’s shoulder. “Come on,” he muttered. Still goading. Or was it begging? “Please. Dreamed about it, dreamed about you, swear to God you have no idea how much— Nathan, love, come on—”

Fitz rattled their bones, both sets, when he let go. So much for the clean jeans, Nathan thought, dazed. Fitz soaked them with his cum, messy spurts dripping through their fingers.

Nathan could taste himself on Fitz’s tongue, ripe-rich-salty. When had they started kissing again? Nathan couldn’t remember. Only that he’d taken Fitz by the hair and pulled his head back almost too far, too hard, and that Fitz clung to him as if they were still fucking.

It doesn’t fix anything. Of course not.

“I know,” Fitz broke off to say. “You didn’t say that out loud, don’t worry. I just know you. At best, that was trying to patch up a bullet wound with a sticking plaster. But you’ve gotta start somewhere, right?”

Nathan groaned. He changed places, scolding himself when the natural move was dropping his head on Fitz’s shoulder—but he couldn’t change that it was natural, and once he’d touched down Fitz didn’t let go. The hands on his back gentled, less clutching, more stroking in broad swoops and soothing circles.

Nathan knew he should fire Fitz now, before this went any further. He had every excuse. Legally and ethically speaking, he should show Fitz the door.

But so help them, Fitz had been right. With Ilse’s desertion, it did leave him in a major pinch, and exactly who else was lining up to help?

Like it or not, he needed the man.

It still grated. And it bothered Nathan most of all that it didn’t bother him more.

And God help him if he’d felt this young, this alive, in seven fucking years. My God.

That was something else he remembered now. Fitz never played by the rules, no, but he always, always won.

Chapter Three

It should have been awkward, afterwards. There should have been an uncomfortable silence wherein they cleaned up, tucked themselves away, and couldn’t meet each other’s eyes. Nathan knew he should have taken the opportunity to tell Fitz no, and to tell him go, but he was well aware Fitz wouldn’t take marching orders gracefully. It’d mean a hell of a fight. And if they didn’t get a move on they’d be truly late for their appointments. Some of his patients couldn’t wait.

No choice, Nathan told himself.

To Fitz, he said, “We’re not done yet.”

Fitz listened to him. Nathan would give him that much credit. But what his response might be… Still working on that one.

Which brought them to the moment. Dressed in a reasonable facsimile of appropriate attire—though his legs were still jelly inside the pressed khakis—Nathan stowed his gear behind the driver’s seat of his Jeep and gestured hop in at Fitz. She might be an old girl, but she was faithful and her engine grumbled to life on the first try. “All-natural air conditioning,” he said, checking behind himself as they pulled out of his driveway. “Sorry.”

Fitz waved a careless hand. “Don’t be. Remember the dorms? Heat in winter, yes. In summer? Screw you. Box fans.”

“I remember.”

He did. The heat, stifling thick, laid on in a sultry blanket that suffocated the unwary, but through which Fitz swam as sleek as a silver-sided fish. Shirts off and briefs on only under duress while indoors, and sometimes out of doors. Nathan chuckled. He’d forgotten that—the night Fitz didn’t quite go streaking. Streaking required running. Fitz had ambled across campus at his leisure, without a stitch, gathering other summer sufferers behind him like a demented Pied Piper.

And more, he remembered Fitz lying on his bed. Their bed. Dewed with sweat, sheened with a thin gloss, licking the salt off his lips and Nathan’s. The hotter, the better. The way their bodies had stuck together and had come apart in the heat, humid air barely breathable except when Fitz passed it from mouth to mouth. He’d sucked on wintergreen mints and, somehow, he’d made July bearable. He’d drawn Nathan into his bed and hadn’t let go until August…or so it had seemed. A month’s worth of stolen kisses, nimble fingers pressing deep inside him, long limbs content to be draped over him and Fitz coaxing him on, ordering him to go deep and hard and like he meant it, now.

God.

Showing up for rounds with a hard-on would be a bad idea, and he was on the wrong side of thirty-five. Coming so recently, he ought not to have been good for another one for a while…

But that was Fitz for you, always beating the odds. Then and now.

On the surface, he didn’t look so very different, chin propped on his hand, watching the world flash by through the passenger window. No lines on his face except for the beginnings of crinkles at the corners of his eyes. Nathan could see the places where he’d been pierced. Heavy-gauge metal that had left scars in a row up both ears and on the left side of his nose. Tattoos bristled dark and tribal on his neck. Clever hands, capable of anything.

If Nathan had met him out of the blue, he’d trust him as a nurse. The thought made him laugh.

Nathan’s laugh drew Fitz’s attention back to him, at once knowing and curious and beneath that, maybe a little… There would be a better word for it, but Nathan knew the look from the times he’d felt it on his own face. Wishfully thinking.

“You still have the busiest head of anyone I ever knew,” Fitz said, with a flash of a new sort of grin. Mature. Knowing. The tiniest bit self-deprecating. All of it—all of it—full of his zest for life. “What are you chewing over like a dog on a bone?”

He knew he didn’t have to ask, the brat. Nathan eyed him sideways as he answered. “I was thinking you hadn’t changed a bit,” Nathan said. He drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel. “Then I was wondering if I knew anything about you at all.”

Fitz raised one hand palm up. Not much of an answer, but Nathan could intuit its meaning. Doubt and wishing. That didn’t sit well on Fitz. He’d been made for self-assurance, and its lack unsettled Nathan.

Which, perversely, pleased Fitz more than anything yet.

He spoke abruptly, and with content still more surprising to Nathan. “It was never in you, to hate,” he said, drawing the words out long and thoughtful. “Not like my dad. My brothers.”

Startled, Nathan glanced at Fitz. “What?”

Fitz rested his arm on the edge of the open window and dabbled his fingers through the rushing air. “That was what I worried about most of all, you know. That what I did for love would have turned you to hating.”

“There were times I wasn’t fond of your memory.”

“Wasn’t?” Fitz asked.

Nathan could feel Fitz watching him in profile. Silent. Leaving it to him. “Don’t ask me that now.”

Fitz nodded, and let it pass. For the moment.

And now it was Nathan who couldn’t let go. He drew the tip of his tongue over his lip, and his lip between his teeth. “You couldn’t have told me then what you were planning?”

“No.”

Well. Guess that told me.

Or it would have, if Fitz hadn’t barrelled on before Nathan could respond. “You’d have wanted to help me. I had to do it myself. And look at you. You did fine without me. Better than.” He twisted the cord of the necklace he wore around his forefinger.

Nathan wasn’t sure he wanted to know any more, and yet he had to ask. “Then why did you come back? And don’t just say it was because I had a job opening. That was a door. You say you know me? I say I know you. There was a reason you walked through now.”

Fitz raised an eyebrow. “Do you really want me to say it? By which I mean, are you calm enough to listen?”

Nathan snorted. “I thought you liked it when I was angry enough to pop all over you.”

Fitz laughed. “Yeah, well. There’s different kinds of explosions. Aren’t there?” He slipped a hand beneath his shirt and drew out the medallion, pressing it to his lips. Worn smooth and shiny from old habit.

Nathan’s breath caught. Dear God. Fitz didn’t have to say it. Nathan knew.

Fitz had come back because Fitz loved him. Still.

Had never stopped loving him, even when he’d left him—had left because he loved him.

Nathan couldn’t think straight. What was a man supposed to do with that?

Fitz rode for a few minutes in silence, turning the medallion over in his fingers. He shook his head when Nathan didn’t speak. Then he leant back and propped his elbow on the rolled-down window. “It’s a start. At least you didn’t punch me in the jaw,” he said. “Which I wouldn’t have begrudged you.”

“You know I couldn’t have done that.”

“Offer stands. If anyone does, I deserve it.”

“I still—” Nathan stopped, frustrated. “I couldn’t hit you. All right?”

“Even if you wanted to?” Fitz studied him. “Do you want to?”

Nathan clamped his mouth shut.

Fitz slipped his hand out to rest on Nathan’s knee.

Silence.

“If you don’t have hope,” he said, quietly, ever so quietly, “then you don’t have anything. That’s all.”

He left it there, for Nathan to make of it what he would. All on him, now.

All of everything he ever was and would be.

No pressure there, huh?

* * * *

Nathan knew the list of house calls he’d scheduled for the day. He still ran over them inside his head, ticking down the list, annoyed to find himself thinking, What will they make of Fitz?

Will Fitz be able to handle this? What about that?

Fitz watched him at it, either out of the corner of his eye or in the rear-view mirror. After five or so minutes, he didn’t bother attempting to play subtle with his silent inquisition.

Nathan prided himself, just a little, on not cracking until they’d reached their first victim, er, patient of the day.

“I am a good nurse,” Fitz said, one hand on his seatbelt but making no further move to free himself from its confines. “If that’s what you’re thinking so loud about, you can knock it off.”

Nathan exhaled. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”

He winced. Too late.

“You’re concerned about something,” Fitz said. He undid his seatbelt, but only to turn sideways and study Nathan’s profile directly. With a grin. “You’re worried for me?”

“Not exactly,” Nathan said, face hot. “Worried about you. There’s a difference.”

“Fine line there, Nathan. I can take care of myself.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Nathan stopped him. “Look. The woman we’re about to see, June Lockhart, she was raised in the old school where you serve tea and cookies to your guests.”

Fitz gestured, So?

“That means she’s old enough to rightly feel she can speak her mind. Whatever her mind might be.”

“You think she’s going to have problems with me?”

“Yes. No. Probably? I’m not sure. She’s old, cantankerous, and I like her. Get on her good side, and you’re golden around here. Piss her off, and look forward to a lifetime of woe.”

“What was I just telling you? Stop worrying. If she doesn’t like me, it’s not going to break my heart.” Fitz stretched his fingers wide, tips straining towards Nathan, but with as good as half a mile of seat between them. The gesture drew Nathan’s eyes to follow, and his skin to remember… “But she matters to you, so she matters to me. I’ll be nice. I know what I’m doing now. You’ll see.”

Nathan ached to reach out and take. Touch. But it couldn’t be that easy. Shouldn’t be. Right? “What’s your point?” he asked when the silence became too much to bear.

“You know what my point is,” Fitz said. Mercifully, he left it at that. “Besides. I like people I have to work a little for, myself.” But, as he was Fitz and getting the last word in once wasn’t enough, he popped the door and slid out of the truck, remarking, “Guess we have that in common.”

Nathan blinked, stunned. He hadn’t ever thought of it that way, but it was—it had been—true.

“Nothing good ever came easy,” Fitz said over his shoulder. “But there’s nothing wrong with intuitive leaps, you know. When they’re right, and when you can, why not?”

Right. Not just talking about June. Nathan wasn’t that thick.

But that was Fitz all over, again, leaping miles ahead. Before Nathan could properly process that, the door snapped open as briskly as linen in the wind, revealing a tiny woman leaning on her cane. Fitz stood at near-military attention and removed his sunglasses with an air that suggested either bowing or doffing his cap to royalty. Possibly both. “Ms Lockhart?”

“Well.” June pressed her hand to her heart. She readjusted her glasses. God only knew what kind of smile Fitz was giving her but, even while hurrying to meet them both, Nathan could make an educated guess. June nodded sharply, drawing herself as upright as her old bones would allow. “Good. It’s about time. See that he eats properly, if you please.”

Nathan’s jaw dropped.

June made an impatient noise. “I’m old, child, not blind. Besides, I never could abide that cow Ilse. Why didn’t you get a handsome fellow for all of us to enjoy before now?”

Fitz’s shoulders shook with laughter. At least he kept it silent, Nathan told himself. But interestingly enough, that didn’t stop his mirth’s contagion, and he couldn’t quite help himself. Against all reason and sense, Nathan found himself smiling as he followed in their wake.

* * * *

Two stops out and as high up the mountain as they’d go, Gibson yanked open the door to his home for them of his own accord before Nathan and Fitz had made it halfway up the muddy hill he called a yard. He glowered across the distance at them. Gibson didn’t have much left but posturing and trying to make fists of his shaking hands, and it didn’t hurt Nathan’s pride to dole out that kind of medicine.

“Parkinson’s?” Fitz asked under his breath.

Nathan gave him the barest of nods. “Plus total hip replacement about a year ago.”

“And he’s still living on his own?”

“Against doctor’s advice.”

Fitz pressed his lips together. He watched Gibson’s every move, assessing the old man’s condition. Not as if Fitz pitied him. More as if sizing up a still formidable opponent and formulating a battle plan. Smart move. Bad hip or not, at the first hint of unwanted sympathy Gibson would kick the giver’s ass so hard he bounced back down the mountain courtesy of momentum and gravity. “He should have a nurse, or at least a nurse’s aide, living in,” Fitz said.

A flash of—something—made Nathan’s shoulders tight. He can’t have you.

But not, he thought, unnoticed by Fitz. Though if he had gleaned the meaning of Nathan’s pause, he kept his reaction to a glint of a grin and kept his eyes on Gibson.

Was that better or worse?

“He needs help,” Nathan said, knowing each word led him into confessing more than he’d like, even if they were things Fitz already knew. “I don’t disagree. You try telling him that.”

Fitz’s grin shone bright and wide. “I like a challenge.”

“So I recall,” Nathan muttered under his breath.

Fitz’s chuckle warmed Nathan down to his bones despite the chilliness of both season and altitude. He raised a hand to signal friendly intent to Gibson. “Yeah, I know the type. Stubborn old cuss, huh? Sir?” he asked. Ah. So he’d spotted there was nothing wrong with Gibson’s ears? “Want me to introduce myself, or get this health care business out of the way so you can get on with telling me to get a haircut and show some respect to my elders?”

Gibson’s cracked laughter sounded not unlike that of an elderly parrot clucking. “Up yours, boy.”

“No thanks, sir. I like fresher meat.”

Nathan choked on air. “Fitz!”

Gibson didn’t miss that either. “Eh, so you two know each other, hmm?”

Fitz met his hawk-eyed stare, not backing down an inch. A little of the old bad boy shining through. “Yes, sir, we do.”

“Long as you don’t develop a taste for old turkey, good for you.” Gibson hawked and spat. To the side. He held one wrist with the other hand, another long-term habit that did nothing to wrench his hands proudly still, and shuffled aside to leave the front door open for the pair of them. “Well? You two coming in, or not?”

Fitz winked over his shoulder. See? Nothing to it.

For Pete’s sake. Nathan cast his gaze to the heavens.

But for all that, he had to linger a few steps behind Fitz to wipe the grin off his face before he went any farther. This was starting to become a habit.

But Fitz had a way of doing that, didn’t he? Becoming an addiction. Then and now.

Chapter Four

An afternoon cloudburst started on their way down the mountain. “Hell.” Nathan slowed to a crawling pace near one of the lookouts that dotted the parkway winding around these hills. He angled his head to look up and gauge the skies. Just small drops so far, teasing them with a patter on the roof of the vehicle. “We might see a delay.”

“Looks like.” Fitz craned to look out of his window. “How’re these roads when it really opens up?”

“Not great. Don’t jinx us. Might just be passing through.”

The skies opened up, pouring down buckets of rain. Nathan swore and stopped completely. “Or not.”

“I’ve seen worse. Haiti, remember?”

Nathan did. “You were really in Haiti?”

“For a while, yeah.”

Nathan had considered going. He still regretted, sometimes, choosing to stay…but his patients had needed him here, too.

“I was thinking about you while I was there,” Fitz remarked. He glanced sideways at Nathan. “You were there by proxy.”

“How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

Know what I was thinking.

“I don’t, always,” Fitz said. He started to reach for Nathan, stopped, then carried through and brushed the back of his hand against Nathan’s cheek. “Your face is an open book. It was then, it still is now.”

“A lot has changed since we last saw each other, Fitz.”

“Not that much,” Fitz said quietly.

Nathan rubbed at his forehead. “Not everything, but some things.”

“Ah.” Fitz fell silent. Only for a moment, though he didn’t look at Nathan when he spoke up next. “It’s after noon. I can hear your stomach rumbling. If we can’t go much farther until it quits raining, how about we break for lunch?”

Nathan grimaced. “I usually don’t. There aren’t exactly a bunch of handy drive-through joints up here.”

“No, but there’s an overlook. Ease in there off the road and we can eat.” Fitz’s amusement and affection were palpable. “So that’s why I can almost count your ribs. You forgot to pack anything, didn’t you?”

“I’m not that bad. And you did remember?”

“I’ve got you covered, if you’ll let me,” Fitz said, pushing without pushing. “June and Gibson are pretty generous.”

Nathan jerked upright. “Wait, what?”

“Just pull over, I’ll show you.”

Nathan burned at the implications, but his growling stomach wouldn’t let him lie. He could have eaten a horse without salt. The steady, quiet pressure from Fitz didn’t let up. He’d outlast the rain if Nathan let him. “Fine. But you’re explaining yourself.”

Fitz gestured acquiescence, but delivered no follow-through before Nathan pulled into the overlook—abandoned this time of year, with the fall colours come and gone, and not another vehicle on the roads as far as Nathan could see, which wasn’t far. The rain drove down in sheets that blurred the windshield.

Nathan killed the engine. “What’s this about June and Gibson? Did you take something from them?”

“Nothing they didn’t give freely.”

“Fitz, they—” Nathan’s tongue tied into a knot of righteous indignation. “They’re on fixed incomes. Both of them. They can barely afford to pay me, and I don’t charge what I should.”

“I know. And so do they.”

“What?”

“You heard me. They’re proud people, Nathan, you said so yourself. You give and they take what they have to. Did it ever occur to you to let them try and give back?” There, a glare, albeit short-lived. “They sneaked me this stuff when you weren’t looking.”

“And you took it?”

“Yes. Because, by God, the one thing I understand is pride.”

Nathan shut his mouth with an audible snap.

Quiet settled between them, drowned out by the pounding of the rain.

“Here.” Fitz sidestepped the stalemate first. He dug in his messenger bag—how capacious was the thing?—and dug out first a package wrapped in foil, then an old margarine tub with the lid taped down and around. “Cookies from June. Stew from Gibson. Still warm.”

The richness of butter and raisins, of savoury beef stock and vegetables, made Nathan’s mouth water. Fitz withheld both. “I know what you’re going to say, and stop. They wanted to give this. It’s an insult to say no and they’re nice enough—yes, even Gibson—to let you get away with not knowing better, but now you do.” He pushed the margarine tub of stew at Nathan. “Take it and next time we’re there, say thank you.”

Nathan swallowed down the hungry saliva. “Did he get this from the pot he keeps on the back of his stove?”

“Yeah. He said something about it being his grandmother’s recipe.”

“He meant that literally.” Nathan cracked the lid, not without effort—Gibson’s shaking hands had made a mess of the tape, but a thorough one—and tried a sip of the stew. “His grandmother started a pot a hundred years ago. Or her mother, I’m not sure. He just adds to it every time it gets low. It’s ancient.”

Fitz considered that, then shrugged. “Probably plenty of time to get it right.”

“Or for it to be a field day for bacteria.”

“Are you kidding? He dumped in a half-pint of something hand-labelled and highly alcoholic after he took this out. If it’s constantly on the boil, it’s fine. Or fine enough. It smells like heaven. Would you try some and share, already?”

He startled the laugh out of Nathan. When he inhaled, flavourful tastes burst against his palate.

What the hell? Nathan sipped.

Delicious. Odd, definitely, and with a mix of flavours unlikely to be found in any other kitchen on the planet, but warm, hearty, rich in texture and taste.

Fitz elbowed him gently. “See? Told you.”

“Don’t gloat,” Nathan said. He couldn’t quite hide his enjoyment—it emerged as a chuckle, and once he’d begun Fitz joined in with a lower rumble of pleased amusement. “Here. See for yourself.”

He passed the tub to Fitz for him to sip. Though he had not intended to, he stayed there, turned to the side, watching him. He remembered times like this. Sharing a meal, small or large. Stolen, pilfered, or honestly come by. College students were always hungrier than their meal cards allowed for.

Fitz chuckled. “Open book. You’re thinking about the college cafeteria, aren’t you?”

“I am.” Nathan tried one of June’s cookies. He licked crumbs off his lips. “That’s how I met you.”

Fitz swallowed a mouthful of soup. He didn’t look at Nathan, not directly. “I remember.”

Nathan let the cookies rest on his lap and leaned his head back. The memory was a vivid one for him too. “You charmed your way into the cafeteria, and went around picking off people’s trays. They were so pissed off—or would have been, but you charmed them.”

Fitz made a small noise that might have been agreement, or a motion to go on. He’d started taking sideways looks at Nathan again. Guess he didn’t see this coming. Nor did I.

“And then,” Nathan said, “then you came up to me and took my apple.”

“I did. You told me an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Fitz held out his hand, palm up, inviting Nathan to take it. Nathan’s palm itched and he ached to reach out and cover Fitz’s hand with his own.

He didn’t.

“Remember what happened then?” Fitz asked.

“You took a big bite,” Nathan said, slowly, slowly, pushing the words out, “and said, ‘Good. I’d rather you stayed right where you are.’”

The silence that fell in the slowing rain was of a different sort. God. The past had so much good Nathan had forgotten. Not just the sex. The sex came to mind first, but that would happen to a body starved of it for far too long. He’d almost missed the companionship more. Fitz had been good at this, once upon a time, just sitting in silence and sharing whatever they had to divide between them.

Fitz turned to one side and put his elbow on his knee, his chin in his hand, studying Nathan openly now. “I can hear your head whirring again.”

“I’m not surprised.” Nathan tucked away the cookies. His appetite had receded as abruptly as the rain. “It’s hard to reconcile you now with you then.”

“It is for me, too.”

Nathan scoffed.

“You’ve changed in some ways I didn’t expect. In other ways, you’re exactly as I remember you. But taken altogether…” Fitz looked thoughtful. “You’re the doctor I thought you’d be. The man I hoped you’d become.”

“Am I?” Nathan wasn’t sure if he was picking a fight, or if he even wanted to. If he wanted the truth, or if he didn’t want anything to do with it. “Did you dream of me?”

“Always.”

“Great. Then tell me. Describe to me how you dreamed of me.”

Fitz stilled. “Why?”

“Because I want to know. Isn’t that enough?”

“Not quite. Nathan? Tell me why you want to know.”

Careful what you ask for. You might just get it.

“Because if you dreamed of me, and you missed me, why didn’t you come back sooner?”

Fitz’s regarded him steadily. “I told you. And I’m still not sorry. It couldn’t have been helped. Not if I wanted to do it right.”

“Then why wait for now? You were in Haiti. If you wanted to be a good man, it doesn’t get much better. Why did you wait for now?”

Fitz pulled his necklace from beneath the collar of his scrubs and squeezed the rock tight. He looked past Nathan, far away. “I’d been waiting for the perfect time. But I realised there’d never be a perfect time. I had to take a chance. That was the last part of it. Do you understand?” He lifted his fist, the pendant still in his grasp. “It’s like this. I should have left it behind, but I couldn’t.”

Nathan’s voice sounded foreign to him. “Tell me why?”

“Some people wish on stars,” Fitz said after a long pause. “Stars are great for dreaming. I wished on a stone.”

And he built his house on solid rock. Nathan pressed his fingers to his eyes, rubbing against the itch and pressure. He must have worked so hard for so long.

He could hear anyone who’d known him lining up with told you sos in hand, ready to go.

But then, when he looked at Fitz with that pendant in his hand, the sensation inside his chest reminded him of scree rolling downhill after a rock slide. Jagged bits and pieces clearing the way.

The imagined crowd of ill-wishers and the very real reasons not to do this faded away. Nathan wanted him. Just wanted.

The rain had stopped, the skies were clear. Nathan popped the locks on both doors and gave Fitz a push. “Outside. Now.” He put his hand in the air to silence Fitz. “Just do it. Please.”

Fitz did.

Nathan could move quickly when he wanted, and for once in his life he had the advantage of surprise on Fitz. He’d circled the Jeep before Fitz could regroup, slammed the passenger door shut, and crowded Fitz against it.

“What are you—?”

“I said please.” Nathan thought he had a spare pair of jeans with his kit. Even if he didn’t, he didn’t care. He braced Fitz where he wanted the man…and to hell with the rainwater, be damned to the mud. He dropped to his knees, the gravel of the outlook rough beneath them.

“Nathan—”

When Nathan looked up, his chin bumped the proof that, while Fitz’s mind might not have caught up yet, his body was on track. “Shh. Hush and let me do this.”

He watched Fitz swallow down a knot of indecision. It wasn’t often that he didn’t have the upper hand, or know what cards he’d been dealt. Nathan would have stopped if he hadn’t wanted this too. But he watched Fitz’s pupils dilating, felt the increase in his pulse, and filled his nose with the headiness of male arousal. He put his mouth over the thickening bulge at the juncture of Fitz’s legs and pressed his lips to the heated length. He tasted faint salt, clean cotton and a hint of soap. His soap, from the morning’s clean-up.

Fitz caught Nathan’s wrist when he would have untied the drawstring. “Why?”

“Because I want to.” No. That wasn’t good enough. Nathan tried again. “Because that’s what I would have done in the shower. Don’t tell me you don’t recall that, because I do. And if you—? Everything you say—you remember too. So let me do this, and don’t argue. I want to.”

“God, Nathan.” Fitz’s grip loosened without fully releasing. Nathan had him, almost.

He took firm hold of the drawstring’s knot and tugged. “I need to.” I need you. No less hard, aching, he moved his knees farther apart to ease the discomfort, groaning at the light friction from his own confinement.

“Nathan.” Fitz’s knees threatened to give. Good thing he had the truck to hold him up. Nathan wasn’t sure he could have done it.

“I need to finish what I started,” Nathan said. “Before I know if I can go on.” He couldn’t explain himself better than that. All he could do was ask Fitz, with the brush of his hands, to understand.

He couldn’t be sure, but he thought, maybe. Maybe…

Eyes locked on Nathan, Fitz swallowed and nodded. His hand fell away to give Nathan the room he needed, permission to take what he wanted.

His hands were steady as he undid the ties, Fitz’s scrubs loose enough around the waist but tight at the thighs. Free, they slid of their own accord down to the thickness of his quadriceps and hung naturally. The jockey shorts he had to ease down on his own. Still steady, but no finesse. Like he was twenty-two again. No waiting and no patience wasted before tonguing Fitz’s length into his mouth and swallowing to draw that sound from him. That deep groan, the hiss of breath, the ragged exhale. God, how good that sound was. He’d forgotten, but now Nathan held the weight on his tongue and committed Fitz to memory. Just in case… Just because.

More. Nathan edged forward, taking Fitz deeper. The blunt push at the back of his throat made him cough, but he swatted Fitz’s protest aside. Mind over matter. He adjusted, relaxed his throat if not his hands, holding tight to Fitz’s hips, and drew him in.

Fitz swore and bucked, backed up flush against the truck, taking the brunt of his weight on his back. He settled his grasp on Nathan’s shoulder and jaw. No choking on his watch, hmm? Nathan let him get away with that much. Each holding onto the other, they formed a closed circuit. An ouroboros on the mountain.

Against his cheek, Fitz’s fingertips tickled. Something in Nathan felt wild, free, unfettered. He hadn’t done this since college, but he didn’t have to think about it to remember how to tilt his head and push the bulk of cock sideways against his cheek, pressing his tongue to push it farther and let Fitz feel.

“God.” Fitz threw his head back. His hips shifted. Nathan knew what Fitz used to like best. Fitz wouldn’t push his luck now, but seven years ago he’d have cast his self-control aside and fucked Nathan’s mouth. Here and now, he held back. Good, Nathan thought. That meant Fitz understood they’d do this Nathan’s way or not at all.

Nathan closed his eyes and took Fitz deep again. Long, slow sucks, drawing this out for as long as he could. Not as messy as Fitz had been, cleaning up after himself with little licks.

The sun emerged fully from behind the last of the cloud cover and beat down on Nathan’s back, burning his nape and the gap where shirt and waist didn’t quite meet. He thought he felt Fitz watching that, staring at him, but not with focus.

Too soon, too little, but Nathan knew—remembered—the signs. He drew Fitz deep in one last hard suck, then pulled off to lash the fat, plum head with his tongue. With only the tip balanced on his lips, he looked up. At Fitz. Into the dark, wide circles of iris.

Fitz jack-knifed forward, a sound Nathan hadn’t heard before ripping its way out of him. He caught Fitz’s weight and let Fitz dig into his shoulders to stop him falling as he came, thick gouts Nathan let paint his lips and cheek and tongue.

Himself, he didn’t touch. He ached for it—desperate—but not now. He pushed Fitz’s hand aside when he would have tried to pull Nathan up and finish him off. I need that edge.

Fitz fought him, only briefly, before he sank back against the side of the vehicle and stared up at the sky. Careful of himself, Nathan stood. He pressed close to Fitz but no more than that. Not even kissing him, but only breathing the air that escaped Fitz’s lips.

Fitz’s tongue touched Nathan’s lips when he licked his own. He started to speak, then shook his head. Nathan could feel him regrouping, boiling it down to one question. Just one. “Are we good?”

He’d meant more than the moment. Nathan eased Fitz’s scrubs back up and tied the string. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t.” He licked the roof of his mouth, tasting Fitz instead of kissing him. “We should get back to work.”

Chapter Five

He might not have thought to—or wanted to—warn Fitz before they’d passed through this day together, but now Nathan laid his hand on Fitz’s shoulder without thinking. Fitz drew to an instant stop. On the surface, that was expectable. Shut-in patients had unique needs. A quick sit-rep was necessary.

But he let his hand linger, and Fitz’s skin was warm, firm, smooth beneath the cotton of his scrubs. His glance up was easy and fond.

Looking into the past. A mirror seven years hence.

Fitz’s eyebrows drew together. “Everything okay?”

“What?” Nathan had to shake his head. “No. Fine. This is Luz. Diabetic. Five years old. Her mother can’t drive and her father’s working up north.”

“Five-year-old diabetic,” Fitz mused. “Doesn’t like needles?”

“I brought earplugs.” Nathan touched his pocket. “She hated Ilse. I’m surprised we don’t already hear her screaming.”

“Yeah?” Fitz cocked his head. “Good thing I’m not Ilse.”

“You don’t think you can charm Luz too.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘charm’.” Fitz grinned. “But yeah. Watch me.”

* * * *

Ten minutes later, Fitz looked as though he wished he’d taken Nathan up on his offer of earplugs, but also as though he’d let both tympanic membranes rupture before he called surrender.

Well, no one could say he hadn’t been warned.

On the other hand…he wasn’t going anywhere. Now.

That wasn’t nothing.

If he tried, Nathan could almost understand why Fitz had ducked out. He could—if he half-closed his eyes—see the gap between the man Fitz could have become, and the man he was.

If he put aside all sense of self, and of old hurts stunned by cauterisation, he could almost accept Fitz’s reasons. That he’d done what he believed to be the right thing by leaving Nathan. Fitz had sacrificed their relationship in the short term in the hopes of long-term benefits. It was like giving necessary medicine to a child who hated needles. She didn’t understand now, but someday, it was to be hoped, she might.

Nathan shook his head. Think about that later. In the meantime, he laid a light hand on the mother’s shoulder. “I know it’s hard to watch this. Don’t worry. We’ll work some more on teaching you how as soon as we’re done. I promise. She’ll come around.”

“So little,” Luz’s mother said. She cried like her daughter, with great messy tears, even if hers were silent. “So little. How can I not hurt her?”

“That’s the point. We’re going to teach you how not to. Here, start with this. Sit down beside her. Let her on your lap. It’ll be okay.” Nathan guided her. Luz, little? Yes. Her mother? Also yes. She couldn’t be nineteen. Poor kid, both of them.

He could feel Fitz watching him through the whole of it. “Everything all right?” he asked, helping Luz scramble to the safety she recognised. Whew. Now he could prepare the insulin, such a minute dose…

In relative silence. Wait. What?

Nathan could only stare. Luz had climbed into her mother’s lap, yes, but she’d let Fitz take her hands and pat them together. He spoke in soft, fluent Spanish. Where had he learnt—? God, it hardly mattered. He needed to learn the language himself—could Fitz teach him? If nothing else, the magic words a doctor could use to calm a terrified child?

You sound like you’re planning on his sticking around.

Nathan gave himself a good hard shake. Think about it later. Scarlett O’Hara had that much right, anyway.

He crouched in front of Luz. “Okay, hon. Ready to give me your arm?”

She screamed, and would have carried on screaming if Fitz hadn’t distracted her. Fitz took her small right hand and showed her how to make a fist, and how to feign jabs at him. She didn’t mind that. She almost giggled.

“Almost got me that time. Make you a deal. If it hurts for more than one second—we’ll count—you can pop me one in the nose. Hard as you want. Promise,” Fitz said, pretending to bob and weave in defence against Luz’s right crosses while steadying her left arm for Nathan.

Nathan knew a cue. Thank God. And by God—the needle slipped in, plunger down, slowly, and out. Done, as quick as it could and should be done, with Luz’s mother staring as if Fitz were some sort of suspect but miraculous angel.

Luz nodded solemnly. “Promise.”

Fitz winked at Nathan. “Go ahead, then. See? The shot’s already finished. You’re a brave girl.”

Luz’s eyes rounding into an O of surprise—and her smile, small but growing—was one of the best things Nathan had seen in a while.

He glanced sideways at Fitz. Almost the best…

* * * *

Fitz checked the sky as they drove away from Luz and her mother. “Getting late. Anybody else to see to?”

“One more. She’s on our way.” Betty didn’t like to come out during the day, and the roads wouldn’t be safe at night, so they compromised.

He could have told Fitz about her. He wanted to. He wasn’t entirely sure why he didn’t.

Fitz hummed his assent with a note of curiosity, sharpening when he saw the crescent of wheel-rutted dirt by the side of the road. Foliage overgrew a fence so thickly that, Nathan knew, visibility was poor at best beyond the perimeter.

Nathan knew Fitz would still check it for himself, and he did, though not at the very edge of the gate. A few feet back. “We walk from here?”

“No. That we don’t.” Nathan rattled the fence lightly. Betty would hear. “She isn’t ill, as such. A couple of minor concerns. You’ll see.”

He would swear he saw Fitz make the connection. He was good. “Agoraphobic?”

“Life’s treated her hard. She doesn’t like people. It took me ages to get her to come to the fence.”

“How’d you manage it?”

“Patience.” Nathan waited. There’d be no point in announcing himself a second time. She’d come, or she wouldn’t. “And some more patience.”

“Lonely?”

“I think so.” He wondered what her house looked like, beyond the trees. “She doesn’t choose to be alone.”

“The phobia chose for her,” Fitz said.

Nathan nodded once. He lowered his voice to a bare whisper to keep private things private, though as good as Betty was at hiding, she might have been a foot away and he wouldn’t have known. “You’ve seen it before, then.”

“Few times. I wish I’d never seen it once.”

“I wish that about anyone who’s suffering.” Nathan offered Fitz a rueful half-smile without thinking, and saw it mirrored in him. He understood.

“But you do what you can, where you can,” Fitz said. He stepped back.

“What are you doing?”

Fitz held his ground at a respectful distance. “I told you, I’ve seen it before. She isn’t like Luz. She’s a grown woman, and if she doesn’t know me then I’ll scare her.”

“Not more than Ilse did when I made the mistake of bringing her,” Nathan admitted.

“I have got to at least see a picture of Ilse. She sounds like the love child of Meatloaf and a Valkyrie.”

“Not too wrong.” Nathan recalled Ilse’s face with a grimace. Sympathy had not been in her personal lexicon, or in her genetic makeup, but how many people willingly signed up for long days with low pay? “She was available. I made do.”

“Yeah, well. You’ve got a better nurse now,” Fitz said. He winked. Then, the cheeky brat, he lifted his chin to draw Nathan’s attention back to the fence and movement behind it. “She knows you, she trusts you. I’ve got your back, but I won’t scare her.”

The Fitz that Nathan remembered—and had seen for himself today, more than once—crowded in. He made people give way. Somewhere, somehow, he must have learnt when to stand down.

Fitz nodded in response to Nathan’s querying stare. He settled into place, smoothing his hair down and tugging his sleeves into neatness. Go on. If you need me, I’ll be here, said his stance.

Nathan pushed the thoughts aside to keep for later. “Betty?”

The small, thin woman crept to the fence, her feet bare but clean. She wasn’t so very old, perhaps in her late fifties. At a glance, Nathan thought she might be doing better. She’d combed her hair and her clothes looked clean. Still terrified by life. Her husband had known how to use his fists pretty well, leaving her nose crooked and her mouth set with a permanent downward droop from nerve damage.

He rustled his bag, letting the top of a file poke out. Fitz took his cue straight away, drawing back with a gentleman’s nod to Betty. Nathan crouched down. “Everything all right, Betty? I have your vitamins for you.” There was little else he could do for her, and he hated it. But he came every week. Twice a week, when possible.

She didn’t take the bag, peering past him instead. “I can see you. Who are you?”

Maybe he should have skipped the visit today. But…if Fitz were going to stay… If…

“Betty, this is my—this is Fitz. Fitz, this is Betty.” Nathan held his breath and prayed.

She ducked her head and mumbled to herself.

Nathan took a guess. “No, Ilse’s not coming back.”

She peeked up at Fitz.

Fitz stayed where he was, outside the radius of arm’s reach. “Ma’am.”

Nathan couldn’t be sure for all the shadows, but he thought he saw the tiniest hint of a smile tug at the undamaged corner of Betty’s mouth.

Fitz cleared his throat quietly, tucking the file away.

“I’ll come around again next week, Betty, all right?” Nathan said, though Betty had already begun retreating. He slid the pharmacy bag through the fence. She’d come back later. “I’ll bring you something from the bakery.”

She might have heard him, or might not have. Hard to tell.

“God,” Fitz said, watching her. “I’ve seen it before, but…”

“I know.”

Silence lingered, dividing them though they stood together.

Don’t ask me why I care. He was Fitz. He’d already know, or be able to guess. I come because I’ve always thought that could be me, someday. But now?

“You should bring her a puppy,” Fitz said, very casually. “One of Gibson’s hounds just whelped a litter. Did you notice?”

“I didn’t.”

“Maybe when they’re old enough. It’d help.”

“If you think you could talk him into letting one of his dogs go… I don’t know. Maybe.” Nathan cocked his head. “Help? How so?”

Fitz gave him an odd look. Or perhaps it wasn’t so odd after all. “Everyone needs something to love.” He tucked his hands into his pockets, his shoulders rounding forward. “Sometimes I wondered, you know? If that could be me some day.” A lock of hair fell across his forehead. “Let’s get back before the sun’s down.”

Nathan’s throat felt strange. Dry. “Let’s.”

He’d turned to go, gravel crunching beneath his heel, when the foliage behind the fence rustled and bent. “Wait,” Betty said.

Nathan stopped, hand out to guide Fitz, though Fitz didn’t need it. He’d paused in his pace half a beat before Nathan himself.

“Here.” Betty thrust something through the fence. Nathan didn’t recognise them at first, caked in earth. “Carrots,” she said. “Do you like carrots?”

Actually, he did. They must have been from her garden. But she couldn’t share with him. Betty was barely at a healthy weight as she stood. She needed all she could get. Better to say no. Thanks but no—

Fitz settled more firmly on his heels at Nathan’s side.

Be grateful for the small gifts. It wasn’t bad advice.

“Thank you, Betty.” He took the gift from her, patting off the dirt. Late winter carrots, palest of orange. The outer ring would be sweet, the core almost astringent. “I do like these. What made you think of them?”

Fitz’s warmth pressed a little closer to his side. Almost ridiculously nice, that sensation.

Betty shuffled her bare feet in a pile of fallen leaves. Was she hiding a tiny smile? “Don’t know.”

Impulse moved Nathan to dust the largest of the small bunch off on his sleeve. He bit off the tip and tasted the dustiness of earth, but beneath that a flavour much sweeter than he’d expected. “They’re good. Thank you,” he said, swallowing down the mouthful. “We’ll see you soon.”

Fitz had shifted, slightly, when Nathan had said ‘we’. But he didn’t make mention of it. Yet.

Chapter Six

And before Nathan knew it, they were back home again. He was home, that was. Fitz came along for the ride, his permanent destination still undecided by Nathan.

Nathan couldn’t shut out his awareness of Fitz beside him, taking up more than his share of room in the Jeep and humming a song Luz had very seriously taught him. When he parked the vehicle in front of his home, he gestured to indicate Fitz should hop out first. Fitz obeyed without question for once and began to stretch his legs.

Nathan sat behind the wheel for a long moment, tapping the old leather, before he followed.

He found Fitz waiting for him not far away at all. Just around the bend of the vehicle.

“So,” Fitz said, leaning on the tailgate, legs crossed at the ankle, hands locked behind his head. A ridiculous pose. He still made it work.

The Fitz that Nathan had known and this Fitz transposed themselves, one over the other, past and present, in Nathan’s mind. Old Fitz and New Fitz—both meant every bit of the cheeky cockiness. New Fitz wasn’t quite as good at concealing how it was meant to hide a hint of vulnerability.

Fitz unfolded himself. “You look like you’ve got a headache.”

“I do,” Nathan said, honestly. “I’m still trying to figure you out.”

Fitz frowned and gestured at his body, up and down. “What you see is what you get.”

Nathan lingered at collarbone level, at the pendant Fitz wore. Even as he watched, Fitz reached for the smooth, river-washed touchstone. “I’m not sure about that,” he said.

He thought Fitz might misunderstand that. Not difficult, seeing as Nathan wasn’t too sure himself. He might not be a master at understanding fleeting complexities of expression, but it didn’t take a genius to recognise the quick progression of doubt, dismay and bravado—then a second go-round, this time with new consideration as what he saw sank in.

Fitz’s grin hinted at making a reappearance. “So? Did I pass the tests you set me up for today?”

Aha. Busted. Nathan’s lips twitched, wanting to curl up. “They were all scheduled for today. I’m not good enough to set up a battlefield run at the literal last second.”

“But…?” Fitz prompted.

“If you need to ask, you’re not as good as you say you are.”

“As good as you think I am,” Fitz said—not asked—relaxing almost fully.

Nathan watched him uncoil like a contented cat, and shook his head minutely in amazement. “How do you do that?”

Fitz’s eyebrow went up. “Mmm?”

“Something a friend of mine said earlier,” Nathan replied. Chelle’s teasing echoed in his mind’s ear. It shouldn’t be this easy, or this natural to stand in his drive with Fitz. As if this were just another day in a string of days, comfortable from long habit yet not boring. With Fitz, never boring.

You need a wife, doesn’t have to be a woman, better if it’s a nurse.

Fitz watched Nathan think. Still idle himself, but in a contented sort of way. Almost purring. “So…?” he said, casting the ball of yarn he’d been toying with—conversationally speaking—Nathan’s way. “Your practice. Mostly kids and senior citizens?”

“Mostly. It’s not ideal.”

“What is?” Fitz shrugged.

“I meant, it’s not as exciting as a hospital job,” Nathan said, with the odd sensation that he was probing at some sort of lock with what might or might not be the right key. “Or Haiti. Or a big city. Everything you’ve done up until now. I like the quiet life, and I like my patients. Apparently I’m not good at telling when they hated a nurse, but I think I’ve figured out how to discern when they like one. But yes. Mostly the very old, and the very young, and very little excitement. We don’t even have a Wal-Mart within fifteen miles.”

Fitz watched him, intent, head tilted in that odd way of his. He wrapped his hand around the stone pendant and pulled, deep in thought.

That was all New Fitz, taking his time to think before he spoke.

New Nathan—he could be new, too, if he wanted—waited for him. Or maybe that was Interim Nathan, coming to the last of his waiting.

“I should hate you,” he said. “Why don’t I? That’s what I really don’t get.”

Fitz cut him an odd look, but didn’t answer that one. Yet, Nathan figured. Instead, he toed at a few loose pieces of driveway gravel. “Seniors tell the best stories,” he said, as if feeling his way through the words. “So do kids. I mean, they’ve either done it all or they have it all still to come. It’s the best of both worlds.”

“Huh.” Nathan rolled that one over. “Funny. I never looked at it that way.”

Fitz winked at him, a flash of cheekiness. “I’m good for something after all. Who knew?”

Nathan smoothed his hand over his lips. Sense memory reminded him, abruptly, sharply, with an all-too-familiar tug of heat in his gut, of what Fitz’s mouth felt like to the touch, soft and sleek, open, wet, yielding… He cleared his throat. “I didn’t say that. Don’t get a swollen head.”

Oh, he could have chosen his words more carefully, couldn’t he? Fitz didn’t play about with this kind of golden opportunity. Nor did he fail to deliver a glimpse of deliberately ill-concealed dark desire from beneath his lashes, looking up at Nathan. “Too late. And way too easy.”

Nathan hesitated. His body wanted him closer. Now. “Yeah. That’s what I’ve been thinking since you knocked on my door.”

“Ah.” Fitz tugged at his necklace and bit at his lip.

“At least in part,” Nathan clarified, though he wasn’t sure why.

“Not a little part.” Fitz couldn’t hold back, even now. He glanced pointedly downward. “Not even a little bit little.”

Nathan felt his face warm up, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t at least try to return fire. He met Fitz’s gaze and held it. “You didn’t answer me before,” he said. “About it being easy. And why it is. And why I don’t… Seven years, Fitz. That’s a long time.”

Fitz tugged at the pendant string before offering up a too-casual shrug. “Not that I haven’t already, but I think I’ll try honesty.”

Nathan resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Just. Not in frustration. More fondness. Nostalgia? Perhaps. “Oh, will you?”

“Yep.” Fitz popped the word like cracking gum. “Ever notice how being honest has more impact than telling lies? People say they want the truth—”

Nathan snorted. “I think I see where you’re going with this. Jack Nicholson did it better.”

“Wrong. You can handle the truth. You don’t like to—sometimes—but you can take what gets dished.” Fitz raised one shoulder. “Most people can’t. It’s one of the things I learnt. And one of the things I always liked about you. But yeah.” He pushed himself off the tailgate and towards Nathan in a light, loose drawl of a gait, giving him plenty of time to get away if he chose to.

He didn’t.

Maybe that made him a fool. But what was that people said about being fools for love?

Nathan couldn’t remember the exact quote, but he could feel it, down to his bones, when Fitz brushed the back of his hand against Nathan’s cheek. “You want to know? Really want to know why it’s ‘easy’, why you can’t hold on to that grudge you were hell-bent on?”

Nathan caught and covered Fitz’s hand with his own. “And how you knew I wouldn’t. You did know that, or you wouldn’t have come.”

“Ah.” Fitz touched his fingertip to Nathan’s temple. “Smart, too. Always liked that as well. Okay. Let’s see you handle the truth, and you can. I know you can.”

“I might have changed since you and I last saw each other.”

“You have. I did. We’re still the same us. And before you say it, I know. That brings us right back around to where we started.” He twirled a finger, sketching a spiral in mid-air. “You don’t hate me because you were waiting for me to come home. Same as I was waiting to come home. And now I’m here, if you’ll let me be.”

He took his hand away and stepped back, his meaning clear. Choose. Choose now, and better think fast, Doc. He’s waiting.

Nathan wasn’t unappreciative of the irony, really he wasn’t.

It didn’t help—or did it?—that Fitz looked for all the world as though he understood, and as though—no lies, no tricks—should Nathan choose no over yes, he’d accept that and walk away, and—

No. God, no.

He licked his lips. Watching Fitz watch him. Breath caught in Fitz’s throat. “You’ll abide by what I decide?”

Fitz inclined his head once, just once. Waiting. On the knife’s edge.

Look at him. His hands. The knuckles are white. He’ll make his mouth bleed soon if he doesn’t give up biting his cheek.

“Answer one question first,” Nathan said. He half smiled. “Honestly.”

“Even if the truth hurts?”

Nathan didn’t think it would, but even if… “Yes.” He refused to close his eyes, no matter how much easier it might make the asking.

One. Two. Three. Out with it.

“If I told you to go, would you?”

Fitz’s face… Put it this way—Nathan had seen parents lose their children. He’d seen men old enough to be his father losing their fathers. He saw that in Fitz now. “Yes,” Fitz said.

Nathan nodded. “If I asked you to stay, would you leave again someday? Because I couldn’t take that, Fitz. Not again.”

He’d seen grief, true. But he’d also seen children born. Not many. He’d seen them put in their grandparents’ arms, wrapped around in blankets and in warm, wrinkled promises to be loved for the rest of their lives, however long that life might be. That was what he saw in Fitz now.

The silence stretched on.

“Answer me,” Nathan said, prompting as gently as he could. Quietly, so he wouldn’t lose his balance on the ground shifting beneath his feet. It’d settle, with the right answer. He thought he knew, but he needed to be sure, he needed that, and—

“I’ve missed you every day,” Fitz said, meeting his eyes. He held his necklace as if it were a lifeline. “Every damn day, Nathan. And every night. I was even—there wasn’t anyone else. Not in all those years. I tried, but they weren’t you, and they went home disappointed.”

Breath escaped Nathan in a rushing sigh.

The string, far too abused, gave way and tumbled the stone pendant into Fitz’s palm. Fitz flinched at the tiny snap of sound, holding his palm open wide with the small rock in the middle.

He knew, now.

He was doubtful his friends, or his family would get it. There’d be questions to answer and noses wrinkled over his being gulled again, but they’d learn in time. Because he would show them, and so would Fitz.

Nathan crossed the distance between them, and closed Fitz’s hand around the necklace. “Just because something’s broken doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed.” He lifted Fitz’s chin, hoping he had this right. “Or worked into something new. Better than before.”

He wasn’t certain. Not before his lips touched Fitz’s, and Fitz’s his.

The hell with common sense and the way things should be. They’d made for cold bedfellows all these years, and he had a lot of catching up to do.

Fitz had always kissed like he meant it. Now, so did Nathan. He took Fitz by storm. If he was giving in, it’d be all the way.

And if Fitz’s reaction was anything to go by, he’d made the right choice.

The only choice.

Fitz took the game and turned it on Nathan straight away. Good. Better. Best. As it should be. Fuck the rules. Fuck me.

Fitz’s tongue slid deep in Nathan’s mouth, slick and twisting. He remembered what Nathan liked, and oh, so clever, picked up on what he’d learnt to like more. Same, but different. Rough and dirty. Only gentle enough to give a peek at his heart.

It was the heart that brought Nathan back, body and mind. He pushed as hard as Fitz, clashing against him, forcing his mouth wider open, pushing him to take more and still more, knowing he loved it.

Mouth open, drinking in the power that came from such an amazing kiss, Nathan rolled his hips, pressing and pushing against Fitz. No quick suck job this time.

Fitz chuckled, low and deep. “That’s what you want?”

“Can’t tell me it hasn’t been long enough.” Nathan snaked his hand between them. “Can’t tell me you don’t want that too.” He thrust his thigh between Fitz’s, grinding. God, he could smell them, both of them, and, while it wasn’t better than the feel of Fitz, it wasn’t a far distant second. Must have hit Fitz the same way. He groaned into the kiss and began to grasp at Nathan more than a little wildly. Buttons flew, and there was no caution in how he handled Nathan’s zipper this time around.

Better than the best.

Nathan laughed when Fitz swore, his hands shaking worse than old Gibson’s, his lips puffy and red from kissing. “Help a guy out here. Get these off. Want my hands on you. Now.”

“Do you?” Nathan turned, presented his back to Fitz, and gave his shoulders a lazy, sexy roll. “Then get to it.”

Fitz swore again, fit to impress a sailor, but it helped. He managed to ease Nathan’s shirt off—just. Nathan took a bit of pity on the man and his hands, clumsy now only from eagerness, and toed off his shoes and socks before Fitz reached them and had a nuclear meltdown. Jeans next, and boxers with a frustrated curse of his own.

God, he’d missed this. Knowing Fitz was crazy because of him, for him.

“Turn around,” Fitz rasped. “Let me see you.”

“I’ll do you one better…” Nathan glanced over his shoulder at Fitz. Time to take this to the next level. He stepped away, though he missed Fitz’s body heat immediately, and kept walking. “If you follow me to the bedroom and do me right.”

“Holy mother of God,” Fitz breathed.

Nathan kept walking, though he wasn’t entirely sure his feet touched the ground.

Fitz followed him. Every step of the way.

Perhaps a tad faster than expected. Nathan almost figured out what was going to happen, but not in time to stop Fitz tackling him, heaving him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

He slapped Nathan’s ass before Nathan could squawk. “You were moving too slow,” he said. “C’mon. Let’s run.”

Nursing wasn’t all Fitz must have done during his time away. Jesus. He carried Nathan as if Nathan weighed no more than a feather. Smart as ever, Fitz made straight for the bedroom door. He tossed Nathan on the bed, half scrambling his brains, but not for long. Fitz wasn’t the only one who’d grown into surety over the years.

Nathan stretched his arms over his head to catch hold of the headboard slats and watched Fitz pull to a stop as though someone had slapped him in the chest with a bat. Took his breath away in the same fashion.

He rippled with pleasure at the sight of Fitz standing stock-still with surprise and took control of himself quickly, spreading out for Fitz’s inspection. Naked, the room was too cold, but Fitz’s presence heated him past boiling. The air tasted of the smell of them combined. His chest rose and fell with each breath, his nipples were furled into hard nubs, legs parted and cock exposed for Fitz’s pleasure.

And it had the effect he wanted. “I could eat you up,” Fitz rasped.

Nathan lowered his eyelids. “What’s stopping you?”

“These.” He tugged at the collar of his scrubs.

“Mmm.” Nathan arched, raising his hips a little. “Then what do you say you get rid of those, and come nail me to the bed?”

He’d surprised Fitz again. Nathan laughed, even when Fitz scowled daggers at him. “I might have passed up being pissed off, or piqued, or slamming a door on you,” he said, rolling to prop himself on one elbow. “That doesn’t mean you get a free pass on teasing. I liked that best. Almost best. Once upon a time.”

Fitz’s lips parted over his white teeth. A knowing grin, with heat in his gaze that burned where it glanced over Nathan. “And some things never change?” he asked in deliberate echo.

Nathan still had the pendant in his palm.

He remembered one last thing—the day he’d bought the trinket for Fitz, and put it around his neck. Clumsy with youth, that promise, and yet in his way Fitz had kept to that word all these years.

Until he’d come back home.

Nathan stretched out to drop both necklace and cord on the bedside table. Rolled to his back again. Waiting. Offering. In the end, it was easy. “They can stay here,” he said. “So can you. No more waiting.” He reached for his cock as a measure of last resort. “Or do you want me to start without you?”

Fitz’s eyes gleamed at that. “Someday, hell yes, oh yes. I want to watch you—”

“But tonight, I want you to touch me. Move.”

Fitz might as well have been a creature made of fire and flame. He growled, deep in his throat. If scrubs were as easily torn as they both wished at that moment, it would have taken far less than the interminable minute required before Fitz was naked, climbing atop him, grinding against him, finally.

“For you,” Nathan said, his voice sounding low and raw as unbrushed silk in his ears, using one of Fitz’s tricks against him and guiding Fitz’s hand tight around his cock. Not difficult to tell Fitz appreciated both. “All of it. Yours.”

Fitz withdrew his hand and brought it to his mouth, licking his fingertips. He twined his tongue around one and grinned at Nathan, daring him, urging him on. “Better put it to good use, then.”

Slick fingers, slippery with lube. A condom packet, its cellophane crinkle somehow obscene enough to make both hiss and hold their breath, their bodies still.

Nathan took hold, raking his short-clipped nails up Fitz’s back. Stopping him before he pressed inside.

“One more request.”

The fierce press of Fitz’s mouth would leave him bruised. Wonderful. “Anything,” he said. “Fuck, I can’t believe I’m here. You want something? It’s yours.”

“The truth,” Nathan said, enjoying this too much. Or just enough. Hard to say.

Fitz gritted his teeth. His cock strained towards Nathan, and it took all of Nathan’s control not to simply let him in. “Are you mine?” he asked instead. “I mean that. It matters. Are you?”

“God.” Fitz pressed his forehead to Nathan’s. “I never stopped.”

“Right answer.” Nathan nipped at Fitz’s chin. “Roll over, and let me ride you.”

Fitz’s teeth flashed in a savage smile, and he wasn’t slow to obey. Nathan was taller, and leaner, but though doing it this way was work, dear God was it worth the effort.

And it seemed right, to start this way.

“Hold on,” Fitz ordered, hands tight on Nathan’s hips. Biting his lip at the touch of Nathan’s hand guiding him into place. Positioning Nathan’s body over his cock, and beginning the first deep push inside.

Nathan moaned as Fitz’s cock ploughed into him. He only stopped when Nathan rested fully on him, his cock entirely inside. “We fit just right. Made to match. Never forgot that either,” Fitz said between breaths sharp and short as shards of crystal. “Take all of me.”

“And more,” Nathan said, rocking slightly back and forth, making Fitz groan, and grasp his hips more tightly still. He’d have bruises, and he’d cherish each and every one of them. “Shut up and fuck me, Fitz. Fuck me hard.”

Every now and then Fitz could take orders.

Nathan could hear himself, babbling on. He couldn’t have stopped or censored himself even if he’d wanted. “Yes, oh, fuck yes, that’s the way. Good, good. Oh, God, good. There. Harder. More—”

He got his wish. Oh. How he’d done without this… Mad as it might be, how could he have considered turning down a second chance?

Look at him. Who could blame me for wanting that? He touched Fitz’s chin, lifting it to meet his stare through the haze of sweat-damp hair hanging over his eyes, the blurriness of focus that came of his mind being as well occupied as his body. Occupied like Normandy, Jesus. Wanting that. Wanting him.

Recognition kindled in Fitz. One nod, then, oh then, the game was on. Nathan shouted, discovering his throat already raw and fiercely glad of it. That was Fitz. No difficulty too great or small to work his way around. Thank God. He angled them so that he hit Nathan’s sweet spot on every stroke.

Nathan caught Fitz’s arms and held them for balance. It was all his turn now. To ride. To bear down. To grind his hips, and—

To surprise himself by coming, his orgasm punching its way out of him. His body took over, leaving him a distant observer, but feeling every last ripple and shiver of muscle. As his muscles quaked around Fitz’s cock, Fitz threw his head back and shouted his name.

Somehow—Nathan wasn’t sure how, and was certain he wouldn’t have had the presence of mind himself—Fitz held Nathan upright until both of them had finished, both shaking with the aftershocks of climax. He took care in separating their bodies, in tying off the condom, and in casting it aside to be taken care of properly later.

Then collapsing as if his strings had been cut.

That, Nathan had expected.

The next, he had not. Fitz’s shoulders shook, and it took Nathan a moment to understand why.

“Something had really better be actually funny,” he muttered, cuffing Fitz lightly on the ear.

Fitz looked up. Well fucked, a mess from top to toe, beard burned and not in the least bit repentant. Blazing with joy. Alight with mischief. Warm with relief.

He jabbed Nathan in the soft spot between ribs and hip, not hard. “I never did get a straight answer from you. Do I have the job?”

Nathan considered his response. For about five seconds.

He figured Fitz knew what he meant, and how he meant it, when he whipped the pillow out from beneath the man’s head and pressed it over Fitz’s face. Fitz batted it away and came up delighted.

“What do you think?” He tweaked Nathan’s nose. “For good? Not part-time. Not temping.”

“For good,” Nathan said, stretching out the length of his body.

“Then come back here and kiss me again. We’ve got years to make up for.”

And that was Fitz. When the man was right, well, he was right all the way, and yes, just like Nathan had thought not too long ago at all—even when he shouldn’t, Fitz had found a way.

He’d won.

Nathan? He wouldn’t be complaining.

Epilogue

The rattling at his front door woke Nathan far too early on Sunday morning. Of course, on his one day off, any time before noon was too early. More so when Fitz shared the space with him, splayed out in a loose sprawl with what seemed like more arms and legs than he should have wound around Nathan, radiating the warmth of a coal fire. Mmm. That’d be nice on winter mornings in the mountains…

A hard, determined rat-a-tat-tat startled Nathan out of the doze he’d slipped into. He cracked one eye open and squinted at his bedside clock. Nine a.m..

He groaned and yanked the covers over his head. “Day. Off,” he muttered.

The caller added a rhythm to their knocking. “I have coffee,” a woman called. “I also have a key, and I know how to use it.”

He hadn’t realised Fitz was awake until the man laughed quietly and burrowed his head against Nathan’s shoulders. “Let me guess. Chelle?”

Nathan scooted backward, pressing himself closer to Fitz. “God, she’s sadistic.”

“Sounds like.” Fitz had heard all there was to hear about his colleague, and then some. Only fair, since she’d heard years of tales about him. “Better let her in.”

“Nope. Five more minutes.” Nathan attempted to bury his head under the pillow.

Fitz pinched his ass, laughed at Nathan’s yelp, and added a light slap by way of a bonus. “Uh-uh. Go take care of her. I call the first shower.”

“That’s a change.” Nathan gave up on the idea of sleep and turned, then raised himself to rest on one arm, looking down at Fitz and his unrepentant grin. He drew his thumb across the plush fullness of Fitz’s lip.

Something of what he was thinking must have betrayed itself on his face. Fitz frowned. “What?”

“Nothing bad.” Nathan bent to brush his mouth over those lips. “Just thinking that the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Fitz’s good humour eased back in, slacking off the tension. “Not a bad thing, is it?”

“Not at all.”

Nathan had occupied himself kissing Fitz for a third time—the goal being to lose count—when he heard the thunk, jingle and crash of Chelle’s monster keychain with dozens of tags and toggles. “Shit!”

Fitz chortled as they tumbled apart, bedclothes flying. “Told you.”

“Yes, you’re very smart.” Nathan cast about for a pair of jeans before remembering a folded stack in a wicker basket by the door. Clean, still smelling of dryer sheets. He stumbled his way in, tripping as he caught his feet. He hesitated. This, they’d talked about. At great length. “You know she’ll want to—”

“I know a lot of people are going to want to.” Fitz rolled his shoulders. “Go. We’ll see it through.”

Nathan drew his lip between his teeth and bit before nodding, decided. Fitz might not look quite as happy as before, but he was no less determined. If you looked at how far determination had taken him… Well, Chelle might still be a challenge, but he thought Fitz could take her.

Nathan took pleasure in sauntering out with a clean shirt in hand—Fitz and the laundry basket again—and his hair finger-combed into a semblance of order. Chelle left off gaping at the house to stare at him. “What happened?”

“Hmm?” Nathan pretended to glance around. “Looks the same to me.”

“Not close.” Chelle held a cardboard cup, clearly forgotten, in a grip just shy of being loose enough to drop and spill. “You cleaned. Put your laundry away. Dusted. There’s fruit in a basket.”

Nathan had never had much of a poker face. He didn’t bother trying to maintain a façade now, enjoying her surprise too much. “What? Weren’t you reading me the riot act about this on your way out of town?”

She snorted. “Yeah. I told you that you should get a wife, not Martha Stewart.”

Oh Lord. If ever there was a straight line Fitz wouldn’t be able to resist…

Fitz sauntered around the corner. He’d been listening, the sneak. “I’m much prettier than Martha.”

Called it, Nathan thought, amused.

“Yes, you are, Arthur,” she replied, still blank with surprise but quick of wit as ever, and her shock fading fast. “Mike Smith, I presume?” She put her purse down and crossed her arms. “I wondered.”

“If you had money on it, you win.” His partner—past and present—didn’t let Nathan down. “Also known as Fitz.”

Chelle’s lips formed a thin line.

Fitz waited, a shock of coiled tension at Nathan’s side.

“I’ve heard of you,” Chelle finally said.

“I imagine you have.”

“Chelle—” Nathan tried to interject.

“Nathan, stay out of this.” Chelle put her fists on her hips and gave Fitz an up-and-down, like scraping porcupine quills off a hide. Harsh, unforgiving—until she reached the pendant. There, she lingered, the hard line of her mouth softening and her lips parting. “Well.”

Fitz inclined his head to her.

Chelle glanced up, assessing Nathan in some feminine way he didn’t understand and was fairly certain he didn’t want to. She lingered long enough to make him fidget, and to draw Fitz closer with an arm around his waist.

“Hmm,” Chelle vocalised. She nodded. “All right, then.”

Wait. What? Nathan shouldered forward. “That’s it?”

Chelle cocked an eyebrow. “It shouldn’t be?”

“No—I mean, yes—” Nathan stopped. “Seriously. I did expect more. You’re the one who’s been telling me to—”

Chelle sighed. “Yes, I did tell you to get over him. Because you never did. Since that wasn’t going to happen, the next best thing would be his pulling his head out of his ass and getting back where he belongs. Here he is. And now there’s someone else around to knock sense into your head.” She rounded on Fitz. “But just so we’re clear? If you ever leave him again, I’ll run you down.”

“Do not fuck with strong women. Duly noted, and yes, ma’am.” Fitz bowed to her.

Chelle could recognise bait when she saw it. “Don’t call them ma’am either, until they’re June’s age,” she informed him, nibbling at the lure with all of them well aware of her play.

Nathan relaxed, tension once so familiar he hadn’t been aware of flowing away like melt-water. Fitz’s grin cracked the last of the ice. “Oh, I think I like you.”

“Jury’s still out on you,” she said. Though it wasn’t, and Nathan thought they all knew it. “You certainly took your sweet effing time.”

“Just enough time,” Nathan said. “It takes time. Sometimes.”

Chelle rolled her eyes at Fitz, inviting him to join in. “Eloquent, isn’t he?”

Fitz cocked his head, the old and the new overlaying one another. “He has his moments.”

“I’ll bet he does.” Chelle dropped a sheaf of papers, unnoticed before, on Nathan’s newly de-cluttered dining table. “Since I am a good, good person, I stopped by the med supply store as promised to get your weekly order. Prices go up, prices go down, and I had to make some substitutions.” She made a small, pleased sound. “I suppose I won’t have to see to this from now on. Come here, Fitz. I’ll walk you through it and you can start proving yourself by carrying everything inside.”

If there was one thing Fitz could do, it was prove himself.

Nathan knew Fitz knew he thought that, too. Fitz made it all easy. Or made it look easy. It just took practice.

Chelle didn’t miss a beat. Her smile softened, becoming more natural. No doubt she’d give Fitz righteous hell for weeks to come, but Nathan had a good feeling about the outcome.

He liked that. It’d been too long.

“You expect me to clean and to hump boxes?” Fitz raised an eyebrow. “I’ll do it, but I’ll take it out in trade on him.”

“Like he’d complain.” Chelle chuckled. “God, you really did get a wife, didn’t you?”

“Chelle—”

They ignored Nathan. He’d probably have a fair amount of that to deal with, too. It seemed no less fine to him.

“Sticks and stones,” Fitz said. “But you should be aware that I usually top.”

Okay, some things couldn’t be allowed to pass. Nathan dealt him a slap in payback and trade…and affection. “You switching liar.”

Fitz groaned. “In case no one’s ever told you, puns are never funny.”

“Yes, they are.” He silenced Fitz with a kiss that tasted of spearmint and a trace of sleep.

Behind him, Chelle stood shaking her head. “Good Lord.” She raised her paper cup. “To Ilse, wherever she is right now. May she stay there.”

“So say we all.” Fitz stole back his kiss and borrowed a nip into the bargain. “So, we have work to do?” He looked, for a moment, as bright and eager as the boy he might have been instead of the man he was, though Nathan loved the reality then no less than the reality now. Still. He wouldn’t mind seeing more.

“Work? You haven’t seen work yet.” He took Fitz’s hand and led him towards the table where Chelle had spread out lists and invoices. “Welcome to the country life. No rest for the wicked. Did I forget to mention?”

Fitz nudged him companionably. “You did, but don’t worry. I’ve got no problem with that, and I’ll remember what you need.”

Yes. He would. “Good.” Nathan drew in a clean breath of fine morning air. The weather had turned clear and cool, with neither rain nor ill winds on the way. A good day for smooth travels, with Fitz by his side. “Now. Starting Monday, we’ll take a route opposite the one we drove on Friday…”

Also available from Total-E-Bound Publishing:

Kingsoak

Willa Okati

Excerpt

Chapter One

“Hello there, handsome. What’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?”

Matthew looked up from his intricate work buckling the multiple small latches of the complicated weave of his  leather bracelets. He ran his fingers over the inscribed designs, the leather dark against his fair skin, contrasting with the sprays of freckles on his slim arm .  The bedroom light shone warm and golden as it fell across the doorway and illuminated his lover Gale, who leaned on his forearm against the door frame, his hip cocked. Edible, and he knows it, too.

Matthew’s cock twitched, interested. Of course, Gale had always had that effect on him. He knew what Gale was up to, employing his charms now, of course. He and Gale were meant to meet up with some pals, Horatio among others, sink a few bottles of beer and laze about in good company. Matthew knew Gale had no objections of a good time on the town, but would love nothing better than to walk in half an hour late with a love bite darkening into a bruise on his neck and his hair still mussed from sex, fucked to within an inch of his life and displaying the proof like peacock feathers.

Point required point. Matthew arched an eyebrow at Gale and returned his attention to his bracelet, hiding a smile. After a suitable span of time spent making Gale wait for it, Matthew cleared his throat. “So a nun, a wrestler and a flamer walk into a bar —”

“Oh, you think you’re funny, do you?” Gale pushed away from the doorway and pounced on Matthew at the end of his nimble stretch, wrapping Matthew up in his arms and nuzzling at his throat. Gale had magnificent arms, strong and flexible, and once they latched on they’d never let go until their owner had had his way.

Matthew decided he didn’t mind a bit. He surrendered with a small, happy moan, letting Gale push him against the dresser. Gale knocked Matthew’s legs further apart with his knee, and inserted one taut thigh between both of Matthew’s. He leaned his weight forward and, not incidentally, discovered how much Matthew didn’t mind. “Happy to see me, sailor?” Gale inquired wickedly, rocking his thigh up and across the firmness of Matthew’s rising erection. “Want to buy me a drink?”

Matthew twined his arms around Gale’s neck and carded his fingers through Gale’s hair, tugging at the short spikes. “I’d planned on it. Someone said something about going out for beer with the guys tonight.”

“The guys,” Gale informed him, reaching for the hem of Matthew’s light sweater, “can damn well wait, and they will, too, if they know what’s good for them.”

“When your cock speaks, everyone listens, hmm?”

“Don’t try to be poetic, love, it doesn’t suit you.” Gale pushed his hand beneath the sweater and splayed his cool fingers out over Matthew’s stomach, which contracted  from the chill. Matthew hissed, pushing up into the touch, wanting more. His swelling cock bumped firmly into Gale’s. His head fell back, exposing his throat.

Gale immediately seized upon the vulnerable spot. “Mmm, you smell good,” he murmured, delicately licking a path up the line of Matthew’s neck and biting the shell of his ear. “Wonder if you taste as good?” he queried upon reaching Matthew’s mouth. He took a brief taste, tongue flickering over Matthew’s lips, and hummed in satisfaction. “I see you do.”

Matthew’s breath had already grown ragged with arousal, but he had presence of mind enough to grab Gale’s hand and move it away from his chest, then to draw it slowly and inexorably down to rest over his groin,  moulding Gale’s fingers around his swollen cock.

Gale tilted his head, the very devil’s gleam in his eye, and massaged the hardness filling his palm. “Someone’s horny.”

“Someone is,” Matthew replied, brazen, bucking into Gale’s hand. “Are you going to do anything about it?”

Gale looked first impressed, then proud. He kissed Matthew fast and hard, breaking away to approve of him in his low, sexual purr. “Every inch of you a proper man,” he murmured, “And every inch of that is mine, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Matthew tugged at Gale’s hair. “All yours.”

“That’s what I like to hear.” Gale rewarded Matthew by snapping open the button fly of Matthew’s jeans. He tickled underneath each button as he opened it, his pace irritatingly slow. He loved to make Matthew break and beg for it, and he was extremely skilled at driving Matthew to that breaking point every single time. Maddening, amazing man.

“What do you want, love?” Gale asked, biting the shell of Matthew’s ear. “You have to say it.”

Matthew rolled his hips. “What do you think?”

“Ah-ah-ah.” Gale dragged the rough callus of his thumb over the slickness at the head of Matthew’s cock. Matthew drew together enough self-awareness to look down, greedy for the sight of his engorged purple flesh slipping through Gale’s hand, Gale jacking him slowly, teasing him with not enough but the promise of more. “God, that’s hot,” he hissed.

“If you want more…” Gale goaded.

“I want more.” Matthew gave in without a qualm, not in the mood to wait or spin out the game. He wrapped his hand around Gale’s, lacing their fingers together as he groaned, infatuated with the doubled pressure and the roughness of Gale’s skin compared to his.

He reached for Gale next, burning with the urge to get Gale’s cock in his own hand. To weigh the heaviness in his palm and measure the length with his fingers. Or to taste. His mouth watered, anticipating the flavour. “How about I suck you off?” Matthew suggested, his eyelids too heavy to keep fully open and his lips parted after the words rolled away from them.

Gale chuckled, proud of himself, and rightly so. “Not worrying about being late anymore?”

“Not at all.” Matthew jerked open Gale’s jeans and pushed his hand inside. “What do I want? I want you to fuck me.”

Gale stopped abruptly, breathless for a moment. “You never stop surprising me,” he said, awed. “All right, then, love.” He squeezed, then slapped Matthew’s ass. “Assume the position.”

“Ever the romantic.”

“You’ve no reason to complain in that department. Hush now, and do as I say.” Gale lowered his face to Matthew’s shoulder, bit the rounded cap, then withdrew his hands and seized Matthew, turning him around.

Matthew gladly let himself be manhandled and slapped his hands down on the dresser. “Like this?” he asked, struggling for words.

Cool air hit Matthew’s ass as Gale dragged his jeans down. “Exactly like that,” Gale approved. “This is the way lovers ought to be.”

And to think, Matthew reminded himself, hissing with the pleasure of Gale’s forefinger circling his nether opening, I almost threw it all away…

* * * *

One Year Earlier

Nine times out of ten, Matthew would openly admit he didn’t know anything about cars. He’d missed the auto mechanic gene somewhere along the way. He didn’t mind being ignorant if it meant he had to take his car to Tony’s, where he could read a newspaper on a hard plastic chair and chat with the guys in the engine bays, entertaining fantasies about hard-muscled backs and taut asses flexing under coveralls, or hands smeared with grease and rough from hard work gliding over his naked body.

The same nine times out of ten, Matthew didn’t mind his car ignorance. Right now, he couldn’t deny that the rattle-rattle-clunk-clank-wheeze his engine emitted didn’t sound good, and for once in his life he gritted his teeth and wished for both a monkey wrench and the knowledge of how to use it.

Half a mile out of Kingsoak was nowhere anyone sane wanted to break down, and after a day like the one Matthew had had, he didn’t feel any too sane, full stop. Zero times out of ten would Matthew want to be stuck there.

Kingsoak was dangerous, so far on the wrong side of the tracks it almost went off the map. Matthew had heard dark stories about what went on there, enough to keep him warily on guard. ’Not a good place to go after dark’ didn’t cover the half of it…although, now that he thought about it, no one ever really went on to finish that thought, did they? Too horrible to think about, or did no one know the truth?

Matthew didn’t think he was up to braving finding out for himself.

Matthew's car made the choice for him. The engine chose that moment to deliver a pitiful grinding whine, sputter, and cut out completely. Grey smoke wafted in wisps from under the hood, seeping out the sides.

Matthew drummed a light, frustrated, slightly panicked rhythm on the steering wheel. Okay, he told himself. Gotta keep my cool. Getting stuck isn’t the best thing that could happen to a guy, but it could easily be a lot worse. I’ve got a cell phone, I’ve got triple-A, and I’ve got cash.

He dug his wallet out and flipped open the worn-shiny tri-fold leather.

He stared at the empty interior. In a cartoon, butterflies would have fluttered out in silent mockery. I had over two hundred dollars in there. What…?

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Matthew muttered, checking the floorboard, under the gas petals, and under the driver’s seat. He found sixty-three cents in assorted loose change, one pristine condom packet, and three milkshake parlour drive-through napkins. “You’re not kidding me.”

Matthew ran a hand through his hair and exhaled heavily, thinking. What are my options? One, get out of the car, walk around, and see if I can find an ATM.

Two…okay, there isn’t a two.

Buck up. What’s the worst that could happen?

A heavy thump on the roof of Matthew’s car startled him into dropping his wallet. So sunk in his own quandary, he hadn’t heard anyone approaching. Ohh, that was stupid, he thought, his heart in his throat.

Looking out the window, Matthew was just in time to see a second man lean heavily on the hood of his car, thick arms crossed and stocking cap pulled low, smirking at him.

“Car trouble, pretty boy?” the second tough taunted. “Why’nt you get out of the car and let us give you a hand, huh?”

No way in heaven or in hell. Matthew fumbled for his cell and held it up, hand shaking. “I have a phone, and I’ll call the cops.”

“That a fact? You don’t need to call anyone. We got you. Put the phone down.” The thug leered at Matthew.

Matthew tried the horn, which produced only the most pitiable, wheezing squeak he’d ever heard.

The thugs laughed. “You’re out of your territory, pretty boy. No one around here cares. Now how about you get out of the car and let us take care of you?”

I am not going to die here. Matthew’s mind whirred, coming up with a plan that sounded suicidal, but…maybe, maybe…

He pretended to start to roll down his window, thankful for the manual crank, then hurled himself at the passenger side door. The door opened with a mighty creak. Matthew scrambled out, running as fast as he could.

Before the toughs recovered from their shock and got it together enough to come after him—Matthew hoped—he hurled his empty wallet in their direction to distract them, and without waiting to see if it had worked, took off on foot in the opposite direction.

Matthew ran until his chest hurt, not stopping though he knew right away he’d chosen the worst possible direction to head in, and was diving deep into the inner labyrinth of Kingsoak with no phone, no money, no car, and no one to turn to. It couldn’t get worse than this.

Despairing, Matthew wondered what on earth he’d done to turn Murphy’s Law so viciously on his head. He was a good man, or tried to be. A good employee with exemplary records, scholarly papers, and an impressive resume in his job as junior curator at the modern art museum. He mentored college students in search of their undergraduate degrees in the fine arts BFA’s, paid his taxes, gave to charity, treated his boyfriends with respect and courtesy, turned the other cheek, and would have helped little old ladies across the street if he’d ever had a chance.

Tonight, though, he’d gotten a brown envelope from the IRS, an email inbox full of spam requests for assistance, and his boyfriend had not showed at the bar for their anniversary, leaving Matthew with an empty apartment and no food in the cupboard because he’d been so busy working overtime that he rarely remembered to go grocery shopping.

Rebellion burned bright within Matthew, pushing him dangerously close to an edge he hadn’t known he treaded. I’ve broken my back to be a good, upright, decent, law-abiding kind of guy, and this is where it gets me. Kingsoak.

Fine. You know what? I quit. Just for one night, I want to see if it’s true that bad boys do have more fun. After this, what’s the worst that could happen? They can’t steal my wallet.

Kingsoak. I want to see what it’s all about. If I make it until tomorrow, if I get out alive, then I’ll have at least one good memory to look back on in my life.

Matthew lifted his head high and walked forward with the mien of one who owns the place. He let the recklessness of his impulse guide him, considering insofar as the seething anger roiling in his head would let him, so that no matter what happened, he could be proud of himself in this moment.

He walked into Kingsoak unafraid.

It’d be the best move he ever made, though he didn’t know it then.

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About the Author

Willa Okati can most often be found muttering to herself over a keyboard, plugged into her iPod and breaking between paragraphs to play air drums. In her spare time (the odd ten minutes or so per day she’s not writing) she’s teaching herself to play the penny whistle.

Willa has forty-plus separate tattoos and yearns for a full body suit of ink. She walks around in a haze of story ideas, dreaming of tales yet to be told. She drinks an alarming amount of coffee for someone generally perceived to be mellow.

Email: willaokati@gmail.com

Willa loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at http://www.total-e-bound.com.

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