“Even as the sun with purple-colour'd face,” Rafael begins, “had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn, rose-cheek'd Adonis hied him to the chase…”

  After all this time, the words of the poem are still clear in his mind—burned there, scorched into his soul. As he recites them, he can see the lights gleaming off the crystal and gold in the garden, hear his brother and sister laughing, feel the exact moment Carraway’s hand slid to his waist and took hold of him, and never let go again. He recites slowly at first: the words he’d read as a flirtation, an intentional temptation of an unknown beast, they turn to ash in his mouth.

  “Now doth she stroke his cheek,” he says, and watches Carraway’s claws gather the curls from the back of Omar’s neck, Domingo's eyes grimly on the floor, the way Sol stares up in aimless distress from a stranger's lap, shuddering and blinking hazy liquid black eyes as the man mouths sloppily at the elegant tip of one ear.

  “Now doth he frown, and ‘gins to chide, but soon she stops his lips.” Rich’s eyes on him, wide and scared as he kneels on the bare floor. Rafael draws a breath as the first burn of anger replaces the numb dread, boiling in the back of his throat like a dragon’s fire.

  “And kissing speaks, with lustful language broken,” he says, and allows his voice to slide into a new accent, a familiar, hated drawl. “‘If thou wilt chide, thy lips shall never open.’”

  It’s foolish, so apocalyptically foolish, to push like this when they have only so narrowly saved themselves. But the knowledge of how nearly Rafael lost everything he had left only adds fuel to the rage spreading through his body, lighting him up with a fervor he forgot he was capable of. When he speaks Adonis’s words it’s with no fanciful accent, no affectation; it's his own voice, as flayed and raw as it was when he first woke to find a collar around his throat. The voice of a betrayed and fearful young man, caught and caged, resenting a captor of surpassing danger and cruelty. Forced to submission, but never to anything like love. Forced to obey, but never to content.

  Lines he used to read with a sultry sigh and a wink to the audience taste poisonous. He’s been Adonis, now, he’s been Adonis for so long, and the men he loves knelt down small alongside him. They’re pinned and held by someone stronger, pressed down and torn open, and the violence of the act covered over with honeyed words. Venus is nothing more or less than a monster, and it feels like justice to read her lines as Carraway’s, to finally give voice to Rafael’s fury. To challenge Carraway’s laughing, limitless cruelty.

  He’s barely halfway through, though, when Carraway holds up a hand and Rafael draws to a halt abruptly, breath coming harsh and fast, his face and chest hot, the rest of him deadly cold. There are tears in his eyes, sharp as needles. He’s aware with dreadful suddenness that there’s no mask on his face; that his body is his own, as the voice was his own. His tight shoulders, his knotted stomach, his cold rage.

  It feels like a dreadful exposure, a slip on that fatal high wire with no net below him—but Carraway just says, “Yes, very nice, sweetheart,” with absent condescension. Not paying attention, not listening, not even bothering to look at him. “Where’s… ah.”

  He beckons Domingo to his side, strokes the man’s dark hair out of his eyes. “Your turn, pretty thing. Why don’t you dance for us?”

  And just like that, Rafael is done. He stands there for a moment, alone on the tabletop. Shock has poured over the fire that was lighting him up, extinguishing it like a candle flame, and he makes his way numbly to the foot of the table, stumbling badly on the dismount.

  Carraway didn’t even notice. Rafael as well as said what he thought, read the man’s poisoned lies back to him in his own voice, and Carraway didn’t even notice. Not even enough to punish Rafael for his presumption, not even enough to look up from his latest amusement.

  “Sir,” Rich is saying from somewhere far away, “Can I—do you think I could—get him out of here—”

  Rafael can’t bring himself to move, however badly he needs to. He can’t find the mask he’s supposed to wear, and so he wears nothing at all, feeling himself blank and motionless as a statue, staring at the floor in frozen horror. The only motion he can force from his body is his own breath, and even that comes halting and unsteady, refusing his weak attempts to master it.

  Carraway goes hm again. “Alright, then, treasure, I suppose you’ve both been good. Take him to bed.”

  “Yessir,” Rich says, a startled second late, and rolls up to his feet. A big, warm hand lands on Rafael’s shoulder and guides him out of the room. Rafael staggers, then goes along, one numb foot in front of the other.

  He makes it out of the door, away from the staring eyes, off-stage, before his legs give out beneath him. Rafael catches himself on his hands, startled and dazed; tries to push himself up and fails, because his hands are shaking, his heart is shaking, his whole body trembling like a leaf in a gale. A thousand things surround him, crowding inside his skull, and his thoughts, his self, the core of him feels quieter and quieter, colder and more numb, farther away, he can’t—

  “Raf!” someone says in alarm, and those big hands lift Rafael to his feet and scoop him into strong arms. “Hey, you okay? We’re okay, now, we got through it. Lemme take you back to our berth and I can tuck you in.”

  Rafael doesn’t answer that, can’t imagine what words he would even say. His input doesn’t seem to be required, though. He’s being carried off, he finished his recitation and now he’s going somewhere dark and quiet, a huge pair of hands lifting him and taking him and carrying him away.

  He’s aware on some level of things happening, being carried, doors going past, the way he keeps shaking. Mostly, he’s in a still, ringing silence. Outside the quiet is the anger, Carraway’s face as he ignored Rafael’s voice and Gabe teasing and light on crystal and Rich kneeling and smiling with desperate tears in his eyes and Sofia laughing and a low voice murmuring You suit my tastes just fine as Rafael was led off away from his family, prey charmed willingly into a den of wolves…

  Somewhere farther away yet, there are more steps, doors and windows seen in passing, the reflection of the night sky outside and Rafael’s face flashing back at him in the glass, hollow and shadowed and smiling. Smiling even yet, without him, the face of a biddable doll designed after the man he used to be. Huge hands gripping him as the shaking comes back and doesn’t stop. A door, a room, a bed.

  Rafael’s body knows what happens when he’s carried away from the party and laid on a bed. He wants to scramble away, to scream, to lash out—he doesn’t. He doesn’t. He stays where he’s put, and breathes, and doesn’t move so much as a trembling muscle. Withdraws into his own mind, curling in on himself in the vast and howling maelstrom emptiness of his skull. Making himself nothing.

  “Rafael?” says a deep, distressed voice, as if from many miles away. Rafael doesn’t so much as flinch, just lies against soft pillows and silk sheets like an exquisite corpse, waiting for cold metal claws to tear the flimsy barrier of his clothes away from him. He’s aware of tears rolling hot and steady from the corners of his eyes, is aware that he should make some effort to wipe them away, but he can’t move. There’s no motive force within him, and even if there was there’s no act or mask to stop this—He mustn’t fight, he mustn’t run, he can’t—

  “Fuck,” says the voice, and there’s the sound of a long, shaky breath blown out. “Okay. Okay, you can just hang out there, if you wanna, that’s fine. Um.” Footsteps cross the room, there’s the sound of running water, and then they come back, drawing closer—pause, the mattress dipping heavily beside him, a huge body bending over him.

  “Raf, man, please, just look at me. I wanna help but you gotta talk to me.”

  Talk to me, yes, he was reciting, spin some pretty words, doll. Rafael has to obey, but he’s frozen, his foolish body confined to motionless dread as thoroughly and completely as cowering prey in front of a hungry serpent. Talk to me.

  Rafael opens his mouth, fighting with himself for every moment, trying to remember where he was in the poem, to perform sweetly, to please the man—he hears the noise that he makes instead as if a stranger made it, a sound like a frightened child or some mortally-wounded animal. He’s trembling. His tears will ruin his makeup, he’s making a mess, he’s such a mess. Why would anyone listen to him, why would they so much as look at him, when he’s such a mess?

  “I’m, sorry sir,” he manages, one threadbare syllable at a time, through lungs constricted by bands of iron. “I’m, I regret—please—I can do. Hh. Better. I’ll be better in, in a moment. Please.”

  The towering figure over him makes a noise of unhappiness, and Rafael forgets how to breathe. Trembles, fresh tears streaking down his face, struggling desperately for—the words, he needs to find the right words. His honeyed tongue was all he had and even that has deserted him, has left him finally and truly alone with nothing to save himself, and Carraway doesn’t even listen—

  Something heavy presses into his arms. Rafael’s arms jerk up on instinct, first to shield himself and then to wrap tentatively around it, as the object is gently and persistently offered.

  It takes him a moment to recognize it, but the shape is so deeply familiar. Rafael’s fingers find the soft edges, the worn corners, the elegant scrollwork impressed into the leather, the velvety-soft pages thin and delicate with age. Comprehension lags, even as Rafael clutches the Compleate Works Of Shakespeare close to his chest with desperate fervor. Do they want him to recite more? Rafael doesn’t want Carraway to see this book, Rafael can recite without it. He must recite without it.

  “He looks upon my lips, and they are pale,” he murmurs numbly, and blinks his stinging eyes open, trying much too late to stem the flow of his tears. “He takes me by the hand, and I am cold…” But no, those aren’t quite the words, he’s doing it wrong. They want a reading they can enjoy. None of them care that Adonis dies at the end.

  “I’m sorry,” says Rafael miserably. Holds the book closer, curls around it and squeezes hard enough the edges hurt his fingers. “Please—I’m sorry.”

  “Raf,” says the deep voice, painfully soft, and the hand that touches his face isn’t clawed or rough or careless with him. It cups his cheek, strokes the curve of his skull over and over again. Rafael is worrying them, he’s disappointing them, he’s failing. He’s scaring Rich.

  Rich.

  “Rich,” Rafael repeats, and tries to take a breath, blinks his blurring eyes. Terror still burns over his skin, crawling and cold, but it’s wrong, nothing to be afraid of. Absolutely nothing to be afraid of, and yet it consumes him, such a terrible fear; thought fails, the soul breaks beneath it. “Rich, I can’t—can’t remember the words, please.”

  “Hon, it’s okay,” Rich says, the words choked. “You don't hafta perform right now, you’re offstage, you can relax. It’s just me, we’re safe.”

  “I know,” Rafael says. And he does. He’s been taken away, it’s quiet and still and there are dark gardens outside the balcony window, and Rich is here. He knows. But he can’t stop. He can’t remember how. Can’t stop trying, again and again, to draw up the mask of a smile over his ugly tears. Rich’s eyes are on his face in all its mess and ruin, and it’s intolerable, Rafael mustn’t be like this.

  “I know," he repeats, "I’m not on stage. I’m, I’m sorry.”

  “No, hey, no,” says Rich, low-voiced. “What for?”

  He’s not on stage, but he is. He’s safe, but he’s not. He’s with Rich, but he isn’t, he hasn’t truly been with someone in so long. What’s even left of Rafael Caro to be with, after all? A performance, a grand pretense, for Carraway, for Rich, for himself, while the person who used to inhabit his flesh is buried deeper and deeper in the howling emptiness. That sad and guttering spark of a soul is no fit companion, consumed with a sorrow and exhaustion too heavy to survive.

  “I wish—” Rafael starts, and sucks in a breath that breaks, creaking and gasping, as ugly as the tears. “I’m sorry.” He doesn’t know what he wishes. For freedom, for an end, any end, anything to stop existing in a world where he feels like this. If there’s any mercy in the universe, this pain will kill him.

  “Nothing to be sorry for,” Rich says, and brushes the tears from his cheek. He’s still touching Rafael’s face as it twists, no revulsion in his manner even as Rafael brings a hand up convulsively to hide behind it. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Raf—”

  “I did everything wrong,” Rafael bursts out, his voice thick and wet and graceless, his tongue stumbling over the words he’s been pushing down for so long. “This is, fuck, this, this is all my fault. It’s all my fault.”

  “What?” Rich says. “No it’s not! Raf, what are you talking about?” He hesitates, then before Rafael can get words out, makes a low, conflicted rumble and shifts closer on the mattress. “Can I hug you? I mean, would that help?”

  Rafael can’t answer that—nothing would help, it doesn’t matter, nothing can fix it—but that’s all helpless nonsense, and he’s worrying Rich, he’s such a burden. He sniffs, breath hitching, a fresh wave of tears down his face, then nods.

  Rich enfolds Rafael in his massive arms, holding him as gently as something fragile and already cracked, one hand stroking his back. “We’re here,” Rich murmurs, “safe in our berth, everybody’s busy down there, he’s not gonna bother us anymore tonight. We can just chill, we’re good.”

  Rafael thumps his forehead against Rich’s chest, sniffs hard, tries to blink his eyes clear. He’s going to get makeup and golden glitter on Rich’s shirt.

  “I did this,” he confesses. The words tear at his throat like bile. No poise to his phrasing, no refinement in his tongue. “I told my sister, my brother, that I’d be alright, and I—” the guilt and shame and rage almost choke him for a second, he forces the words out with such effort only for them to break into a sob. “I knew he wanted me, I wanted him to want me, I, I smiled for him, I recited that damned poem for him, I played for him and promised he could have what he wanted of me. I didn’t know, I didn’t think he wanted…”

  “To fucking kidnap you?” Rich says incredulously. “Why the hell would you? You’re a reasonable guy, you probably didn’t even think there were people who’d do stuff like this—I sure didn’t.” He sighs and puts a big palm on the back of Rafael’s head, cradling him there.

  “I did it too,” Rich goes on quietly. “Fell for it, I mean. Everybody said landside people were crazy, and rich people are dangerous, but I just didn’t—And when I headed up to the top box to see if Sol was up there, Liam came with me, we didn’t even think—” Rich’s voice turns anguished, “—he was just there to cheer me on, he doesn’t even really care about hoverboarding, he came on the trip because there were some scientists down there doin’ bioengineering stuff he wanted a look at. But he was with me, and Sol wasn’t there but Carraway said he knew the guy. So he took us both to dinner, and then to bed, and…” he shrugs tiredly. “Then we woke up here with collars on. So. If it's your fault, it's my fault too. And I don't think it is—either of ours, I mean. None of ours."

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Rafael shakes his head mutely, swallowing another convulsive sob. It's easily said, sweetly meant, but. Even through the dull haze of living death that took him for so many years here in this dreadful place, the memory of that first night remains as sharp as the edges of their captor's claws. Rafael's posturing and preening, the sweet words he wasted on the man, prey trying to seduce the steel jaws of its own deadly trap—

  "Sol's said a little about how he got hooked," Rich says. "Connor too, he'll talk about it if you ask him. We all bit the line. Y'know? Carraway puts out bait and he gets guys to come bite and then he laughs at you while he reels you in, it's what he does. I—" he falters, and his grip on Rafael tightens for a moment, almost crushing, as though he has to steel himself. "…I was so fuckin' nice to the guy. I could tell he wasn' sure about me, about the soldier mod thing, and I wanted him to like me. Wanted him to know I wasn't like the other soldier mods he'd met, I wasn't gonna push him around or hurt him or make him do anything he—"

  His voice chokes into the agonized edge of a rumbling growl. He's quiet for a moment, breath hitching as he fights with it, and when he says, "Guess he noticed, alright," it's only exhaustion that roughens his voice.

  For a while they just hold each other, each to their own thoughts. Rafael’s breath steadies slowly, his tears ease. As the desperate sorrow settles to something more familiar, more well-practiced, he becomes aware he’s sore, stuffy and swollen with makeup doubtless smeared across his cheeks. He sniffs, dabs at his eyes, straightens his back. Rich loosens his grip in turn and takes his own deep and steadying breath.

  “I brought you some water,” he says, and twists under Rafael, coming back with a glass. Rafael takes it, sniffs and takes a cautious sip and then drains the rest in short order at the sudden demand of his parched body. “You wanna… we could watch a play, or go to sleep, or—it’s a party night, I could help you get off, if you want, if that’d help?”

  “Yes,” says Rafael hoarsely, and gives an ugly, inelegant sniff. And then, realizing some further input is needed, “—I mean—I don’t know. Would it be alright if—” he bites the words off, self-conscious warmth rushing across his face.

  “What?” Rich says, and laughs a little. “Man, I’m almost sure the answer’s yes, you just gotta tell me what you want.”

  “You could… if you wanted,” Rafael manages, and rests his head against Rich’s chest, listening to the low, heavy thump of his heartbeat. Finishes, “You could read to me?” in the smallest uncertain murmur, already braced for Rich’s denial.

  “Like, a book?” Rich says, startled. “Or—your book, read some of a play or something?”

  Rafael opens his mouth to reassure him—he doesn’t have to, Rafael knows they’re hard to read, archaic and confusing and as obsolete as Rafael himself—but none of that will come out. He closes it again instead, and just nods.

  “Sure, I can probably manage that,” Rich says. “I mean I dunno how good I’ll do, but… here, let's get you some more water, an' all that off your face, and I'll read whatever you wanna hear."

  Rafael's makeup is as disastrous as he thought it might be. He scrubs off the smeared eyeliner, the sticky tear tracks, the smell of chemical smoke and Kurtz's cologne, and then drinks two more glasses of water, and when Rich gathers him gladly back into bed he feels… if not better, then at least clean. Emptied, scoured. Rafael settles against Rich's side, secure under his arm, and Rich gives him a long squeeze, then presses a kiss against the side of his head with devastating gentleness, and lays Rafael's book in his own lap like a man handling a holy relic.

  Rafael lays a hand over his on the worn leather of the cover. Rich had laughed, The one where the king dies? Rafael opens the book to Julius Caesar.

  Rich takes to the task with the same diligent enthusiasm he brings to every errand, no matter how strange or unnecessary. He starts out slowly, methodically picking his way along from syllable to syllable, clearly more determined to achieve clear enunciation than to come to grips with the emotional content of the story, but a few scenes in the rhythm of iambic pentameter catches him up, as it catches everyone eventually, and his great shoulders relax as he leans into the task, reading more steadily, more smoothly.

  “So then Casca: ‘So then every bondman bears the power to cancel his own captivity,’” he reads, and something in his deep, barrel chest ratchets strangely, and the next words come out with a rising saw-edged burr to the edges. “Cassius, he goes, ‘And why should Caesar be a tyrant, then? Poor man, I know he would not be a wolf, but that he sees the Romans are but sheep; he were no lion, were not Romans hinds.’”

  Rafael is barely listening to the familiar words anyway. He presses himself to that steady heartbeat, listening to the low hum of Rich’s voice through his ribs, the words Rafael loves from the mouth of a man he—

  After so long and painful a night, the thought brings a sharp pang of fear with it. The foolishness of it all, to fall in love in a place so cruel… his siblings used to laugh at him, Rafael, our Romeo, so easily felled by Cupid’s bow—but it wouldn’t have to be a tragedy. Next summer is going to be beautiful. They promised each other that.

  Rich makes a soft, deep chuff of surprise when Rafael lays a hand on his ribs and strokes him, right over that rising growl, and swallows it back down to silence.

  “I—sorry, hon,” he rumbles quietly. “He’s just. I just. Shakespeare knew his shit, didn’t he?”

  “They’re classics for a reason,” Rafael says. “Even after all these centuries, you find your own heart beating in these pages, and all your grief.”

  Rich gives a soft, shaking breath of a laugh, and squeezes Rafael close. “And a couple good dick jokes,” he says.

  “I have been fond of a dick joke, in my time,” Rafael says gravely.

  “Oh, your time,” Rich teases, his voice gone so warm with fondness it heats Rafael’s blood. “Five hundred years ago, huh?”

  “Or now,” Rafael says, and pets Rich’s chest again, and glories in the way it makes that monumental span of bone and muscle quiver. “Here and now.”

  “Now’s pretty good,” Rich agrees softly, breathlessly, and turns back to his task. Rafael doesn’t look up to see Rich’s face, just maintains the slow and steady motion of his hand over the tight, silky fabric of Rich’s shirt, breathing as steadily as he himself can manage and glorying in the way the body beneath his hands responds to his delight of it. Rich, the brave boy, works his way gamely through the scene, and this time his voice hitches and roughens with pleasure rather than growling pain.

  In the wake of the fear, of forgetting and then remembering who Rich is, who Rafael is, his soul turns golden-hot to feel Rich shiver and sigh beneath his hand. Rafael may stumble, he may have his weaknesses and foibles, but he’s more than a shadow, and he’s not without purpose. He can cling to his fellow men, trapped here by his side; he can bolster Rich, protect him in whatever ways he may, as Rich has protected Rafael in turn without hesitation. Has pled for him, has knelt and begged without hesitation. They can have each other. When they have nothing else, that at least remains.

  It’s that memory that brings Rafael to pause, to press his hand more firmly yet against Rich’s chest as if he can touch the man’s heart that way. He wants it, he’s realizing, more and more as Rich gives piece after piece of himself to Rafael. He wants more, helplessly, greedily, wants Rich to give him every part and see how well Rafael can care for them.

  “Raf?” Rich says softly, and Rafael pulls himself up Rich's shoulder to kiss him, claims Rich’s lips as though they’re his for the taking and thrills with raw glee to feel Rich gasp and grant them, letting Rafael take him one hungry kiss at a time.

  “Fuck,” he sighs, when Rafael allows him to draw back. His lips are pink and so are his cheeks, and his eyes are wide and wondering.

  “Yes?” says Rafael.

  “Nothing,” Rich says with a shy smile, and lays his own hand on Rafael’s neck above the ever-present collar, stroking his jaw with one thumb. “Just—the way you kiss me, man, it’s…”

  He trails off, shakes his head, licks his lips, eyes falling softly down to Rafael’s mouth and lingering there. Not looking away as he closes the book very gently and sets it down on the bedside table.

  “It seems only fair,” Rafael murmurs, shifting into Rich's lap in the book's place, and gives him what he so clearly wants, kissing him slower and sweeter now. “A thousand kisses buys my heart from me…”

  “Mm.” Rich takes a soft breath against his lips, kisses him once more as though he can’t help himself. “That was—you said that before. That was in the poem, right?”

  Rafael’s heart gives a sweet and painful twist, a stab of familiar, aching resentment—Carraway didn’t listen, barely paid him heed, but Rich heard every word. As he always seems to.

  “It’s a lovely phrase,” he says, and Rich hums in agreement, kneading at the back of Rafael’s neck. “Free from its… grimmer circumstances.”

  “Yeah,” Rich says softly. Catches his lip briefly in his teeth, then asks, “Is there more?”

  “More kisses?” Rafael teases.

  “I mean, yeah.” Rich half-laughs. “But I meant… I just like hearing you say stuff like that. You make it sound… so real, so true. Not like me. You always say it perfectly.” He shakes his head and gives Rafael a smile that makes his heart stop; soft with amazement, as though Rafael is something precious and wonderful.

  “A thousand kisses buys my heart from me,” Rafael says again, and doesn’t allow himself to finish, But you can have it freely. Doesn’t say, You’ve taken it already, better cared for than I’ve cared myself. “Pay them at thy leisure, one by one. What is ten thousand touches unto thee? Are they not quickly told and quickly gone?” He kisses Rich again and grows quickly distracted—draws back breathless, some uncountable time later, and casts about for his place in the line.

  “For non-payment, if the debt should double, is twenty-hundred kisses such a trouble?”

  “From you?” Rich says, and hums again in the deep cage of his ribs as Rafael puts a hand on his chest. “Mm. You can charge compound interest, I’ll pay, uh. Whatever you want from me. As much as you want, as long as you want it.” He smiles shyly, and Rafael has to laugh, even as his heart swells so hotly in his chest it’s hard to breathe.

  “Gabe and Sofia always used to laugh at me,” he admits, and allows the hurt to roll through him this time, to find the bittersweet longing fondness beneath it. “They thought I was ridiculous to court my lovers with ancient poetry, they thought I was a romantic fool who succeeded more on the strength of his pretty face than his agile tongue. Gabe got a book of pickup lines for me once, and no matter how many times I threw it out he somehow managed to find it again and ambush me with it after shows. Usually just when I’d found someone who liked the poetry.”

  “I like the poetry!” Rich says, a little too loud and emphatically, and then colors at his own candidness, pink washing over his cheeks and down his neck, but he doesn’t take it back. He says stubbornly through his own embarrassment, “If you ever had trouble landing yourself a date you just must not have had anyone around with ears.”

  Rafael is startled to laugh, an unrestrained peal of laughter that feels as long-awaited as his tears had. “Well, I’m glad I’ve found someone who can hear me,” he says, and hesitates, swallowing back the rise of his heart before admitting, “I’m so glad it’s you,” with a throb of self-consciousness, uncertain and shy.

  Rich flushes a little darker, smiling. “I’m glad it’s me, too,” he says, and leans in for another kiss. Rafael grants it, and another, and more yet after that, pressing into him, threading his arms around the man’s shoulders and holding on. Pressing, tentatively at first, then more confidently as Rich easily yields. He goes with the slightest push, allowing himself to be coaxed down onto his back with Rafael laid along his chest, stroking across that sturdy barrel chest and up and down Rich’s sides with ever-increasing hunger.

  The fabric of the shirt is silky-soft to his hands, and Rich’s skin is warm below it, and if he doesn’t purr to the touch, there’s definitely a soft rumble on the back of his sighs and groans, thrumming under Rafael’s hands. It makes Rafael want—it makes him want, and he finds himself rolling his hips against Rich’s stomach, increasingly breathless. Rich’s delicate touch slips across his skin, caresses feathered along Rafael’s throat and chest and back until his white silk shirt is hanging open and slipped from his shoulders, until he has to brace himself on Rich’s chest and just moan, soft and overwhelmed at how good things feel.

  “Yeah,” says Rich softly, and runs his fingers delicately along the neckline of the black halter top Rafael wore beneath, a thrillingly light touch from a hand large enough to cover much of Rafael’s chest without effort. Rich glances up at Rafael, and whatever he sees there makes him smile radiantly.

  “Can I get you out of this?” he says, and Rafael gives a convulsive shudder, a hot thrill of pleasure running down his spine, before he nods eagerly. Rich helps him shrug out of both shirts, pauses to meticulously fold them with a distracted frown and then sets them aside and glances with blatant hopefulness at Rafael’s pants.

  Rafael would be more than glad to allow that as well, but he has to lean down and kiss Rich again first, for—everything, for the sweetness of his touch and his words, for the grand and sweeping feelings in Rafael’s chest and for the way Rich makes sure their frivolous party clothes are folded with such diligence, the wonderful strangeness of him.

  He can’t stop once he’s started, and Rich’s chest hitches and hums below him, moans and soft gasps against Rafael’s palms and his chest and the persistent aching roll of his hips. Rafael kisses him with passion, with something like desperation, drinking in the delight and the happiness after such a long and miserable evening, craving it more fiercely the more he gets, frantic with it. A starving man’s hunger, a figure of graven ice longing toward the sun, struggling to make its way back to the living currents of the river—

  “Hey, whoa,” Rich murmurs, gasping, and his hand strokes the bared line of Rafael’s spine, soothing. “Hey, babe, it’s okay. I’m not going anywhere, it’s okay.” His hand pauses at the waistband of Rafael’s pants. “Can I get these too? Or, d’you not want—”

  “I want,” Rafael says immediately, barely able to draw back from Rich’s lips. “I want you, please, I—I thought he’d take me from you, tonight, cast me into some new hell all alone.” The returning tide of cold horror rises under him—he kisses those warmly-flushed lips again to push it back down. “…But I’m here. I’m still here, and I’m—Rich, please, don’t make me beg.”

  Rich gives a soft moan at that, and this time when he pulls Rafael’s pants free his hands are more eager and less cautious, and he makes only a token attempt to put them in order before growling softly and slinging them over the end table, across the fruit bowl and barely missing Shakespeare's marble head, to return to Rafael’s mouth as though he needs this with just as much ferocity.

  “God, you’re so gorgeous,” he says, with no trace of artifice to his admiration, and he touches Rafael’s cheek, strokes a finger over his lips. “You were so brave, man, sticking with me all of tonight, and up on that table, giving him a piece of your mind—I just wanted to—to carry you off and kiss you all over, you’re incredible. Fuck, I’m so lucky to have you with me.”

  It hits like a blow, the sweetest possible pain. Rafael has to gasp, his throat tightening for the second time tonight, but this time instead of cold howling nothingness there’s golden light filling him, spilling over into a huge and breathless smile of startled joy.

  “Oh,” he says, too delighted, too amazed to hold himself in check, and he leans down just to press his forehead to Rich’s, to be close to him, to breathe. “Oh, beloved.”

  Rich sucks in a sharp breath, his hands going still on Rafael. His eyes are very wide, his face soft and shocked and open, and when he moves it’s all in a rush, spilling Rafael off him to his back on the bed and bending over him to press frantic little kisses across his jaw, his lips, his cheeks.

  “Yeah,” he murmurs between kisses, “yeah, Raf, so great, you’re so good.”

  His other hand sweeps down Rafael’s chest, lingers gently at one pierced nipple before moving on to stroke and tease at Rafael’s dick. Rafael arches into the touch with a barely-audible moan, breathless and amazed, face hot—he didn’t intend to reveal his heart that way, letting the word leave him so easily, but Rich seems not only tolerant of it but delighted. Rafael wants to cling to him and say it again a thousand times, beloved, my own, dear heart, my love—but he daren’t, still, and Rich’s hand coming back slick and wonderful to stroke Rafael in a sweet and steady rhythm is more than enough of a welcome distraction.

  Rafael does his best to reciprocate, to seize the moment knowing that Carraway’s iron rules are relaxed the night of a party, but Rich keeps soothing him back down, telling him I’ve got you, I’ve got you, it’s alright, just let me, and Rafael can do nothing but glory in it. He comes after an endless time, touched gently but never tormented, held down by huge hands but never afraid. Rich’s words are graceless but all the more honest for it, calling him gorgeous, amazing, so brave, again and again.

  “I want to return the favor,” Rafael says, once he’s able to speak again. Rich has fetched a few warm washcloths, has fastidiously cleaned Rafael up, ignoring his own clear and visible need.

  “Yeah?” says Rich, pausing. The blush that was beginning to fade from his skin is flooding back again. “I’d like that too, if you’re… if you feel up to it?”

  “Come here,” says Rafael, and Rich puts the washcloths down on the bedside table and lowers himself beside Rafael, flushed and shyly hopeful. “Come here, won’t you, and let me care for you—I told you I would.”

  Rich gives a rumbling moan as Rafael kisses from his jaw to his ear, and although Rafael is heavy-limbed and warm and pleasantly satisfied, his own body still shudders in response to that sound. He slips his hands up Rich’s thighs under the cloth of his wrap, rucks it up determinedly until Rich takes pity on him and undoes all the complex folds, laying himself bare in white and pink and red. He looks delicious, and Rafael tells him so, petting and praising every inch of him until Rich flushes all over and stares up at him raptly, gasping for breath, begging for more. Hanging on his every word, his slightest touch, transfixed, delighted.

  Rafael draws him out, one stroke and tease at a time, until Rich is shivering all over, heavy muscle tense and working in his efforts to hold himself in check, and Rafael watches hungrily as Rich finally gasps his name, as he shivers and cries out, as he comes in shaking waves and falls back, still and sated against the sheets.

  Rich grabs for a washcloth before his breathing even starts to slow, distractedly cleaning himself up and then tugging Rafael gently down against him.

  “You’re good, you’re so good,” he mumbles, nuzzling Rafael’s temple. Says again, “I got so lucky,” in wonder, soft and amazed.

  Rafael ducks his head. “My luck has served me at least as well as yours,” he says, and bumps his temple against one enormous bicep, nuzzling at it distractedly before reaching up to steal a pillow. He’s yawning already, head gone heavy and limbs slack, but he wants more poetry yet to say, something to sum up his gratitude and his wonder.

  “Oh gentlest of lovers… mm. Kindest keeper of my heart… Not cruel Venus, but her faithful Vulcan, I think, the god of all mechanicals. You mend me so. You shine me…”

  “Oh,” Rich says, low and rough, and takes in a breath that catches on the inhale, shakes on the exhale. His huge hands skate over Rafael's skin like sunlight on seafoam.

  Rich murmurs, “Someone like you deserves to shine, is all.”

  With a great effort, Rafael turns his head and presses his mouth once more to some stretch of Rich’s expanse. But all the alert tension of the past hours has drained from Rafael’s body, chased away by pleasure and comfort, and sleep comes to take him. Not away from Rich, no, but further into his embrace: his hands sheltering Rafael’s back, his heart speaking against Rafael’s cheek. Held thus together, they venture warmly into the dark.

  RUN AGROUND IS NOW AVAILABLE! The official sale will begin on Dec 21st, but if you want to pick it up ASAP, we're doing presales!

  Tomorrow, Dec 8, all our ebooks, and go on sale at Smashwords, and remember, the early access ebook of Run Aground will go live Dec 21!

  Smashwords as well as your (but not Amazon yet except for After the Storm), under the series title, Stories From The Michigan Fleet. If you missed book one, After the Storm, you can . And check out our !