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  “You’re not leaving,” Ivan said at last, barely louder than a whisper, husky with mixed drams of want and wish and will you. “Not yet.”

  Robbie knew better. He touched two fingertips to the soulmark beneath Ivan’s mismatched buttons. “You look like you’re playing dress-up in your father’s clothes,” he said, and let Ivan’s mouth touch his, roving and hungry. “No,” he said, catching his breath. “God help us both. I’m not leaving yet.”

  * * * *

  Ivan’s room was larger than the one Robbie had rented, more lush and better-appointed, but still very much a man’s den, with glossy dark wood and a fanciful water sculpture. He’d turned the heat up far too high to ward off the chill of the evening.

  Not that cold was a problem, Robbie thought, swearing under his breath. He’d loosened the threads on Ivan’s buttons in his rush to peel the offending linen out of his way, and had nearly wrenched his wrist trying to help Ivan free him from his sweater at the same time. Awkward, but then— oh yes —worth it for the first press of his mouth to s kin, gorgeous skin, still smooth but over muscles more developed than he remembered.

  “What’s this?” Robbie asked before bending his head to take one pierced nipple between his lips, his teeth. He tugged once, the metal skin-warm yet still shockingly cool on his tongue.

  Ivan hissed and dug a hand into Robbie’s hair, kneading his scalp with strong fingers. He could taste the silver, the flavor lingering, when he let go of the pebbled nub. He rolled the other nipple between his fingers, well aware of the roughness of his callus that would catch and pull the way Ivan—used—to like. He remembered when they’d talked about this. Long time ago, now. Long, long time.

  “When did you get these done?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t remember.”

  “Now who’s the liar?” Robbie breathed at Ivan’s ear, sifting hungry fingers through his shorter, forever-disheveled hair, pulling locks forward over his forehead and cheeks. He had forgotten how good it was to be the smaller and shorter one, even if only by an inch and a half, and even if he was wider in the shoulders and Ivan was narrower in the hips.

  Ivan lifted his chin. “Doesn’t matter in the least. Does it?”

  Robbie couldn’t disagree.

  The bed looked as if it would engulf them, but there was a firm mattress beneath the lavish, thickly layered duvet that cradled and cushioned Robbie’s bones. No headboard. Ivan propped himself against the wall, legs stretched out before him. Robbie knelt in his lap, against him, bare as the day he was born. When had that happened? He couldn’t remember. Only that it hadn’t been a moment too soon. More like moments too late. He reached between himself and Ivan, catching Ivan’s cock and rubbing the long shaft in his palm.

  “I’d have asked questions if this was pierced, too,” he said, with the breath and words he could steal between kisses. His lips were fuller, plumped from kissing, but he couldn’t satisfy his craving for Ivan’s flavor, his taste. He inched closer, needing more, the press of their cocks sliding together between their bellies.

  Ivan laughed breathlessly, but didn’t speak. He buried his face against Robbie’s shoulder and mouthed at the skin, sharp teeth prickling Robbie. Robbie bent his head to the side to give Ivan room to work, and spread his hand as wide as he could on Ivan’s back to feel the play of the muscles beneath and the sweat that had started to slick him. He wanted to taste that sweat, salty-rich on the tip of his tongue, and he wanted to swallow Ivan down in great greedy gulps. He wanted so many things, and there wasn’t time for all of them. He groaned at the press of Ivan’s cock on his stomach, almost willing to ignore his own urgency for more of that friction.

  He nearly lost control when Ivan bowed his head to press his mouth to the soulmark on his breastbone. A shout slipped, loud and rough, from between his lips, and he scrabbled uselessly at Ivan’s too-short hair, trying to press him closer. The tip of Ivan’s tongue swept over the soulmark in soothing, infuriating laps, a ring of fire burning itself ever deeper into his skin.

  Ivan had made a detour through a closed door when they entered the room. Robbie hadn’t paid attention at the time, too caught up in the need to satisfy his thirst, but when Ivan nudged him to catch his balance by himself for a moment and clicked open a small bottle that smelled of cinnamon and cedar, he understood. Lotion, or something like it, unless Ivan’s room came with more perks than the usual. He didn’t care, not when those long, clever fingers, slick with cream, circled his rim and slipped inside.

  “More,” he said, hitching forward and lifting his hips, not caring at all how demanding he might be, or how he looked. His hair fell forward in a curtain that hid both their faces. Ivan’s tongue slipped past his lips in time with the stroking and stretching of his fingers deep inside, curious fingers that curled up slow and steady until he found what Robbie had known he would have remembered the path to. “More.”

  “Greedy,” Ivan said, catching Robbie’s lip between his teeth for a nip, half-playful, half-fierce. The light from one dim lamp, as diffuse as a candle, made his bare skin gleam and cast his eyes into fire and shadow. “Like this. Hold still, like this…”

  He held Robbie’s hip, bracing Robbie on his knees as he slid his fingers out, leaving Robbie achingly empty—but only for a moment, just one moment, before replacing fingers with something longer and hotter and much, much harder. No playing about, once he was in, but a long thrust that filled him and didn’t end until Robbie settled into his lap.

  When he moved, Robbie could feel the scorching length inside and the flex of his thighs, the ripple of his stomach. His hand was at first unsteady around Robbie’s cock, but it remembered as well as the rest of him. Robbie tipped his head back then forward, and tried to rise and fall, but he’d lost his strength as well as his willpower.

  Robbie leaned down to press his lips to Ivan’s soulmark. He scraped his nails against Ivan’s chest when he hitched and spilled between them, a creamy mess that Ivan caught drops of as they trickled down his fingers, then raised those fingers to his mouth to lick clean. He wound his arm harder around Robbie’s waist, almost too hard, and his hips faltered. Almost crushed the air out of Robbie’s lungs—what little remained—when he groaned, deep and low, and shuddered from so deep within Robbie imagined his bones would vibrate with the resonance.

  He couldn’t feel Ivan coming inside him, but he clenched his body tighter and bore down around Ivan’s length and held him fast until the hard shakes passed and Ivan breathed hot and moist against his chest.

  Ivan held his head low, forehead pressed to Robbie’s shoulder. He drew lines and letters on Robbie’s back, nonsense strokes. Waiting for Robbie to give him permission one way or another. He hadn’t done that when they were young. He didn’t have to now, but that he did struck Robbie as—as—he didn’t know. Only that it struck him and worked its way beneath his skin.

  His choice, then, and he made it.

  “If you think we’re done,” he said in a low rumble, “think again.” He wound his arms around Ivan’s shoulders and nudged the man with his knees, ordering with as few words as he could get away with that he should move with Robbie, and follow him down onto his back.

  The way they fit together, God. ‘As if they’d been made for each other’ didn’t begin to cover it. No one else had ever come close—not that there had been many. Ivan could have counted the lovers he’d taken in the years after Robbie on the fingers of one hand, with no need to use his thumb. No one else compared. Even when he didn’t think as much consciously, Robbie was still there at the back of his mind.

  He slipped out, as carefully as he could for both their sakes. Robbie pulled and tugged them both over, arranging them with Robbie on his back and Ivan over top of him. Robbie spread his legs to make a cradle for Ivan to fall into, then raised them to bracket Ivan’s hips.

  Ivan took Robbie’s cock in hand. He hadn’t gone down much. Halfway, if that. Ivan hadn’t gone down at all. True soulmates weren’t often satisfied with just one round,
and a trick of biology made that possible. He nudged Robbie’s rim, slick with lotion and with his own cum. Just checking. Just testing his luck. Slipping two hooked fingers in, he rubbed the spunk up beneath Robbie’s heavy, furred balls, and weighed them in his palm. He’d forgotten how solid these were, almost too much to fit in his hand. He traced the tightly wrinkled skin and stroked the crisp wreath around both cock and balls.

  Bending, he pressed his nose to the center of Robbie’s chest and nudged the raised, embossed edges of the soulmark. Did it burn Robbie the way his scorched him? It was like carrying a live coal beneath his skin, the sepia color shading darker and hotter with each shift closer to one another.

  Robbie’s big hands took hold of Ivan’s hips, kneading him with rough clumsiness as he sought Ivan’s mouth with his own. The blueness of his eyes had gone hazy and clouded, his lashes stuck together in spiky clumps that clung to his cheeks.

  Ivan gave in to the demand his body made and set his cockhead against Robbie’s rim. Just a nudge, just a question—that Robbie answered by raising his hips and deepening the cradle of his legs. Ivan slid in an inch, two inches, not sure if he were testing or teasing or both. The wet heat coaxed him deeper, a slick stroke that he held back on. Something wasn’t… He wanted…

  He knew. Ivan slid out, shushing Robbie when Robbie growled a protest. He laid his fingers over Robbie’s lips, and had to catch his breath and stop the man when Robbie’s tongue curled around the pads of those fingers to lap at them. He managed a grin, lopsided though it might be, and a haphazard kiss pressed to the corner of Robbie’s stubborn mouth, to make a wordless promise that he didn’t mean no more. He pushed his arms beneath Robbie and tugged, trying to guide him over on his side.

  Robbie got the idea halfway through Ivan’s pull. He half-closed his eyes and hummed, or sighed, a deep, charcoal-shaded sound, and bumped his knuckles against Ivan’s soulmark before he yielded. He was as clumsy as Ivan, but between them, somehow, they managed to turn on their sides without tangling their legs or falling off the bed.

  Ivan remembered when they’d done that. They’d knocked a picture off the wall before Robbie had dismantled the headboard, but they hadn’t counted on not having anything to hold onto. When they’d hit the ground, it’d startled the breath out of them more than the impact had, but the second Ivan had been able to draw air he’d let it go in a loud laugh—and after a surprised pause, Robbie had joined him with his low chuckle. Then he’d wound Ivan into his arms, and not let go…

  As he didn’t let go now.

  Lying on his side, he let Ivan guide one leg up and arrange it as he liked, though he leaned forward on one arm to steady himself and Ivan missed the weight of his head and the sight of his face. He arched his neck, whispering words that had no sense or meaning through gritted teeth, louder when Ivan touched his mouth to Robbie’s nape and scraped lightly with his teeth. Loudest of all when Ivan guided himself inside, one hard push the way he remembered Robbie liked best, no asking and no apologies. Rough. Hard, fast and almost punishing, his mouth sealed over the tendon joining head to shoulder, his arm around Robbie’s waist to reach the cock he worked with hasty, messy pumps, and his cock driving deep into snug heat.

  God, but he’d missed this. He’d forgotten how good and found he’d remembered wrongly, both at the same time. The way Robbie’s stomach hitched and he knotted sheets into twists and tangles, how his hair stuck to his back and made Ivan want to sneeze and laugh when he pulled them as tightly together as they could get, and the way Robbie got just…that…bit harder right before he came, spilling thick cream over Ivan’s hand.

  He almost broke the skin when he climaxed too, following Robbie over the edge. Almost but not quite. Robbie groaned and shuddered and jerked in Ivan’s hand. Ivan caught the last drop on his thumb and rubbed it into Robbie’s stomach. He licked the sweat of Robbie’s nape instead of finishing the bite, soothing down the sore spot, and breathing in the scent of him.

  Mate. Love. Right. The world as it should be, for one still and shining moment. He’d needed this more than he’d known.

  Or should have known. Ivan closed his eyes and breathed deep of the air that smelled like them, and rich with sex, because when he opened them again…

  Well. Who knew? Not him, but…he expected he would find out.

  Robbie lay still for as long as he could. He pressed his hand to his soulmark, the edges hotter and bolder to the touch, and knew it’d darkened to near-black.

  You can run from the past, he thought, but it will always catch up with you. He should be sorrier than he was. This wouldn’t fix everything, and couldn’t patch them up. Couldn’t weave their lives back together.

  But just for a moment…just a little longer…he could pretend.

  Chapter Five

  Billows of mint and eucalyptus-scented steam furled and eddied around Robbie. He squeezed as much water as he could manage out of his hair and cast a wry glance at the towel racks. No matter how well-appointed a room might be and regardless of the number of occupants, hotels never laid in enough towels for more than one guest—and a fairly dainty one, at that. He’d empty the stock just drying himself, and never mind if Ivan wanted to shower as well.

  Robbie thought about drip-drying. He’d learned a knack for it—Cade had a gift for ‘forgetting’ laundry when his turn came around on the roster, and Nathaniel tended toward a preference for fruity-scented fabric softener that made everyone else sneeze. And Ivan certainly needed a rubdown as much as or more than Robbie did, but…

  What good was it, staying in a hotel, if you couldn’t call for what you needed? Regardless of what Robbie did, Ivan wouldn’t go without.

  And yet somehow, one clean towel ended up set aside anyway, draped over the warming vent so it’d be ready for Ivan. Robbie never had been able to resist taking care of someone when they needed it. Ivan wouldn’t read anything more into the act that Robbie being up to his usual tricks.

  Maybe.

  Robbie wrinkled his nose as he stepped into the jeans he’d worn to the game. Not ideal. Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers. At least he’d remembered to grab them on his way in, as eager to break the awkward post-coital silence as he thought Ivan had been. Too bad he’d forgotten the sweater. Now that the heat of the shower had begun to leach out of his skin, he shivered. Must have been running hot for days. His body had known he’d meet up with Ivan again.

  Such an odd world they lived in. What was it all about, really? Some small god enjoying a laugh at their expense? Could be. It made as good an explanation as any.

  He wrapped the last of ‘his’ towels around his neck to catch the drips from his hair. He wiped steam away from the mirror with the flat of his left hand and leaned on the edge of the hammered copper sink basin to frown at his reflection.

  He had gray in his chest hair. When had that happened?

  In the center, spaced neatly between his nipples, the soulmark showed dark and elaborate, as if a calligrapher had drawn on him with a quill pen and velvety black ink.

  Was Ivan’s the same?

  Swearing under his breath, he flipped off the light switch and opened the door to the lion’s den. Or Ivan’s rented room. Either term seemed applicable. What was he meant to say to Ivan now, after jumping one another like wild animals starving for a hot meal, when he—

  Ivan glanced up from the edge of the bed, where he’d been apparently intent on his phone before Robbie made his exit. His mouth fell open, as did his hand. His phone slipped to the floor with a plastic clunk that made Robbie want to hide a smile. Call him human! He’d just noticed gray in his chest hair and wise or not, a little admiration went a long way.

  Only a little, though. Robbie cleared his throat. “Sweater?”

  “Ah.” Ivan fidgeted like a boy. He caught himself, but Robbie had seen the look before. Like a little boy indeed, caught in the middle of a prank. Ivan usually meant well, but… “I sent your sweater down to the hotel laundry.”

  Robbie folded his arms ove
r his chest. “The laundry.”

  Ivan didn’t back down. That was new. The boy Robbie remembered would have carried on fidgeting and maybe tried to play it cute. This Ivan shrugged and held steady, apologetic but not sorry. “It’d been drowned in cheap beer. I figured it was the least I could do.”

  “You weren’t the one who spilled on me.”

  A wicked twinkle kindled in Ivan’s eye, but he kept the dirty joke to himself. It still tugged at Robbie’s lips, tempting them into a hint of a grin. He rubbed the tail end of the towel against his hair, then flicked his wrist to snap it at Ivan. “God, you’re a bad man.”

  Ivan laughed aloud, a surprising sound. Robbie had forgotten how much he liked that laugh, husky and mellow, with notes as bright as dancing sparks.

  “What?” he asked, remembering then how Ivan used to like the contrasts of their voices, baritone and tenor. “If you liked it that much, I can insult you again.”

  “Rather you didn’t,” Ivan said. His smile lingered, softening the shape of his face. The color on his cheeks made him look comforting, warm as a summer morning. He waved at the space between them, and at the bed behind him, still so rumpled no one with any sense could misread what’d happened. “Just—well, as icebreakers go, I’ve got to say that was a pretty good one.”

  Robbie snorted rather than snickered, but the effect was the same.

  Ivan chuckled as he stretched his long legs out before him. “I liked it better than the first time we met again tonight.”

  His hair was as dry as he could manage on his own, Robbie decided. He left the towel where it lay. “You would,” Robbie said. “You got to finish. Twice.” He could still feel Ivan inside him.

  “I could have gone again,” Ivan said frankly, with that soft, sideways grin that made Robbie want to touch the corners of his smile. Always had, still did.

  And Robbie hesitated. Long enough for the silence to make itself noticed. “I remember,” he said.