“They were fighting?”
“Shouting about office politics, more like. And scared, I reckon. It was too foggy to see them, but I could hear them all the way from the next tor.” He smiled. “I soon sorted them out.” Pasha could imagine. Ed had a very quiet way of makingpeople listen. “Took them climbing the next day.” He absently closed the open flap of a packing box. “It’s hard to play office top dog when the person holding the rope between you and a fifty-foot fall is someone who won’t take corporate bullshit. They all came home happier.” He turned to his mum. ‘Have you got the sheets?”
“No.” She hugged the bundle of bedding to her chest, her eyes twinkling even as she pretended to be aghast. “It’s just the way I walk.”
Ed’s gusting sigh suggested that was an old joke, but Pasha cracked up all the same.
“Don’t encourage her.” Ed grumbled.
“Do you have everything you need, Pasha?” After Pasha nodded, Ed’s mum reached out and snagged her son’s sleeve. Her face creased as she asked, “Did they truly send you both away with nothing but train tickets and a camera?” Her frown deepened at her son’s curt nod. “If you weren’t doing this for such a good reason, Ed, I’d expect you to tell them where to stick it.” Her small hand cupped her son’s face. “But for whatever reason you’re here, it’s so lovely to have you home for a while. Both of you. Sleep well, darling.”
Her good-night kiss was a quick press of lips to his cheek that Ed bent to receive before scooping his mum into a hug that lifted her from her feet. Once safely standing again, she curled a hand around Pasha’s elbow too, pulling him just as close. Pasha almost stumbled when she stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek as well.
“Good night, dear.” That quick brush of lips was over in a split second, yet he still felt the pressure after she left the bedroom. Pasha only realized his fingers had risen to touch where they’d pressed after the door closed behind her.
Ed raised his own hand to cover Pasha’s. “Anyone would think you’d never been kissed good night before.” He slipped hishand from Pasha’s cheek to his shoulder. “Anyone would think you wanted another.”
“I’ll tell you what Idon’twant.” Pasha kept his voice low, eyes drawn to Ed’s mouth.
“Yeah?”
Pasha leaned a little closer before slipping under Ed’s raised arm and throwing himself onto the only clear bed in the room. “I really don’t want to wrestle with a duvet cover. This bed’s mine, okay? You can take the other one.” He spread out like a starfish, but his breath left him in a rush when Ed ignored his orders. “Jesus, you’re heavy.”
Ed settled over him regardless. “And you’re a bossy little shit, but you don’t hear me complaining. This is my bed, but I suppose I can share it.” Ed’s face was in shadow but his smile was obvious. “In fact, I insist.” He hesitated as if not sure, but then kissed Pasha quickly, first on the lips and then in the same spot as his mum before he skimmed his mouth to Pasha’s ear. “I meant what I said before.”
“You meant what, exactly?” Pasha dragged in a breath and placed his hands on Ed’s shoulders, pushing up until a few inches separated them. “That I’m a pain in your arse?” How often had Ed said that during the competition? “Or that you’re sick of the sight of my face?” He’d heard that few times as well. Pasha pushed harder when Ed didn’t answer. “Hey. I was kidding.”
“I wasn’t.” Ed shifted his weight and manhandled Pasha so they lay face-to-face on their sides. “Not at the start, anyhow.” He kissed Pasha again, less hesitant this time before he pulled away. “You just never let up.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing, but look where it’s got us so far.” Pasha dropped his gaze from Ed’s face to the buttons on his shirt. He hesitated before popping them through their holes one by one, fingers steady even though nerves made each move seemtwice as tricky. He paused before finally reaching Ed’s bare skin. It was firm under his fingers, but each touch caused a shiver, and the fine gold hair on Ed’s chest, invisible from a distance, rose like Pasha’s fingertips were freezing.
Was that a good reaction?
A nipple was half-visible where Ed’s shirt hung open, flesh pulled tight, even though the room was warm. Pasha ran one fingertip around its small, taut circle. Another shiver, and Ed roughly tugged one-handed at his shirttails, leaving his chest uncovered.
They’d been around each other half-dressed before, many times, often wearing fewer clothes than now. But seeing Ed up close like this—available and radiating heat while still flecked with goose bumps—was another thing entirely.
Pasha’s mouth dried, and his whole focus zoomed in to the thrum of Ed’s pulse at the side of his throat. For someone who now watched him so calmly, its beats were wild and rapid. Pasha dropped his gaze, following the dip at the base of Ed’s neck to the curve of his pectorals and falling lower to his belly, dusted with the same fine hair that glinted. His gaze stopped abruptly. That was his hand on Ed’s fly…. His thumb tucked tight behind the eagle on Ed’s belt buckle…. Ed’s cock that jerked just to the left of his fingers.
Fuck.
Pasha’s swallow was a loud click followed by complete silence until Ed said, “You were a pain in the arse, Pash. But I’m glad.” Ed shifted a little, and the outspread metal wings of the eagle under Pasha’s palm dug into his skin. If he pulled it, Ed’s belt would come loose.
Pasha swallowed again.
“I’m glad,” Ed said, “because you made me fight back.”
It sounded like that mattered. “Someone had to make you stop playing your cards so close to your chest.” Pasha madehimself stop staring at where his hand was tucked. His gaze rose like a slow tide—belly, chest, and fast pulse—before meeting Ed’s eyes. “I had no idea you came from landed gentry.”
“Hardly. Go back a few generations, and it might have been different. Times change. Now I’m singing for my supper, and Mum makes souvenir Cornish pixies for tourists.” Ed slid a hand under Pasha’s T-shirt, his palm warm and hard-work roughened, dragging a little over his skin. “I’m a very ordinary person. Nothing special at all.”
Here, in this room crammed with boxes containing the life he’d walked away from, in a house only a few miles up the road from the widow Ed had put his life on hold for, Pasha begged to differ. When he spoke, his voice came out lower than he’d intended. “What was it that you said earlier?” When Ed’s brow creased, he elaborated. “Concentrate, won’t you? The thing you said that you meant?”
“Ah!” Ed’s face smoothed from a frown to a smile. “That’s easy.” His mouth was against Pasha’s ear like he thought a microphone might pick up what he said if he spoke any louder. “I said, ‘I’m not letting you go.’”
Pasha didn’t argue. Here, with the first man he’d ever wanted, that would be redundant. Accepting that still left him flustered.
He looked toward the door rather than maintain Ed’s intense eye contact, following the path of another, newer-looking beam from one side of the room to the other. This one had the same initials as the one in the hallway. It was sturdy, like the rest of the stable block, built to last generations, and so different from the rented places Pasha had grown up in. Not one of those many flats or run-down mobile homes had this kind of solid permanence. “Tell me,” he said, his grip on Ed’s belt buckle tightening, “how soundproof would you say this room is?”