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They continued to lie motionless, and there didn’t seem to be another sound in the entire world but their own breaths.

“This is harder than I thought,” Quinn said suddenly, ruefully into the darkness.

Andy exhaled. “Jesus. Glad to know I’m not the only one!”

Quinn’s answering laugh sounded funny, a little unsteady. “Come here,” he said, reaching for Andy, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world to move into his arms.

“Déjà vu,” Andy muttered. Not exactly, though. The arms holding him, the body pressed against his own was definitely larger, harder, older than the one he remembered—and yet there was something poignantly familiar in this.

“Are youshaking?” Quinn’s voice was hushed.

“Hell yeah. It’s so cold, I can see your breath in the moonlight.” It wasn’t the cold, though, sending those little tremors rippling through Andy.

“What’re you wearing? A snowsuit?” There was a quiver of laughter in Quinn’s voice. He pushed up Andy’s sweatshirt, his warm hands making soothing circles on Andy’s bare back. “I’ll warm you up.”

No question of that. Andy already felt flushed and tingly. The simple pleasure of bare hand on bare skin. “That’s…nice.”

“It is.” Quinn said, “Just this, just holding each other is good.”

Andy nodded because yes, it was. Marcus had never been much for preambles, and as their relationship had deteriorated, sex had felt increasingly less loving and more like a series of complicated, even rigged tests. He’d forgotten how lovely it was simply to hold and be held by another man. Forgotten that strength could be paired with tenderness, that sensuality could be complemented by sweetness. That sometimes there was nothing more to prove than that you cared for someone and wanted to be close.

Quinn dipped his head, brushed his mouth against the bridge of Andy’s nose, whispered, “It doesn’t have to go any further than this.”

Memory closed his throat for a moment.You can’t go home again.But a bubble of laughter dispelled the sadness. This wasn’t about recapturing the past. This was the here and now, and it felt surprisingly right.

“Isn’t that how this started the last time?”

He could hear rueful, smiling acknowledgment in Quinn’s, “But it’s true, you know.”

Andy’s lips closed on Quinn’s lower one, tugged teasingly, kissed Quinn, murmured, “I do. Yeah.”

He hoped he wasn’t wrong about that, about the instinct to trust Quinn. At one point he’d trusted Marcus too, thought Marcus would be the guy he’d spend the rest of his life with, and he’d been about as wrong as a person could be.

Quinn smiled against Andy’s mouth. His hand slid down Andy’s back, arrowing past his tailbone, sliding over the crack of Andy’s ass, long fingers caressing, stroking. But it was easy and playful.

You like?

And Andy responding silently, sincerely,I like.

Whowouldn’tlike this? He wrapped his arms around Quinn’s lean, muscular body, and Quinn’s cock tented against the restraint of his shorts, thrusting against Andy’s thigh. Andy’s cock pushed back against the downy fleece of his sweatpants in a game of Blind Man’s Buff.

Not buff enough. Not yet. Soon.

Quinn gathered Andy closer, burying his face in Andy’s shoulder, inhaling sharply.

“What is that?” His voice was muffled. “You smell great.”

“Soap?”

Quinn gave a funny laugh, shook his head. “No. It’s you. I remember.”

More likely it was Uncle C.’s soap Quinn remembered. Uncle C. had been buying Ivory soap since the beginningof time. Quinn, on the other hand, smelled nothing like his teenaged self, and Andy rubbed his hot face against Quinn’s chest, feeling the tickle of soft hair, breathing in the sharp, sexy smell of bare skin and faded cologne. Trussardi Action Uomo if the bottle in the bathroom was to be believed.

It felt like a long time since Andy had been with someone, really been in the moment, touching, exploring, enjoying. That wasn’t true, of course. He and Marcus still fucked on a regular basis—Marcus demanded that proof and reassurance—but for Andy, fucking was all it had been. He had not loved, or felt loved by Marcus for months. Maybe longer.

Nor was this anything like the tentative, often clumsy fumbling between himself and Quinn all those years ago. Not that that hadn’t been pleasurable. Pleasurable and playful. It had certainly been meaningful, but then you never forgot your first love.

They struggled out of their clothes—attempts to help each other only impeding their efforts—and then there was the shocking delight of naked hot skin on naked hot skin. A pleasure as old as life itself.