Page 47 of Troubled Skies (Blue Skies #3)

The game broke up a few minutes later with Ren’s team winning by a landslide. Still breathing heavily from the last play, Ren ran to Adrian. He took the glass from Adrian’s hand and finished it in one swallow then said it had been too long since he had had the taste of champagne on his tongue.

“If it were not for you, poussin, my tastebuds would have died of boredom.” Ren leaned in making it clear what he meant. “You are by far the most exquisite thing I have ever tasted.”

Adrian stepped away from him and shook his head. “Captain’s orders, Your Highness.”

“Je sais. Je sais. But come, if I cannot quench my thirst with you, then a glass of champagne will have to suffice.”

“I’m going to go sit over there,” Adrian said, pointing to Sylvie and Veronique, who were by the firepit. “It’s safer.”

“You are no fun.” Ren pouted. “But I will still bring you something.”

“Merci,” Adrian said as he walked away, smirking as he made his way toward the stews.

For the rest of the evening, he teased at Ren by moving as soon as Ren came near him.

At first, it clearly frustrated Ren, and he glared as Adrian shifted to a new location with a wink and a wave.

Once he caught on that Adrian was playing, it became a game with both of them pretending to ignore each other while trying to sneak up on the other.

Ren succeeded a few times, tapping Adrian on the shoulder while hidden behind the cabana’s corner, hiding behind the only unoccupied lounger until Adrian sat down.

Adrian managed to evade him more times than not, finding that he almost always knew where Ren was even if he couldn’t see him.

All the while, the tension between them simmered and grew.

When they caught each other’s eye from opposite sides of the tent, Ren licked his lips, and Adrian suppressed a shiver of arousal.

By the time Rachel called them idiots and told them to get back to the yacht before they got in trouble, Adrian was so turned on, he could barely sit still.

He asked if Ren was ready to return, but Ren said no.

His dark eyes told a completely different story, and Adrian understood.

Ren didn’t think he could refrain from touching if they traveled back to the yacht together.

Adrian agreed, he didn’t know if he could do it either.

“I’ll see you back there then,” Adrian said as he and the lead deckhand wandered into the hotel to ask for the shuttle to take them back to the marina.

Once onboard, Adrian hurried to the cabin.

He’d firmly decided he couldn’t tell Ren how he felt.

It would be unfair to both of them, and Adrian wasn’t willing to risk the embarrassment or awkwardness if Ren reacted badly.

So, declarations of love were not going to happen no matter how Adrian felt.

But an idea had formed while in the shuttle.

If he couldn’t tell Ren, he could show him, he could let his emotions flow through his body, trusting that the connection between them would convey all he was feeling inside without him saying a word.

He could let himself feel how much he loved Ren and hope it permeated his touch, informed each kiss, spoke for the words he wasn’t saying.

In the cabin, Adrian set about dimming the lights, turning down the bed, and finding some suitable music to play through the cabin’s speakers.

He wished he could light candles or fill the space with flowers, but he worked with what he had.

After everything was as perfect as he could make it, Adrian took a quick shower, but he didn’t put on clothes after he dried off.

Instead, he got the string of black pearls Ren had bought him in Ibiza, lay down on the bed, and waited for Ren to return.

He didn’t have long to wait—no more than five minutes—before the cabin door opened and Ren strode into the room.

“You are quite the tease, poussin, I think I should—” Ren’s voice faltered as he came around the corner and saw Adrian lounging against the pillows on the bed.

“Think you should what?” Adrian asked, looping a finger under the strand of pearls and rolling them against his neck.

Ren shook his head. “I do not know,” he said. “The sight of you has completely erased my thoughts.” He walked to the edge of the mattress and stood above Adrian. “You look divine, mon cher.”

“Merci, Your Highness.” Adrian let his legs fall open, giving Ren a prime view of his hard dick. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

The string of French that fell from Ren’s mouth when Adrian took hold of himself made Adrian smile. “Do not let me interrupt you,” Ren finally managed to say in English.

“I wasn’t planning on it.” Adrian gave himself a couple of strokes, shivering under the intensity of Ren’s dark gaze. “Do you want to join me?”

“Non. I would rather watch, mon cher.”

Adrian dropped his gaze to the bulge in Ren’s pants. “Sure about that?”

“I can control myself, poussin.”

With another laugh, Adrian gripped his cock, his hips thrusting upward as he drove himself into his tight fist. When he felt a bead of precum form at his tip, he ran his fingers through it and held them out to Ren who fell on them as if Adrian was offering him a delicacy.

Ren licked Adrian’s fingers clean, declaring himself to have been correct: Adrian tasted better than the champagne they had been served.

“You are delicious, chéri. The most amazing thing I have ever had in my mouth.”

Adrian fixed Ren with a steady gaze. “Show me,” he said, loving the way those words ignited the heat in Ren’s expression.

His prince might not have fully regrown the thick, dark scruff Adrian had loved to feel against his skin, but Ren more than made up for it in the way his gaze raked up and down Adrian’s body.

“As you wish,” Ren said.

Instead of climbing on the bed as Adrian had expected, Ren began to strip.

Slowly. He took his time pulling his shirt over his head, teasing Adrian with views of his tanned skin and flat stomach, then the dark patch of hair and the dusky nipples that nestled within.

With his arms over his head, Adrian was treated to the long lines of Ren’s torso.

His muscles stood out, defined, firm, veins still prominent from his exertion playing volleyball.

Adrian could smell the musk and sweat on him as well.

Clean, masculine, powerful. The scent hit Adrian in the pit of his stomach, made him groan, and stroke himself harder.

Ren paused as he pulled the shirt over his head, held it up to his nose, then out to Adrian who took hold of it and brought it to his own nose, inhaling deeply.

The scent was magic, spice and musk, and thick enough to coat Adrian’s tongue, giving him a taste of Ren that flowed down his throat and filled his lungs.

He was surrounded by Ren, and the man hadn’t even touched him yet.

Making short work of his pants, Ren stepped out of them and kicked them to the side, then knelt on the bed.

He knee-walked his way between Adrian’s legs, gazing down with such reverence, Adrian nearly stopped breathing.

If he had intended to show Ren what he was feeling, was it possible Ren was doing the same?

Adrian pushed the thought away. It had no business here tempting Adrian into thinking this could ever be anything but what it was.

No matter how he felt about Ren, nor how Ren felt about him, they could only be two men who enjoyed each other’s bodies and company for a time. And that would have to be enough.

As if to prove that to himself, Adrian reached out and pulled Ren on top of him, bringing their mouths together in a heated kiss.

They devoured each other. It had only been a few hours since they’d been able to touch, a few hours of watching each other and being unable to kiss, but there was a void in those hours, a chasm in which Adrian had missed Ren more than he would have thought possible while they both occupied the same space.

They kissed as if they had been separated by days, years even, starving pilgrims who had made it to the end of their journey as they feasted on each other.

Ren’s mouth and hands were everywhere, as were Adrian’s, a flurry of touches and kisses, bites and nips, a constant and ever-shifting arrangement of limbs as they sought each other’s most sensitive places, vying to provide as much pleasure as possible.

Gasps, moans, deep-seated groans, and shouts of surprise filled the air as they teased and sucked.

For a while, Ren’s cock was in Adrian’s mouth, lodged in his throat as Adrian swallowed around him, then it was Adrian’s cock in Ren’s mouth, his balls, his ass.

Adrian gasped when Ren’s tongue speared his hole, what little scruff shadowing Ren’s mouth managing to scrape Adrian’s tender skin, setting off sparks that rose up his spine.

He pushed back against that mouth, crying out when Ren shifted positions again, then shouting when Ren’s fingers found their way inside him and lit up his prostate.

Their scent filled Adrian, the combined taste of them ripe in his mouth, his fingers sensitive to the smallest ripple of pleasure in Ren’s body.

He had intended to show Ren his feelings this evening, to speak them without uttering a word, and what he was getting in return was a declaration, a validation, a celebration.

Ren had told Adrian that he was a revelation, had said that Adrian had allowed him to be himself in a way no one else ever had, and now Adrian knew the same was true for him.

Ren had given Adrian himself, and in doing so had brought Adrian home.

Every mistake Ricky had ever made was bathed in the light of Adrian knowing he would not be here with Ren had those things not happened.

And this moment, this precious moment when their bodies joined, finally brought the shattered pieces of Adrian’s heart back together again.

“Je t’adore, mon amour,” Ren murmured as he rocked into Adrian’s body, and Adrian didn’t need an interpreter to know what Ren had said. He felt it. He gathered those words to himself and echoed them back to Ren in the few words of French he knew.

“Moi aussi.”

The days that followed were the happiest and most peaceful Adrian had felt in years, the words Ren had spoken lodged firmly in his heart.

He and Ren spent hours lounging by the pool, moving indoors when the sun got too intense to help Rachel with meal prep, then retiring to their cabin after lunch to rest. Or to have sex, which usually happened whenever they were in bed together.

They watched movies and played board games after dinner with the crew who were off-duty, a surprising move allowed by the captain who usually stuck by strict divisions of rank.

Ren had had to approve it, of course, but he’d done so enthusiastically.

“I may have suggested it to him,” Rachel said with a smirk on the third day when Ren said something. Adrian raised an eyebrow, and Rachel gave him the most lascivious grin he’d ever seen.

“I think Rachel is sleeping with the captain,” he told Ren later that day.

Ren shook his head. “She is playing with fire,” he said, but then pulled Adrian down on the bed and ran his fingers through Adrian’s hair. “But I like to play that way too.”

All in all, Adrian had a great time even as the days with Ren ran down to nothing. Whenever he got anxious about the end of the trip, he pushed those thoughts away and focused on making each moment he had left a memory worth keeping.