How they made it home was anyone’s guess.

They stumbled up the stairs, pulling at each other’s clothes. Cliff murmured in his ear not to drop anything. Buttons open, shoes kicked off, Pax dragged Cliff into his room and continued stripping him. Clothes flung around the room; a shirt over the TV screen, socks draped the model birds; jeans puddled on the floor.

Cliff grinned and draped Pax’s shirt over his picture on the corkboard.

Pax playfully tackled naked Cliff onto the bed and straddled him, face to face. Cliff was warm and solid under him. Thank God he didn’t attempt to remove his glasses.

Pax flicked a tongue over Cliff’s mouth, eliciting a groan that had Pax’s cock growing heavier and thicker.

Cliff slid a hand up the back of Pax’s hair and swept his tongue inside his mouth. Cliff tasted of mint and warmth, and Pax moaned into it for more.

Cliff’s kiss grew more desperate, tongue plunging into his mouth, hands tight in his hair and clasped at his hip. They panted between deep kisses, and their cocks rubbed together. This sinful, tongue-tangling kiss was driving him insane. It fired all his nerve endings, and it supercharged the butterflies in his chest. This was what music felt like.

He wrenched his mouth back.

Cliff’s lips were raw and his eyes were half-lidded in lust. God, he was so fucking perfect.

Cliff chased after him for another kiss and Pax cursed at the incredible pleasure of it. Cliff’s thick shaft rubbed against his. “This is not a summer thing, Cliff.”

“You’re damn right it’s not.”

“Every line of the song. I meant it.”

Cliff’s eyes shuttered closed and his soft smile chorused through Pax. “The moment you snuck on stage, I about riffed a solo on the piano.”

Pax nibbled Cliff’s chin. “Promise to do that sometime. I’d love to hear you go off script.”

Cliff bumped the tip of his nose against Pax’s and hungrily met his eye. “Your mouth.”

Pax smirked into a kiss. “What about my mouth?”

“It’s my favorite part of your face.”

“You love the smug smiles, don’t you?”

“I love . . .” Cliff swallowed and raced into a tongue-thrusting kiss, hands sliding over the rise of his ass.

Pax thrust against Cliff and pulled out of the kiss. Their chests bumped together as they hauled in breaths. “You love, what?”

“Every second of sass that comes out of your mouth.” Cliff combed his jaw over Pax’s and spoke in his ear. “Suck me.”

Holy hell. Yes.

Desire surged to his cock. He flattened a palm against Cliff’s chest and pushed him back against his pillow.

Pax kissed down the column of Cliff’s throat and reveled in the responding groan. He slowed his pace, exploring Cliff’s chest, nipples, and stomach with his tongue. He licked over tight, undulating abs to his hips.

Pax settled a gentle kiss at the plum-like head of Cliff’s cock. He grinned. “You love my mouth? You’re about to enter another fucking realm.”

He gripped the base of Cliff’s solid cock, breathed in his musky scent, and tasted him with a dart of his tongue over his leaking slit. Cliff made a deep sound that felt like a stroke to his cock—and his ego.

Pax took Cliff into his mouth and sucked the hot, silky length of him. Cliff was all mutters and groans and urges for Pax to take more. Pax took more.

He grabbed Cliff’s clenching ass and urged Cliff to fuck his throat. His jaw ached, and Cliff’s cock stretched his mouth. Pax wanted every salty second to last forever.

He wanted Cliff thinking the same thing.

For this to last forever.

Cliff gasped, bucked, and pulled out of Pax’s mouth on the verge of coming. He clutched the sheets either side of him and his neck corded as he forced back an orgasm. “Want you to come inside me.”

Pax had never moved so fast. Cliff laughed at his squirreling around for condoms and lube. Laughed at Pax cursing when he couldn’t sheath himself fast enough. He didn’t laugh so much when Pax thrust lubed fingers into him.

Cliff writhed and bossed Pax around, telling him how he liked it. His ragged grunts were so fucking hot. Pax’s cock pulsed for friction and he scrambled up Cliff’s body, positioning himself at Cliff’s hole.

They snatched each other into a pleading, desperate kiss.

Cliff spread his legs and urged Pax closer.

The desire between them swelled, and their gazes locked.

Cliff swallowed like he sensed the weight of the moment, and Pax embraced the tingles racing over his skin. More than sex. This was a duet, and they were harmonizing. Body and heart.

Pax feathered their lips together. “You and me.”

He pushed into Cliff’s tight channel and gasped. Cliff clutched him as he moaned. “You and me. Now riff already.”

Pax riffed.

He riffed like he was tasting every note of music in existence.

Riffed like he might meld them together permanently.

Riffed like a man drowning in pleasure and love and the sweet sound of Cliff losing himself to fun under him.

Pax drove his cock into Cliff, pace quickening as he reached an impossibly high precipice. He jerked Cliff’s cock, frantic and needy.

Cliff groaned, and their eyes caught. A fountain of come spilled over Pax’s hand. Pax surged into Cliff one more time, lost in those framed green eyes as his orgasm wrenched through him.

Christmas morning, Pax woke tangled around Cliff.

A hand feathered over his naked hip, and Pax hummed into Cliff’s neck. Felt nice. Perfect.

Cliff shifted, and his chin bumped Pax’s forehead. A kiss dropped onto his hair.

Pax settled a return kiss on Cliff’s chest. He tasted faintly sweaty from the three times they’d had sex last night. They’d been relentless, caught in the raw need to push into each other as close as possible. Pax had slid in and out of Cliff, making Cliff whimper, and Pax’s orgasm had torn through him like the best of Beethoven.

But this moment?

Waking up cocooned in warmth, Cliff murmuring, “Merry Christmas?”

Knowing a lifetime of Christmases were to follow?

It was like Beethoven, Mozart, and Chopin on the electric fucking guitar.

Pax pulled himself out of bed. “You should move my poster firmly into the doing section of your corkboard.”

Cliff scoffed but proceeded to haul himself out of bed and make the suggested change.

Pax barely refrained from tackling him back into bed. “I’ve got to grab gifts and stuff from next door.”

He left before his baser instincts got the best of him.

He hurried home and knelt on the carpet in front of his bedroom dresser, where he pulled out the gifts he’d bought a few days ago.

Pohutakawa-print wrapped gifts pooled over his lap. He stopped gathering them into his arms at the soft sound of the piano from next door.

He was playing “Carol of the Bells.”

No hesitation or stuttering this time. Played with a zest that had Pax scrambling to his feet and grabbing the angel.

He turned his attention from her cunning smile to Cliff at the piano in his study. “It’s time.”

Cliff looked at the angel, at Pax, and at the angel again.

Pax sat next to his boyfriend at the piano, holding the beautiful carved angel between them.

Pax held her at the base and rested his hands on the middle piano keys, causing upward scaled clatter.

Cliff softly played keys at the upper end, his fingers getting closer and closer until the only move left was to take the angel.

With a brave smile, Cliff curled his hand around the angel’s torso.

Electricity raced through Pax and it must have done the same to Cliff, too, because he started and the piano keys clattered. The moment felt warm, tender, and deep, like somehow the angel was knotting their souls together.

“I think she misses you,” Pax said, still clasping the end of the angel. “I also think you missed her.”

Pax let go and Cliff studied the angel. “I think you’re right.”

They ran downstairs, toward Bianca and Luca giggling in the living room, then changed course when the doorbell rang.

Pax raced to the door and swung it open.

Henry stared at them imploringly from the porch, like a puppy who knew he was in trouble. No matter how much the guy pissed Pax off, he couldn’t help but like him. A little. A very little.

Henry undid one of the jacket buttons, cleared his throat, and swung his gaze from Cliff to Pax to Cliff again. “Forgive me, fellas. If hearty sorrow be a sufficient ransom for offence, I tender’t here. I do as truly suffer as e’er I did commit.”

“Not as much as you’ll suffer if I hear Shakespeare from your tongue again,” Cliff muttered.

“What’s all this about?” Pax asked.

“I woke up alone in my big house, and it’s Christmas, and I suppose I wondered if I’d get coal this year.” Henry met Pax’s gaze. “Bianca told me she thought she was the villain here, but it’s me. I know it is. I held that Lone Whistle gig over your head and made you do things you wouldn’t otherwise have done.”

He stared at his feet, only glancing up to check Pax’s reaction.

Pax enjoyed letting him stew in his remorse.

Cliff elbowed his side. “Will you two sort it out? Or do you need divine intervention?”

Pax choked on a laugh, then focused on poor Henry. “Let’s be clear. The way I went about friending Cliff wasn’t ideal. In fact, despite claiming he was the shrew, I suspect half the time I was too.”

Cliff threaded their hands together. “Just half the time?”

Pax squeezed his fingers. “But . . . I am e’er so glad that I had a reason to get to know him. That he showed me the true meaning of friendship.”

Henry’s eyes snuck to their entangled hands. “More than that, I imagine—”

Cliff muttered, let Pax go, and hauled Henry inside by the jacket. “Bianca and Luca are in the living room. Go.”

Pax admired his boyfriend. “Look at us. How much we’ve grown.”

Rolling his eyes, Cliff propelled him to the Christmas tree that sparkled with tinsel and dozens of glittery ornaments.

The trio sat on the couch. Pax faced Cliff in front of the tree, feeling very much on stage and loving it.

He waggled his brows and pointed to Cliff’s bulging pocket. “Is that an angel or are you just happy to see—”

Cliff whipped the angel out of his pocket with a maddened glare. “Jesus.”

“I prefer Apollo.”

Cliff shook his head at the angel. “I’ve quite the adventure before me, don’t I?”

He lifted her up and twisted her onto the small branch poking up at the top of the tree. The room brightened.

“Now gifts,” Cliff said, clearing a frog in his throat. He pulled a wrapped rectangular box from his other shorts pocket and handed it over.

Pax ripped into it. An empty CD case. On a card inserted into the front were the names of the songs Pax had written.

“I’ll support you starting your own band,” Cliff said.

The sunshine simmering in Pax’s chest came out in a face-splitting grin.

They hadn’t even eaten breakfast yet, and Pax was ready to drag Cliff back to bed for the day. God, would he ever get used to this jumpy, disoriented feeling that licked through him with every breath?

“You’d make a badass manager,” Pax said.

“I intend to work you hard.”

“Sounds like fun to me.”

Cliff’s lips twitched. “Me too. What did you buy me?”

Pax gestured to the Christmas tree. “Other than my balls?”

Bianca snickered from the couch.

Cliff wasn’t impressed. Pax reached under the tree and pulled out a small wrapped gift. “Merry Christmas.”

Cliff picked it open with aching slowness and drew out a pair of white boxers.

“They’re good quality cotton,” Pax said.

Cliff stared at the back of the boxers for a long moment, and then snorted. “Autographed underwear.”

“For my number-one fan.”

“I have no words.”

“You’re welcome.”

From the couch came another rumble of laughter. Bianca was turning pages of a book on Renaissance music from Luca. Henry was eating a Christmas mince pie, one cupped hand under his chin for catching crumbs, another dusting crumbs from the couch between them.

“Don’t peek under the tree for my gift for you guys,” Bianca said. “I already gave you it.”

“Gave us what?” Pax asked.

She stopped turning pages, her expression 100 percent duh. “The one-man band didn’t turn into a none-man band without a mighty amount of persuasion.”

Pax stiffened. “You got rid of him on purpose?”

“I wanted you to play together. Wanted to know you were good enough for my brother, Pax. You had me sweating for a bit, but you came in the end.”

Pax rubbed his jaw in disbelief. “How very cunning of you.”

The fondest smile lit Bianca’s face and she swept it toward Cliff. “I wonder where I get it from?”

Pax addressed the angel atop the tree. “This family is so my jam.” He faced Cliff. “Kiss me.”

“With our friends and family pretending not to watch us while secretly bug-eyed to our every movement?”

Henry burst to life from the couch. “What? Outrageous. I’m not paying any attention to you at all.”

Luca hooked an elbow around Henry’s neck, grinning at Pax and Cliff wildly. Henry’s gaze snuck to Luca and lingered. When Luca caught him staring, Henry yanked Luca’s arm from around his neck and dropped it like it burned.

He muttered something under his tongue about squashing his curls and sidled across the cushions to where Bianca ripped into her Christmas gifts.

Pax returned his attention to his preppy poster-boy boyfriend. “Kiss me like you mean it.”

Wrapping paper crunched as Cliff came forward. He curled a finger under Pax’s chin and steered his face up. A thumb swept over his bottom lip.

“Apollo, I . . .” Cliff’s voice shook, and Pax straightened.

Pax liked the sound of where that was heading. He prompted Cliff on. “Yes?”

“I love playing music with you.”

Pax folded his arms. “In that case, after you’ve tried again to tell me you love me, we’ll head upstairs and play Beethoven’s Symphony no. 5.”

Cliff raised a brow. “Why will we play Symphony no. 5?”

“After you tell me you love me as much as I love you.”

Cliff laughed. “Why will we play Symphony no. 5 after I’ve told you I love you?”

“You know why.”

“It’s our song.”

“It’s our song. It’s also famously titled ‘Fate.’ And we’ve been playing to her tune from the beginning.”

They both glanced at the angel. Cliff swept a kiss over his hair to his famous freckle to the side of his lips. “I love you, Apollo.”

Pax turned into the soft kiss with a cheeky smirk. “And I love you, shrew”—Cliff clapped him against the back of the head and Pax laughed—“shrewd angel.”