Cole ached from use and want. He gripped Rhett’s ass cheeks in his hands, spreading him apart and swiping his tongue up from his hole to his balls. Rhett jerked and Cole held him tighter, licking tight swirls around Rhett’s ass, using spit to lube him up. He eased a finger inside, pressing his tongue against the tight seal Rhett’s body formed around his knuckle.

“Please,” Rhett begged.

“I don’t think I want to take my time with you after all,” Cole told him. He unrolled a condom down his length and aligned his cock with Rhett’s entrance. He grabbed the lube and slicked his cock and Rhett’s crack, using the head of his dick to spread the lube around.

“You better not,” Rhett rasped.

Cole pushed inside, his cock stretching Rhett until he whimpered beneath him. He stilled. “Too much?”

Rhett bore down, his muscles tightening and then giving way and letting Cole deeper.

“Jesus,” Cole breathed out. He bottomed out and stayed, flexing his fingers against Rhett’s waist.

This was better than he’d imagined. If every shower wank where he’d thought about Rhett had happened at the same time, it wouldn’t have felt this good. His body trembled and his cock pulsed. He was ready to come, but he wasn’t anywhere close to being ready for this to end.

Rhett was babbling promises of anything, and forever, and always, and Cole didn’t know if he meant it, but he hoped he did. He’d been fantasizing about a future with Rhett that he was desperate to fully realize and with Rhett beneath him, it seemed possible.

“You said you wouldn’t hold back,” Rhett grunted, the muscles of his channel gripping Cole’s cock.

He growled and grabbed Rhett, flipping him onto his stomach and hoisting him onto his knees. He buried himself inside of Rhett, snaking an arm around his chest and holding him up, pressing their bodies together. He sank his teeth into Rhett’s neck and pounded him from behind, hips bucking feverishly.

Sweat dripped into his eyes and he used Rhett’s hair to wipe his face. He reached around and fisted Rhett’s cock.

“Is this real?”

Heat flamed up Cole’s spine and he cried out Rhett’s name, hips snapping forward, balls emptying themselves into the condom.

“Oh, fuck,” Rhett panted.

Cole’s hand was warm, slick with Rhett’s cum, and he continued to pump his fist around Rhett’s dick. He pulled back, his own cock sliding free of Rhett’s hole. He patted the gaping and tender flesh with a sweaty hand and Rhett shook violently in his arms, angling his head to the side to search out Cole’s mouth.

Cole kissed him back, their teeth again smashing together, nipping at each other’s flesh, then Rhett was gone, collapsed on the bed beneath him with a happy sigh. His back was slick with sweat and splotchy red. Cole traced the shapes with his finger, adding the kaleidoscope blush of Rhett’s body to the secrets about his boyfriend that he’d never share.

Rhett wasn’t his boyfriend though. Cole lowered himself to the sheets, breathing heavily and feeling somehow sated and forlorn at the same time. He’d just ejaculated what felt like his entire soul and it was for what? A man who wasn’t really his?

He removed the condom and tied it off, tossing it onto the floor. Rhett shimmied across the bed, raking his short nails across Cole’s chest affectionately. Cole stilled his hand.

“I know we just did it, but when can we do it again?” he asked with a tired smile.

“Again?” Cole questioned, turning to face Rhett.

“I told you I didn’t want to pretend. I mean that wasn’t pretend. Was it?”

“It wasn’t pretend,” Cole agreed, releasing Rhett’s hand. Rhett flexed his fingers against Cole’s chest and tickled them lightly across his skin.

“So, again then?” Rhett’s hand snaked down his chest toward his cock.

“I don’t know, Rhett.”

“What’s not to know?”

“Fucking each other puts this whole thing in jeopardy,” Cole reminded him.

Rhett twisted his face into a scornful look. “It definitely does no such thing. We’re supposed to be fucking anyway. That’s what couples do. If anything, this adds to our credibility.” He traced a finger down Cole’s shaft, making him shudder. “You’ll react to me differently now when I’m around.”

Rhett rolled his head on the pillow and licked the shell of Cole’s ear. “Because you’ll know what it feels like when I’m inside of you.”

“Jesus,” Cole exhaled.

“Just me.”

Cole chuckled. “So is this friends with benefits then?”

Rhett propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at Cole. “Do you want to be my friend?”

“We’ve been friends,” Cole reminded him.

“This doesn’t seem very friendly.”

“This seems far too friendly.”

Rhett laughed and dropped onto his back, lacing his fingers together behind his head and sighing happily.

“I don’t want to just be your friend, Cole.”

Cole swallowed thickly, his heart trying to make an escape out of his throat. “Alright.”

“You’re not the most romantic one, are you?”

Cole moved quickly, covering Rhett’s body with his own and slanting their mouths together in a gentle kiss. “Just wait until I propose to you.”

“It doesn’t count if I told you how I want you to do it, and besides, this may be real, but that definitely wouldn’t be.”

“Why not?” Cole asked, brows furrowed.

“We’ve been fake dating. Now we’re barely real dating. How could a proposal in three months be real?”

“You think that’s what’s going to happen between now and Christmas?” Cole teased. “We’re just going to fake date, but it’ll be a little less fake than before tonight?”

“Basically,” Rhett agreed.

“Ye of little faith.” Cole jumped off the bed, padding naked into the bathroom. He began a mental checklist of all the things he planned to do with Rhett between now and Christmas just to make sure he knew that Cole was all in.

He turned on the shower and waited for the water to warm. Rhett appeared in the doorway and approached him, wrapping his arms around Cole’s waist and flattening his cheek against his shoulder blade.

“Why can’t we real date with a fake proposal?” Rhett propositioned, peeking around Cole’s side and searching out his eyes in the mirror.

“Do you think that would work?” He moved toward the shower, taking Rhett with him.

“It has as much a chance of working as it did when it was one-hundred percent fake.”

Cole handed Rhett a washcloth. He held it open in his hands and Cole quickly rubbed the hotel bar of soap across the terry cloth until it lathered. He took the soapy cloth from Rhett’s hands and washed him thoroughly, making his way across Rhett’s chest to his back and down between his legs.

His balls were heavy and Cole massaged them in his palm until Rhett moaned. The sound was gorgeous, a melody that Cole wanted to get used to hearing. Maybe Rhett was right. Real dating wasn’t such a preposterous idea.

Rhett took the washcloth from his hand and dropped it on the floor between them. He reached for the soap and lathered his hands, slicking his palms up Cole’s chest to his shoulders.

“I never want to stop touching you,” Rhett admitted with a blush that quickly spread to his throat.

“Then don’t,” Cole conceded, echoing his reply from earlier in the night.

Maybe it was the romance of Tahiti, the scents in the air and the way the stars and moonlight reflected off the water that was all around them, but everything with Rhett seemed magical. Like something that had been born and nurtured in the depths of Cole’s mind, then removed and constructed into complete perfection.

“You’d never get any work done,” Rhett murmured, his hands dragging down Cole’s ribs.

“That’s fine,” Cole assured him.

“You’re ridiculous,” Rhett teased, pushing Cole under the spray.

They both rinsed the soap from their bodies and dried off, returning to the bed together, still naked.

“What do you want to do now?” he asked, unsure of how to proceed.

“Like, immediately?”

“Obviously.”

“Grab the champagne from the fridge, let’s go sit outside.” Cole pointed toward the small fridge in the corner of the room. Rhett snatched his underwear from the bed and put them on, shuffling to the fridge and grabbing the bottle.

Cole grabbed a pair of underwear out of his suitcase and stepped into them, following Rhett out of the room and onto the patio. He loved that their room was on the beach, the sand practically coming straight to their door.

Instead of sitting in one of the wooden chairs, Cole lowered himself to the step and sat, digging his feet into the still-warm sand. Rhett joined him, scratching the foil from around the neck of the bottle and twisting the cage away from the cork.

“Do the honors?” he asked, holding the bottle between them.

“Happily,” Cole agreed, taking the bottle.

He angled it toward the ocean and worked his thumb under the cork, popping it free with a bang that echoed through the night. The bubbles overflowed and he laughed, raising the bottle to his lips and slurping the champagne before it was lost.

“Don’t move,” Rhett blurted, jumping up and running back into the room.

Cole didn’t move, the bottle still in his mouth and the bubbles sliding down his hands. He waited, glancing toward the room and waiting for Rhett to reappear. When he did, he had a camera with him and he hopped off the deck and into the sand. He looked above him at the moon, then back at Cole.

He lifted the camera and squinted, looking through the viewfinder. Cole heard the camera click in rapid succession before Rhett lowered it and stared fondly at him.

“What?” he asked, daring to change his pose now that Rhett had his pictures.

“Just the way you looked,” Rhett said, coming back to the patio and sitting beside Cole. He set his camera out of the way of the sand and bumped their shoulders together. “I didn’t want to ever forget it.”

Cole passed him the champagne and slid a hand around Rhett’s waist. They sat there quietly, watching the moon dance on the water, passing the bottle between them until it was empty.

“Do we really have to go home?” Rhett whispered, burying the base of the bottle in the sand between their feet.

“Do you like it here that much that you’d want to stay?”

Cole closed his eyes, the stars spinning behind his eyelids like a merry-go-round.

“I like it with you.”

“I’ll be with you at home,” Cole reminded him.

“But not like this.” Rhett gestured behind him to the room they were sharing.

Cole kicked at the neck of the champagne bottle and stood up, tugging Rhett with him. He wrapped his arms around him and kissed him, gently and sweetly, his tongue sliding slowly against Rhett’s mouth until he was allowed inside.

Rhett moaned into his mouth and Cole held him tighter, only separating so they could make it back into the room without falling over each other. The champagne had made Cole’s limbs loose and his blood hot.

“Well, our relationship is very serious,” Cole reminded him. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a proposal was in your future.”

Rhett smacked his chest and rolled his eyes. “What’s your point?”

Cole figured it was all or nothing.

“It makes sense that if things are this serious, that when we get back to the valley,” he said, pausing to swallow the last bit of fear, “my home becomes your home.”

“Are you asking me to move in with you, Cole Mallory?” Rhett kissed Cole along his jaw, up to his ear.

“I am,” Cole confirmed.

Rhett made a speculative sound, then his lip angled up into a smile. “My answer is yes.”

Cole kissed him, faster and more urgent than on the sand. Rhett tangled his fingers into Cole’s hair and they tumbled together into the bed.