Zane ushered Beckett inside the cabin he’d booked, dropped their ill-fated backpack and sleeping bags, and hurriedly blocked out the frosty night. Dim lights popped on, but Zane was too distracted to take in details. He stripped Beckett out of his clothes and steered him toward the thick rug seated before a leather couch.

“Undress, too,” Beckett demanded, trembling.

Without preamble, Zane yanked off his boots and clothes and tossed them atop Beckett’s near the bunkbeds.

He scanned the room and spotted a thick, decorative blanket hanging on the wall.

“Are you sure we should be taking that down?” Becky’s teeth chattered.

“It’s a blanket, Becky. You’re shivering.”

“Yes, well. I’d rather catch a cold than have you commit a crime.”

Zane laughed at Beckett’s over cautiousness. “It’s just a blanket nailed to a wall.”

“In a historic cabin. In the middle of native New Zealand land. All the furniture has backstory.”

“We should give it more story.” Zane winked, then tugged the thick woolen weave, freeing the blanket of the last nail. “A happy story about being the blanket that stops my boyfriend”—fiancé?—“from getting hyperthermia.”

Beckett shook his head. “Hypo.”

He erupted into another shiver, and Zane curled the blanket around him. “What type of tapestry is this?”

“The warm type.” A card dangled from a tassel at Beckett’s shoulder. Zane leaned in, read the scripted font, and froze.

Beckett swung his head toward him, those beautiful blue eyes striking Zane with a flutter in the chest, just as they had when they met, and every time thereafter.

“What is it?” Beckett said.

Zane flashed a meek smile and feathered a kiss on Beckett’s frosty lips. “Getting arrested would be worth it. You’d fall ill without this wooly weave. You don’t have my Kiwi blood to be able to walk around naked and not feel the cold.”

Beckett’s disbelievingly impressed gaze flittered down Zane’s bare length. “Why would you get arrested?”

“According to this tassel, it’s a pretty old blanket? A few decades. Closer to a dozen, actually. This blanket should be in a freaking museum.”

Beckett groaned and started slipping it off.

Zane picked up the fallen corner and tucked it back around Beckett’s shoulders. “But not as much as it should be around you.”

He hunkered down next to his boyfriend and studied the warm reds and whites of the blanket. “Huh.”

Beckett managed to quirk his brow between shivers. “Huh?”

“This pattern,” Zane said. “It’s a giant fish hook.” He eyed his Taurus boyfriend and his stomach lurched giddily. Beckett Fisher had surely hooked Zane Penn and he never wanted to be set free. “This moment feels strange. Like it’s meant to be.”

“That strangeness you are feeling?” Beckett whispered. “It’s called numbness.”

Zane laughed, scoring a hand through his damp hair. “I’m sorry about the bridge thing.”

Beckett opened the blanket and wrapped it around Zane, sidling over the rug until their sides met, Beckett’s arm and hip cold against Zane’s warm skin. Now there was an idea to keep his man warm. Zane scooched in front of Beckett, cushioning Beckett’s front with warmth while the blanket cloaked his back. Zane steered Beckett’s arms around his chest.

Beckett shivered and pressed a tickling kiss on Zane’s shoulder.

“It was supposed to be romantic,” Zane said, sighing.

“Nothing says romance like being jumped on a semi-collapsed swing bridge over a dirty creek in the middle of the night.”

“It was a full moon. I thought you were into it.”

A chuckle skittered over his shoulder blade. “I was into it. Until—”

“We toppled into the creek?”

“Before that, when—”

“I accidentally kicked our pack over the edge?”

“Before that.” Beckett clamped his front flush against Zane’s back and Zane willed all his warmth into Beckett’s body.

“Before that?” Zane warmed Beckett’s thighs that were clenched around his. “It was totally hot before that.”

“Hmm. Hot. Not the word I’d currently use for it.”

Oh. Zane stared at his feet poking out from the tapestry-blanket. Embarrassment burned through him.

Beckett rested his forehead against Zane’s nape. “You’ve gone quiet.”

Zane shrugged. He tried to laugh but it sounded panicked. “So . . . you weren’t into trying, um, that with me?”

Beckett’s arms stiffened around him. His fingers curled around Zane’s upper arms, the blanket pooling to their waists. “Turn around, Zane.”

Zane turned onto his knees and kept his gaze cast at Beckett’s smooth, hard chest.

A finger curved under his chin and steered his face up. Beckett sized-up Zane’s expression, his gaze soft, curious, and cautiously desiring. “I refuse to top you for your first time on a semi-collapsed swing bridge over a dirty creek in the middle of the night.”

Zane tried to drop his gaze, but Beckett pinched his chin in place. He leaned in until his lips hovered at Zane’s. “But I’m definitely into the idea.”

Zane shivered, and it had zero to do with the cold. “Now I’m all nerves and hypo-exhilaration.”

Beckett smiled against his lips and Zane pulled back to admire the way Beckett’s face transformed with joy, eyes twinkling, mouth curving sensually.

Zane crushed Beckett into a smoldering kiss.

Beckett pulled back, chuckling. “Not tonight.”

“But what a brilliant way to keep warm.”

“How romantic,” Beckett said, dryly.

Zane saluted him. “Totally right. My first time should be. I’ll continue offering romantic suggestions, Becky, and when the feels overwhelm you, you’re going to peg—”

“Not what you think it means.”

“Piston—”

“Good Lord.”

“Plunge? Whoa, where are you going?”

“To plunge off a bridge. Apparently once wasn’t enough.”

“You’re back!” Darla called out the moment they fell out of the taxi in front of Beckett’s duplex.

Zane abandoned his suitcase, rushed up their neighbor’s path, and whisked the old bull into the biggest, foot-popping hug.

“Now I remember why I missed you,” she cooed in his ear. “Side note, could you maybe toss me over your shoulder and spank my bottom next Tuesday at five o’clock?”

Beckett coughed behind them, and Zane pulled back grinning. “What’s next Tuesday at five?”

“Oh, this gentleman I met at the library is coming over to pick up an antique chair.”

“You don’t own an antique chair.”

“Maybe he’ll pick up an antique something else,” she said.

Zane laughed. “I’ll spank you any time at all.”

“I feel like I’m in class,” Beckett said. “The professor no one pays attention to.”

“What was that?” Zane asked.

Beckett gave a cute, irritable growl. “Darla, move your insanely manicured fingernails off my boyfriend.”

Darla lifted her nails off Zane’s jaw. “Boyfriend or fiancé?”

Zane’s stomach dipped. Beckett had said he wanted to marry Zane when he was eligible to enter the States. After months in New Zealand travelling with Beckett, here Zane was, back on American soil on another visa.

Were they officially fiancés? Or was it only official if they wore engagement rings? Did guys buy engagement rings?

He glanced at his bare fingers and over at Beckett’s and shifted uneasily.

Darla grabbed her cane and pivoted suddenly, mumbling about a package as she smacked her way inside.

Beckett stepped closer to him and words skittled over the shell of his ear. “I’m not letting you leave again.”

Zane swallowed Beckett into a tender embrace. Their warm breaths tangled and their legs slotted easily together. Their kiss crackled with electricity.

“So many feels,” Zane croaked. He pressed against Beckett’s warm body and deepened their kiss.

A muffled laugh. “Not now, Zane.”

Darla returned with a package addressed to Beckett and Zane. One glimpse at the sender, Zane knew what was in the box. After the bridge incident a few weeks ago, he’d organized this.

With a grin, he plucked the package from Darla, and pivoted to Beckett. “This is for us.”

Once they’d lugged their suitcases inside, Zane dragged Beckett to the bathroom with a giddy grin. Jetlag was fast catching up to him, but he didn’t care. He wanted Beckett to open the package now.

Beckett perched on the tiled rim of the bath. With an inquisitive brow, he carefully opened the package and peeked inside.

Zane could barely restrain from helping him rip into it. He bounced on the balls of his feet.

Finally, Beckett pulled out the plastic material. “A shower curtain?”

Zane tapped the rail high above the bath that held a navy shower curtain. Nothing wrong with it, but it was nothing special either. “Open it out.”

Beckett did. Zane had sketched a Taurus and Pisces either side of a large hook. The hook he’d modelled off the historic tapestry they’d used to keep warm in the cabin. Once they’d reached civilization, Zane had sent away for his design to be printed on this shower curtain.

Beckett scrubbed his smile and carefully gathered the material onto his lap, twisting it so the bull, hook, and fish faced him.

“It had to be a bathroom related gift,” Zane blurted. “You know, because of all the fond memories we’ve had in here.”

“Remembering them gives me a real high.” A twinkle danced in Beckett’s eye, and a gentle shiver slid through Zane.

Beckett laid the shower curtain over the bathtub and crossed over to him. Blue eyes simmered with fondness, lust, and shyness—something he wasn’t used to in Beckett.

Beckett laid a warm hand over the side of Zane’s neck. His thumb tapped with the rapid beat of his heart. A question brewed in his gaze, and the answer was yes, yes, yes! But Zane’s throat dried, and he croaked.

Flustered, he broke their connection, scooped up the empty box, and shifted it from arm to arm.

“We should put the curtain up.” Zane peeked inside the cardboard box. Just a bunch of screwed up packing paper. “Shit. No shower rings.”

Beckett frowned. “I’ll order some. Should arrive tomorrow.”

Zane slumped his shoulders and followed. For weeks he’d tossed out romantic opportunity after romantic opportunity. Beckett hadn’t so much as nipped at the bait.

Now he had, and Zane had gutted it.

After a day recovering from jetlag, Zane redoubled his efforts.

In the early evening, he drove to the florist and returned a dozen scarlet roses richer. He smuggled them into the bedroom and scattered the ripped petals off eleven of them over the bed.

Gently oiled and wearing an assless thong—step four on a “How to Seduce” blog he’d discovered—he slipped the last rose between his teeth and snuck to where Beckett was working in the living room.

Admittedly, this was cliché. But clichés were clichés for a reason. They worked.

And hopefully it’d work for him right now.

Zane hovered in the doorway. The curtains were drawn and bright light filled the room. Beckett sat at the table, sloped over his journal, writing vigorously, his blazer open and his shirt unbuttoned to the sternum.

He tapped his pen against his lips in thought. Zane couldn’t contain the crazy love swelling in his chest. He never needed Darla’s dodgy brownies; he was always high around Beckett.

He cleared his throat and Beckett glanced at him with a warm smile. He refocused on his journal and then whipped his head back up with a startled blink.

Zane dimmed the lights and sidled to Beckett, removing the bitter tasting rose stem from his mouth. He offered the flower.

“Uh, what?” Beckett said.

“How elegant, professor.”

Beckett’s gaze roamed Zane’s length up and down, and again, lingering on his jockstrap. His hand twitched with his pen. “What’s going on?” he rasped.

“If I do it right, this’ll be a seduction.”

Beckett regained his composure, dropped his pen, and took the flower. Amusement creased the corners of his eyes. He leaned back in his chair. “You’re the cutest man I’ve ever met.”

“Cute? Try sexy.”

“Hmmm.”

Zane growled, then turned around and showed him his gaping backside. “See, sexy!”

Beckett laughed, and Zane felt the seduction leak through his fingers like the coconut oil he’d slathered himself with.

Another fail.

At least he wasn’t the type to give up easily.

He excused himself to the bedroom—despite Beckett’s baffled frown—and returned a few minutes later, nervously gripping a piece of paper.

Beckett remained where he’d left him, twirling the rose between his fingers, a soft smile playing at his lips.

Zane moved to him.

Beckett eyed the boxers and T-shirt Zane now wore with a glint of disappointment.

“I’ve made a list.” Zane slid the paper over the table toward Beckett, who glanced at it. “I don’t want to keep messing it up, so choose which scenario makes you feel the most.”

“Zane.”

“I mean it. I want this to be perfect for both of us.”

Beckett twisted on his chair and captured his hand. Warm fingers tightened around his and Zane folded toward the pull.

Beckett tugged him again and Zane scooched onto his warm lap, straddling him.

Zane brushed a stray hair off Beckett’s face. “I’m sorry I ruined our moment in the bathroom yesterday.”

“You’re nervous.”

“Yeah.”

Beckett leaned in, nose dragging along Zane’s cheek to his ear. “Me too.”

Zane pulled back. Beckett’s grip was confident at Zane’s hips, but his eyes wavered between desire and uncertainty.

“You are?”

Another nod.

“Have you never done it before?”

Beckett smiled against Zane’s lips. His words were a warm whisper. “I have. Most times with my ex.”

Zane jerked back and Beckett gripped him tight.

“You mostly topped? But I’ve been . . . we’ve been . . . on an almost daily basis.”

“And it’s perfect. What we have works for us. I don’t have to do it any other way, Zane.”

But Zane saw a curious flash in Beckett’s eyes. “You want to, though.”

“I don’t . . . Maybe. Yes.”

“Why haven’t you, then? I’ve offered a million and twenty-seven times in the last three weeks.”

Beckett swept a hand up Zane’s back and squeezed his nape. “Because I want you to like it, Zane.” He loosened his grip to a tickle. “Really like it. I don’t want you to be disappointed, and first times can be . . .”

“Painful.”

“It’s a lot of pressure.”

“Was that a pun, Becky?”

Beckett laughed abruptly. “Not intentionally.”

Zane understood. Beckett felt pressured to make it perfect for him. “Thing is, I do hope it feels great. Wonderful. Mind-blowing—”

“That isn’t helping.”

Zane swallowed Beckett’s exasperated groan into a kiss. “Eventually. But the first time is not about that. It’s about me and you. About being close. About sharing that intimacy.”

They pressed their foreheads together and Beckett’s breath shuddered over the top of Zane’s lip.

Professor Beckett’s voice came out soft, breaking on his name. “Kiss me, Zane?”

Zane slid his palms across Beckett’s freshly shaven cheeks and whispered his lips over Beckett’s. The soft touch sent a shiver through him, and he squirmed on Beckett’s lap.

They had kissed ten thousand times already, yet each kiss still felt like a snowflake: tender, fresh, unique.

This one was all nervous edges.

Zane slipped his tongue inside Beckett’s mouth, reassuring and pleading, and Beckett rolled his hands down his back, pressing him tight.

Zane moaned and Beckett deepened their kiss. He tasted faintly of wine and under that, sweet, like he’d eaten apricots.

Their kiss grew heated. Zane rocked against Beckett’s hard-on, his own hardness obscenely tenting his satin boxers, the head nudging Beckett’s stomach.

Beckett nipped the side of Zane’s throat and groaned. “Are you sure?”

Zane was too lost to the sensation of Beckett’s hands clamping around his ass to answer.

“Because you can have me instead. Forever. We don’t—”

Zane freed himself from Beckett’s lap, and yanked Beckett to his feet with him. Their bodies bumped together as Zane crushed him into another kiss. And another. And another.

They stumbled to the bedroom where the bed awaited them, large and dominant. Curtains were drawn tight, though one flap was caught on the bull-cloaked armchair. A mild glow emanated from the nightstands, casting dim light over the bed and even hazier light over the soft carpet.

Beckett tugged out of his blazer and Zane helped him with the shirt. Both ended up puddled between them, soft material tickling the tops of his feet.

Beckett slid soft fingers over Zane’s jaw. “Any time you change your mind—”

Zane growled, flicked Beckett’s jeans open, and reached a hand under his briefs and palmed his hot length. He squeezed the silky skin around his firm shaft and sucked Beckett’s bottom lip into his mouth.

Beckett melted into the touch, pushing into his hand with a frantic moan.

Zane loved how hot Beckett was, how he trusted himself to let go.

Beckett’s fingers swept under Zane’s T-shirt and glided over his coconut-oiled skin. “Slippery,” Beckett mused before pulling the T-shirt off.

“Um, yes. Everywhere.” Zane may have overdone it, but he’d felt tight when he’d fingered himself in preparation earlier. Had been rather zealous with the coconut oil.

Beckett’s eyes darkened. He steered the waistband of his boxers over his rigid cock and Zane wriggled it to his ankles. Zane wrapped a hand around himself and stroked as Beckett stomped out of his pants.

As soon as their feet were free, Zane pulled Beckett against him so eagerly, he lost balance and they crumpled half against the bed, half the floor.

Zane’s ass hit the soft carpet, Beckett’s knees thumped between his thighs. Their cocks crossed with glorious sensation and Beckett’s laugh fanned over his chin.

Zane didn’t care where they’d landed, all that mattered was that his sexy, professor boyfriend was in his arms.

He pulled Beckett on top of him, and Beckett’s laughter drifted into their next kiss. They kissed softly, Beckett gently grinding on him. But grinding wasn’t enough. Zane wanted Beckett inside him.

He was a little scared, and a lot nervous, but he was so achingly ready.

He arched up against the shallow thrusts and looped a leg around Beckett’s back. He tightened his hold on Beckett and pleaded for Beckett to touch his ass.

Beckett cursed against his neck and reached between them.

The first sweep of fingertips over his hole had Zane alight. He lifted his head off the floor and kissed Beckett deeply, hand threading through his hair, urging him on. His body burst into needy shivers. With his free hand, he greedily gripped Beckett’s and helped push his fingers inside him.

The breach felt insanely good. “I can’t believe you never told me you love to top,” Zane groaned.

Beckett swatted his hand away and took over teasing his hole. “It didn’t seem . . . pertinent.”

Kill Zane now. “You used that big word on purpose, didn’t you?”

“What? Pertinent?” Beckett said innocently.

Zane scowled into a punishing kiss. “You know I love it when you use clever words.” And that one sounded particularly perky and pointy and penis-tenty.

Beckett pulled back with a humored grin. God, he was beautiful.

“What did you use in yourself?” Beckett asked.

“Coconut oil.”

“That doesn’t work well with latex.”

Zane rested his head back on the ground and held Beckett’s gaze. He whispered, “I want you to come inside me.”

They’d been tested, and they were both clean. Zane and Beckett had talked about not using condoms, but this would be their first time following through with it.

Beckett’s breath hitched as his finger drew out of Zane. Zane’s stomach clenched. Was Beckett drawing back to say no? To tell Zane he wasn’t ready for that yet?

Would Beckett touch his face gently and say Zane was moving too fast? From meeting, to confessing their love, to suggesting they marry when they returned from New Zealand . . .

Was Beckett—

Beckett touched his face, and Zane slammed his eyes shut.

Hot breath pooled over his parted lips. A thumb stroked the bridge of his nose. Beckett’s voice shook. “I’d love being so close to you.”

Zane’s eyes popped open, and beheld Beckett’s tender, lust-filled gaze. “Really?”

Beckett slanted his lips on Zane’s.

The warm weight of Beckett wriggling against his slippery body felt perfect. Kisses trailed down his throat and shoulder before a tongue flicked over his nipple. Zane’s skin tickled in the cool air as Beckett slid between Zane’s legs.

Zane dropped his bent leg to the spongey carpet as Beckett cupped and kneaded his balls. Fingers darted with shallow thrusts in and out of him, and for twenty frustrating seconds, Beckett left him, nerve-endings on fire, as he found more lube.

He returned with kisses and slick fingers, and murmurs about how sexy Zane was.

Beckett steadied himself against Zane’s chest, their cocks rubbing with delicious friction. “Should we move to the bed?” Beckett asked raggedly in his ear.

The bed, strewn with rose petals, would have been romantic.

The side of the bed was swathed in dull shadows, his back was pressed hard into the carpet under him, and bedsheets hung over the bed, dipping over the arm Zane had flung out.

It wasn’t perfect, and yet.

“Here,” Zane said.

Perfect came from them and their nervous eagerness to be close and closer still.

He turned his head and captured Beckett’s hot lips. “Here,” he murmured. “This way I can say I floored you.”

“You floor me every day.”

Zane’s heart galloped. “Literally.”

A soft laugh. “I have no words for you, Zane.”

“Me either, professor.”

With a quivering breath, Zane grasped Beckett’s cock and thumbed the come at his head. He tilted his ass and steered Beckett to his entrance.

Beckett swooped for one more kiss, and then pressed forward. Zane hissed on the first intrusion, and grappled at Beckett when he started pulling back. Their eyes locked. “This is about us. I want to feel you.”

Beckett fed him his length inch by gasping inch. He threaded their fingers, the back of Zane’s hand pressed against the carpet, and squeezed.

Beckett was seated so deeply.

Zane clenched around his length. It wasn’t quite as painful as he expected, but he felt strangely full, and his cock flagged.

“Kiss me, Becky,” he whimpered, but Beckett was already there, tilting his head down and sweeping a tender kiss at the base of his lips.

“You’re hugging me so tight,” Beckett gasped, and squeezed Zane’s shaft with delicious pressure.

He hardened rapidly, and moaned for Beckett to move.

Beckett eased out of him and slowly pressed forward again. He kept a languid pace, gentle, steady, until it was Zane who couldn’t handle any more careful rolling of hips. He wanted to feel Beckett shafting into him.

“Harder, Becky. So I feel you forever.”

Beckett uttered a string of long words that Zane loved. Beckett bucked into him at a pace that teased his prostate. Zane cried out for more just like it.

Zane laid a wrist at Beckett’s shoulder, loving the way it bumped forward with each thrust.

Beckett plowed into him, again and again. The carpet burned Zane’s back and the pressure was intense, but he hungered for more. He clutched the bedsheets and yanked them. Rose petals puffed up and rained on them.

His orgasm hurtled toward him, sudden and powerful, as he choked on Beckett’s name. Zane grasped at his cock, stroking furiously, and Beckett’s body slapped against his as he pounded into him, pace growing rapid and wild.

One more thrust tore pleasure through Zane and he came hard between their stomachs. Beckett groaned. He was close, but not quite there. He started pulling out, and Zane curled his legs around his back. “In me, Becky.”

Beckett drove into Zane like he never wanted to stop. His expression slackened with pleasure and Zane loved that he was sending Beckett to these desperately bucking heights.

He snapped his hips one last time and Zane felt his cock pulsing inside him.

Beckett groaned and collapsed onto Zane’s chest, planting a kiss at his throat.

Zane wrapped his arms around Beckett’s heavily-breathing chest. Those beautiful blue eyes found his, awe and apprehension simmering there. “How do you feel?”

Zane smiled at him. “Happy you took the plunge.”

Barked laughter combed through the hair at his chest.

Zane winced at the loss when Beckett slipped out of him. He hugged him tighter. “That felt very . . . “

“Satisfying?” Beckett fished.

“Pertinent.”

Beckett buried his face in his neck and their stomachs slid together with oil and come. “God, I love you.”

Zane rolled them and pinned Beckett’s wrists to the carpet and squashed rose petals either side of his head. He gazed deeply into Beckett’s eyes until humor faded to quieter sincerity. “I liked it, Becky. More than liked it.”

Zane sucked in Beckett’s relieved breath, and their lips hovered close. “I love you.”

After much lazy kissing—and Beckett murmuring in Zane’s ear not to get rid of the assless jockstrap—they moved to the bathroom and cleaned themselves with a warm cloth.

Zane eyed the new shower curtain draped over the tub. Beckett disappeared and returned thirty seconds later with a set of solid silver shower-curtain rings. “They came while you were out. Let’s put it up.”

Zane discarded the plastic rings and sat on the bath, watching his boyfriend gracefully snap the silver rings through the new curtain.

“We’re done. Do you like it?”

Zane continued watching Beckett. “Yeah. Perfect.”

Beckett picked up the two leftover metal hoops and played with them in his hands.

He eyed the Taurus, the hook, and the Pisces, and leveled his warm gaze on Zane. “I agree.”

He stepped between Zane’s legs and took his hand. “And if you like it . . .” Beckett slid one of the shower hoops over his ring finger. It was too big, but it slid on with all the promise in the world. “You should put a ring on it.”

Zane blinked at the ring. At Beckett. At the ring again. Was this . . . was he . . .

Beckett slid the other ring on his finger with a twinkle in his eye.

Zane leaped to his feet, heart in his throat. “Best quote ever, professor.”

He placed his hyper-trembling hand, bejeweled with a shower-curtain ring, against Beckett’s cheek. “It was yes, it still is, and it always will be. Let’s tell Darla that we’re . . .”

His voice stuck on the word, and Beckett swept in and kissed him. “Fiancés.”