“What did we say about breaking my back?”

“That the sex would be worth it.” Wesley winked into his laptop camera. On the side of the monitor, the popup video window showed Lloyd lifting a brow, his hazel eyes flashing with a suppressed laugh.

The background showed his fiancé sitting at a hotel desk, an elbow resting on a stack of textbooks. His shaved head had since grown to a tight buzz, and his collared shirt lay seductively unbuttoned over a tight tank top.

Two agonizing weeks they’d been apart, Skyping at night after Lloyd finished at his workshop for the day. The distance itched at Wesley, and he squirmed on Lloyd’s desk chair. Where he sat. Wearing only underpants and the leather wristband Lloyd had given him.

Wouldn’t be as fun without light-hearted, cross-country teasing.

“Fine,” Wesley conceded, scrolling down the page on the website they both scrolled through. “Position fourteen?”

“It involves a hammock.”

“Sixteen?”

“Should I send you a diagram of a bed so you know what beds are used for?”

Lloyd. Body of a fit twenty-six year old. Mind of an old codger.

Wesley couldn’t get enough of him. “You’re good with chairs, and a swing is like a chair . . . You sit in it.”

“I’m cramping just imagining it.”

Wesley flexed his right hand in front of the camera. “So am I.”

Lloyd scrubbed his face in amused exasperation. He had a talent for riling Lloyd up, and every responding growl, eye roll, or secret smirk tickled him. Wesley admired his handiwork.

“Lloyd?”

“Wesley?”

I miss you. “You better bring me back an airport gift.”

“Airport gift?”

“To measure the depth of your feelings for me.”

Lloyd’s nose flared as he breathed deeply. “Right now, my frustration is off the charts. What is with the sex website we’re looking at?”

“You’re coming back tomorrow.”

“And you intend to send me straight to hospital!”

Wesley leaned back in Lloyd’s chair. “I intend to play with you.”

“Play?”

“A game I made up during the long, sad nights without you.” Wesley said it lightly, but the lonely ache in his chest had grown with each passing day he spent without Lloyd.

Lloyd spoke in a dry, teasing tone. “What are the rules of this game?”

“Rules?”

“Games generally need rules to be fun. To work, period.”

Wesley scrunched up his face. “I’ll keep you posted. All you need to know is tomorrow we’re going to fuck.”

* * *

Rocking his hips to Elvis did not make time fly. For the first time ever, Wesley’s idol failed him.

He raked a hand through his dark hair, checking himself out in the full-length mirror.

Tight jeans, check.

Lloyd’s favorite green T-shirt, check.

The nauseating feeling he’d experience if he didn’t see Lloyd in the next ten minutes, triple check.

His phone buzzed with an unknown number, and Wesley answered in under a second. “Yeah?”

A blunt female voice sounded down the line. MacDonald. His best friend and brother’s girlfriend. “What the hell do we put on the barbecue for your veggie man?”

“Barbecue?” Barbecue! Fuck.

That was today.

Wesley glanced at the time on his phone.

The barbecue was in one hour.

“Caleb made a salad and cut up some zucchini. Lloyd better like strawberries.”

The sound of the front door opening had Wesley dropping his phone and racing to the entrance.

He greeted Lloyd with a body-smacking embrace. Lloyd dropped his bag and clutched his waist, gaze dancing. “It’s good to be home.”

“Never leave again.” Wesley pressed their lips together, and Lloyd laughed into the demanding kiss. He walked Wesley backward against the coats hanging on the wall.

Wesley pulled out of the dizzying kiss. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

“I admit, I’ve been out of practice, but I didn’t think our kiss was that bad.”

Wesley attacked his mouth again, chest flipping. “Throw up with giddiness.”

“Your flirting skills have really blossomed over the years.”

Wesley sniffed. “I was going to be kind. Was going to let you fuck me on our bed.”

“Now I have to suffer a swing?”

“You’re going to wish it was a swing.”

Lloyd winced. “A hammock?”

A phone buzzed between them, and Lloyd rocked back on his heels and answered. “Caleb. …Uh huh.” He glanced at Wesley. “Hungry? You bet. . . . Yeah, we’ll be coming soon.” He hung up, and Wesley shook his head with a smirk.

“Coming soon? Don’t be so sure about that.”

* * *

Wesley drummed his fingers over the picnic bench in his brother’s large backyard garden. He and MacDonald had been living in the rental since the beginning of summer. The air smelled of freshly cut lawn and grilled steak. The taste of MacDonald’s strawberry shortcake lingered on his tongue.

“Let’s do something,” Caleb suggested to his guests. Other than Wesley and Lloyd, his brother had invited a few guys he studied with at Treble School of Music. “Play a game.”

Across the picnic table, Wesley winked. “A game. Sounds like fun.”

Lloyd straightened. “I don’t know. What are the rules?”

Wesley’s grin widened and Lloyd shifted on the bench.

“How about Twister?” someone suggested.

Bending backward? Tangling limbs? “Brilliant suggestion,” Wesley said, gaze rooted to Lloyd’s. “What do you think?”

“I prefer a more sedentary game.”

Wesley snorted. “Like what?”

“Like chess,” he said. “A game of outmaneuvering your partner—taking them by surprise.”

“I’d love to play you,” Wesley said. “Right here. Right now.”

Lloyd’s wolfish grin landed on him, and Wesley’s cock swelled. “Even if you know who’ll come out on top?”

Wesley slipped off his side of the bench and moved behind Lloyd. The others continued brainstorming game ideas. Only MacDonald watched them as she gathered her red hair into a knot.

Wesley planted his hands on Lloyd’s shoulders. His nose skimmed the shell of Lloyd’s ear. “Come on. Cream me, then.”

“Where is your chessboard?” Lloyd barked to Caleb and MacDonald.

Caleb startled. “In the guest room. Top bookshelf.”

Wesley leaped toward the path leading to the house. “I’ll grab it.”

MacDonald’s voiced trailed behind him. “Unless you grow a few more inches, maybe Lloyd should help you out.”

Oh, he was growing a few inches, all right. And Lloyd was definitely helping him out.

Lloyd’s stride quickly ate the distance between them until a thick wall of heat hit Wesley’s back. Wesley leaned back into it as he opened the backdoor to Caleb’s house. Lloyd’s hands clasped his hips and slid into his front pockets. Hot breath funneled through his hair, and Wesley turned a naughty grin on his fiancé.

A hungry, predatory look glinted in Lloyd’s eye. Wesley’s cock protested the lack of space in his jeans.

Wesley lowered his voice, letting his words rumble into Lloyd. “I didn’t bring condoms.”

He slipped out of Lloyd’s hold, away from his groaning curse, and hoofed inside to the ground-floor guest room that overlooked the garden. One window was cocked open, and a warm breeze trickled into the room. A hundred feet away, partially hidden by an oak, guests lounged around the picnic table.

As Lloyd entered the room, Wesley leaned against the bookshelf and admired his confident gait and purposeful glimmer in his eye.

Wesley held a hand against Lloyd’s chest, stopping him. “We left home before you had a chance to give me my airport gift.”

“There is no airport gift.”

Wesley pouted. “Your love is off the charts, all right. Nonexistent.”

“Drama queen.” Lloyd lifted Wesley’s hand and kissed his wrist at his leather band. “I got you something better.”

Wesley swallowed a ridiculous sigh of relief. “Go on.”

“A classic vinyl record for your new record player.”

Nice! “Are you buying me a vinyl every time you leave? Because maybe you should leave a lot.” I don’t mean it. Say you’ll never leave me again.

Lloyd murmured, “How about next time I have a workshop, you come with me and choose your own?”

Best possible answer. “Hmm, we’ll see. Now, let’s remove that fuck-me belt.”

A raised brow. “What’s a fuck-me belt?”

Wesley hooked his fingers into Lloyd’s leather belt, pulling him close. “This. It doesn’t hold a damn thing up. All I can think is that you wear it”—he palmed the thick silver buckle—“to attract my eye downward.”

Lloyd’s voice grew husky. “Downward? Come on, Wesley. You can do better than that.”

Wesley’s pulse spiked. “You’re right. That silver buckle screams come get my dick.” He traced the hard outline of Lloyd’s erection.

Breath fizzed across Wesley’s check and Lloyd’s lips were at his ear. “Come get it, then.”

Wesley’s cock throbbed, begging for freedom. Begging for the vibrations of Lloyd’s gravelly voice to caress the slit of his cockhead.

Background chatter drifted into the room on a warm breeze, and tree-splintered sunlight glowed through the windows. Quasi-public or not, they needed this.

Wesley pushed Lloyd onto the end of the bed. Lloyd steadied himself against the bouncy mattress, locked his knees on either side of Wesley’s legs, and shoved his pants to his knees. Lloyd’s hot breath slid along Wesley’s hard shaft.

“My, my, aren’t you in a rush.” Wesley teased. “I thought you Capricorns were meant to be patient?”

“And I thought you Geminis were the most eager in bed.”

The baiting had Wesley’s lips hitching. “Too late. I warned you before we got together that we’re sexually incompatible.”

“I believe you said bad in bed.”

Lloyd flicked his tongue over the pre-come pearling at his tip. Wesley gasped. Firm hands squeezed his ass, drawing him close. Lloyd sucked his cock deep.

Wesley buckled, elbow bracing against Lloyd’s wide shoulder. Fuck.

The wet heat of Lloyd’s mouth blissfully suctioned his cock, the head bumping the back of Lloyd’s throat. Wesley eased back, sliding his cock over Lloyd’s tongue.

Lloyd flashed dark eyes at him as he stroked Wesley’s ass with his thumbs.

Wesley ran his tip along Lloyd’s bottom lip, and grinned as he sank back inside. Lips sealed around him with delicious pressure. He palmed the back of Lloyd’s head and rocked into the wet heat, hissing. “Yes. We are so bad in bed. So. Fucking. Bad.”

Wesley pulled out, panting. “I don’t want to come like this.”

He tugged his balls.

Lloyd pushed Wesley’s pants to his ankles.

“Stand up,” Wesley begged. Before I come on your face.

Lloyd stood slowly, deliberately grazing his two-day stubble up his inner thigh and hip.

Wesley yanked open Lloyd’s belt and button-up fly. The pads of his thumbs brushed Lloyd’s hard shaft through a thin layer of cotton. Lloyd’s growl throttled Wesley’s cock deliciously.

“Here are the rules of our game.” Wesley smirked into Lloyd’s nose-bumping kiss. “One. I don’t come until you tell me to.”

Another groan bubbled down the column of Wesley’s neck.

Wesley sank his fingers into the hem of Lloyd’s pants and pushed all the layers to the spongey carpet. Lloyd kicked them aside and Wesley torturously kissed up Lloyd’s thigh.

He ignored Lloyd’s straining cock, dragging his tongue to the inner crease of his thigh, nose shifting the hem of his shirt. He pressed his lips teasingly to the base of Lloyd’s cock and glanced up. Lloyd’s gaze melded with Wesley’s.

“Rule two?” Lloyd asked.

“You don’t come until I tell you to.”

Lloyd’s cock twitched and Wesley palmed himself. He so badly wanted Lloyd. It’d been too long with only his hand, and Wesley needed Lloyd like oxygen.

Lloyd’s face gleamed. “We should shut the curtains. The door.”

“Leave them open.”

Wesley undid the lowest button of Lloyd’s shirt and pressed the material against the V of his waist. With a mischievous wink, Wesley shuffled Lloyd to the window, pressed him against the glass pane, and took Lloyd’s cock to the root.

Lloyd swore, carding fingers through Wesley’s hair. “You drive me crazy.”

Wesley answered by mouth fucking him, eyes locked together.

A smirk deepened Lloyd’s dimple, and he spoke in a deep whisper that plunged its way to Wesley’s toes. “Don’t think you hold all the cards in this game, honey.”

Wesley pulled off, and Lloyd had him on his feet immediately. With flurried kisses, Wesley worked off Lloyd’s shirt. It snagged on a window handle and they left it there.

Deft hands skimmed under Wesley’s T-shirt. Lloyd pulled it over his head, bunching the material at his wrists. He yanked his arms down between their groins. Wesley stepped close, the tips of their cocks brushing over the soft shirt.

The touch scorched his body and he trembled into a deeper kiss, tongue sliding against Lloyd’s. Locking and thrusting. Lloyd tasted of lip balm, strawberries, and pure need.

Wesley’s heart pounded. He pulled out of the kiss, lifted his cuffed arms around Lloyd’s neck and yanked him until his mouth was against Lloyd’s ear. “Fuck me. I’m prepped for you.” He always was.

A breeze funneled into the room, along with an intrusion of voices.

“Caleb!” MacDonald yelled. “Where are you going?”

“Clearly, Lloyd and Wes can’t find the chessboard. Someone with smarts had better help them out.”

MacDonald laughed. “There is so much wrong with that last sentence.”

Lloyd smiled at Wesley. “Your brother is a clueless idiot. Almost as much as you are.”

“You clueless idiot!” MacDonald said. “If they haven’t found the game yet, it’s because they are not looking for it.”

“But if they are not looking for it, then—” Caleb choked on a curse.

“There we go,” Lloyd said, steering Wesley to the large, polka-dot sheeted bed.

Caleb’s voice rose for their benefit. “You have twenty minutes before Mom comes over. She has a key. She’s storing her bags in the spare room. Do NOT come on the sheets.”

Wesley eyed the open door. “Maybe we should shut it.”

Lloyd nipped Wesley’s lips. “Not a chance. I rarely have you on edge like this. I’m going to savor it.”

“If Mom catches us, we won’t be invited back for Thanksgiving. Or Christmas.” A sudden thought had Wesley pulling his T-shirt tight behind Lloyd’s neck. “Let her catch us!”

Lloyd laughed. His hands grazed down the slope of Wesley’s back, settling firmly on the crest of his ass. Feather-light, he swept over his ass cheeks to the backs of his thighs, pressing their groins together. “Where were we?”

“Fuck me.”

A wild kiss. “We have no condoms.”

Wesley’s stomach knotted. He looked into Lloyd’s eyes. “We’ve . . . it’s . . . I mean . . .” He bit his lip, and Lloyd followed the movement, his breath hitching.

Wesley hurried on. “I’ve never done that before. Not with anyone.” It wasn’t a question of being clean—they both knew they were. But wearing a condom had always been what they did. The very last barrier of trust and commitment.

Wesley had wanted to stop using them for months but could never bring himself to ask.

Lloyd was always so careful. The possibility that he might kindly but firmly refuse . . .

Wesley swallowed. His gaze flittered to the bookshelf over Lloyd’s shoulder. “I missed you so much.”

Lloyd’s gentle sigh sifted over Wesley’s cheek. “You know I was equally miserable, right?”

Lloyd gently cupped his jaw and Wesley whipped up a cute grin. “I hoped you were miserable.”

“How caring of you,” came Lloyd’s sarcastic reprieve. His thumb swept over Wesley’s cheekbone. He whispered, “Why is it hard for you to tell me you want this?”

“Despite my incessantly bad influence, you’re still very rule oriented. I thought . . . I’m nervous that this is a rule you don’t want to break.”

“Wesley?”

“Lloyd?”

“I want us to make rules together.” Lloyd pressed the softest kiss to his mouth. “I want us to break them together, too.”

The words spiked tenderness through Wesley’s veins, mixing with intoxicating lust. He wanted more skin against his. Needed to feel Lloyd as deeply as possible. “Please?”

Lloyd’s fingertips danced over the hollow of his neck and swept to his shoulders. Wesley rocked back with a shiver, the backs of his knees hitting the cool base of the bed.

Nearby laughter and the lingering scent of barbecue smoke wisped into the room.

“Tell me precisely what you want,” Lloyd said with a huskiness that made his cock jump, “and I’ll give it to you.”

“Jesus, Lloyd.”

“Give anything other than redemption for your copious sins.”

Wesley smirked and tossed the T-shirt he was choking to the floor. He grasped Lloyd’s cock and stroked. “I want you to push me onto this bed and fuck me until I tell you to come.” He emphasized with a squeeze. “I want you to pulse every drop deep inside.”

Their mouths collided. The kiss was sex and intimacy, and it spiked all of Wesley’s nerves. His cock throbbed like he’d never been touched, and his chest filled with butterflies.

Lloyd pushed him to the bed and gravity chased shivers through Wesley.

The hot, hard heat of Lloyd’s body covered him with sweet protective weight. Lloyd’s nipples rubbed close to his own.

Lloyd shifted, aligning their hard, sensitive cocks together. Wesley bucked against the ridges of Lloyd’s dick and stomach. He whimpered impatiently. Lloyd gripped one thigh and smoothed his palm up the inside.

The tickle of fingertips against his balls had him mindlessly pleading. He clutched Lloyd’s shoulder blades, nails biting into the firm muscle.

Finally, Lloyd nudged a finger into his pre-lubed hole. His cursory, careful check that Wesley was prepared. “I’m ready, just—”

Lloyd clasped Wesley’s ass, and the blunt head of his cock breached him.

Wesley threw back his head at the delightful pressure. His hands slid over Lloyd’s back, urging him in further.

Lloyd pushed in to the hilt with a heady groan that fanned over Wesley’s lips.

“Kiss me.”

Lloyd swiveled his hips and licked the seam of Wesley’s mouth, synchronizing his thrusting tongue with his cocking hips.

In a gentle rhythm, Lloyd’s cock grazed Wesley’s prostate, making him pant into the kiss. “More.”

Lloyd pulled back from the kiss, grabbed his thigh and drew almost all the way out. Their hooded gazes met and Lloyd plunged back inside. Wesley pushed into each long hard thrust, loving the depraved way Lloyd’s gaze raked over him.

The bedsprings squealed, tangling its moans with theirs.

“Don’t come.” Wesley chanted with each thrust. Not yet, not yet, not yet.

Lloyd’s pace increased, his cock spearing him hot and deep. All his nerve endings were alight. Every time their gazes clashed, Lloyd’s eyes shimmered with longing. Deeper than lust, his eyes said he couldn’t get enough of Wesley. Said it maddened him that they weren’t one.

Lloyd’s intensity liquified Wesley’s insides and stirred up an unknown depth of arousal. Lloyd’s firm hand gripped Wesley’s shaft and gave it a torturously slow pull.

The touch disappeared, leaving Wesley’s cock twitching between them.

“Don’t come, either,” Lloyd said.

Wesley’s body was cresting toward the biggest release he’d ever had. He regretted the stupid rules he had set in place. Through pleasure-clenched teeth, he said, “If I tell you to come—will you tell me?”

“No.”

Wesley pulled through mountains of stimulation. “No?”

Lloyd moaned. “Tell me to come.”

“And be left on the brink? I know I deserve punishment, but just spank me.”

Lloyd thrust in and dipped his lips against his ear. “Touch my ass.”

Wesley rolled a finger down Lloyd, parting his cheeks. The pad of his index finger met a familiar slickness.

Lloyd darted his tongue in Wesley’s ear. “I want you to come while fucking me.”

“You’re right. You hold more cards than I thought.”

Wesley clenched his ass and sucked on Lloyd’s moan. “Come. Come. Come.”

Lloyd flexed as he drove forward, rhythm delightfully raw.

Fighting against rising pleasure, Wesley barely held back when Lloyd rocked into his orgasm, garbling Wesley’s name.

Never in his life had he been so hard. His heart thudded in his chest. Lloyd’s sweaty warmth collapsed against his chest as he rippled one last time with a satisfied moan. The feel of him was addictive.

“Fuck, Lloyd. I need to come.”

Lloyd slid his tongue against Wesley’s as he pulled out.

With enthusiastic kisses, Wesley steered Lloyd onto the bed next to him. He pistoned against Lloyd’s thigh, then gripped his shoulder and pushed his front to the bed.

Wesley rolled onto Lloyd’s firm back, shaft sinking into Lloyd’s crack.

Butterflies fisted his heart and his cock as he kissed the nape of Lloyd’s neck.

Lloyd reached back and knotted one of their hands together.

The head of his aching erection slid over Lloyd’s lubed hole. Wesley hesitated. It had been a while since Lloyd had taken his cock.

As if reading his mind, Lloyd pushed back. “I spent the last two weeks prepping for this,” he said into the sheets. “Take me as hard as you want.”

Fuck. “If this were a real game,” Wesley said, slowly pressing his head past Lloyd’s ring. “You’d have won.”

Lloyd squeezed his fingers. “Don’t I always?”

For the arrogance, Wesley pushed all the way in. A groaned ripped out of him at the insane tight heat hugging his cock. “Are you okay?”

“You feel amazing inside me,” Lloyd said, voice croaky.

Love and lust, tenderness and wild need, wrenched out of Wesley every time he sank into Lloyd.

Wesley’s toes scrunched the bed sheets and slid over the arches of Lloyd’s feet. He loved the slide into Lloyd. Loved the firm globes of Lloyd’s ass molding into the contours of his groin. Loved the gentle tapping of their balls.

He untangled their hands and palmed Lloyd’s shoulder up his neck to his raspy jaw. He dipped his thumb into Lloyd’s mouth, and Lloyd sucked it in.

Passion and need pounded out of Wesley and he increased his rhythm. “Let me come.” Let me come. Let me come.

“Come,” Lloyd said over his wet thumb.

Wesley cried out as he hurtled into the most mind-blowing orgasm of his life. His cock burst with pleasure that rippled down to his toes and fingertips. His chest flooded with sweet release and uncontrollable euphoria.

Ripples crashed one after the other, each more consuming than the last. Every part of him stunned with ecstasy.

Lloyd twisted, and their lips clashed hard; the final, perfect beat of release.

Wesley slipped out, shivering at the loss of connection. Lloyd wrestled him to the bed, planting his weight on him.

Their kisses turned languid, and Wesley’s pulse slowed. Soft emotion glimmered in Lloyd’s eyes and Wesley drank it in.

So often they played this teasing game, poked fun at each other, and flirted like they’d never fucked.

This time, it had turned into something profoundly intimate.

His breath shuddered. He felt vulnerable. Stripped of his defenses.

Trembling, he traced Lloyd’s knowing eyebrow, and curved around his breathtaking gaze. “I love you.”

The glow of Lloyd’s smile wrung Wesley’s heart. “I love you, too.”

Their lips hovered close—

A door closing had Wesley shoving Lloyd off him. “Crap. Mom’s here.”

They bolted off the bed, yanking on their clothes. Wesley’s ass clenched to hold in Lloyd’s seed. They managed a cursory straighten of the bed, secretly smiling at each other.

His mom’s heels clacked down the hallway. Wesley cast an eye about, searching for an excuse. His gaze landed on the games stacked on the top of the bookshelf.

“Brace yourself,” Wesley warned, and jumped onto Lloyd’s back.

“Oofh.” Lloyd swung around with the impact, positioning Wesley right where he could reach the chessboard. “What did I say about breaking my back?”

Wesley smirked. “That I’m worth it?”

Lloyd laughed. “You’re lucky that’s the truth.”