Gambling Men

Readers love AMY LANE Keeping Promise Rock “You know how you can tell when someone is a great author? It’s when that person writes a book filled with such heart wrenching emotion that the reader can’t stop crying, either tears of sorrow or of happiness. That's what author Amy Lane has accomplished with Keeping Promise Rock.” —Recommended Read, Fallen Angel Reviews

Living Promises “This book will have you chuckling, have you sniffling and have you cheering these men on, so my personal recommendation is… clear the weekend, go buy this book, some chocolates and wine… oh don’t forget the tissues.” —MM Good Book Reviews

The Locker Room “The word that comes to mind after reading The Locker Room is unforgettable. This tender and passionate love story is truly something special.” —A Joyfully Recommended Read, Joyfully Reviewed

Super Sock Man “Cute, adorable, super sweet, and with a message of joy and hope, this story captured my heart.” —Queer Magazine Online

Talker “I loved this book and I truly hated to see it come to an end.” —Night Owl Reviews

By AMY LANE NOVELS Chase in Shadow Clear Water The Locker Room A Solid Core of Alpha THE KEEPING PROMISE ROCK SERIES Keeping Promise Rock Making Promises Living Promises

NOVELLAS Bewitched by Bella’s Brother Christmas with Danny Fit Hammer and Air If I Must It’s Not Shakespeare Puppy, Car, and Snow Super Sock Man Truth in the Dark The Winter Courtship Rituals of Fur-Bearing Critters GREEN’S HILL Guarding the Vampire’s Ghost I love you, asshole! Litha’s Constant Whim TALKER SERIES Talker Talker’s Redemption Talker’s Graduation

Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com

Copyright

Published by Dreamspinner Press 382 NE 191st Street #88329 Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/ This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Gambling Men: The Novel Copyright © 2012 by Amy Lane Cover Art by DWS Photography [email protected] Cover Design by Anne Cain All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 382 NE 191st Street #88329, Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/ ISBN: 978-1-61372-498-9 Printed in the United States of America First Edition May 2012 eBook edition available eBook ISBN: 978-1-61372-499-6

This one is dedicated to Elizabeth and Lynn and Mary, because they’ve all claimed Jace and Quent from the very beginning and have refused to let them go.

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… How to Deal … Jace “MCDONALD’S? Really, Jace?” Jason Spade looked up at his business partner, old frat buddy, and best friend, trying to keep his face impassive. “I like McDonald’s.” Quent Jackson was looking good today—dark hair cut to part on the side, neatly trimmed goatee framing almost ridiculously full lips. Of course, Quent looked good every day. Quent had even looked good when they were both college freshmen, rooming together, before the goatee or the expensively cut hair or the natty suits, and even before the acne had cleared up. Something about Quentin’s brown eyes and open smile had always looked good to Jace. It was why he’d maneuvered their room assignments in college and asked Quent to partner with him in their day trading company. It wasn’t because Quentin was a shark— he was good enough at his job, and he certainly held his own—but because Quentin was a mammal. A warm-blooded, friendly, sweettempered fox who could get his own dinner but who knew how to curl up in a nest. When they’d roomed together in college, he’d always made their dorm room home. “We usually eat sushi,” Quent was saying now with a lift of his naturally skeptical eyebrow. Quent didn’t seem to believe the obvious things—or the things Jace thought should be obvious—and that bothered Jace. Right now, it was bothering him a lot. “Sometimes,” Jace grunted, not wanting to put it into words, “sometimes, french fries are better than sushi.”

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“So I got McDonald’s for the french fries?” Again, that skeptical eyebrow. “Yes.” “Yes?” Jace swallowed. Damn Quentin. Damn him for needing words. “French fries are like blow jobs,” he said shortly, and he had to give it to Quent. He didn’t blush or anything. His eyes got big, and he paused with a ketchup-smothered fry on the way to his mouth, but he didn’t blush. But his swallow was audible. “Elaborate.” Jace scowled. “Sometimes, the meal is the burger and the french fries are a prelude, right?” “Gotcha.” “Sometimes, you eat the fries, and they’re good, but what you really want is the meat, right?” “Gotcha.” “But sometimes….” Jace took a deep breath and then brought a crackling, crisp, salty, slick, tangy little stick of heaven to his mouth and chewed, closing his eyes and letting the fry slide down his gullet, almost shuddering in ecstasy. “Sometimes, the fry alone is all you need. It’s the whole meal, first course, last course, beginning to end. Sometimes, the french fry is all you need and all you ever fucking want.” Quent grinned at him, looking pleased by the analogy. “Well, Jace, I’ll think about that the next time I’m getting a blow job!” Jace tried not to sigh. Quentin grinned. He liked the idea. But he didn’t blush. “Well, it’s not going happen tonight,” Jace said, the thought almost consoling him. “Tonight, we’ve got racquetball.” Quent rolled his eyes. “Another chance for you to kick my ass in something. Fabulous.” “I do my best.” Yup. Jace was going to have to wait for the blush.

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… Ante Up … Quent “GOOD game, Quent.” Jace’s voice echoed hollowly off the tile in the gym. They were the last two off the racquetball courts, and all but one of the employees was gone for the night. Quentin looked up and flushed with pleasure. They’d been playing since their senior year, and Quentin felt like he so rarely did anything better than Jace. “You let me win,” he said, running a hand through the thick brown hair that was wet and hanging in his eyes from the shower. “I don’t let anybody win.” Jace’s voice was mild. His scalp trim was already dry, and his vodka-blue eyes were twinkling. It was the truth. Jace was a cutthroat competitor—everybody knew it, and Quentin had always worshipped it. “Then I must be getting better!” Quentin said brightly, although he knew for a fact that he wasn’t. He didn’t expect a reply—banter had never been their strong point. For the most part, their nearly eight-year relationship had been based on Quent’s willingness to follow Jace anywhere and Jace’s strange willingness to keep a soft touch like Quent around. But then, Jace didn’t talk to anybody, so Quent felt privileged. He wasn’t looking forward to chatter. Instead he started rummaging around in his locker for his toiletries. Deodorant—always a plus, right? “Hey, can I borrow some of your pit-stop?” Jace’s voice came from right behind Quentin’s ear, and Quentin almost jumped. Jace sounded… odd. Breathy. Different. “Yeah, no prob… lem?” Quent squeaked on the last part because Jace just reached over his shoulder, the front of his lean chest pressing

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so tightly against Quentin’s back that Quent could feel pointy, airhardened nipples pebbling against his slick skin. “Thanks, brother,” Jace murmured, and Quentin felt a moment of dizziness as his partner’s voice brushed his ear. Eight years? Four years of college, four as business partners, and Jace had never once been a touchy kind of guy—and Quentin had never allowed himself to think that his hero worship of his old roommate was anything more than admiration for a gifted friend. Okay. Maybe once, when they’d first become roommates, he might have looked furtively at Jace and thought he was beautiful. Or twice, he may have been with a woman and gotten off thinking about Jace’s hard, blunt hands stroking along the edge of his skin. Or… oh God. Right now. Right now, Quent thought Jace might be more than a friend. Jace’s erection prodded at Quentin’s ass through their towels, and Quentin took a risk and leaned back… just… just enough to rub a little, see if that hard lump under the terrycloth really was what he thought it was. Jace pinned Quentin’s shoulders to the locker so quickly Quentin didn’t have time to breathe, and without a word, without even a deep breath, ground up against Quentin hard enough to leave bruises. Quentin gasped and grunted—and pushed back. Jace’s movements grew more frantic, more frenzied, and as Quent was pretty much dry-humped by his friend, his business partner, he wished… wished… for a hand on his cock, even his own, to ease the painful, frustrated ache that had blossomed in his groin. Quentin wished for that right up until Jace bit him, hard, in the tender joining of neck and shoulder before he grunted and came, the semen seeping between the towels to soak into the skin of Quent’s hip. The bite alone did it, sent Quentin over the edge, and he climaxed without even touching his own cock. They stood there for a moment, breathing heavily, and then Jace backed away, saying, “Oops… my bad. I forgot I had some of my own.”

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AND that was the end. The fucking end. For most of a week they had worked in the same building and played ball at night, and that moment—that gasping, breathless moment of sex and come—had ceased to exist. Until now. Poker night, of all places. The bastion of manhood and heterosexuality that Jace had started dragging Quentin to even in college. The first thing he’d done when they’d graduated was start asking clients for a new poker group—one that Quentin approved of as well, strangely enough. And now here they were, wearing tuxes, drinking high-end vodka, laughing at mildly sexist jokes, and Jace was looking at Quentin like Quentin was… was…. Was an order of french fries and Jace wanted lunch. Quentin steeled himself to look sideways at Jace while he tried to read his tells. After more than eight years, Jace still had a poker face to beat them all. And he did beat them all. Frequently. But on this night, even in the crowd of their buddies (most of them clients, one of them their lawyer) telling raucous jokes and pounding vodka, Quentin needed a sign, a glance, a wink, a twitch… something… because what had happened between him and Jace earlier that week… well…. It could leave a guy feeling insecure, that was for damned sure. Jace ran a finger under his collar and freed the stays from his black tie, then took a deep gulp of his vodka from the cut glass tumbler. “Mitch, you got anything good enough to hold?” Their corporate lawyer looked at his cards and threw down, and that was it. Nick wrinkled a small nose in a boyish face and threw his cards in the center. “If Mitch doesn’t have it, I don’t,” he said. “He’s the guy you send into the building first. If he comes screaming out, that’s the end. There’s not enough backup in the world.” Jesse rolled his eyes and shook his overly long blond hair out of his expressive eyes. “You cops are all such total pussies. It’s not like I ever have backup.”

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“You need it!” Randall muttered, thumbing through his cards with blunt, battered fingers. “I’ve seen you walk into doorways with no bad guys in sight. You must have been a total loser in high school.” Jesse blushed. “I was in the chess club, yes. Why, were you the teacher who’d make a man out of me?” Randall grinned and threw his cards in the center too. “No, I was the teacher who’d let you hide in my classroom like a weenie.” “Oh good,” Peter said dryly. “So I would have known you then too!” He looked at Jesse and nodded firmly while throwing his cards in. “Go chess club.” “So what about you, Jace?” Randall asked, and Jace barely looked up. “Football,” he said without thinking. “And call. But Quent was probably in the chess club, right, Quent?” “Home ec,” Quent stammered. He realized he’d sat there for so long, trying to see if Jace was going to give him any clues about the two of them, that he’d forgotten to actually look to see how he was doing at poker. “Hey,” Jace said quietly—almost intimately. He took a swig of vodka and looked up over the edge of the glass and caught Quentin’s eyes, crystal blue sparking from under his lowered brows, and Quentin blushed hotly. Jace’s eyes were open and even and perfectly sincere, and Quentin felt another surge of heat under his skin. Okay, Quent wasn’t delusional. Jace did remember. Quentin had almost doubted his sanity. Hell, he’d almost doubted his memory! Until right now. “Ready to see my cards?” Jace asked, and for a moment, it was almost like they were alone, the two of them, maybe working in their shared office, or studying late when they shared a dorm. For a moment, the predator that was Jason Spade receded, leaving the guy Quent had known for eight years in his place. “Yeah,” Quent said, his voice husky. “Go ahead and lay them down.”

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Jace’s blunt hand lowered, fanning a set of low cards, a flush of hearts. Through the electricity of their glances, Quentin barely registered that his hand beat Jace’s. “I won,” he rasped breathlessly among the crowd of catcalls from the other guys at the table. And then, hoping this meant something: “You must have let me win.” Jace grinned recklessly, and Quentin felt his knee touch—just a bump really, or a promise. “I told you on Tuesday, Quent—I never let anybody win.”

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… Flush of Hearts … Jace

JACE had learned to play poker at his Uncle Mike’s knee. Since Mike and his “live-in bachelor friend” had managed to live together in a small town for over twenty-five years without raising eyebrows, Jace figured Mike knew what he was talking about in poker. And Mike said sometimes you had to tip your hand. Jace had seen Quent’s blush after racquetball and… oh God. His erection had been instant, aching, and urgent. And he’d needed… needed to just see. He’d played his cards close to his vest even as a child, but suddenly, there was that blush. Under the dark hair and eyes, Quent had surprisingly fair skin, and the blush that had blotched his cheeks and his neck and the straight, sleek column of his back…. That was Jace’s blush. That was for Jace, and Jace had needed to claim it. And then, once he’d claimed it, he hadn’t known what to do next. He didn’t like to admit that he didn’t know what to do next, but it was true. Uncle Mike had told him that poker held the secrets to all life as Jace knew it, and it was also true. Sometimes, you had to let the hand play out, and that was what Jace was doing. And there they sat, and there was just something odd about Quent’s expression. He’d looked that way in their freshmen year, when he’d been crushing after that Marlene girl with the fantastic rack and the obsession with Green Day. It wasn’t really a puppy-dog face—Jace had grown up hunting in South Dakota, and he wasn’t particularly tolerant of things that were weak—but the look on Quent’s face did have a certain wistful quality to it, and Jace just knew. Quentin wanted a next step.

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Jace’s hand was not high. In any other game, he would have folded. But Quent was riding it out, and he seemed far more intent on Jace than on the cards. In fact, the cards seemed to have no meaning to him whatsoever, which bothered the hell out of Jace, because didn’t he know that poker was life? Then Jace bumped his knee, and Quent’s entire body quivered, and Jace thought, Aha! I shall have to teach him that! And suddenly the little flush of hearts that Jace had didn’t seem like such a bad hand after all.

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… Draw … Quent

QUENT gave a wry glance at the sky, which was dumping down rain, and then at Jace and Nick, who were waiting with him for a cab from the game. “I’m not walking!” Nick muttered, slicking his longish brownish hair out of his eyes, and Quent wanted to groan. He would have walked. Of the three of them, Nick lived closest to the bar that housed the poker game. If Quent knew Jace would be at his back, he’d run the entire distance through the pissing rain to be in the same room with him. Alone. Stripping off their wet clothes in the steaming hallway. Alone. As it was, they were waiting in the rain in front of the club, and Quent wasn’t sure if his hope was real or just that: a hope. “Jesus, aren’t you, like, a cop or something?” Jace chided, and Quent looked at him with appreciation. Jace would say something like that. Quent would not. “Why do you think I hate to walk? I get enough of it at work!” Nick looked over Quent’s shoulder and smiled, looking boyish for a moment when usually his lean, fair-colored features were sort of predatory. The two girls giggling shyly at them were as adorable as baby bunnies. They were hardly dressed, especially for a night like this, and Quentin saw blue toes with red toenail polish peeking out from the little strappy sandals that one of them wore. For a moment Quent’s heart fell—on an ordinary night, Jace would probably end up walking home with both of them. But this wasn’t supposed to be an ordinary night. This was supposed to be the night Quentin remembered the hard feeling

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of Jace’s flesh against his own. Jace’s cheerfully rolled eyes gave Quentin a little more hope that the moment might live up to its promise. “You always were a chivalrous bastard,” Quentin muttered as the cab pulled up. The three gentlemen took a step back, and the girls shimmered their way into the back of the cab and waved gratefully, leaving the men in the rain. Again. “Damn,” Nick muttered, shaking his head. “You’d think they would have offered to share the back, at least!” “With the three of us?” Jace’s voice held nothing but wry amusement. “We would have been in each other’s laps. Quent’s muscle mass alone would have pressed me to the floor!” Nick made a moue of distaste for the bottom of the taxicab, and Quentin pushed his dripping dark hair from his eyes to mask the heat that built up in him with the thought of pressing Jace to the floor of anything. Ah, God. If only— The thought was interrupted when the next cab pulled up, and the three men squashed their tightly muscled bodies into it, Quentin in the middle. Nick chattered about the girls and how badly he wanted the two of them together all the way to his apartment, and Jace replied with laconic, one-word statements, keeping up the joy of the night. Guys, playing poker, drinking vodka—didn’t get much better than that, right? Quent sat in the middle and wondered why the heat from Jace’s thigh seemed to sear right through his wool slacks when he couldn’t feel the heat from Nick’s flesh at all. Finally, finally, Nick was out, and he was walking cheerfully past his doorman, apologizing for dripping into the building. Quent made to move, to give Jace a little more room, but Jace’s hard hand gripped the inside of his thigh and squeezed. Quent’s lungs went on permafreeze.

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Jace gave crisp instructions to the cabbie, and Quentin gulped a chest full of air and stopped breathing again. Jace’s place. No stop at Quent’s. Both of them, going to Jace’s. Jace’s index finger traced a sure path along Quentin’s inseam, and Quent’s slacks were suddenly Too. Damned. Tight. “I told you,” Jace murmured into the hollow of Quent’s ear, “I never let anybody win.” Quentin turned his head, found that he was close enough to bump his lips along Jace’s jaw. So he did. “So why play this game?” he asked. “Why now? After so many years?” Jace tilted his head a little so it rested on Quentin’s shoulder. For a captain of the stock market, a bloodless shark who ripped the throat out of anything that stood in his way, the gesture was curiously vulnerable. “You never tipped your hand,” Jace said softly. “I didn’t even know it was in the cards.” Quentin closed his eyes and turned his head until he could feel the puff of Jace’s breath on his cheek. They were both flushed and hot, and the cab was steaming and close from their body heat and their wet clothes. The foggy windows gave them an intimacy, an isolation from the rest of the world. The cabbie might not have existed. Jace’s hand moved strong and certain, up Quentin’s thigh… up… up… and then it brushed Quent’s cock through his slacks. Quentin let out a whine because just that suddenly, he was ready. His cock was blood-full, his chest was tingling, and his vision was dim with desire. “I didn’t know what game we were playing,” he rasped. Jace trapped Quent’s cock against his thigh and squeezed, and Quentin sucked in a rattling breath. That grip was strong, almost painful, heavenly. Jace pressed his lips against Quent’s jaw again, nipped lightly. “Not a game, Quentin. Never was.” Jace’s breath puffed softly in Quentin’s ear, and the enforced intimacy of the cab only made Quent’s mind race more. He’d never touched a man that way.

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He’d wanted to, sure, ever since a circle-jerk in the tenth grade. He’d looked at the boy next to him—a taut blond hurricane of a kid who bound friends to himself like static electricity—and had been fascinated. He’d seen how the kid’s eyes rolled back, how he palmed his slender, longer cock differently, how he’d surreptitiously licked his hand when he was done, and Quentin had wanted… had wanted…. Things. Things he hadn’t let himself want with Jace because Jace was a bloodless competitor, a shark, the leader of their partnership, the electric-ball-center of their all-het peer group. If Jace hadn’t wanted those things back, Quentin would have been screwed. And now Jace did want those things back, and Quentin was going to get screwed. But in a good way. He shivered, his cock aching, and Jace made a grunt in his ear. The cab came to a halt and Jace was gone, into the rain. Quentin followed him, barely able to walk, barely able to stand still as Jace paid the driver and then hustled up past the doorman and to the elevator. They didn’t touch in the elevator. They stood, one in either back corner of the empty lift, and didn’t look at each other. Quentin snuck a look at Jace as the floor meter counted to fifteen, and saw that his fierce blue eyes were glued to the meter, as though he could make the lift go faster just by concentration alone. Quentin’s entire body went cold and then flushed warm with excitement, anticipation. He’d seen Jace like this before. He’d watched him juggling numbers, juggling screens on the computer, watched the way his back tightened and his eyes grew big and round. On those few occasions when Jace actually talked about himself, he mentioned bow-hunting deer, and Quent had always imagined that he looked just like this before he released the arrow with bloody relish and a fierce desire to win. Jace was going to turn that fierceness on him. When they got to Jace’s room, Jace gestured casually for Quentin to go first. Quent shed his raincoat and suit jacket on the hook in the

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entryway and moved toward the impressively large front room. He looked out the stark window into the brightly lit city below them, listened nervously to Jace’s noises behind him, and wondered what happened next. He was unprepared to feel hard hands on his shoulders, whirling him about and pressing him against the wall. Neither of them had turned on the lights, and for a moment, Quentin was lost in the glitter of Jace’s ice-blue eyes peering at him in the dark. His throat was Sahara dry, and he had to struggle to speak. “I don’t know how to do this.” Jace’s hard mouth went soft in the corners. “Just do what you do at work, buddy.” “Follow your lead?” And now that lean mouth went entirely soft, and Jace’s sharp eyes hooded. “Follow my lead.” Quentin closed his eyes and nodded, and Jace shook him a little at the shoulders. “Look at me,” he commanded, and Quentin sucked in a breath and did just that. “Good….” Jace punctuated the praise with a kiss at Quentin’s jaw, and Quent kept his eyes open even as he tilted his head and bared his neck. “Now touch me,” Jace hissed against Quent’s throat. He was placing nipping, gentle, tongue-point kisses at the edge of Quentin’s collar, and Jace dropped his hands to unbutton Quent’s shirt while Quentin raised his own to do what Jace had demanded. Jace’s back was taut, lean, muscled underneath his hands. Quentin took a fistful of shirt under Jace’s jacket, pulled hard, and palmed the smooth skin at Jace’s waist. Jace “Mmmmmm”d at Quent’s throat, and Quentin tilted his head back even further and groaned. His hands found Jace’s shoulders, and he pushed impatiently at his tuxedo jacket until Jace dropped his hands and it fell to the floor in a puddle. Jace returned the favor by yanking at Quentin’s shirt until the remaining buttons exploded across the floor, and shoving at Quent’s

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undershirt. Quentin made a sound—protest, acceptance, whatever—and Jace went down on one knee and sank delicate teeth into the tenderness of Quent’s stomach. Quentin shoved himself back against the wall to keep his knees from buckling. Against the soft skin of his taut stomach, he heard Jace’s evil chuckle. “That was a little girl’s sound,” he grumbled, fumbling at the stays in Quent’s slacks. “I’m not….” Oh God. Jace was nuzzling the skin under the waistband of his boxer briefs. “Not… a… girl…,” Quent panted. Jace shoved slacks and underwear to Quent’s thighs and his prick bounced out, fully engorged and slapping Jace lightly on the cheek. “I’ve noticed,” Jace said dryly, a wicked light sparking in those hooded blue eyes. He stuck out his evil pointed tongue and dragged it from the fur underneath Quentin’s cock to the broad, flaring tip, paying special attention to the taut little harp string of flesh under the head. Quent made that little girl’s sound again and caressed Jace’s head. The skull trim tickled Quentin’s palms, but Jace leaned into the touch—right before he opened his mouth fully and engulfed Quentin to the root, closed his mouth, hollowed his cheeks, and sucked, pulling his head back with agonizing slowness. Quentin pulled the palm of his hand to his mouth and bit down hard to keep from crying out. Jace backed up, held Quent’s cock in a hard, lean hand, and reached up with his other hand to jerk Quentin’s arm down. “Scream for me,” he commanded roughly and deep-throated Quentin again. Quentin screamed. He whimpered. He begged. And still Jace kept up that agonizingly slow, hard mouth-caress on Quentin’s body until will alone kept Quent pressed against the wall. Jace opened his mouth for a moment and took his finger to the end of Quent’s cock, skating it around the slick precome at the end. “Your noises are making me hard,” he said roughly, his voice matter-

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of-fact. “You know what I’m going to do to you when we’re done here, right?” Quentin moaned softly, and Jace traced that wet, glistening finger back down the underside of Quent’s cock, down beneath his balls, skating it past his taint and finally hovering, almost tickling, at Quent’s entrance. “Tell me…,” Jace commanded, and Quentin had no choice but to find words. “Fuck me…,” he gasped. “You’re going to fuck me….” That finger eased its way in, and Quentin grabbed onto Jace’s shoulders to keep his knees from buckling. “Oh yes,” Jace promised. “But first….” The finger withdrew, then breached again, and Jace engulfed Quentin and then pulled away. Jace spoke again, his breath hissing along the nerve endings of Quentin’s cock. “Come for me,” he whispered, and then he took Quentin into the back of his throat one more time. And Quentin did. Quentin continued to lean his head back against the wall and kept his eyes shut. Jace’s hands were gentle on his calves as he helped Quent toe off his dress shoes and step out of his slacks, socks, and underwear. It was a good thing. Quent was shaking so hard from orgasm, from desire, that he almost couldn’t do it. God. It was like… oh crap. It was like sex had just been invented. Everything—Jace’s hand in his, the feel of Jace’s breath against his stomach, his chest, his shoulders—all of it was magnified about six thousand zillion times. Quent wanted him so badly his stomach almost cramped with it. Quent was abruptly aware that Jace was standing in front of him. Jace was a little bit shorter, and when Quent opened his eyes to look, Jace’s vodka-blue eyes were glimmering back at him. Quentin’s breathing was still not even from climaxing in the man’s skilled mouth. There was a trickle of spend on the corner of

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Jace’s chin to testify that it had happened, and Quentin was now locked in one of the secret fantasies he’d never given voice. He raised his hand to Jace’s chin and used his thumb to stroke away the last of the come. Jace turned his head and popped the thumb in his mouth to suck it clean, and then released it with a last lick and a satisfied sigh. Quentin kept his hand there, cupping Jace’s cheek anyway, enjoying the way such a fierce competitor leaned into his touch. Jace met his eyes again, his face shadowed in the ambient light of the city that came through the front room window. It was hard to read his expression. If Quentin didn’t know better, he’d say there was uncertainty in Jace’s eyes and a little bit of fear in the curve of his mouth. It was an expression Quent had never seen—not on Jace—so he wouldn’t have recognized it, even in broad daylight. “Kiss me,” Jace murmured, but he was no longer commanding. Quentin would have kissed him even if he hadn’t asked. It was the first time their lips met. Quent knew he tasted like cigars and fine liquor. Jace tasted like the same thing—but mostly, he tasted like come. He plundered Quentin’s mouth, taking his face in both hands and pressing Quent back into the wall until he felt the imprint of the paneling on his bare ass. It was a kiss. It was ravishment. It was Holy Communion. Jace’s lips were firm and his tongue was aggressive, and their mouths tangled and merged and tasted and then started all over again. Jace pulled back and scraped his hands through Quentin’s short dark hair, and there was a half smile on his lips as he softly walked elegant fingers through Quent’s trimmed goatee. “Itchy,” Jace murmured. He cupped one hand on Quent’s cheek and sent the other on a foray under a rucked-up undershirt. Quent gasped as Jace’s fingers found his nipples and pinched gently and then hard. “Mind-blowing,” Quentin groaned, closing his eyes because he had to.

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Jace’s chuckle was low and rough, and Quent’s cock stirred as it dried against his thigh. “I’ve got a promise to keep,” Jace said. The hand still cupping Quentin’s cheek trembled, and he moved in for another kiss, pressing his swollen groin against Quent’s body this time as he did so. Oh. Dear. God. The thrill of Jace’s erection grinding into Quent’s hip through his slacks was almost as high as coming in Jace’s mouth. Quent groaned and pressed into the kiss hungrily, wanting all of it, the promise, the threat, and the frightening fuck. They made it to the small bedroom on the side of what was mostly a loft apartment. The front room and attached kitchen took up most of the space, and the bedroom was an intimate little corner alongside the front room, made large by another pane of glass overlooking the fairy-tale lights of the city. Quentin wasn’t looking at the city. That curious tremble had taken over Jace’s hands again, and he was having trouble with his shirt and the stays of his slacks. Quentin, who never helped Jace, never advised him, always simply sat back and let the magic man do his thing when they were at work, didn’t hesitate to help him now. “I’m not a child,” Jace snapped, and Quentin finally understood. Jace, who had faced a market crash with little more than an eye twitch and a clenched jaw and who had more bed partners than Quent could count (double that, now that Quent knew he swung this way) was nervous. Quentin sat on the bed and felt Jace’s cock through his slacks. It was huge, thick, and pulsing, even through the wool. “You most certainly are not,” Quent said softly. Carefully, he undid the trousers’ stays and slid them down Jace’s fine, lean thighs. He welcomed Jace’s weight as Jace balanced to take them off, along with his shoes and dress socks, and then Quent slid his palms up the front of Jace’s thighs to the waistband of his shorts. Quentin pulled them down too, and then looked up and allowed his own nervousness to show.

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“You got a license for this thing?” He held out his hand and allowed Jace’s cock to balance in his palm. It was long and fairly wide, especially at the head. Quentin explored it hesitantly, finding veins and ridges under his fingertips and allowing his thumb to skate across the head, slicked with precome. “It comes with the equipment,” Jace muttered through clenched teeth, and Quentin felt a curious sense of power. He smiled—the kind of smile he felt at his cheeks when he was moving in for his own kill on the market—and stuck out his tongue to taste. It was sweet… so sweet…. Quentin hollowed his cheeks and made to pull the whole thing in his mouth when Jace’s fingers tangled in his short hair and jerked him back. “Lie down!” he barked gruffly. “Take off your shirt first.” Quentin gave an ironic nod. “Sure thing, boss man.” “Quent…,” Jace growled, and Quentin was assaulted with that sudden surge of power again. Jace wanted him so badly. Quent dropped his clothes on the ground and backed up on the bed, propping himself up on his elbows. Deliberately, he spread his knees and looked up at Jace expectantly. Come get me, asshole. You’re the one who started this. It was time to throw down their cards, to show that they were serious, to follow through. Jace looked at him for a moment and swallowed. With deliberate movements, he stalked to his end table and pulled out condoms and lube. “Have you done this before?” Quentin’s turn to swallow. “No.” Jace glanced at him and looked away, then crawled up on the bed and leaned over, bending over Quentin until their mouths touched. He pulled back from an absurdly tender kiss and rasped, “You’re going to want to turn around.” Quentin must have made a protesting noise, because Jace closed his eyes and tilted his face up to the vaulted ceiling. “Please,” he murmured, not commanding, not ordering. Begging. “Please, Quent—I want to make this good for you. But I’m… I’m there. If I look at you, I’ll come and it will be over.”

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Quentin reached up and splayed his hand over Jace’s exposed abdomen. “This isn’t a one-hand game.” Jace puffed out a breath and relaxed. He almost smiled. “No, it’s not.” Quentin stayed there then, his knees spread, his body wide open and vulnerable. Jace made short (or long) work of the condom, and there was an alien little click as the bottle opened. Quentin hissed—the lubricant was cool and different on his asshole, and then…. “Ahhhhhhhhhh….” Jace’s finger breached him, and it burned… and stretched… and felt so good. There was pressure, and then two fingers scissoring inside Quentin’s body and making him ready. Quent’s eyes popped open in surprise at the fullness, and he saw Jace both studying Quent’s open legs and stroking Quent’s cock, all of that fierce, competitive concentration bent on making it good, on wringing Quentin’s body of every last shudder of screaming pleasure he possessed. “Jace….” Quent’s voice was uncertain, especially as Jace’s hand tightened and his whole body flushed under the pleasure, but he wanted to see Jace’s eyes. They were every bit as fierce as Quent expected. “Are you ready?” Quent tilted his head back in response, saying, “No!” with enough of a smile to let Jace know he’d die if they stopped. Jace laughed gruffly and then pulled out his fingers and poised himself so very carefully at Quent’s entrance. “I could always stop,” he threatened, and Quentin whimpered. “Don’t. You. Fucking. Dare. Gaaaawwwwddd….” Jace’s cock was wide and thick, and it stretched Quentin, burned the rim of his asshole until he saw a ring of fire behind his clenched eyelids. Still, Jace pushed, gently, inexorably, and as his flared head breached Quent’s sphincter, Quentin groaned and begged and pleaded for him to for the love of God please. Don’t. Stop. “Ahhhhhhhhhhhh….” Jace’s relief at being inside was enough to make Quentin open his eyes. Jace pitched forward, held himself over

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Quent with strong arms, and began to shift his hips ever so slowly as Quentin got used to the sweet invasion. Quentin raised his hands to Jace’s smooth chest and rubbed the skin greedily, thumb-teasing the hard nipples and enjoying the shift of muscle as Jace’s gentle pumping grew a little more forceful. “How’s it feel?” Jace asked roughly, and Quentin grinned through the excruciating pleasure. “Same as work—it’s you, up my ass until I’m begging for mercy.” Jace laughed, but his eyes were squeezed shut as he tried to hold back. His hips jerked forward—hard—and Quentin gasped. “Then work that ass, dammit—I need to come!” Quentin hadn’t known it was possible to laugh and moan at the same time. Jace jerked his hips again. And again. And again. And before Quent knew it, he was begging, just like he’d promised Jace at the beginning. “Please… dammit, Jace…. God… please… fuck me. Please ohmygod fuck me!” Jace lunged above him, his body sweating as he thrust again and again and again, and Quentin was in agony, poised so close to coming, but without a hand on his cock he didn’t know if he could. It didn’t matter. He’d come already, spurted into Jace’s mouth, and if not coming now was the price for watching Jace come completely unglued, frenzied, naked, in his arms, he’d stay hard and aching for a week. Suddenly Jace froze above him, his face contorted in pleasure. He gave a strangled roar and lunged one more time, burying his cock so far up Quentin’s ass Quentin wondered that his lungs didn’t impact as Jace came. Jace shuddered against him again, and again, his balls rubbing against Quentin’s flesh as he did. Quentin rubbed Jace’s shoulders, nuzzled the hollow of his neck, soothing him, caring for him, surprised that Jace—who was so self-reliant, such a predator—was responding,

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leaning into the softness of aftermath like any lover left naked by orgasm. “You didn’t come,” Jace apologized, and Quentin puffed laughter into his ear. “You came enough for the both of us.” Jace pulled back and looked anxiously into Quent’s eyes. “That’s not fair.” Quentin grinned and learned another lesson about power, because the expression seemed to soften Jace’s rough edges, making him suddenly shy and boyish in the faint light from the window. “Neither is poker,” Quent said, still grinning. His ass hurt—in a good way—even as Jace shrank inside of him, and the rest of his body was crazy-horny-sensitized from the mind-blowing sex. “This is better than poker,” Jace said seriously, and Quentin nodded, his eyes wide, as Jace collapsed against him.

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… Counting Cards … Jace

QUENTIN’S soft breathing lapsed into sleep, and Jace turned to his side and looked at him, trying to control his helpless shudders. Oh God. Oh God. They’d done it. For a moment, Jace put his head on Quent’s shoulder and let the reality sink in, and as he did so, he was struck with a sudden terror. He’d had no idea how much this moment was going to mean to him. His Uncle Mike had raised him after his parents died—he’d been too young to remember them, and he didn’t really feel their loss—but Mike had done a good job. Taught him to be honest, taught him how to hunt, taught him that a condom was a growing boy’s best friend. Neither Mike nor Jefferson had been particularly demonstrative, and that had been fine. Jace had known he was loved, and he was good with that. Besides Mike and Jefferson, Jace couldn’t remember loving another human being, ever, until Quent. He’d had plenty of ass, male and female. Mike had told him to treat the girls like princesses and the boys like brothers, and the advice had seemed to work. None of the girls he’d been with seemed to get upset if he wasn’t willing to be pinned down, and he had plenty of weeklong affairs under his belt. The boys had all been willing to go ass-up for him and walk away. He’d enjoyed that too. In college, he’d fucked the men stealthily, in their apartments or dorms or wherever the sex had to be had, and then no follow-up, no phone numbers, no “Look me up later and I’ll blow you again,” although he’d always been up for a blow job if he stumbled into the same guy twice. He gave pretty good ones—he’d studied, just like his math and econ courses, so he knew

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how to make a guy come in a club bathroom without a whole lot of effort on his part. But he’d never… never caught on, never stayed together, never connected. Had never wanted to. Mostly because, from the moment Quent had smiled shyly at him in their freshmen year, he’d had Quentin to come home to. Quentin came from a happy, average sort of family in Northern California, with a mother who had baked him cookies and a father who had coached his soccer team. With their first handshake and Quentin’s hesitant smile, Jace had seen something that he didn’t think he’d see outside of South Dakota. And Quentin had followed through on that promise. He’d gone out of his way to find good posters for the walls, eschewing hot women and going instead for soccer players and the monsters of finance on the Got Milk ads. Jace approved. Besides not being sleazy, it sort of fell directly in line with Jace’s own vision of his life. He liked hunting. He wasn’t so crazy about killing—the blood and the viscera hadn’t really been his thing, but tracking prey? Finding something beautiful and smart and fast and gifted and making yourself into that thing in order to find it? Jace loved that. Quent seemed to love it too—and as they’d started working on finance, Jace found that Quent had the same philosophy. The going in for the kill was the apex, the fun moment, but it wasn’t the point. The point was that you’d had to think hard, make your brain work like the market, like the buyers, like the shareholders, like the businesses, and then, after you’d followed a business plan into venture capital into a thriving stock option, you could claim that sort of ingenuity for your own. By the end of college, Jace had been able to go out and fuck the bed partner of his choice, as long as he could come home in the wee hours of the morning and find Quentin in their room. Sometimes Quent would be with a woman when Jace did that, and surprisingly enough, Jace wasn’t particularly jealous, even when Quentin seemed particularly moony over a girl. All Jace had to do was find a flaw, one, one tiny niggling thing about her personality (never about her looks—

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that was petty), and eventually Quentin’s mooniness would end, and Jace would know Quent was there alone at 3:00 a.m., when he came in smelling like a tomcat and strutting like one too. “Do you like her, Jace?” “Yeah, sure. But does she ever stop smiling? She seems like a sweet girl, but geez, take a sedative!” Quentin’s face, which was almost heart-shaped before the beard, grew pensive and thoughtful, and in a week or two, Julie whatserface stopped spending the night in their dorm. Now, standing next to Quentin’s naked body as he slept, Jace’s stubble burn still on the skin of his neck, Jace could actually recognize those moments for what they were, and he wasn’t proud. He wasn’t sure if he could have changed them, but he still wasn’t proud. It was just… just that Quentin was his. They’d shared their first apartment as they’d been starting up the business, and for six months, they’d been too damned busy working twenty-hour days to bother with petty shit like getting laid. But still, Jace remembered catching glimpses of him as he got out of the shower, and those had lasted him for a week in terms of stroke material. Jace had gotten the gym memberships for them then and started the weekly racquetball and bi-weekly workout routines, partly so they could get out of the office, but mostly so he could watch Quent’s muscles strain and watch his lithe, relaxed body move gracefully in physical exertion. Jace won most of their games because he was still tracking things through a South Dakota woods in his mind, but Quentin… Quentin was worth watching. One night, Jace had woken up from a slump over his computer in the living room to hear Quentin’s breathless moan. He’d tiptoed through the tiny dining room/kitchen to the abbreviated hallway that had housed their rooms, one across from the other, and looked into Quentin’s room. He’d left the door open, probably thinking Jace was asleep, and he was standing against the wall in the dark, masturbating with an unconscious joy. His head was back against the wall, his fist was moving easily, not too fast and not too slow, and his other hand was up

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on his chest, pinching his nipple, as he stretched for climax like a languorous cat. Jace had frozen, suspended, all time stopped, until Quentin moaned, ever so subtly, and cut loose, the arc of the first semen spatter catching the light from the tiny window at the top of the room. Jace had fled to his own room, closing the door and leaning on it as he reached his hand inside his pants. He’d barely brushed his cock before it exploded, and he was left shuddering in his last clean pair of underwear, his entire body quivering from his orgasm. Oh God. The things he wanted. But Jace hadn’t had a sexual involvement that had lasted longer than a month. What if… God, even if Quentin was receptive, what would it be like to fuck him for a month and then… then have whatever happened to Jace’s sex partners happen to him? It didn’t bear thinking about, so Jace didn’t. The minute their small company started making money, Jace got his own apartment and a small office complex, telling Quent that he didn’t want to cramp his style. Jace had pretended for four years that the look on Quent’s face when he said he was moving out hadn’t been hurt. But now…. Jace couldn’t look at Quentin sleeping anymore. He looked too innocent in sleep—always had. Jace used to catch brief glimpses of his face, heart-shaped before the beard and vulpine and triangular after, relaxed and peaceful. Jace never felt like he relaxed, even in sleep. Even in his dreams, he was running through woods or running down information or… sometimes, chasing Quent naked through a long hallway, laughing breathlessly because he was about to catch him. But always running, always hunting. Quentin hunted when he had to, and he enjoyed it. But even as Jace watched, Quentin curled up on his side, unconsciously putting his hand in the warm spot where Jace had just been. Just like a fox or a leopard or any other warm-blooded mammal, Quentin knew when to hunt and when to curl up in a den. Even his apartment was warmer than

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Jace’s, with corduroy furniture instead of leather, warm brown carpet, the shag kind that felt good under bare feet. There were colors in Quentin’s apartment, reds and blues and greens. It was a good autumn den, and Jace loved it, even if it didn’t quite have the view that Jace’s did. Jace loved his view, mostly because he loved the city. He loved the streets, even when they were dirty, and the smell of the sea, and the tight amount of personal space you had when you walked in the crowd off the Embarcadero. He liked the tiny little businesses you could find in South San Francisco, the ones that almost seemed to go back in time to the 1950s and that smelled like mothballs when you sat in the booths in the back of the stores. He loved the rush, the fact that he could go on a run on any day and see a whole new part of the city, and he loved that when you ran to the top of a hill (and he never walked, even the ones with gradient warnings that burnt out a car’s brakes just sitting still), you could almost always see the ocean. He’d come to San Francisco State because he loved that it was a hub, an epicenter. Real things came and went in the ports, and even if he wasn’t going to have anything to do with those things as he made his livelihood, he just loved that they were there. Quentin went running with him when they didn’t work out or play racquetball. Jace had seen the look on his face when he got to the top of a hill, puffing slightly, and it was almost luminous. Almost, in fact, as transported as it had been just an hour ago, when Jace had been heaving inside his body and he’d been about to come. Jace turned back to the city because he couldn’t stand to look at Quentin again. What if he woke up and slunk away? What if they pretended it never happened? What if Quentin faded from his life just like all those other nameless, faceless partners that Jace had never allowed himself to become attached to? The city was comforting. There was prey in the city. There was busy-ness and obliviousness, and peace. He would watch the city and try to keep his heart from beating too fast with absolute fear.

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… Clearing the Table … Quent

MEN fall asleep after sex—it’s a fact of life. Quentin dozed off after Jace slid out of him and to the side. His last conscious thought was that Jace’s scalp trim tickled his shoulder. When he woke up, probably no more than a few moments later, Jace was gone. Quentin looked around blearily—he was never good at waking up—and saw him. He had grabbed a handful of sheet and slung it around his waist, and he stood in front of the window, staring thoughtfully out at the city below them. His body—and now Quentin knew firsthand how good that fine body felt under his hands, against his chest and thighs, inside of him—was silhouetted by the lights, his shoulder blades and the muscles of his back thrown into shadow. Quentin swallowed. That pose could mean a lot of things. He was hoping one of them wasn’t regret, but he feared asking. God, what could Jace possibly say? And how could Quent answer him? Jace had needed to make the first move. Of course Quent had loved him, practically from the very beginning. And yes… yes. Quent had loved him in this exact way here. The kind that involved them naked in bed, and naked in their hearts— that was how Quent loved Jace. Maybe it was how Quent could love other men, but the only man who had ever been worth the effort to reveal it had been Jace. That was why Quent couldn’t have made the first move. If Jace was fine with the gay thing, then Quent would do it for him. But what if Jace hadn’t been? Then Quent would have lost him completely, because Jace didn’t do things in halves. So yes, Jace had needed to make the first move.

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But now that he had, Quentin was all in. All of it. All of him. Jace might think he knew everything about poker, but Quentin knew that much. If you were playing the only game that mattered, you didn’t gamble half or a quarter of what you had, and you didn’t gamble half or a quarter of your heart either. You gambled all of it and hoped for the best. Quentin was at least that brave. So after a moment of watching Jace, deep in thought, he squared himself to ask what was on the man’s mind. You couldn’t win if you didn’t play. Quent stood and grabbed his own blanket, then walked to Jace and wrapped an arm around his waist, turning his chest to Jace’s shoulder. Carefully, he placed a kiss on Jace’s neck, and another one along his collarbone, and another one on the edge of a round, smooth shoulder. Jace tilted his head and accepted the kisses, closing his eyes against the brightness of the city. “What now?” he asked. Quentin looked at his profile, then leaned in and kissed his jaw. Jace made a little “Mmmm” sound, and Quentin smiled against his neck. “What now? You mean where do we go from here?” “Yeah.” The syllable was soft in the darkness, as uncertain as anything Jace had ever said. “You mean… I don’t know… do we out ourselves at the office? What?” Jace nodded and searched out Quentin’s eyes in the darkness. “Exactly—what? Do we move in together, have quickies in the broom closet, go to poker night holding hands? What?” Quentin blew out a breath. Nope. He hadn’t thought of this either. But he thought about all those days he’d dragged himself out of bed to work out just to see Jace. He thought of the marathon nights and days they’d spent putting a business together. Quent himself had always imagined himself a grinder, a middle-management guy, someone who did his job well but wasn’t going to set the world on fire.

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He’d hitched his star to Jace’s wagon—and Jace had taken him further and more gloriously than Quent had ever imagined. But as precarious as this situation was, as close as they might be to losing everything they’d worked for, he wouldn’t go back to before. Eight years of furtive fantasies, so buried beneath his need to be in Jace’s life that he barely acknowledged them to himself, even when his own hands were moving on his flesh—he wouldn’t go back to stuffing these fantasies to the back of his head and spending more time at the office than at home because Jace was there. “Jace?” “Yeah?” “Why’d you do it? Why’d you show your hand? We were just at the gym—been there a thousand times. Why’d you… you know. Suddenly decide I’d be receptive.” Jace smiled and looked away, and Quentin knew it wasn’t his imagination. The gesture had been shy. “You blushed,” he said. “Blushed?” Quentin tried to remember. “I told you I never let anybody win, and you blushed.” Jace smiled again, and this time the shyness was gone and the shark was back. “I smelled blood—I took a gamble.” Quentin nodded and pulled Jace’s far shoulder to him so they were standing chest to chest in front of the diverse, throbbing city that could either welcome them or eat them alive. “It paid off,” he said quietly. “You want to take another?” Jace nodded, accepting. “What are the stakes?” “Nothing big—how about I stay the night?” Jace rested his forehead on Quentin’s, and their breath mingled in the quiet for a moment. “You can borrow one of my suits for work tomorrow—if you can explain why I’d let you.” It was Quentin’s turn to laugh. “I’ll tell them you let me win a bet.” Jace raised his head and murmured, “Maybe, this once, I could let you win,” before going in for a kiss.

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… Reading the Tells … Jace

MORNING—but not just any morning. Morning with Quentin in Jace’s bed. Jace woke up before Quent and stared at him furtively, to see what he would do when he opened his eyes. He didn’t look surprised to see Jace at all. In fact, he smiled and spoke playfully. “What?” Quentin sat up and started pulling on the sheets, which had become all tangled up in their legs, then pulling on the blankets, because one of them had gotten wrapped up all around Jace’s legs and the other one was completely on the other side of Quent. “Oh my God!” Quent laughed when Jace didn’t reply. His voice was slurred with sleep. “Did we have a war or something?” Jace had to laugh, and he helped situate the blankets. When the blankets were on top and the men in the middle and the bed on the bottom, Quent did a curious thing. He draped himself over Jace like an extra blanket, with one leg slung over Jace’s and his head tucked against Jace’s chest and everything in between touching in as many places as humanly possible. He closed his eyes then and sighed, and Jace raised a tentative hand to his hair. It was normally gelled or something. Jace scalp-trimmed his own dirty-blond hair just so he didn’t have to bother with product, and he was just lucky it was fashionable, since he’d been wearing the look for the past three years, but he liked Quent’s hair. He liked the sable brown

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of it, the way it looked soft even when you could see it was sort of frozen into place. He put his hand on it now, tentatively, and played with it, liking that without gel, it was just as soft as it looked. “Mm….” Quent sighed. “This is surprisingly comfortable. I didn’t think you were a snuggler.” “I should have known you were.” Quentin pulled back and grinned. “Well, it’s not like you didn’t know me, right?” Jace’s tentative smile faded. “No. It’s not like I didn’t know you. Right now, you want orange juice and half a bagel, toasted, with a tomato slice.” Quent’s mouth quirked up. “And right now you’re thinking all you have in the refrigerator is milk for the coffee and takeout from when we had Indian food two nights ago.” Jace nodded, his smile pulling up again. “Sorry.” “Don’t be.” Quent pulled his stomach muscles in just enough to lift up and kiss Jace on the cheek, as naturally as breathing. “I’ll shower, you figure out which of your precious suits you’ll allow me to wear, and then you shower, and we can go get a bagel at that place on the corner on the way to the office. No worries, no fuss, okay?” Jace nodded but was actually surprised—of course. It would figure Quentin would know how to be at home in Jace’s den, even if he had to feed himself. “We can do this,” Jace said, trying to sound like he wasn’t trying to reassure himself, and Quentin smiled. God, that smile—it was just so… so easy. Quentin himself had surprising reserves, strength, perseverance, moments of sheer stubbornness when he opposed Jace because Jace was actually wrong and too single-minded to see it. But that smile—Quentin got along with anybody, and that smile was very possibly why. “Yeah, of course we can. Now let’s get dressed, oh mighty sex god—I’m sort of starving.” Jace nodded, but he missed Quent’s body as soon as it was out of the bed. He thought wistfully that he would have liked another kiss—

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and then was surprised, because that was not really one of his favorite parts of sex, ever, especially not the morning after. So he waited until he’d brushed his teeth (and Quentin had too) and Quent was getting out of the shower to pin him up against the wall and kiss him breathless. Quent grinned and then closed his eyes and let Jace kiss him again. Jace had to pull himself back, his face flushed, his breath coming quickly, before he could actually throw himself in the shower. It wasn’t until he heard Quent humming to himself as he combed his hair and beard in the mirror that he realized he hadn’t said a damned thing. But Quent didn’t seem to mind when Jace did all that shit silently. Jace had laid out two suits—one of them a black brown and the other one gray pin-striped—and was busy putting their tuxes in a laundry bag for his housekeeping service to take care of when it occurred to him: he’d already merged their lives, just that easily. God, he hoped so. It was really, really impossible for him to imagine a day without Quent.

SO,

WELL, normal. Normally they would have gone running this

morning, meeting at 6:00 a.m. by the corner, but they didn’t go running, so they had time to walk to the office instead of taking a cab, and time to stop for bagels and coffee and to rehash the game from the night before. Jace was irritated. Quentin didn’t seem to remember any of the hands they’d played. “How are you going to get any better at poker if you don’t analyze the play?” he asked, sincerely puzzled. Quentin looked back, his brown eyes wide and incredulous. “I was thinking about you the whole time!” he snapped and then turned around and walked off quickly, leaving Jace to struggle to catch up. He did catch up at their favorite coffee place, and Quent had been saving him a place in line, so that was something. But he still didn’t understand what had made Quent so mad. “Poker is important,” he said, taking his spot next to Quent without preamble. “If you don’t

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know what to do with the cards you have, you can’t play the market or run a business or… or anything that’s really important.” Quent looked at him through narrowed eyes. “How about living with another human being without beating him senseless, Jason. Is poker going to give me that?” Jace blushed and then got pissed off at himself for it. “We’re not living together,” he said woodenly. Quent took a deep breath and then ordered a large mocha for himself and a double espresso for Jace. The clerk took his money, and Quent turned toward him and said, “Yeah, Jace—and why is that? You had me. You had me, we were in the same apartment, and neither of us was getting laid. Why did you come in and give that bullshit story about needing space? Why didn’t you just kiss me then?” Jace’s forehead twitched when his scowl grew too fierce to support. “Because sometimes the only thing that happens when you lay your cards on the table is that the game is over and the players walk away. I’ll buy the bagels at the kiosk.” Quent blinked and walked forward to collect their coffees. For the walk toward their building, on the corner of Sacramento and Lieddesdorff streets, Quent remained largely quiet and brooding, which was so unlike him that Jace started to get twitchy. But he wasn’t the type of guy to just ask “What’s wrong with you?” And with Quentin, he’d never had to, either. But then, he’d never been balls-deep in Quentin’s ass the night before either, and that act had put them on a new level of intimacy. Maybe now Quentin would be the type of guy who brooded. Jace sincerely hoped not. That was usually his department. They stood in line while Quent continued to stew, and as the person in front of them was ordering, Quentin looked at him. To Jace’s surprise, he saw a line of hurt between Quentin’s eyebrows. “I can walk away from poker, jackass. I can’t walk away from you. I’ll buy the bagels. You get lunch.” Jace couldn’t meet his eyes for the rest of the walk.

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They were the only two people in the elevator as they went up to the sixth floor. Their building actually had ten, but Jace didn’t want to move up until he had a little more solid capital to go on. Too much of trading stock was figurative, and Jace was very aware that the market was fragile. They’d managed to survive the crash because Jace tried hard not to invest in anything that didn’t actually produce a product, but misleading information was always available for the unwary. Jace would rather exist in a smaller office and wait until the economy stabilized than hunt prey too large for him just for the sake of his pride. The doors slid shut, and Jace had a sudden image of Quentin standing next to him, shoulder to shoulder, just like he had when they’d applied for their first business loan so they could lease the office. Quentin had shaken the hands and made the nice, and Jace had made the presentation in which he had (in Quent’s words) dared people not to see them as business assets in every sense of the word. Quentin had grinned at him in the elevator and said, “You know, Jace, since we’re dreaming big together, let’s dream up perfect wives, perfect families, and vacation homes in the Vineyard while we’re at it.” Jace had turned to him and said, “I’ll settle for a poker table without folding legs.” Even then, Quentin had been dreaming of a life with Jace in it. Jace had almost forgotten that. The elevator hit their floor, and Jace hit the close-doors button before they could even creak open. Quentin was still in the middle of “Wha-da-fu—?” when Jace grabbed Quentin’s shirtfront and hauled him in for a kiss that made Jace’s pulse race and Quentin moan. Quent’s body sagged backward against the back of the car, and Jace pulled away with reluctance. “Neither of us is walking away,” he affirmed, and then he wiped his mouth and opened the elevator doors. Quentin followed him, as he always did—but that didn’t mean Jace didn’t listen hard for the sound of his footsteps or burn to look behind, just to make sure.

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… Laying the Jack of Spades … Quent

QUENTIN spent the day simultaneously growling to himself and lapsing into a dreamy silence worthy of any teenaged girl with a Justin Bieber poster. Oh God. God. He’d spent the night with Jason buried in his ass, kissing him, blowing him…. Looking at him. Quent was used to Jace’s scowls, and he was used to that fiercely wrinkled forehead when Jace was displeased, or the narrowed vodkablue eyes when he was contemplating a challenge. Quent knew the deeply introspective look when he was concentrating and the sudden glimpses of teeth when he was laughing about something. Yes, Quent knew all of Jace’s looks—and not one of them was the way Jace was looking at him. The closest thing Quent could draw a comparison to was the way Jace looked at a winning hand on the table—except feeding sharks never had the heat Jace was aiming at Quent. “Are you high or something?” Quentin blinked at Elsie, their office manager, and tried to see past the tanned-to-leather face and five-pound makeup to tell if she was joking. “I’ve never done drugs,” he said earnestly, not mentioning the one time he’d dragged Jace off to try pot in college. Elsie peered back at him through eye makeup so heavy she probably put it on after she weighed her chicken-leg-skinny body in the morning, just so it wouldn’t register. Elsie was in her late forties and was putting two sons through college, and apparently trying very hard to hang on to her own

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youth as well. That was okay, though—she was so terrifyingly competent that even Jace walked on eggshells when she was pissed. She wasn’t pissed right now, but Quent was still a little bit terrified. “Then what the hell’s the matter with you?” Elsie asked, frowning. “I, uhm, can’t find the stats on Triax,” Quent responded gamely, and Elsie narrowed her eyes enough that her gooped-up lashes almost met. “You can’t find them because I haven’t given them to you, because I can’t find jack or squat on the company. And that was a neat little evasion, but you should leave the bluffing to Jace. You can’t do it for shit. What’s with you?” Quent blushed and turned his eyes back toward his computer, shifting gingerly. His ass hurt—there was no denying it—and his morning trip to the bathroom had been, well, uncomfortable to say the least. “Nothing,” he lied, and Elsie rolled her eyes. “Should I send Lexi into the bathroom to blow you? Will that make you talk?” “Oh God! Jesus, Elsie!” Quentin actually stood up in his effort to back away from that image. “She’s a good-looking kid. Jace obviously isn’t going to date her; she’s been throwing herself at him from the get-go. Why aren’t you going for her?” Quentin blushed. She was a good-looking kid: dark-brunette hair, big sloe eyes, an impish, heart-shaped face. But Quentin had assumed Jace would take her home eventually, and, well…. He hadn’t been all that interested in women for the last couple of months. “I’m sort of seeing somebody,” he muttered, looking furtively to his door. He could see Jace’s office from there, and he wasn’t sure what Jace wanted him to say. He certainly wasn’t going to explain where he’d spent the night, not without Jace’s permission.

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“Yeah?” Elsie looked at him curiously. “You going to bring her around?” Well, it was standard practice, wasn’t it? Neither of them were strangers to girls coming up and waiting with the receptionist to go get lunch or go out after work. “She’s sort of skittish,” Quentin mumbled. “Not really up for that sort of thing right now.” Elsie’s mouth quirked up. “Seriously?” Quentin looked desperately at his computer, but all of the numbers and reports seemed to blur together for a minute. “That’s hard to believe?” “Yes,” Elsie said with decision. “You usually date mama’s girls—the kind who are dying to go out with you, you know—’cause you’re such a catch?” Oh God. He did. Quentin couldn’t remember the last girl he’d gone out with who hadn’t been thrust upon him by her mother, who was either a client or the friend of a client. And they’d all been nice girls—fun, kind, interesting, classy—but after a couple of months, the relationships usually fell into patterns of complete and total boredom. That moment in line for coffee came back and smacked Quent’s consciousness with a cat’s paw. Yeah—life with Jace may have been like a perpetual game of poker, but it wasn’t boring! Quentin smiled slightly and brought his attention back to Elsie. Her pinched nostrils were beginning to flare, like she scented something tasty. “So,” she said slyly, “you said this one was ‘skittish.’ Is that skittish like shy and retiring, or skittish like she only comes out under the cloak of darkness if you cover the mirrors?” Quentin’s eyes grew really round. “Skittish like a feral cat,” he said after a moment of thinking about it. “So, you’re not sure if she’s going to claw your hand or leave roadkill on your porch?” “Oh, God, no! I mean, about that roadkill thing.” “So, you’re not sure if she’s going to claw your hand or piss on your carpet?”

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“Oh Jesus, Elsie! Can you just get me the frickin’ data on Triax and forget about my stupid love life!” Elsie nodded sagely. “So she’s either going to claw your hand, leave a dead bird on your porch, piss on your carpet, or make you pet that pussy ’til it purrs. I don’t know, Quentin, I think you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. And yeah, keep your suspenders on, I’m getting to that data….” Elsie’s eyes narrowed. “Keep your suspenders on. Keep your suspenders on Jace’s suit. Why are you wearing Jace’s suit?” “I crashed at his place after poker last night.” Wow. In a million years he never thought an innocuous truth could sound so much like a world-shaking bold-faced lie. “If you’re so hot for this skittish girl, what are you doing crashing on your best friend’s couch?” Quentin pinched the bridge of his nose. “Wishing I hadn’t drunk quite so much vodka.” “Ever hear of a cab?” “Ever hear of a friend?” “Lots of times. They put me up when I fight with my husband. Are you fighting with Ms. Skittish, or has she already broken your heart?” “Elsie….” Quent felt like he was whining. “Elsie, I am fully aware that your work is done before quitting time every night, because you are the perfect office manager and we couldn’t live without you. I, however, am just a lowly stockbroker, and I actually need to work, or you will never be rewarded for your amazing skills and astute mind. Is there any way you can go watch a soap opera or something and leave me to my work?” “Jesus,” Elsie huffed, turning around to stalk away in a black skirt tight as snakeskin and heels that looked like they’d punch through the floor. “Try to get a guy laid….” Jace walked into Quent’s office in time to hear her say that as she teetered down the hall. “Why is Elsie trying to get you laid?” Quent closed his eyes. “I have no idea.”

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“What did you tell her?” “That I was seeing somebody.” Jace actually growled. “Who are you seeing?” Quent’s eyes shot open. “That would be you, the bald jackass with the enormous fucking manhood. Did you need something?” Jace’s grin was so white and so pointy that it probably scared the fish Quentin kept in the tank in the back of his office. “Yeah,” he murmured, closing the door behind him and walking forward until Quent was backed up against his desk. “You.” They were standing chest to chest and groin to groin. Quentin could actually feel his cock swell. “Me?” His voice was more than a little breathless, and Jace grinned that toothy shark’s smile again. “You… and lunch.” He backed away looking very pleased with himself, and Quentin snapped, “Yeah, you can have my big fat one for lunch, you cocky bastard—” He was unprepared for Jace’s eyes to sharpen. “Yeah. Yeah I could.” Jace backed up for a second and locked Quentin’s door. “In fact, I think I will.” Quent’s face washed red, and his crotch gave a giant throb. “Now?” he squeaked, but Jace’s hands were already undoing his belt, and before he knew it, his (Jace’s) slacks were around his knees with his (Jace’s) boxers, and don’t think knowing that he’d been wearing Jace’s clothes like an owned man hadn’t been turning Quent on all day. It was turning him on even more knowing Jace had just taken them partially off. Quent’s cock flopped out into the office air between them, and Quent stared at Jace with a mixture of embarrassment and hunger. “We’re at the office,” he said, almost pleading, and Jace’s smile had no room for embarrassment—it was all appetite. “I own you here too,” Jace muttered, and then he fell to his knees and sucked Quent into his mouth so quickly that Quent almost came right there. Quent shoved his palm into his mouth and bit down hard, unleashing a groan from the pit of his stomach in surprise and flaming

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desire. He wanted to say something, anything, but Jace had his nose buried in Quent’s pubic hair and was swallowing Quent to the back of his throat. Quent shook, put his other hand on Jace’s head, and spurted a little precome. Jace groaned and swallowed, and Quent spurted some more, and then… oh God. Jace pulled back and rubbed his palms on Quent’s thighs and spoke, letting Quent’s bobbing erection slap his cheeks and lips as he was speaking. “I do own you,” he said, almost desperately, and Quentin nodded, bucking his hips. “Yeah, sure,” he conceded. Being “owned” by Jace was no big deal; Jace was his captain, the leader, the one who’d called the shots since Quent had walked into the dorm. Jace pulled away. He pulled up Quent’s underwear and did up the stays in his slacks, then tucked in his shirt while Quentin put his hands on Jace’s shoulders just to keep his balance as his cock screamed for justice. “If I own you,” Jace whispered, his voice husky, “then you’ll have to come back to my place again tonight.” Quent moaned a little and let his head drop to Jace’s shoulder. “Oh God…,” he whimpered, wanting Jace’s arms around him so badly, because the ache in his groin and his still fully erect cock was miserable, and he needed comfort. “Jace, Jesus, I was going to come back tonight anyway!” Jace pulled back a little and looked at him skeptically. “Yeah?” Quent gave up some of his pride and pulled Jace’s hips closer so he could grind up against Jace’s groin. “Yes!” he snapped, pushing, pushing…. Oh God… it was savage and painful and…. And Jace slid his hand down the front of the brown-black slacks Quentin was wearing and grasped his cock firmly, stroking slowly, with a firm grip. Quent whimpered again and rested his head on Jace’s shoulder, wondering when in this little relationship he could ask for a hug. “Hold me?” Apparently now.

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Jace’s expression was a little shocked, and he wrapped his arm around Quent’s shoulders and drew him closer as his hand continued to stroke Quent off. Quent sighed then and came. It was a short, slow orgasm, the kind that usually meant there would be more to come, and Jace pulled his hand out of Quent’s pants carefully, not getting any come on the waistband. Quent was shocked when Jace put his hand to his own mouth and started licking the come off slowly, not breaking eye-contact with Quent, even once. Quent shuddered and went limp a little in Jace’s arms. “I was planning to come home with you,” he said into the silence for lack of anything better to say. “I should have known that,” Jace muttered. He must have finished his catlike cleanup, because he wrapped both arms around Quentin and held on until the shudders ceased and it was only Quentin’s regular breathing. “You know what would help this new enterprise of ours?” Quent snapped, a little out of patience, and Jace raised his eyebrows amicably, as though the last intense, painful, amazing ten minutes had never happened. “Yes?” “Maybe if you spoke in actual words,” Quent muttered, pulling back and dodging out of Jace’s arms. “I wouldn’t have just let you hang like that. You could have asked me.” Jace sighed. He hated being wrong, Quentin knew it, but dammit! His balls still ached. “I’d rather play poker,” he said by way of apology. “What would you like for lunch?” Quent glared at him sourly. “Anything but french fries.” If Quent didn’t know him better, he’d say that Jace just winced, but Jace didn’t wince. That would mean backing down. “Fair enough. Sushi it is.”

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… Claiming the Table … Jace “WHY are we going to your apartment?” Jace asked as Quentin took the turn that would take them to his building. Quent rolled his eyes, still a little bit pissed from the aborted blow job that afternoon. Jace couldn’t blame him, really, but he’d sort of lost his temper listening to Elsie from behind the door. Claw Quent’s hand, piss on his carpet, and leave roadkill on his porch? Really? It was like the long and rich history of being a predator had been maligned, and Jace wanted to set the record straight. He’d clearly done an outstanding job of it. “To get some stuff. I actually have my own suits and razor and toothbrush and everything, right?” Jace flushed, and he hated doing that because he knew the mottled red could be seen under the stubble of his scalp trim. Wonderful. “Yeah. Right.” Except he didn’t want Quent to wear his own clothes. Jace wanted Quent to wear his clothes. Jace didn’t want anyone else looking at Quentin and thinking, That could be mine! It was bad enough that Lexi the receptionist kept eyeballing him every time Quent walked down the hall, and Jace was pretty sure that Toby, the office assistant, kept timing his moments at the copy machine for right when Quent was there, stuck in the tiny supply closet that was their copy room. Sure, Quent liked to talk and people liked to talk to him, but nobody was in that good a mood to make copies, were they? For the first time in his life, Jace contemplated things like hickeys and cock leashes, and neither one of them seemed good enough to make sure Quentin stayed where he belonged.

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Well, maybe the cock leash, but that could get them arrested in public. Quentin bid the doorman a cheerful hello and continued to the elevator, apparently completely oblivious to the fact that he was attracting people’s attention wherever he went. In the elevator, an attractive woman their age got on, her high heels peeking out of her shoulder bag and her tennis shoes obviously well-worn. Quent smiled at her and she smiled back. “Time for another pair, Lisa—those look about done in!” “Lisa” grinned. “Yeah, my husband wants to get me something special, with bells and whistles and everything. I keep trying to tell him bells and whistles will give me blisters, but you know him!” “The guy who got you the primo iPhone that you never charge? Yeah, we’ve met. Shoes are a different thing, though.” Quent pointed to his own high-quality, well-broken-in wing tips. “Good shoes mean the difference between a really shitty day and a really awesome one. Listen to him—he’s just trying to treat you right.” Lisa looked at his shoes consideringly and then shrugged. “Yeah, why not? If I didn’t like making my feet comfy, I’d walk to work in the frickin’ ladykillers, right?” She patted her purse, and the elevator dinged, and she got out. Quentin looked up at the floor counter, which indicated he had about eight more floors to go, and then looked back at Jace. And cringed. “What?” “Nothing.” Jace was growling. He knew it. Fuck. “Seriously, Jace, I’ve got no idea what you are thinking.” The elevator dinged and Quent got out, looking behind him to make sure Jace was following. When had Jace ever not followed? “You always know what I’m thinking,” Jace complained. “You damned near read my mind!” “Yeah….” Quent pushed on his door. It stuck a little—had since Quent moved in. Jace would have had the doorman fix it in the first week. Quent never seemed to notice. Quent closed the door behind

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them and turned around and finished his thought. “Yeah, I read your mind so well I didn’t know you’ve wanted me for years—you think that’s not going to shake me when all you do all day is glare at me?” “You talk to everybody,” Jace snarled, and Quentin tilted his head, curled up his lip, and squinted through one eye. The effect was reminiscent of a genuinely puzzled chocolate lab. “And…?” Jace shifted as he stood, feeling uncharacteristically unable to meet Quent’s eyes. His attention darted around the apartment instead, taking in Quent’s use of color, of warm reds and browns and dashes of blue in his furniture and the brightly colored still life prints on the walls. Quent had houseplants—large ones—and they made the space warm and kind and more than just bright. It was almost antithetical to the ebony furniture and hard oak paneling in Jace’s apartment, but Quentin only had a couple of smaller windows in his much smaller spread. “You could have gotten a bigger apartment,” Jace said for probably the eleventeenth time. “I didn’t need the space. It was just me and the plants. Why is it bad that I talk to people, Jace—come on, here, buddy, you’ve got to give me some clues!” Jace glowered at him, a little dismayed when he didn’t back off right away. “I’m not your buddy.” Quent rolled his eyes. “Did you stop being my buddy when you started sucking my cock? I’m just wondering—no one gave me the hetfriends-to-gay-lovers handbook!” Jace just glowered, and Quent sighed and shook his head. “You know,” he said gently, “we don’t have to do this. If you really don’t want me to come over, I can stay home and we can pretend last night— fuck!” Because Jace had him up against the wall, his fist clenched in the collar of what was once a pristinely white starched shirt collar. “It happened,” he hissed. “It happened. It happened and I won’t let you undo it.”

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“Great,” Quent snapped back. “It happened. Now how do we live with—” Jace captured his mouth hard, bruising hard, and kissed and kissed and kissed until the irritation and resistance in Quent’s spine melted, transformed, became pliant, needing flesh. Quent’s arms wrapped around Jace’s shoulders, and he pulled until Jace felt the same curious melting sensation. His chest went from hard and unyielding to curved and gentle around Quent’s more slender body. He wasn’t aware that the kiss had stopped, but suddenly he was standing, his arms around Quent’s shoulders, their foreheads touching. Quentin was taller than he was, something that usually didn’t bother him, but now… now it meant that he was protecting Jace right back, and for a moment, Jace resented it. Then Quentin raised his chin and kissed Jace’s forehead, the gesture so easy, so natural, that Jace relaxed a trifle more. “Can you live with this?” he asked, and hated the needing in his voice. “Yeah,” Quent murmured, kissing his forehead again. “Yeah. I can live with this. Do you want to stay the night here?” Jace shook his head, unable to put words to why not. “Get your stuff,” he muttered hoarsely, backing away. “Maybe bring extras over.” He couldn’t meet Quent’s eyes. “I, uhm, think you’re going to be doing this a lot.” Quent just stood there, eyebrows raised, and Jace scowled back at him. “Is that going to be a problem?” “Apparently not for anybody but you.” Quentin turned and started stalking about his apartment. Jace heard him in his bedroom, throwing shit around and muttering under his breath. Jace had a sudden urge to simply appropriate all of his things, shove them in a moving van, and make him become a part of Jace’s home. He chuckled to himself, some of the absurdity of the thought finally trickling through. Jace had him: Quent was in his bed. When hunting, either in business or in the woods at home, he had always known how to be

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patient. There had been the patient moments tracking the prey, the patient moments deciding if the deer or the rabbit or the pheasant was big enough and worth the hunt, and the patient moments when the prey came into sight and Jace had to wait for the perfect shot. Patience. Jace had it. He just had to be patient some more. Eventually he’d have his quarry, all curled up like a fox, in Jace’s own den.

THEIR attitudes evened out on the way to Jace’s apartment. Quent made him stop by a small grocery to get some broccoli to steam with some large potatoes and specialty cheese. Jace silently added butter to the basket, as well as bagels and a small carton of milk. Quent looked at him and Jace shrugged. “We don’t have any at ho… my place.” Quent nodded without comment and grabbed a box of cold cereal, and Jace added another, and Quent held up a hand, stopping him. “Okay. That’s the last thing.” He jerked his shoulder and, with it, the folded garment bag hanging from it, with his shaving kit in the bottom. He had the basket in his other hand, and Jace grunted. “Here, give me that.” He took the garment bag and threw it over his own shoulder, and Quent let him, shaking out his arm. “I’m being a prick.” Quent cocked his head and rolled his eyes, and Jace felt a grin being squeezed out of his balls. “Okay, I’m being more of a prick than usual.” Pursed lips, a little bit of head nodding to indicate deep thought, and apparently Quent decided that it would pass for an apology. “Fair enough. I still think we don’t want to carry any more than this back to your place.” Jace had to concede, but he also saw the new significance and relevance of shopping for yourself every day. They would make this a routine, a habit, and soon Quent would want to eat at his apartment, and then Jace would have him.

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IT

WASN’T until they were on their way again that Jace realized Quentin was not really comfortable. “You strain a muscle or something?” “Yeah, genius! Someone shoved something up my ass last night that I’m not used to having there. It was hella huge, and then I sat on those muscles all day.” “You should have told me I hurt you,” Jace muttered. Fuck. “Felt good at the time. Don’t sweat it.” “Yeah, but there go my plans for the night.” Quent bumped his shoulder on purpose, which meant that the groceries they were both carrying swung into their legs. Physically fit or not, it was a good thing the grocery was close to Jace’s apartment, or this could have been the walk from hell. “We can do other stuff,” Quent said, his voice hopeful, and Jace knew his expression was pure joy. “Yeah?” “Yeah.” “Excellent.” Jace actually shuddered. He had a plan. He loved a good plan. They had actually spent many nights at Jace’s place. Working late, going out, poker night. The only exception this night was that Quentin was cooking dinner, which usually only happened when Jace was at Quent’s. That, and Jace was planning to do unspeakable things to Quent’s body before they went to sleep. They’d done that once before, and it had turned out okay, and so the mechanics— conversation, Quent being comfortable in Jace’s home, sitting and eating together—these were easy and natural. Quentin knew where the pots and pans were, knew where to put the food away, knew how Jace liked his steamed broccoli, knew that the potatoes had to be wrapped in rock salt and foil before they were baked and the ham should be pan fried before it was chopped up and put into the cheese sauce. Actually, Jace had never specified these things or suggested them, but Quentin knew them just the same. Eight

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years of eating together and talking about random shit hadn’t been lost on him, and Jace looked at the simple meal, served on his plates with real cloth napkins Quent had given him for Christmas one year, and swallowed. Quentin had to come live in his home. It was imperative. It had to happen. “Thank you,” he said, as though his chest wasn’t clenched. “This looks really good.” Quent shrugged. “Cooking basics. You gotta have them, right?” Jace grimaced. “Uncle Mike used to think pasta noodles and Ragu were high cuisine.” Suddenly Quentin’s hand covered his as they sat at the table. “I’m sorry about that. I know it hit you hard.” Uncle Mike and Jefferson had been killed in a car crash three years before. Jace forgot, sometimes, when he thought about them, that they weren’t just where he left them, in a little spot of unwanted forest in South Dakota. But he wasn’t comfortable with comfort, so he looked away. “I like this better than takeout,” he said, pulling his hand back, and Quent sighed. “I know you do, Jace. I don’t know why you haven’t asked before.” “What? Ask if my perfectly straight friend could come over and cook for me?” “Yeah, jackass. Why couldn’t you have asked your perfectly straight friend to come over and cook for you?” This time Jace could look him in the eyes. “Because if I saw you bending over the stove like you just were, you wouldn’t have stayed perfectly straight for long.” Quent blushed. “You only say that because you want me to do the dishes.” “Leave them. Cleaning service comes tomorrow. The girl will faint from shock.”

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“Yeah, you’d enjoy the hell out of that. I’ll do the dishes, Jace. It’s not a feast for six.” And sure enough, after dinner, there he was, shirtsleeves rolled up, his suit jacket and tie hung up in Jace’s closet (well, they were Jace’s clothes), wearing an absurd little apron that he’d found somewhere to protect his slacks, looking as happy as Jace had ever seen him. Jace stood up and walked over until he was close enough to Quent’s back to feel the body heat seeping through his clothes. He just stood there for a couple of moments, waiting to see what Quent would do. As unobtrusively as possible, he leaned forward, sticking his nose into the hollow of Quent’s shoulder, and breathed in. Quent smelled like Jace’s soap and Jace’s aftershave and Jace’s clothes, and it wasn’t enough. Jace needed him. All of him. In his arms and in his bed, right the fuck now. “Jace?” “Mm.” “I’m not gonna go any faster if you watch me over my shoulder like—” The dish in his hand clattered into the sink and luckily didn’t shatter. Jace had wrapped his hands around Quent’s hips and pulled him abruptly back, grinding his aching erection into Quent’s backside. “Oh God…,” Quent whispered, and Jace could feel his wanting— and his reluctance. “Don’t worry. This won’t hurt a bit.” “It’s a good thing I trust you.” A solid ten-point-two on the Richter scale-sized thrill raced up Jace’s spine when he heard that. “Good. Don’t stop.” With that, he unhooked Quent’s belt and pulled Quent’s pants down to his ankles. Quentin balanced himself on the counter and toed off his shoes, and in very short time, Jace had him, legs splayed, holding onto the kitchen counter for support. Jace stood up and leaned over his shoulder then, reaching into a drawer for a clean, soft cloth. “Is the water warm?” he asked in Quentin’s ear, and Quentin turned on the faucet in response.

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Good—warm water, soft cloth. Jace squeezed the cloth in his hand and then brought it down and started bathing Quent’s thighs and backside with it, and Quent let out a shudder and a sigh, relaxing infinitesimally. Jace used the opportunity to spread his cheeks open gently and then leaned over again, warming up the washrag almost to the point of discomfort but not beyond. “What are you doing?” Quentin breathed while Jace’s lips were close to his ear. “Relaxing you a little so your ass muscles don’t ache.” “I said I was… ahhhhh….” Jace shuddered, and his silk boxers grew damp with pre-come. He’d parted Quent’s cheeks again and was massaging with the cloth, cleaning, yes, but also warming, relaxing, heating, and he wasn’t disappointed when Quent shuddered and leaned forward some more. Jace warmed the cloth again and then used it on Quent’s testicles, sagging low and hard between his thighs, and then, using Quent’s hips to balance, he lowered himself down to his knees. He used one hand to keep Quent spread out for him—clean, trembling, relaxed and waiting for what was next— and the other hand to take the washcloth and start stroking Quent’s rampant erection with it. Quent shuddered and sighed and leaned forward more, and Jace very deliberately used his tongue on the sorest part of Quent’s body. “Gaaaaahhhh… Jace… just… oh God….” Jace shook again with need and kept tasting, kept licking, kept stroking, and kept listening to Quentin lose his mind. “Oh… God… Jace… Jace… c’mon, man… I just want to… oh God! I just want to kiss you is that so… oh fuck… oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck…. Holy Jesus I’m gonna fucking… aaaauuuuuggghhhhh!” Jace shivered as Quentin came, his body heaving as he clung to the counter for dear life. Eventually his cock stopped convulsing in Jace’s hand, and Jace rested his cheek against Quent’s nether-cheek and kept stroking until Quent hissed with the soreness. Jace’s entire body was taut like a bowstring, set to go off on a hair trigger, when Quent

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tried to turn around. Jace backed up and let him, standing up and dropping his pants as Quent struggled to catch his breath. Jace didn’t give him a chance to. His kiss was hard, bruising, and desperate, and in spite of his bemusement, Quent opened his mouth and gave back just as hard. Quent pressed up against Jace, his stomach, thighs, and cock covered in his own come, and Jace pulled back from the kiss and issued orders. “On your knees,” he muttered. “Shirt off.” Quentin did exactly what he asked, unbuttoning his shirt with shaking fingers and then hauling it over his head along with his undershirt, and there he was, kneeling naked on Jace’s black tile floor. Jace groaned and took his cock in his hand and started to stroke. Quentin leaned forward and opened his mouth, and Jace let him have part of his cock, the crown, tastes of the shaft, and that served to tantalize, to drive him to the knife’s edge, to force him to stroke faster, faster, faster, until he hollered and came, spattering Quent’s face, his chest, his shoulders with come. He stopped for a moment and reached out one hand to the kitchen counter, his knees weak, his vision dancing with spots, and took a look at his handiwork. Quentin was still kneeling in front of him, his face upraised, his eyes closed, waiting, just waiting, to see what Jace did next. His face was coated, white clots mixing with clear trickles, only some of it landing, like serendipity, on his tongue. Jace groaned and fell to his knees, wincing because now that he was done the tile hurt. He pulled Quent to his chest and kissed him, come and all, as sweetly as he could when need was still thundering in his blood. They didn’t say anything for several long moments, and then Jace took Quent’s undershirt and started wiping off his face carefully, not wanting to get anything in his eyes. Quent swallowed and leaned his face into Jace’s touch. When Jace was done, he opened his eyes, and Jace was suddenly mesmerized, swallowed whole by their darkness. “Jace?” His voice was tentative, and Jace stood up and offered his hand.

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“Yeah?” “Why didn’t you tell me you wanted me this much?” Jace couldn’t look at him. He bent and started picking up clothes and shoes instead. “Sometimes you just have to play your cards close to the vest,” he muttered. “C’mon, let’s go wash up. We can watch some television in the bedroom before we sleep.” He felt Quent’s hand on the small of his back then, and it seemed to help a little with the shaking in his arms. So did the kiss on his cheek, complete with the rasp of Quentin’s goatee. “Sometimes,” Quent said carefully, taking his shoes before they slid from the top of the pile, “you can’t win unless you lay your cards on the table.” Jace grunted. “It’s always a risk,” he admitted, and Quent kissed his cheek again. Jace turned his head into the kiss at the last moment and captured his lips before letting go and heading for the bedroom. “You’re telling me,” Quent murmured, following behind him, and Jace was just not in any shape to find out what he meant by that at all.

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… Raising the Stakes … Quent

“DO

YOU two do any real work, or are you making plans to suck

face?” God, Jace could be a real sonofabitch sometimes. Of course he’d been giving Quent the evil eye all day, and Quentin still had no idea what he’d done wrong. “What’s up with Mr. Sweetness-and-Fucking-Light?” Elsie checked her manicure as Jace stalked off, and Quent grimaced. Jace had been a bear today. He’d reamed Lexi over some misplaced files— Quent still had tearstains on his shoulder because she’d come, literally crying, to his office when Jace had finished the dressing down. Quentin had gone to confront him and found Toby, in the tiny copy room, scrambling to pick up a sheaf of papers he’d dropped when Jace had barked at him. Quent helped Toby—who had looked at him with so much gratitude it had actually made him uncomfortable—and then went to knock on Jace’s door. Jace barked “Go the fuck away!” and Quent returned to his own cubicle, irritated and fuming. It was just so out of character for Jace, especially in the past couple of months. They’d worked hard to establish a good office, they’d worked hard to attract competent help, and they’d showered Lexi, Elsie, and Toby with bonuses and rewards and as much goodwill as they could stand in order to keep their office running smoothly. They liked these people. They took them out to dinner once a month and knew whom Lexi was dating and whether or not Toby was on the ins or the outs with his roommate (and not, as Toby made sure everyone knew, his boyfriend). They’d contributed to the college funds for both of Elsie’s kids. They did not come tumbling down on their employees’ heads like an avalanche from a mountain.

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Which was why, when Quent had come looking for some files while he pretended to work, he could take an impertinent question from Elsie about her boss. He was at a loss himself. “I have no idea what’s wrong with him,” Quentin answered in response to her question, and Elsie snorted. “What’s that supposed to mean?” “You’re wearing his suit again,” she observed, her eyes narrowing in her lean, tanned face. “I lost another bet,” Quentin mumbled, not meeting her eyes, and she gifted him with another snort. “Then it won’t hurt to lose the final one, come out of your damned closet, and let him be our quietly competent boss instead of this pissy-assed bitch he is now.” Quentin knew his game face closed down like a fucking poker vault. “Elsie, you know I love you, but even if what you’re talking about is true, it’s still none of your business.” Elsie didn’t back down. “It’s my business if he’s making us miserable.” Her heavily mascaraed contact-aqua eyes didn’t so much as pulse as she leveled a mom gaze at him, and Quentin found himself looking away. “Duck,” he muttered. “He’s back from the bathroom…. Elsie, hon—could you do me a favor and get these copied by four?” he asked nonchalantly, pointing to a pile of documents he’d told her he didn’t need until the next morning. “Oh absofuckinglutely, boss,” Elsie snarked with a straight face, and Quentin walked away from her desk and toward his office with all the casualness in the world. He should have gotten a goddamned Oscar for that performance. The truth was that he was starting to think Elsie was right. It had been an amazing three months. Amazing. The nights— most nights—he’d spent at Jace’s apartment had been… oh God. The things that man could do to him in bed? Quentin had no idea—none— that sex was supposed to be like that. When Jace had him by the hair and was fucking him into the mattress, Quentin’s entire brain shorted

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out—all that was left was Jace’s cock in his ass and the screaming desire to come. They had both been tested since that first night, and the agreement not to use condoms had been both tacit and irrevocable. It was them, the two of them, free to fuck each other’s brains out, which they did with impunity. But that wasn’t all of it. The rest of it was just… just them. They went to poker night like they always had, and Jace kicked everybody’s ass and then Quent and Jace went home and fucked like rabbits on Viagra. They went out to eat together—like they had maybe three nights a week since they’d quit rooming together in the first place—and they talked about work, and then they went back to Jace’s place and watched some television, and then fucked like rabbits on Viagra. They went to the gym, played racquetball or worked out, went back to Jace’s apartment, where Quent would make them dinner, and then they fucked like rabbits on Viagra. And every once in a while, Quent would be there, on Jace’s couch, doing work on his laptop like Jace, or reading a book or watching TV, and instead of jumping his bones on the couch, Jace would simply move the laptop or whatever, grab his hand, and say, “C’mon, Quent, let’s hit the hay.” And then they’d go to bed. And the really awesome thing about those times was that after they’d had vicious, savage, mind-blowing sex, Jace would throw one arm around his waist and then burrow into Quent’s body like a wolf cub and go to sleep. And on those nights when they just went to bed? Jace did the same thing. Like it was Quentin there that made him burrow and (almost) snuggle, and not the overall endorphin release that came with the orgasm. Quent would go to Jace’s apartment on any number of nights, for any number of pretexts, just to be the guy that Jace claimed with that heavy arm and then burrowed into before he fell asleep. So yeah, it had been going great. In fact, it had been going so well that Quent hadn’t wanted to jinx it. Very carefully, he’d been choosing random days to find “stuff to do at home.” Once, twice a week, just so Jace felt like he could breathe.

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Last night had been one of those nights, and Quentin had prowled his apartment like a caged wombat, cleaning, dusting, vacuuming, watering the damned plants… wishing he was with Jace, mostly. Just wishing he was with Jace. Quent’s musings on the way back to his office were interrupted when Jace passed him in the hallway, pressing up to him deliberately with his broad chest, crowding Quentin into the wall. “Follow me,” Jace growled, and Quentin turned and followed the back of Jace’s scalp-trimmed head with some relief. At last, he’d get to find out what he’d done wrong. But then Jace’s powerfully built body took a right into the little niche that held the copy supply closet, and Quentin’s relief shorted out. “What in the—” Jace opened the copy closet, grabbed Quentin by the shirtfront, and threw him in, coming in afterward and locking the door behind them. Quentin found himself facing a shelf of copy paper and legal pads, with Jace’s hard hands working furiously at his belt. The overhead fixture was off, but there was just enough ambient light coming under the door for Quent to make out the name of their paper distributor in the darkness. But that’s not what caught Quentin’s attention. “You’re wearing my suit,” Jace growled. Well of course he was. Jace and Quentin had been swapping clothes a lot these days. The suit had been clean, Quentin had a freshly dry-cleaned shirt to match—it didn’t seem to be a big deal. “So?” Quentin panted. The belt was gone, and Quentin felt the cold, stale air of the closet hit his stomach. Then Jace shucked his pants and boxers to his knees, and the air hit his cock and bare ass, and Quentin gasped. One quick grope from Jace’s hand and he was not only half-naked in the supply closet, he was hard and aching. There was a fumbling behind him, and suddenly Jace’s naked cock was grinding up against his ass. Those competent hands were parting Quentin’s cheeks, and for a terrifying moment Quentin thought he was just going to go in, no lube, no prep, no nothing, but then Jace surprised him. There was lube, dribbled down Quentin’s ass crack, and

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then there was Jace wedged securely in his bottom and riding the cleft of his ass and upper thighs with a savage intensity. “Come prepared much?” Quentin growled. “Shut up,” Jace grunted in his ear. “I’ve had lube in my pocket for a year, thinking of you. This was an extreme case.” “A year?” They’d only been having sex for three months! A year? How much longing was that? “I said shut up!” One of Jace’s hands came up to Quentin’s chest, splayed wide at the base of his throat, and pinned Quentin there, his back to Jace’s front while Jace grunted with effort behind him. Quentin whimpered. “God, Jace… talk to me….” “Not talking….” A rough hand cupped his balls, and Quentin keened, wanting more. “Please….” “You wanna talk or you wanna….” Jace’s cock glided right past where Quentin wanted it to be, and Quent barely managed to gasp, “Both!” There was a silence then, filled with panting, filled with Jace’s rough, teasing hands, filled with Quent’s biting his lip in an effort not to beg for any of it—words, tenderness, Jace’s cock in his ass… anything. Quent tightened his ass in an effort trap Jace’s cock, and Jace bit his back and muttered, “Please. No.” Oh God. If Jace could beg, he could. “Please… Jace….” Jace ground against him in a particularly rough thrust, one that rubbed up against Quentin’s entrance and made him whimper again with what he wasn’t getting. “So,” he panted, “you’re wearing my suit”—thrust—“and I haven’t been in those pants in two days.” He thrust in silence for a moment and then pressed Quentin closer. Quentin bent his knees a little, because Jace was an inch or two shorter, and Jace muttered specifically in his ear, “I missed you.”

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Quentin caught his breath and went boneless in Jace’s arms. Everything about Jace was hard, from his ice-blue eyes to his bold Roman nose to the enormous fucking cock that was grinding in the cleft of Quentin’s backside, even now. Every now and then Quentin caught a glimpse, a moment, of a tender lover, a man greedy for companionship, a man who, just maybe, had loved Quentin through years of a solid friendship and had waited for an invitation to make his move. Now was one of those moments. “I missed you too,” Quentin confessed, and Jace, oh, thank you, Jace, reached between them, used one finger, two, to stretch Quentin’s backside and, before Quentin could even drag a breath in through his tortured chest, had breached him. There was enough lube and barely enough preparation. The burn was exquisite, but the feeling of Jace inside of him, oh… oh… God. Quentin tipped his head forward onto one of his raised biceps and fought to keep his knees from buckling. “Missed you, Jace,” he said again, because now he knew how badly Jace had needed to hear it, had needed to know. “Why’d you stay home?” Jace demanded—right before he sheathed himself to the seat of his balls, right in Quentin’s ass. Quentin stifled a scream against his arm. Oh… God, he loved it when Jace fucked him hard. Loved it when Jace fucked him easy. Oh God…. Jace pulled back and slammed forward again. Quentin just loved it when Jace fucked him, period. Jace pulled out until the head of his cock stretched Quent to the point of pain, and then slammed into him again. “Thought you’d want space,” Quentin whimpered. “Sorry….” This time Jace slammed into him hard enough to thrust Quentin’s hips against the shelving, and Quent’s cock brushed a stack of copy paper. Quentin had to close his eyes for a minute so he didn’t come all over the closet, because lowering his hand to catch was not going to happen. “I want space”—slam—“I’ll ask for space”—slam.

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Quentin nodded helplessly, feeling sweat running down his eyes from his hair and itching underneath his goatee. “I hear you,” he rasped, and then Jace pumped into him frantically for a moment, wrapped his arms around Quentin’s middle, and bit Quent’s shoulder through his shirt to muffle his roar as he came. They stood in the stifling dark for a moment, their breathing rattling harshly in the small space, before Jace pulled out and let his spend trickle between Quent’s thighs. Quent’s cock was hard, and it hurt, and this moment was obviously over. That was what he thought until Jace rose up a little and whispered in his ear. “Are you hard? Are you still hard?” Quentin nodded. “Yes. God, yes.” “Good.” Jace rubbed his nose gently along Quentin’s jawline and dropped a sweet, gentle kiss next to his lips. “You’re just going to leave me like this?” He sounded pathetic— he didn’t care. He’d just been ravished in the supply closet—his ass ached deliciously and his balls were drawn up between his legs… and he needed to spill his load so badly he couldn’t see. “What are you going to do about it?” Jace taunted. Quent turned to him mutinously, licked his palm, and went to place it on his own cock. It was knocked roughly away, and Jace pinned him again, hand to hand, chest to chest, groin to groin. Jace’s cock was wet with come, and his pubic hair grated roughly against Quent’s upper thigh. Quentin tried to grind against him to get off, but Jace thrust his knees between Quent’s thighs. “Shit,” Quent panted. “I’m hard and I hurt… what else do you want from me?” “You’re not really hard,” Jace taunted, whispering his hips across Quent’s until Quent let out a helpless sound. “God, Jace, I swear… I’ll come without being touched… please… please….” “You’re not really hard,” Jace taunted again. This time his thigh found the edge of Quent’s cockhead, and Quent almost dropped his face into Jace’s shoulder so he could make begging an art form.

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“How do I prove it to you?” Jace chuckled roughly. “If you’re hard enough, Quentin, maybe you’ll learn to top.” Quentin blinked stupidly, even as Jace crushed against him in a hungry, devouring kiss. Quentin responded to the kiss, and then he felt Jace retreating from him—oh nightmare of nightmares, he was pulling away. “Top?” he asked, his voice rising. He thrust forward, surprised when Jace gave way before him, and now he was the one who had Jace pinned against the door of the copy room. “Top?” he demanded again between hard, punishing kisses that Jace seemed to be eating up with a spoon. “You want me to top?” “I want you…,” Jace muttered roughly. For a moment he threatened to take over the kiss again, and Quentin was just frustrated enough not to let him. “You want me to what?” he demanded. “To be your guy? Your fuckbuddy? Your quickie in the copy closet?” He kissed hard and harder, and Jace was clinging to him the way Quentin usually clung to Jace, his mouth open and sloppy and waiting to be used. “Yes,” Jace breathed when Quent moved to chew on his neck because Quent knew it took him to crazy and he needed company there. “Yes what?” Quent demanded, his lips brushing Jace’s ear. “I want you to want me….” Quent groaned. “Want you?” He crushed up against Jace, shoving his aching—God, so-hard-it-hurt-aching—cock right up against Jace’s hip, and Jace moaned weakly. I’m making him hot. Holy shit, I’m making him hot. He’s hard again. He wants me again. Jace undulated against Quent, and Quent saw stars behind his eyes in an effort not to come all over him. Fine. He wants me? He’s got to earn me. Quentin straightened and threw himself against the back wall, dragging Jace with him. Jace sucked on Quentin’s neck for a moment

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before Quent put his hand on those broad, tight shoulders and shoved down. “You want me on top, Jace, then suck my fucking cock!” In the dark of the tight space, Jace looked up at Quent and grinned, and Quent realized he’d played his cards right into Jace’s hand. Jace had wanted this, wanted Quentin to take the initiative, wanted to know that he was wanted enough to be bossed around. Oh, Jesus, did Quentin need to boss him around right now. “Anything you say, buddy—you’re the one with the cards.” Oh God… poker metaphors again? Quentin was going to say something sarcastic, but Jace engulfed his cock until it hit bottom in Jace’s throat, and words turned to meaningless drivel. “Auuughhhhh!” It was really the best he could manage. Jace stopped moving. “What was that, boss? I didn’t hear you?” he taunted, and Quentin got a better grip on Jace’s scalp-trimmed head. “Suck me, dammit,” he graveled, and he could feel Jace’s contented chuckle against the head and the base of his prick. It made him insane. “Oh, God… harder… please… dammit… harder….” He pushed at Jace to make it so, and Jace complied so quickly Quent’s eyes rolled back in his head. “Keep going,” he pleaded, barely coherent. “Keep going, and when you’re done, you’re gonna bend me over, and you’re going to fuck me again, and this time do it right.” Jace pulled back and licked the flared face of Quent’s cock slowly as some sort of punishment. “I always do it right,” he said lazily, and Quent growled. “Unless you’re leaving me high and dry like you almost did… now suck me, dammit!” Jace chuckled again, and Quentin closed his eyes so tight that the lights behind them exploded as he came, loudly and with style. “Oh, God—Jace!” He didn’t even have time to recover before Jace had whirled him around and was inside him again. Right as Jace was sliding inside his dilated asshole, still sloppy with lube and come from the first time, it occurred to Quentin that this

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was no longer a quickie. Jace shoved into him with a satisfied grunt. Quentin groaned, his entire body tingling from their encounter, and wondered, if he looked at his watch, how much time had passed. Odds were good they’d been “making copies” for over a half an hour. Jace bit his neck again, and Quentin yelped. “Stay with me,” Jace muttered. “I’m with you,” Quentin replied, right back in the moment, “copy marathon” be damned. “That’s not what I meant.” Jace’s movements stalled out behind him, and Jace’s cheek rubbed up against the back of Quent’s dress shirt. Just that quickly, the moment went from frenzied fuck-me sex to c’mere-and-hold-me passion, and Quent collapsed forward, letting the paper rack take all his weight. For a moment, the copy room—overheated and stuffy now, with their sexual gymnastics—was empty of everything but their panting. Jace wrapped his arms around Quent’s chest and groaned. Quent took the hands clasped around him and stroked them quietly, and their passion cooled and only the warmth of their bodies remained. “I’m still with you,” Quentin repeated into the silence. “Really?” Quentin closed his eyes, suddenly assaulted with Jace’s terrible vulnerability. “I wouldn’t bullshit you about that, Jace. Not after three months.” Hell, it was the longest relationship he’d had since high school. Jace pulled out again, and Quent felt a rough handkerchief at his backside, cleaning him up—and Jace too, he assumed. Then he felt Jace’s hands, tender and shaking as they pulled up his pants and belted him, all while Quentin was still facing the back wall. “So you wanted me to top?” he asked quietly when he heard Jace behind him, doing the same.

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“It’s your relationship too, Quent,” Jace said, and Quentin risked turning around. Jace’s ice-blue eyes were sober, and—Quent swallowed—insecure. Quentin nodded. “Top,” he said with more assurance than he felt. “So how’d I do?” Jace’s face lit up, his teeth gleaming in the dark. “Great. Want to try it when we’re not fucking?” Quent’s mouth went dry, and he swallowed again so he could speak. “Absolutely. You know anyone with a pickup truck?” Jace’s lips were surprisingly full—especially when they curved into a tentative smile. “Why?” “I was thinking about moving up,” Quent told him, feeling vertigo for reaching so high. The smile widened, grew sharklike and full of fierce joy. “My place is as high as you can go,” he said. “Well yeah,” Quentin agreed, smiling back. “Wouldn’t that put me on top?” Suddenly he was assaulted by an armload of Jace—and a surprisingly quiet exploratory kiss. Jace tasted of salt and the sports drink he’d had for lunch—and Quent’s spend—and when he tried to pull back, Quent took the initiative and captured his lips one more time. “You can be on top any time you like,” Jace muttered. “You just have to let me know you’ll be there.” “I’ll be there. Are you sure you want me to move in?” Jace rolled his eyes. “I don’t do flowers, kittens, or engraved invitations. This was it—my grand romantic gesture. If it’s not enough for you—” “No, no!” Quentin laughed a little. “It was great, Jace—being fucked unconscious in the copy closet is better than dinner and flowers—swear!” Jace’s mouth quirked wryly. “Smartass,” he muttered, and then he checked both of them to make sure their clothes were done, and opened the door.

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Elsie, Lexi, and Toby were all standing outside, their arms crossed and their eyebrows arched to their hairlines. “Sorry.” Jace grinned his shark’s grin, trying to brazen it out. “We didn’t mean to take up the copy room all day.” “It’s a closet,” Elsie said bluntly, “and now you’re out of it. Is there anything you wanted to tell us, Jace?” Jace pretended to consider it. “Yes—I wanted to tell you that anyone who doesn’t get their ass in gear in the next ten seconds is going to spend overtime on Saturday helping Quent move. Can we all get back to work now?” “No,” Toby said slyly. “I’m all for helping Quentin move. Where ya moving, Quent?” Quentin blushed and looked sideways at Jace. Jace scowled and returned his look. Jace’s face was flushed with razor burn, and his neck was covered in hickies. Quentin realized that he probably didn’t look much better, and his blush about scorched his skin. “My place,” Jace grunted, and to their immense mortification, the entire staff burst into applause. “It’s about fucking time,” Elsie snapped with a roll of her eyes. “It’s worth a Saturday, that’s for damned sure,” Lexi agreed. She didn’t even look depressed that Jace was taken, although Quentin could have sworn she’d been crushing on him since she was hired. “And now I get to be the only straight boy at the office,” Toby said brightly, and Quent ignored Jace’s grunt of incredulity. “Excellent! Jace was sucking up all the women before you two hooked up anyway. Should we meet here on Saturday?” Jace’s eyes connected significantly with Quent’s, and Quentin took his turn to answer. “Yeah—we’ll be here at ten with doughnuts,” he said, and with that, the staff all turned around to go back to their duties. “Wait a minute!” Jace demanded, and they turned back toward him. “Didn’t any of you have any copies to make?” “No, sweetheart,” Elsie said sweetly. “We were just waiting for the two of you to come out of the closet.”

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“Someone should shoot her for punning without a license,” Quent muttered, and Jace grabbed him by the hand and hauled him toward his own office. “Elsie’s easy,” Jace said with a shrug. They reached Jace’s office—cream carpet, black leather furniture, dark wood appointments—and Jace swung the door shut. “Elsie, Lexi, Toby— they’re a dry run. You know what tonight is, don’t you?” Quent shrugged. “Poker night—so what?” “So what?” Quent looked at him under his shock of hair. His whole body tingled from sex, from embarrassment, and from the high of knowing he was about to move all his earthly possessions in with the guy he loved. Felt good. Damned good. “I don’t know… maybe we just go in, kiss each other, and fucking play.” Jace grinned, not put out in the least. “Yeah?” Quent shrugged. “Okay, I’ll be honest. It’s going to be harder for me. You? I guess you’ve been fucking guys since you’ve been fucking. Me? I’ve never really thought about the world paying attention to me for who I’m sleeping with. I don’t think I could do it unless you were there.” “I’m not going to be playing poker anyplace else,” Jace said dryly, and Quent wrinkled his nose. God, he really could be an asshat sometimes. “I’m just saying….” Quent shifted uncomfortably, and not just because he was still sticky from their encounter. “You… you’re a leader, Jace. You walk into poker, kiss me senseless, sit down, it’s all going to be okay. I walk in there and say, ‘Hey, guys! I’m gay!’ and we’ll never settle down to play.” “You can’t play for shit anyway,” Jace growled, and it was Quent’s turn to scowl. “I’d rather play poker than have people sticking their noses in my bed!”

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“The only thing in your bed had better be me!” Quentin pinched the bridge of his nose. “Well, I wasn’t going to move in with you because I wanted anyone else in there!” Suddenly Jace wasn’t behind his desk anymore, he was in front of it, and he had both hands on Quentin’s chest. “You don’t, right?” Quentin took a shaky breath and tried to lasso this conversation and bring it to heel. “Jace, you’re the one who likes poker so much. I just let you bang me in the copy closet. We damned near had witnesses. In our entire lives, have you ever known when I was having sex with someone?” Jace looked honestly shocked. “You’re almost frighteningly discreet!” “Yeah, Jace. But not anymore. Now I’m the guy getting assfucked in the copy closet. I’m moving in with you—I’m going to have to tell my parents, and did you think I wasn’t going to tell them why?” His voice cracked a little there. He wasn’t proud of it. His parents were… well, conservative was an understatement. But he’d promised Jace, and he wasn’t going to back down from that now. But he hadn’t promised to come out in front of their poker group. Not without Jace. “So before you freak out on me, oh mighty poker player, is there maybe a term or something for someone who just threw his entire life and livelihood into the relationship?” Jace looked away, and a small, secret smile played with the corner of his lean mouth. “All in,” he said. “I raised the stakes, and you’re all in.” “Yup,” Quentin said. “I’m all in—how ’bout you?” Jace nodded and swallowed. “Every chip I have is on the table, Quent. You know that, right?” Quent nodded and moved in to take Jace’s face in his hands. “I know it, Jace. It took me a while to see your cards, but I know it now.” “Think we’ll both win this hand?” Jace asked, and once again, Quentin saw the earnest lover behind the shark. “I’d bet on us,” he whispered, and Jace met his lips for a kiss. “I guess you just did.”

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… Losing a Hand … Jace

JACE watched Quentin carefully as he lunged after the ball on the racquetball court. For once, Quentin’s concentration was on the ball, completely on the ball, and not taken up by cracking a joke or ogling Jace’s ass or goading Jace into making a mistake by his chatter. No, no. Quentin had one goal in mind: get to that helpless hard rubber ball and kill it the fuck dead. His swing was beautiful—Quentin really did have athletic ability when he put his mind to it. The racquet arced perfectly, and when it connected, Quent added a savage burst of power to the swing, pushing the ball so fast toward Jace’s head that Jace didn’t bother to return it— he dropped to the floor and let it zing right over his head. He stayed there until the ball played itself out, and then stood up again, not even bothering to dust himself off. “What in the holy fuck crawled up your ass and ate your brains for breakfast?” Quent gritted his teeth. “Nothing,” he snapped. “Your point.” Jace sighed and retrieved the ball, serving it carefully against the wall—not too fast, not too slow, just hard enough to make a good game. This was not how he usually played. He usually played with the intention of drawing blood—yes, even against Quent. But not this time. This time, Quent seemed to be out for enough blood for the both of them, and Jace ducked as Quent nailed the holy bloody fucking hell out of the ball again. Jace returned it this time, and Quentin growled like an honest-to-crap Russian bear and attacked it again. It was like Pepé le Pew playing racquetball. Jace approached the

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ball with his usual panache and patience, and Quent snarled and attacked it like a rabid fox attacking a field mouse. Quentin won the next point, and the next, and not because Jace was letting him, either. He just kept returning the serves and watched warily as Quent threw his entire body into the game like he was going into battle. When their hour on the court was over, Quentin had sweat dripping down into his eyes and even out of his beard, and the corded muscles in his arms, neck, and shoulders weren’t one bit less prominent than they had been at the beginning of the game. “Nice game,” Jace said at the end, all teeth. “Congratulations. Now are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” “Nothing’s wrong,” Quent growled. “Let’s hit the showers. I was going to cook.” “Alrighty then….” Jace was unused to backing down—on anything—but then, he was unused to living with someone too. Toby had taken Quent’s apartment (Toby and his roommate were thrilled to buy the rent-controlled lease from Quent), and they had moved Quent out of his place and into Jace’s on the promised Saturday. It had been an adjustment. Jace had found that as much as he loved Quent’s way of giving things color and comfort, he resisted having it done to him. “So, Jace, do you want to put your stuff in storage and keep my stuff, or put my stuff in storage and keep your stuff?” “Keep my stuff. Sell your stuff.” “I’m not going to sell perfectly good furniture that I really love!” “Then why ask?” “Okay, keep your television because it’s the size of my freaking bedroom, get rid of that big black club chair because it’s hell on my back!” “But it goes with the carpet.” “My recliner will go with your carpet too. It’s a brown carpet— it’ll go with everything I own.” “I like the club chair.”

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“To throw shit on. It’s where your briefcase goes on its vacation. You can put your briefcase in the empty frickin’ hall closet and let me have a club chair, for sweet chrissakes!” “Okay, fine. Club chair, gone.” “Awesome. My couches, then.” “What in the hell?” “Your furniture squeaks, Jace. You know why we haven’t fucked in your living room yet? Because the goddamned furniture squeaks. You get some furniture in there that doesn’t hurt to sit on, and I guarantee you’ll be bending me over the couch a lot more often.” Silence. “What?” “Can we do that now?” “No, we can’t do that now! We’ve got the whole office coming to schlep boxes, and movers for the furniture in less than an hour. Just give me some of my fucking furniture, you horny fucking bastard, and I guarantee you’ll get laid more often.” “Excellent. We keep your furniture. Whose bed?” “Yours.” “Why mine?” “It’s bigger, for one.” “And for another?” “Mine doesn’t have the sort of headboard you can tie someone to. I’ve always sort of wanted to do that.” “Bend over. Now. Take off your pants and bend over. I’ll be done in five minutes. No one will ever know.” It had taken them ten, and he was pretty sure the office staff suspected, but there was only so much a bottle of Febreze could do to cover the smell of sex. And Jace had been so pleased he’d let the houseplants come without even a token resistance. That had been two weeks ago, and everything else? Had been easy. It had been like college again, except instead of sharing a dorm

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room, they’d shared a bed. He and Quent had taken to stopping at the grocer’s every other day and even had the handy little environmentally friendly bags in their briefcases. Quent had fed him more and he’d eaten takeout less, and in the meantime? Quentin was his, every damned night. They didn’t have sex every night—although Jace probably could have. Something about seeing Quent in his underwear and T-shirt for bed, and knowing that all Jace had to do was ask, say the word, nuzzle his ear, and he would be on his knees or bent over, or flat on his back with his legs spread—oh God. Just thinking about it made Jace hard. Quent’s skin was sort of a dark gold—naturally, because Quent didn’t do tanning booths—and he had a patch of hair between his pectorals just exactly the color of his goatee. He had a swimmer’s build, where Jace was more muscular, but Jace didn’t think of him as delicate. That didn’t stop him from lying in bed at night, though, after Quentin was asleep and exhausted, his lips swollen, Jace’s spend anywhere from his chest to his mouth to drizzling down the crease of his backside, and reaching out with a deliberate finger to stroke his cheek or shoulder. Jace was very, very careful not to do this when Quentin was awake, and Quentin had not mentioned it once, so Jace figured it was safe. So as far as Jace knew, life was gravy. Except Quent had gone into his office to work after lunch today, taken a personal phone call, and come out of his office… well… a guy who would savagely beat a defenseless rubber ball into eraser gum. And Jace was nonplussed. For a minute, he thought about Mike, just because whenever he’d had a question about life growing up, Mike and Jefferson had been there. He didn’t have a lot of questions, actually; he tended to be self-sufficient that way. But he lost his virginity twice in a week—once to the cheerleader he’d been taking out after school and once to the defensive lineman on his football team who had gone down on him in the locker room. He’d liked both experiences just fine, and he understood that wasn’t the norm, so he’d gone fishing with Mike that Sunday (since the three of them didn’t do church) and flat-out asked. He could summon that day like a picture painted on a glass canvas, the sun sifting through the greens surrounding their little lake,

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the blues so sharp they almost etched themselves in Jace’s heart. Mike hadn’t been that old—maybe in his late thirties then, with a few strands of silver in his sandy-brown hair and a perfectly average face and build. Jace had revered him, but that hadn’t stopped him from tackling the question with his customary bluntness. “So, fucking. Boys and girls. Why’d you pick boys?” Mike had dropped his fishing pole, and they’d spent a couple of breathless moments scrambling to get it before Jace was forced to strip to his skivvies and dive to the bottom of the lake for it. This had been in October. The lake had been cold. It was worth it to take the time to get the pole. “So, uhm,” Mike said, resetting his tackle with patience he was famous for, “that whole fucking thing. You want to rephrase that?” “Mary-Lynn gave it up to me in the front of the truck the other night—” “You put a rubber on your pecker?” “Yes! I’m not stupid, and she’s not a virgin. Or, she wasn’t even before I nailed her.” “Nice, Jason. Really nice. Maybe work on that phrasing a little before you tell your friends.” Jace looked at him in shock. “Why would I tell anyone else? Mary-Lynn knows and I know—if we used protection, who else needs their nose in our business?” Mike seemed to think about that for a minute and then shrugged. “No one, I guess. Now you were saying something about boys?” “Yeah. So, Mary-Lynn and I—and it was pretty amazing. And then Thad Greavy—” “Your defensive lineman?” “Yeah. Anyway, apparently, Mary-Lynn told her girlfriend and he eventually heard, and he was pissed.” “Why was he pissed?” “I couldn’t figure it out either.” Jace shook his head. “And then he went down on me after practice the other day.”

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Mike almost dropped his pole again. Jace had been puzzled at the time. His uncle had never been clumsy. “So, uhm, how’d that go?” Jace shrugged. “Went fine. I liked it. He was actually better at it than Mary-Lynn.” Jace shrugged again, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. “But he was way more pissed off at the end.” As an adult, thinking back on it, Jace had to hand it to Mike. He seemed to get hold of himself, and even Jace had to admit he’d needed to work on his diplomacy back then. “Is that what’s got you bothered?” Mike asked, and Jace nodded. He felt a nibble on his hook and jerked the pole a little. He didn’t want to catch a fish yet—he’d wait for later. “See, I like them both, but Mary-Lynn was all soft and sweet afterward.” Jace had a problem admitting this, even to Mike. “I sort of liked that,” he half whispered. Mike grunted. “And Thad?” “He finished, and I sort of looked at him, and he sort of looked at me, and then he stood up and kicked the locker and said if I was going to be like that I deserved Mary-Lynn.” Mike sighed, reeled his line in, checked his bait, and cast again, then settled himself down. “Okay, so Jace?” “Yeah?” “Did Jefferson seem particularly happy to you when we left?” “No.” Jefferson had, in fact, been kicking cabinets and throwing pots and pans and shit around the kitchen as he got ready to cook roast chicken, because that was what he’d planned for Sunday dinner. “Do you have any idea why that is?” Jace hadn’t really thought about it. When Jeff got pissy like that, Mike found a way to make it better. Mike never got pissy about stuff like that, so Jeff must have done his smoothing over before stuff got bad enough to ruffle Mike’s feathers. “Not a clue.” “’Kay, the thing is, you know Jefferson loves you like a son, right?” Well of course. It didn’t need talking about, it just was. “Yeah.”

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“Well, how do you think he felt when you asked me to come fishing and not him?” Jace blinked. “He hates fishing.” Jefferson had shown Jace his old yearbooks once. Mike had been the captain of the football team. Jeff had been the captain of the Dungeons & Dragons guild. They apparently hadn’t gotten together until college, but those sort of fundamental differences between them had made their lives quietly interesting—but only to them. “Yeah. But he likes talking to you.” Jace squirmed. “Yeah, but… but Uncle Mike. It was about girls.” Mike had dated girls. He’d said so himself. In his entire life, Jefferson had only ever looked at a girl as a sister or a friend. Mike sighed and pulled his line in a little. “Yeah, and when I tell him that, he’ll forgive you. But see, here’s the thing. You wanted to know about girls, and I’ll tell you what I know. Girls are like those houses—the kind where the stairs to the attic take you down to the basement, and if you drop a ball in one corner of the kitchen it ends up rolling down a secret passage and into an upstairs bedroom. Girls take sex and put it in one part of their house, and usually there are a whole lot of doors leading to that room, and if there aren’t enough doors, the sex will find a way to roll around until it hits some other part of her life. That’s why you always need to wear a condom. You may think you’re just in the house to have sex, but she may think you’re in the house to make babies, cook dinner, do the dishes, the laundry, and paint the nursery.” Now Jace almost dropped his pole. God. He made a mental note to never run out of condoms. “And boys?” he asked, semi-alarmed, and Mike smiled, apparently more at ease with this topic. “Boys are easier,” he said sincerely. “Boys are like a series of doors. If something pisses you off in one room, you go into the next room, closer to your vest, and slam the door so no one can get in and see your cards.” Oh. Poker. Jace got poker. Rules, a goal, and a little leeway for personal skill and calculation. Jace was all about poker.

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“So what did I do to piss him off?” Jace asked, not wanting Thad to be mad at him. They’d been friends since second grade. “Did you even say thank you? Give him a kiss? I don’t know, Jace, reciprocate?” “Well, I was a little surprised,” Jace defended. He’d known that Mike and Jefferson did those kinds of things, but until Thad, he’d really only thought about girls. “Fair enough. Maybe the next time you two are in the locker room together, you can try giving him a favor—but only if you want to. If you don’t, you’re going to have to use actual words.” “But what about Mary-Lynn?” Mike sighed. “Have you promised her anything?” “I promised her not to talk, and she did that all on her own!” This time the sigh damned near shook the boat. “Okay. Don’t promise a person anything—but go one better. Unless you’re going to be seeing one person and one person only, make sure they know that you’re going to be dating around. You don’t have to tell them if you’re dating girls or boys, although that would make a gentleman out of you—just tell them that they’re not the only one. That’s integrity, or, as much integrity as I think you’re going to get when you’re doing all that thinking with your peter and none, apparently, with that fine mind God gave you.” Jace eyed him warily and pulled his line in. That fish had probably nibbled off all the bait, and he was about done with this conversation and ready to catch something. “Why are you mad?” Mike swore and reeled his line in to do the same. Together they concentrated on gutting big fat night crawlers on their hooks, and then, back to back, with nearly identical motions, cast their lines. When they were settled, Mike resumed the conversation. “Because I’d hoped you were smarter than I was, kid. I played the field plenty when I was a kid, and when I hit college, I looked around and realized that the person I’d always wanted was right there—but it took me a lot of hard looking at myself and at him to figure out if I could do right by him.”

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Jace looked at Mike sideways and squirmed a little. “You two never let me down,” he said quietly, and Mike’s smile was relieved. “Good. You’ve never let us down either. I guess when you find the right person—girl or boy—you’ll muddle through things on your own. Just… be honest what your game is, Jace, and keep your cards close to your vest.” “And don’t come out of the poker room,” Jace said with a straight face, because he could see the metaphor just so clearly. And then Mike sort of rocked his world. “Jason, you’ll know it’s for real when you open all the doors in the house.” The thought had terrified him.

IT

STILL terrified him, except now, when faced with Quent’s piss-

bitchy mood, he was feeling a little desperate. He’d open up a door or two, tip his hand a little, if only he could have his Quentin back, the one who played with grace instead of fury and who talked instead of snarled. Uncle Mike wasn’t there anymore to ask how to open doors that Jace had snapped shut when he was seventeen, but he still hadn’t forgotten the long-ago conversation with the two men who had been his family. For some reason, as he thought about that conversation now, he wasn’t thinking about Uncle Mike, or the fact that Mary-Lynn had continued to put out his senior year, and so had Thad, for that matter. For some reason, he was thinking about Jefferson, who had been outside on the porch, shucking peas and looked seven kinds of sad as Mike pulled the boat up to the dock. Jefferson was a tall, angular guy with a long, angular face. When he looked sad, the brilliant October sky turned gray, and Jace and Mike would do about anything to bring back the sun. So on this particular day, Jace was open to ideas as he walked up with the string of fish in his hand and asked where Jefferson had

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wanted them gutted. Sometimes it was the mudroom, sometimes it was the kitchen—it all depended on what Jefferson had going. “I’ll gut them,” Jefferson said shortly, and Jace sighed and tried really hard to make Mike proud. “I wanted to talk about girls,” Jace said by way of explanation. “I didn’t want you to feel left out. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” Jefferson looked up then, his eyes bright and shiny, and Jace felt like seven tons of crap until he stood up and wrapped his arms around Jace’s shoulders. “You’re a great kid, do you know that?” Jace squinted his eyes and shook his head. “I’m not really,” he apologized. “I’m not actually that nice a person.” Jefferson stood back with a short laugh. “You are to the people who count, baby. Never doubt that. Now give me those stinky fish and go shower. Dinner’s almost ready.” Jefferson’s mood had improved after that, and Jace had pulled out his own poker metaphor for the situation. No matter what was going down on the table, it all went back to the hand you started with. So whatever was wrong with Quent? That had to go back to the things Jace knew about him already. They had finished their shower, and Jace was in a funk because the club was not deserted as it had been when he’d made his move nearly four months earlier, in June. Quent continued to be surly and unyielding, like a snarling concrete wall, and Jace sighed, shouldered his gym bag, and stalked to the front of the club to summon a cab. That snapped Quent out of his funk. “I thought we were walking?” he asked, turning his body sideways to avoid the small Asian family walking in a tight-knit clot. The streets in this city were crowded—physical space almost nil. “I want to talk,” Jace said shortly, whistling at a cab. It peeled to the curb in a hot second, and Jace opened the door. “Well I don’t,” Quentin snapped back. “Does that mean I don’t get the cab?”

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“Get in the fucking cab,” Jace snarled, and Quent shot him a killing look and then got in. Jace slid in after him and barked the address, leaving Quent on one side of the cab fuming and Jace on the other side of the cab feeling bereft. “What did they say?” he asked quietly when the news radio show playing from the front grated on his last nerve. “What did who say?” “Don’t bullshit me, Quent. I’ve never seen you like this. The only thing you had going this last week was telling your family you’d moved, and why. And now you’ve had a personality transplant, complete with extra working asshole. So are you going to punish me and the air quality and little rubber balls, or are you going to talk to me?” Quent looked out his window. “When we get home,” he said softly, some of the tension going out of him. “Everything is better when we’re at home.” Jace looked at him, in the corner of the cab, as remote and distant as Quentin had ever been to him, and felt compelled to close that distance. He fumbled for Quent’s hand then, scooting over enough for the reach not to be awkward, and Quent startled, then looked down at Jace’s fingers, laced on top of his. Without saying another word, he turned his palm up and relaced their fingers and gave a comforting squeeze. A house full of doors, Mike had said. Jace realized that he’d just unlocked a door or two that he’d never thought to open.

THEY were quiet when they got to the apartment, both of them moving in accustomed tasks—putting their gym clothes in the hamper, adjusting the thermostat because it was early November and it got cold when they were gone. Quent went into the kitchen and pulled out some eggs and some low-fat cheese, scallions, and mushrooms, and Jace went to the counter and watched him work for few minutes.

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“Who taught you how to cook?” he asked curiously. Jefferson had tried—valiantly—to teach Jace something besides how to open a can or microwave popcorn. Jace had tried—valiantly—not to let him down, but nothing had worked. Watching Quent make quietly simple dishes without a lot of fuss always seemed like sort of a miracle. “The housekeeper,” Quent said without seeming to think about it. “My little sister and I used to get home about three hours before my folks. We’d be starving—because kids are, right? And I got tired of Chef Boyardee and popcorn. Lucia would come in and show me how to make basic things, and then I’d make them for Sam, and she liked them better than mom’s cooking.” Quentin laughed a little and scooped the chopped scallions into their own separate pile from the mushrooms. Jace didn’t know why he did that—all of the vegetables ended up in the middle of the omelet anyway—but it made the process look neat and orderly, and Jace appreciated that. “Jefferson kept trying to teach me,” Jace said, surprised that it came out so easy. “I was sort of hopeless.” Quent gave him an admiring look. “You had cooler stuff to learn anyway,” he said with a very natural grin, and Jace shrugged. “We should go camping sometime,” he said hopefully, and Quentin’s look back was not enthusiastic. “We can, uhm, try,” he offered, and Jace almost slammed a door until Quent added, “I don’t want to hold you back. I’m not, you know, Junior Woodchuck material. I’d need an air mattress and a camp stove and chairs and stuff.” Jace was surprised. “You’ve thought about this.” “Well yeah, Davy Crockett. Every year you left me behind for your big testosterone circle-jerk in the woods with Randall and Mitch, and I stayed home and—” “Went and got laid in some tropical paradise!” Jace snapped, not particularly sympathetic. “Well, I had to do something,” Quent said, his easy humor reasserting itself. “I felt damned pathetic.”

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“No!” Jace laughed, the sound sincere and reassuring, even to himself. “No. We just felt bad. You were always so nice about it, but we could tell you felt left out.” Quent was at the omelet flipping part, where he just sort of slid it out of the pan and it folded itself on the plate. He did that to the one that was ready, sprinkled some scallions on top, and gave the plate to Jace as he sat at the counter, then poured the second half of the egg mix into the pan. “Maybe, you know,” he said, blushing, “this year, we could go do something together, and then you can take off for your big he-man sojourn into the woods.” “I’d like that.” Quent busied himself with cleanup while his dinner was cooking, and when he spoke, Jace was so immersed in the first-rate omelet that he almost didn’t catch what was said. When he did catch what Quentin said, he had to ask him to repeat it. “They told me not to come home.” “I’m sorry?” “They said this wasn’t the way they’d raised me, and that if I was going to live in….” Quent flushed, and Jace snapped, “Spit it out!” so he wouldn’t stumble on the hard words. “In abomination,” Quent finished, “then I wasn’t welcome in their home anymore.” Jace just gaped at him, so taken aback that he had no words. He thought of Mike, almost dropping his fishing pole as a very young Jace told him about his rather adventurous sex life, and wondered how fucked up—how seriously fucked up—he would have been without Jefferson and Mike and their steadiness and their kind humor. They hadn’t been demonstrative, no, but they had loved. They had really loved him. “I’m so sorry,” he said, dropping his fork with a clatter.

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“It’s not your fault,” Quent said, plating his own omelet. He turned off the gas, bypassed the garnish, and grabbed a fork to sit next to Jace and start eating. “Yeah, but… but….” Jace floundered, suddenly panicked. Quent didn’t have to pick him. It wasn’t a given. He’d seemed to like girls okay before Jace had moved in on his sweet little ass. He could— “I’m not going back,” Quent said, looking determinedly at his food. “No?” Quent might never know what that one little syllable cost him. Quent met his eyes and shook his head. “Eight years, Jace. I didn’t risk eight years of friendship by letting you seduce me to throw it away now. If it doesn’t work out—” “It has to.” Jace’s voice brooked no argument, and Quentin raised his eyebrows and continued, like they both knew that wasn’t always possible, not in an uncertain world. “Okay. So it has to. It has to work out, because we already share the same freakin’ brain, right?” Jace nodded, knowing that his whole body had gone hot and then cold all in the same second. “Right.” He nodded and tried to keep his hand from shaking as he picked up his fork. He could have lost him— Jace could have lost Quentin to this one stupid thing, this one dumb prejudice that Jace should have predicted but hadn’t. He dropped his fork again, and suddenly Quent’s hand was on top of his. “I promise,” he said quietly. “Not going anywhere.” Jace nodded, and his cold hand sought out the warmth of Quentin’s soft computer worker’s palm. Quentin folded his fingers over Jace’s hand, and Jace tried hard to find something to say. “You win some, you lose some,” he managed, feeling beyond stupid. “I won,” Quent murmured, and he used his left hand to pick up his fork. Jace picked up his fork again with his right hand, and quietly, in the silence of their home, they began to eat. They didn’t let go of each other’s hands until it was time to clean up and go to bed.

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… Cards on the Table … Quent

“SO WHAT you’re really saying is that you want me to out us both.” Quentin cringed from Jace’s hard-eyed glare as it chilled him from the other side of the cab. When Jace was pissed, that vodka-blue color that Quent so admired could freeze absinthe. “No,” he defended weakly. “What I’m saying is that you’re the leader. You’re the one that started the poker group; you’re the one who got everybody together. You walk in there, say we’re a couple, and no one’s going to toss you out on your ear, that’s all.” Jace grunted and crossed his arms, annoyed. “I thought we had this out three weeks ago. You don’t always need to follow my lead!” Quentin blushed. Yes, they’d had this out three weeks ago, while fucking in the copy closet. Jace’s point—that same point that had been so delicious when made while Jace was buried balls deep in Quentin’s ass—was that Quentin didn’t always need to follow Jace’s lead, and it seemed to have worked out okay. It certainly seemed to be the impetus for them moving in together: for once Quentin took charge and took the relationship where he’d wanted it to go. (At least Quentin thought that was the way it had worked. A little part of him kept wondering if maybe Jace had wanted them living together from the get-go.) “How do you know this isn’t me leading?” Quent demanded irritably. “I’m giving you an order, dammit! You tell everyone we fuck like lemmings, and then we can just play cards!” Jace uncrossed his arms and ran one hand over his skull-trimmed scalp, something he did when he was agitated and didn’t care who knew it. Since he and Quentin had spent the last three weeks cohabitating in what used to be just Jace’s apartment, apparently Quent

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was welcome to see the irritable bastard just as often as the tender, occasionally vulnerable lover. “That’s bullshit,” Jace said after a moment, quietly. “That’s bullshit and you know it, Quent. You’re nervous. You think the guys we’ve known for a million years are going to turn their backs on you— “ “Us,” Quent interrupted. “I’m afraid they’re going to turn their backs on us. Because I’m a follower and you’re a leader, and if I come out, nobody’s leaping into that rowboat, okay? So you come out, everybody leaps into the big gay rowboat, and we can get on with the game!” Jace scowled. “You were braver three weeks ago!” he accused. Quent didn’t deny it. Fresh from their romp in the closet, with the full approval (and, embarrassingly enough, practically firsthand knowledge) of their office staff, Quentin would have taken out an airplane to plaster “Jace fucks Quent blind six times a week and Quent loves it!” all over the goddamned city. As it was, he’d been all stoked and ready to swagger into their monthly poker game, hold Jace’s hand and plant a big one on him, and then sit down to (what he assumed would be) their friends’ shocked stares and ask whose deal. But then Mitch had called and bailed, and Nick had called after him, and then Jesse had called, and then Randall, and that left Jace, Quent, and Peter, and besides not being enough to play poker, coming out to one friend wasn’t really coming out to the group, now, was it? So they’d moved Quentin’s shit in over that weekend, and now, a month later, here they were. Poker night again. Time to show their cards and see if just this once, a pair of kings would beat a five-card straight. Quentin was willing to bet on it—but only if the king of swords led. “I hadn’t called my parents three weeks ago,” Quentin said into the sudden silence. Almost against his will, Jace stopped rubbing his own head and put his palm on Quentin’s thigh, his touch burning through the fabric of Quent’s formal slacks.

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“Sacramento sucks anyway,” Jace muttered, and Quentin captured his hand gratefully. Jace didn’t do a lot of PDA. He didn’t do a lot of nuzzling or soft touches in private, either. But every once in a while with a look, a touch, a caught breath, or wide-open eyes, he’d show his cards, and all his kings looked like Quent. “Hate that town,” Quent agreed now. Sacramento was the big house downtown, the housekeeper, and important political friends who would be good for the career his parents had groomed him to have since he was very young. Quentin had been more attached to his dorm room with Jace than he had been to the house he grew up in—at least, it was starting to feel that way now. Anyway, it was a good thing they both hated the state capital, because that was where Quent’s parents lived, and they weren’t getting any Christmas invitations there any time soon. “But,” Jace said, pulling back his hand, “that’s no reason to go back in the closet!” Quentin growled. “I’m not going back! I just figured you’re the king of the game, here! They’ll go along with you!” “I’m the poker king? So what in the fuck does that make you?” Quentin smirked and reclaimed Jace’s hand. “The jack of ass?” He was watching carefully. He could tell when Jace’s smirk almost broke through, and he grinned softly, thinking maybe he’d won this round. “I’ll jack your ass,” Jace said fondly, and Quentin squeezed his hand. “As you do every night,” Quent conceded grandly. Mostly because he begged Jace to. It had been a good four months. Then Jace looked at him sideways, his ice-blue eyes glinting steel, and his smirk turned toothy, like the shark they both knew he could be. “I’ll bet you that you’ll come out before I do,” he dared, and in the shifting shadows coming in the cab’s windows, his grin was positively diabolical. “That’s unlikely,” Quentin told him, rolling his eyes. Seriously? Quent? Quent hadn’t led in high school, hadn’t led in college—just

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flat-out didn’t lead. And why did he need to, really, when Jace was willing to leap fearlessly into the breach, right? Hey, Quentin, let’s go to this party! Sure, why not? Hey, Quentin, let’s join this organization—it’ll get us business contacts! Yeah, Jace, whatever you say, man! Hey, Quentin, let’s start our own business! Yeah, buddy, I’m all yours! Hey, Quentin, I’ve wanted you forever, let’s start fucking like lemmings! Oh, God, Jace, what took you so fucking long? All things considered, telling Jace that he wanted to move in was as ballsy as Quentin usually got—he was just lucky that risk paid off. “You came out to your family,” Jace said, but as far as Quent was concerned, that was an argument in Quent’s favor. “And that worked out so damned well I was disowned,” he shot back blandly, and Jace sighed. Quent had tried hard to reassure Jace that it hadn’t been his fault. Quent knew that Jace’s uncle and his uncle’s partner had raised Jace in some sort of idyllic small town. As much of a shark as Jace was, there was still a part of him that didn’t see life as more than a game. Quent had known that his family played for keeps when he came out. If they didn’t want to accept that Jace was more than a business partner, more than a friend, then that meant that they didn’t accept Quent, and Quent found that unacceptable. Jace was still reeling from the idea that not everybody’s family was like his. Quent was still reeling from the idea that he’d rather Jace be his family than anybody else in the world. All things considered, maybe it wasn’t a good idea to risk alienating their mutual peer group with their new living arrangement, right? But that was not how Jace played. Ever. And now he was looking at Quent like he could make this game more profitable for both of them. “Naw, man—I totally bet you. You’ll come out first. You’ll totally lead.” Quentin looked at him warily. “What’re the stakes?” “First out tops.” Quentin blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

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Jace kept that handclasp, except his hand tightened like the trap he’d just sprung. “You heard me. The first one who comes out tonight tops in bed.” Quentin felt his eyes get wide, and he breathed in quickly enough to choke on his own spit. He coughed violently, covering his mouth with his hand and trying to smooth his hand over his goatee when he was done. Surreptitiously, he looked at the cabbie (an ancient Asian man who was ignoring them both with no effort at all) and then looked at Jace. “You always top!” he muttered. Jace grinned. “So even if you lose, you win, right?” “I had no idea you wanted to bottom!” And now Quentin was accusing. Yeah, Jace had used the term to mean “take the lead,” but Quent had never really thought…. It had never occurred to him that he could… Jace would want…. A sudden vision of Quent’s hands on the taut flesh of Jace’s ass, spreading his cheeks, toying with the little rosebud pucker between, froze the breath in Quent’s lungs. He imagined stretching Jace… playing with him… oh, God, tasting him… and hearing Jace screaming for it, begging Quentin to please, God, fuck me, Quent, fucking fuck me right the fuck now! “Quent?” Jace murmured. Quent inhaled and watched the stars dancing in front of his eyes. He took another deep breath and swallowed hard, and then Jace palmed the bulge in his slacks and squeezed, smiling with satisfaction and more when Quent gasped again. “What?” he rasped, and Jace’s predatory smile grew wider and sharper. “Just remember. I never let anybody win.” The cab pulled up to the curb—a little club with dark wood, hard liquor, and a poker table in the back with a green felt cover that was so soft and warm it was like a security blanket for the hard men who played on it.

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As a whole, the men who greeted Quent and Jace as they walked in (Jace’s hand obviously not on the small of Quent’s back) were not soft men. Mitch was the lawyer that Jace had hired to represent his and Quent’s company, Nick was a vice detective, Pete was an architect with his own company, Jesse was a journalist with his own byline, and Randall was a high school shop teacher in Oakland. (Of the seven of them, Randall was universally admitted to be the toughest fighter and the best poker player. Nick told Quentin once that Randall scared the shit out of him because he could throw a delinquent up against a brick wall in a three-point restraint to hand him over to the school outreach officer and then sit down to lunch with a smile on his face.) These were work hard/play hard men—clean-cut, in their late twenties to early forties, take-no-prisoners, eat-no-shit, tell-you-no-lies men. Quentin usually adored them, but tonight, they all scared him shitless, and not just Randall. Of course, being those kinds of men, they did all of their talking at the table. Quent and Jace sat down and Randall dealt the cards with thick, scarred hands that belied his boyish face and a background in theater. The talk was raucous and raw and more often than not featured on a man’s favorite body parts and their size/hardness/resilience to pressure/resistance to pain. “No, man,” Jesse was saying, taking a hard pull on his scotch. “Jace has to have the biggest ball-balls of the lot of us. Quent—you were there the night we got mugged, do you remember that?” Quent’s happy daze (and his happy hard-on) from the cab faded, and he glared at Jace. “Yeah, I remember. The mugger had the gun but it was Jace who scared the fuck out of me!” Jace threw in his ante and then discarded on a snort of “whogives-a-damn.” “Man, all I did was bluff a little.” He took his new card without even batting an eyelash—he always did have the best poker face of the lot of them. Jesse shook his blond hair out of his brown eyes. “Yeah—the rest of us are literally stripping off our cuff links to try to get this guy to go

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away, and you’re rubbing your wallet on your credit cards and telling the guy—” “It’s eel skin!” Peter chortled. He was a slender, ginger-haired man in his thirties, but he had the best laugh of the lot of them. “You said, ‘It’s eel-skin! I’m rubbing it for luck!’” Jace quirked his mouth in spite of the grim set he usually assumed at the poker table. “It worked, didn’t it?” he asked innocently. “I was the only one who didn’t have to deal with bad credit charges.” “Well yeah.” Jesse’s grin was as sweet as a baby girl’s. It was what made him such a good reporter—people told that baby face a lot of stories. “Because you had a magnet in your hand—you stripped all your cards before you gave them to the guy.” “That’s Jace,” Quent said meaningfully, throwing out his discard and eyeing his new cards with relief. “Always going where angels fear to tread.” Jace gave him that dark sideways look again. “Don’t need angels to play the cards you were given,” he said, clinking some more chips to the center of the table. “Call.” Quentin took a deep breath and tried to keep his temper. Neither of them was talking about poker. It had gotten to the point where they were never talking about poker when they were talking about poker, even when they were playing the wretched game. “No,” he agreed, “but it takes a certain kind of man to win with low cards.” Quentin had three sevens and a pair of jacks—a full house, but not a high one. He thought he could bet safely, but not outrageously. He threw in his chips on top of Jace’s. Jace leaned forward and spread his stance so that he was solidly pressed up against Quent. He put his hand under the table for a moment and squeezed Quent’s thigh, then picked up his vodka and took a sip before Quent could even gasp. Nick folded like he always did, Randall threw in with what seemed to be a strong hand, Jesse folded on two pair of low cards, and Mitch stayed in the game with Randall.

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The whole time, Jace kept his thigh firmly pressed against Quent’s under the table, and Quentin’s mouth was so dry he ordered himself a water or he would have been roaring drunk by the end of the first hand. “Every man has the hand to win,” Jace said softly when the play reached him again. “He just has to have the balls to play it through. See you and raise you.” His chips clinked arrogantly to the center of the table. Quent met his bet, mostly because Jace’s stockinged foot was now stroking his ankle and he was betting on autopilot. Damn him. Damn that fierce competitor’s grin and the way it made Quent’s cock swell and ache and rise to a challenge Quent’s brain would have walked away from as a bad bet. “That’s not true!” Quent managed to squeak, trying to stick to his guns when what he really wanted to do was shove Jace against the wall and stick his tongue down the guy’s throat. “Two kings do not beat a straight flush!” “Who’s got two kings?” Mitch asked, folding. Mitch’s sharp nose, chin, cheekbones, and widow’s peak matched his razor mind. He may have been the only guy in the room who noticed that something was going on that had not a goddamned thing to do with cards. “I don’t,” Randall sighed obliviously, folding reluctantly. “You’re up, Jace. Raise or call.” “Call,” said Jace immediately. “Show me your cards and I’ll prove it to you.” He looked Quentin in the eye and dropped one of his hands under the table again. “Two kings do too beat a straight flush, Quent, and you know it.” Quent gasped because the hand that Jace did not have on the table was burning through Quentin’s slacks again, nudging his hard-on and short-circuiting all the speech centers of his brain. “I’ve got a full house,” Quent graveled after a moment, showing his cards to a silence shocked and confused by Jace’s blatant twisting of poker physics, “and you’re full of shit.”

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“They do,” said Jace, showing his two pair—one of them a pair of kings. “Two kings really can beat a straight flush.” He waited a beat to make sure he had Quentin’s absolute attention. “But only if the kings are queer.” With that, he squeezed Quent’s cock hard enough against his thigh to make Quent’s vision grow black, and then, when he could breathe again, it went red. “You let me win!” he accused. “You know I’d never stay in with cards that couldn’t beat a hand like that!” Mitch may have been the sharpest, but nobody at that table was stupid, and now all of their friends, their little poker family, were staring at the two men in fascinated silence, but Quentin couldn’t bring himself to care. Jace never let anybody win. “Well maybe that’s not the game I was playing!” Jace snapped back, coming to his feet, and Quentin saw something in his face. Irritation, yes, and that predator thing that said Jace was coming in for the kill—definitely. And also, something else entirely. Hurt. Jace was hurt. Quentin had let him down by trying to back out, and suddenly Quent could hardly stand being in his own skin. “You want to throw the cards on the table?” Quent stood up, going toe to toe with his lover, recklessness winning out in the blaze of emotions searing through his chest. “You want to see my cards? Okay, here they are, you bastard. I love you—we moved in together and it’s been the best month of my fucking life! Are you fucking happy now?” Jace’s hands knotted into Quent’s suit jacket, and Quent was suddenly the one pushed back against the wall of the small room. “I will be when you pay up,” he growled, and then his mouth was hard and open and demanding over Quent’s in a very sexual, very hungry, very nonplatonic kiss. Quent saw his lover’s hunger and raised him with voracity and the sharp edge of anger and contrition. He kissed Jace back, and harder, until it was Jace who went boneless, Jace who whimpered in surrender,

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and Jace who clung to Quentin as though he were the last best hope in a losing hand. The kiss ended, and they stood, forehead to forehead, panting and looking at each other with a whole deck of cards they hadn’t played before right there in their eyes. “Uhm, guys?” Quent turned his head and saw that Mitch had taken the lead and was standing up from the table to talk to them. “Guys, uhm, we’re happy for you, we swear”—the rest of the table nodded bemusedly—“so how about you come back next week and play, okay?” “Next week?” Quentin managed to rasp, feeling dumb, and Mitch nodded and blushed. “Yeah. We’ll try this again next week. Uhm, right now… you know… maybe you want to… uhm… get a room?” Jace’s lips were suddenly right there, brushing Quentin’s ear. “Yeah, Quent. You want to get a room? Our room? Our nightstand? Lube? Toys? You, naked….” Quentin flushed hot and cold, and his cock ached so fiercely he was surprised he wasn’t bent double. “Room,” he mumbled. “Got a room. Got Jace’s room….” And then Jace seized his arm and was hauling him past Mitch and out of the poker game and the bar with nothing but a fierce, proud grin over his shoulder and a wave at the guys who were apparently still their friends. The cab ride was a delirious haze—one long, scorching, wet kiss. Jace kept Quent’s hands pinned between their chests, and it was all lips and tongue, silent, starving nips, the burn of stubble as Jace suckled on Quentin’s neck or Quent nibbled Jace’s ear. The cab screeched to a halt in front of their building, Jace dropped probably three times the fare in the cabbie’s lap, and Quentin never even saw the guy’s face. The first time they’d taken the elevator to Jace’s loft after a poker game, the two of them had stood quivering with tension, willing the elevator to go faster.

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This time, as soon as the doors closed, Jace thrust Quentin against the back of the elevator car and tried to crawl down his throat. Their bodies ground together, chest to chest and groin to groin, and after a particularly hard thrust, Quent pulled back and shuddered, gasping, “I’m gonna… Jace… Christ….” Jace stopped thrusting and locked his hands around Quent’s neck, keeping the kiss going until Quent was shaking with the pressure not to grind against Jace in a frenzy. They fell through their front door in a muddle of tangled limbs, and Jace was the one who kicked it closed behind them. Their tuxedos (an unofficial rule of their game) fell down around their feet piece by piece as they kissed, groped, stroked, bit, and squeezed their way to the bedroom. When they got there, Jace shoved his boxers down and sank to his knees in front of Quentin, who was already naked. In one giant, slick swallow, he engulfed Quentin’s cock until his lips tickled pubic hair and Quentin’s vision went red-tinged-black with the effort not to come. “Goddammit, Jace, do you want me to last?” he demanded, and when he looked down, Jace was grinning his shark-toothed grin again. Throwing that smile over his shoulder, he crawled onto the bed they’d slept in together for the past three weeks—hell, the past four months!— thrusting his bare, sculpted ass in the air and coming as close to begging as Quent had ever heard him. “Then what are you waiting for, goddammit! Fuck me now!” “Lube!” Quent gasped, taking a step toward the dresser. And apparently they didn’t even need that. “Fuck lube,” Jace gasped, and then he shoved two of his fingers into his mouth and reached back with the other hand, pulling his ass cheeks apart. He pulled his fingers from his mouth, and with a single thrust, he buried both fingers into his asshole, gasping “Aaaaaauuughhhh” into the pillow as he scissored his fingers and stretched himself for Quentin’s invasion. Quentin wasn’t going to fuck him without lube—not even a question—but he made record time as he oiled his cock, still

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mesmerized by the sight of Jace’s own fingers penetrating his backside, his whole body shaking with need. “Is your conscience all nice now?” Jace snapped, and Quent nodded, bending and suckling in a mouthful of clean, smooth flesh, just to make Jace squirm. “God, Quent, stop fucking around and fuck me!” Jace pleaded, and Quentin’s hand shook as he wrapped his hand around his cock and poised it at Jace’s entrance. Jace shuddered beneath him, and Quent thrust slowly, slowly, breaching Jace’s dilated body with care when he was really so desperate to fuck him unmercifully he was trembling with need. “Is the water warm enough, princess?” Jace gritted through clenched teeth. “Are you ready?” Quentin asked, all out of wordplay. It felt… God. Tight and hot and… oh… better than he’d imagined. And seeing it, seeing his cock buried inside Jace’s stretched body… the sight alone made him throb. But he wasn’t going to start fucking like a madman yet; he’d just learned that Jace could be hurt—he’d be damned if he did it again, not here. “God, the next time I’m fucking you you’re so going to pay for this,” Jace grunted, throwing his ass back hard enough to make Quentin wobble a little on the bed. Quentin relaxed a fraction, took a deep breath, and smiled. “I’m so going to hold you to that,” he muttered, then pulled back and thrust forward, burying himself to the hilt in Jace’s asshole. “Finally!” Jace groaned, grabbing at his prick, and Quent pulled back and did it again. “Is that all you’ve got? I wait for this for months and… augghhhhh….” The slender string of Quentin’s control snapped and he lunged forward, placing the flat of one hand between Jace’s shoulder blades to keep him pressed against the bed and grabbing the underside of Jace’s hip hard enough to leave bruises and keep his ass positioned… just… ah, God… just right… there…. He angled his hips forward and Jace grunted. “That’s the sweet spot,” he hissed, and Quent loved that sound coming from his lover’s

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throat. He nailed that spot again and again and again, and Jace howled into the comforter and pulled furiously at his own cock. Every time Quent nailed him, his ass contracted a little tighter, and a little tighter, and… ahhh… Christ…. “You ready?” Quent gasped. Jace grunted again, and Quent hoped that was a yes, because one more thrust, one more… oh, God, shit, he needed it, needed it so… fucking… bad…. “Gaaaaawwwwwddd…. Shit!” Quent screamed, and Jace screamed too and shuddered underneath him, and together they came and came and came. Quentin fell on top of Jace with a low moan, and they panted into the sex-drenched darkness of their room. “Quent?” “I’m crushing you?” Quent went to roll off, but Jace said, “No. Stay. Stay inside me…,” so he stayed. Their breathing evened out, and then Quentin, soft and flaccid, slid out of Jace’s body whether he wanted to or not. Feeling uncertain, feeling like their relationship was new all over again, Quentin rolled to the side and wrapped his arm around Jace’s chest and brought him along with. Quent rubbed his cheek on the back of his partner’s stubbled head and stroked Jace’s chest softly, feeling tenderness, feeling vulnerability—feeling, in fact, all of the things that neither of them spoke about, even when they’d agreed to move in together. “I didn’t say it back,” Jace muttered, easing back against Quentin and literally snuggling into his arms. Quentin took the snuggle—and the pillow talk—very seriously. Most things with Jace were serious, even when he was talking about games. Quent was coming to realize that. “Didn’t say what back?” Quent asked, pulling Jace tighter. “I didn’t say ‘I love you’ back,” he said softly. “That’s o—” “I do, you know,” Jace continued in a rush. “I do love you. I have forever. Probably since college, if I think about it. But I love you. Thanks for being so brave tonight. It meant a lot to me.”

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Quentin chuckled weakly against his back. “God, Jace. I love you. But man, I’ve got to tell you, I think between the two of us, we’ve warped poker forever.” Jace chuckled in his arms, and their bodies shook gently as the sweat cooled from them. Quent took a moment to pull the rumpled comforter around them both, and then Jace had the last word of the night. “You’ve got to admit, Quent—even though I didn’t let you win, you still did manage to come out on top, right?” Quentin was still chuckling as they drifted off to sleep.

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… Sitting Out a Hand … Jace

“NO,” JACE snapped into his phone. “No, Mitch, I’m not signing cohab papers or any shit like that and neither—” Cough cough. “—neither is Quent.” He was shivering. Fuck, he was shivering and his throat hurt like a sonofafuckin’bitch, and he was trying to button his shirt up and do his tie and tell their lawyer to fuck off at the same time. “Jace,” Mitch said with exaggerated patience on the other end of the phone, “I’m just saying, I’ll be by this afternoon, and you can look them over in case—” “I’m not—Quent, wha’b da’ bubk?” Quent walked into all of his frantic activity and shoved two big green pills in Jace’s mouth, then took the phone while he struggled with that and gave him a vitamin water to wash them down. Jace did so on automatic while Quent grabbed the phone and said, “I’ll be at the office, Mitch. I’ll sign anything you want me to. I need to hang up for now. Jace is about to try to yell at me.” He hit End Call and slid Jace’s phone into his suit pocket. The liqui-gel tabs were hard to swallow when his throat felt like hamburger, and Jace spent a couple of precious breaths doing just that before he came up sputtering for breath and snapping, “What the hell? What did I just swallow?” “NyQuil.” Quent’s voice was as even as it always was, and Jace was so jaw-dropped that he didn’t argue while Quent took his tie off and turned around and hung it on the closet rack. “It’s eight in the morning!” he said, and he didn’t protest when Quent took his suit jacket, either. “You know what that shit does to me! I might as well just—”

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“Crawl into bed, turn on the television, and pass out,” Quent finished for him as his thought train wandered. Fuck. Jace had never been one to overindulge—didn’t drink too much, didn’t get stoned in college (except the one time that Quent did, and they both giggled a lot and decided they weren’t really that kind of college freshman), and avoided painkillers. NyQuil on an empty stomach? It might as well have been a pocket of Quaaludes. “But I have to work!” “Remember me? Your work partner? I’ll field your calls, you sleep it off—in two days—” “Two days!” “Two days, you’ll be ready to start kicking ass and taking names again. For right now, pass out and blame me, and I’ll go sign Mitch’s cohab papers or whatever the fuck—” “No!” Jace snapped back. “He’s been trying to get us to do that since poker night. We don’t need them!” Quent unbuttoned his shirt, the gesture so intimate that Jace was caught up in the warmth of his body so close to Jace’s feverish one, and Quent looked up and smiled gently, kissing his cheek as he slid the shirt off and hung that up too. “I know, and I’ve heard you two sniping at each other all week. We’re going to stop it. Thanksgiving is coming, we’re having it with Mitch’s family, and I don’t want you guys hung up on business next week.” “We’re having Thanksgiving where?” Jace muttered, still wondering where his shirt had gone. Quent moved on to his belt buckle, and for a minute Jace’s cock stirred, and then Quent’s finger brushed Jace’s stomach and the poor guy shriveled up like a dead bug. “Oh fuck!” he complained. “Your hands are freezing! And not in the sexy grab-my-penis way, either!” One corner of Quent’s mouth twitched up under the goatee. “There’s a sexy grab-my-penis way to have freezing hands?” “I used to think so.” Jace’s disappointment was acute.

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Quent helped Jace step out of his shoes and his pants, and while Jace was standing by his closet, feeling bemused and freezing, Quent fetched his sleep pants from the drawer, as well as a hooded sweatshirt left over from college that Jace only wore when he wanted comfort. Quent bent down, and Jace fumbled into his pants, and then Quent helped him with the sweatshirt too. “We’ll experiment with ice cubes and heating pads later,” Quent promised soothingly and then grabbed Jace’s hand and walked him to the bed. He pulled back the covers, and Jace was surprised to see pristine gray cotton sheets there. He looked at Quent in puzzlement. “It took you forever in the shower,” Quent clarified, “and you were cooking like chicken all night. Didn’t take a genius. Changed the sheets, got the NyQuil—yes, I was a criminal genius mastermind, all set to drug you into submission. Now lie down.” Jace crawled into their bed docilely, but only because the room was getting ready to spin around his head. “Don’t leave yet,” he murmured and then was a little horrified. Oh God. That sounded so needy! “Wasn’t gonna,” Quent soothed. He came and sat down next to Jace with his work loafers in his hand and slid them on while he sat. “I’ve got time. Elsie has a key. Things will run without us for a little while.” Jace nodded and folded his arms as he shivered under the covers. It felt like an act of bravery to reach for Quentin’s hand. “I wanted to call Uncle Mike last night,” he said, “and ask him what to do for a cold. He used to make this… this stupid down-home bullshit tea, with honey and something that smelled really good, and… and I wanted to make it, and then I remembered….” A hard shiver shook him again, and he curled in on himself, feeling altogether miserable. Quent did an unexpected thing, then, and folded himself over the shivering huddle of Jace’s body. Jace felt almost tearful, the comfort was so huge. “I’m sorry,” Quent murmured, his voice pitched just right to be soft in Jace’s ear. “You didn’t talk much in college, you know? But you used to tell me you were going home during the summer, and you told

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me where you were going and about Uncle Mike and his friend, and I thought you were so lucky.” “They weren’t really friends,” Jace chattered, something in his body giving in to the shakes now that the medicine had weakened him just enough. “Yeah, Jace. I know. I figured it out our senior year—you were talking on the phone when you thought I was asleep. You told Jefferson to kick Mike out of bed so he could get some information for you on their taxes so you could make sure they kept their property.” Jace frowned past his fading headache. “You heard that?” “Yeah.” “You didn’t say anything.” “Didn’t matter, Jason. You obviously loved them—they were your family. Wasn’t going to shit all over your family.” Quent settled his cheek a little more firmly against the bundle of comforter and sweatshirt and Jace. “Especially not when they gave me a little bit of hope.” “You wanted me,” Jace murmured, thrilled and comforted, and Quent’s chuckle was dry. “Yeah, even then. No accounting for taste.” “If you wanted me then, why all the women?” Quent sighed. “There was only one guy worth coming out for, Jace. He didn’t seem interested at the time.” “Don’t sign the papers,” Jace mumbled, wondering if he’d see the connection. “Why? Because they make it legal?” “No. Because they make it… business.” “Oh.” Quent’s body was so comforting on top of his. Jace’s vision was feeling swimmy, and he closed his eyes, hoping that feeling, that pressure on top of him, would never go away. “It’s not business,” Quent murmured. “It’s not business, and it’s not a game. It’s just us, right?” “Right.” Good. He got it.

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“Then I’ll sign the papers, bring them home for you to sign, and the business shit will go away, and it will just be us again.” “No!” God, for a week, a frickin’ week, while Jace had been getting increasingly tired and achy and out of sorts, Mitch had hounded him on the phone relentlessly. Sign the cohab papers, both of them, so that way if it ended, they could end it amicably. We’re amicable. We’re amicable, and neither of us would treat the other one any way but fair. Don’t make this about money, dammit. Don’t make this about business! Business is a game, and this is real life, and once I see papers, maybe I’ll see it different, and I want it to stay real! Quent sighed. “Okay,” he said quietly. “We won’t sign anything, okay? You won’t have to sign a damned thing. I’ll tell Mitch, right?” Jace nodded and thought about Uncle Mike and Jefferson and the simple way they’d moved into Mike’s grandpa’s little plot of land after college and had just stayed there, doing their jobs in town, cohabitating, building a life. They’d been so quiet, so discreet—to the day they’d died, most of the town hadn’t known that they’d been as deeply in love as any married couple on the planet. Jace had let the town continue think that during the funeral. It didn’t seem to be anyone’s business but Mike and Jeff’s how they’d lived their lives. “I miss them,” he murmured now, out loud. Quentin sighed and kissed the stubbly dome of his head. “I know you do, baby.” “They would have loved you.” Jace felt helpless tears sneak by, the way they did when you were sick and drugged and the person you loved was offering comfort by the bucket load. “I would have loved them.” “Yeah?” “Yeah. You and Mike would have gone fishing; Jefferson and I would have stayed back and cooked. You said he was a good cook. We would have talked. Mike was probably like you, right? Not a lot of words if they weren’t needed. It would have been good. It would have been like family. Like my parents’ house, where Samantha brings her

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kids and her husband, and Dad talks to the husband and Mom tells Samantha how to raise the kids—” Quent’s voice was getting a little breaky. “I’m sorry.” It had to be said. “I’m not,” Quent murmured, kissing his head again. “I can’t imagine leaving you here in the city for one more year for Christmas. It almost killed me to do it last year. I couldn’t have done it again.” “I stayed in last year,” Jace murmured, but Quent knew. They’d gone to get tested together when they’d first started having sex. They’d both had to confess to their last sexual partner so they knew when their window closed. Jace hadn’t been surprised to know that Quent had gone almost six months without, but Quent had been shocked to learn that Jace had gone a year. “I wish I’d stayed with you then.” “Me too. More fun than what we’re doing now.” “Yeah. But not nearly as important. Close your eyes, Jace. Close your eyes and sleep. I’ll come back and check on you around lunch, okay?” “Tell Toby to stay away from your ass.” “Toby’s straight.” “So he keeps saying, but he’s got a mancrush on you.” “Whatever. Close your eyes. Good. I love you, Jason.” “Love you too, Quent.” And that was all Jace remembered until lunch.

QUENT was back at lunch, good to his word, and the phone calls from Mitch stopped. By the end of the next day, Jace was feeling cranky and restless with too much sleep, and Quent told him he had to either go to work the next day or get a personality transplant, extra asshole not needed.

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He was tired but able for the rest of the week, and his little bout with the flu was almost forgotten. Thanksgiving at Mitch’s house was the next week, and Mitch lived in one of those humongous houses overlooking the sea in Palo Alto. It was a lovely home—the dining room was the size of Jace’s apartment, and Mitch had told them that the four bedrooms each had its own attached bath so Mitch’s two teenaged daughters never had to fight over one and his teenaged son could be left the hell alone. The daughters were the ones who opened the door when they rang. Quentin was bearing wine and, for the teenagers, sparkling cider, and the girls laughed and giggled and took the gifts and chatted without any self-consciousness whatsoever. Jace thought they were charming. They had Mitch’s sharp features, but on girls, they looked vulpine and delicate. They had their mother’s blonde hair and as a whole, they looked like younger versions of the society girls that Quentin had been fielding left and right since Jace had met him. The girls greeted them politely through their giggles, took the wine, and escorted them into the living area, where Quent was immediately co-opted by Jesse and Peter, because he was good at conversation and because Randall and Nick were eating dinner with their own families this year. As Quentin disappeared, the youngest— Chelsea, a rather scatterbrained thirteen—watched him walk away and said, “That’s Quentin?” “Yeah,” Jace said, surprised she’d heard of him. Chelsea shook her head in wonder. “Dad said he was brain damaged and should be breathing through a tube. I’m really surprised to see him up and around!” Jace blinked, a little stunned, because Mitch wasn’t usually cruel and because, well, everyone loved Quent. Chelsea disappeared, and Jace took a mineral water (he didn’t want to get sick again) and faded into the background of the pre-dinner chatter, all the better to wonder how a father of three had the faith to decorate his home in creamcolored carpet with cream-colored walls, and to lie in wait, ready to spring.

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He got his chance right before dinner was served—and unlike other folks in their income bracket, Mitch’s wife and her friends cooked, so sitting down to dinner was not optional—when Mitch walked by him on the way to the bathroom. Jace followed him, and Mitch looked over his shoulder, rolling his eyes. “You’ve been here before, Jace. You don’t need a written invitation.” “Yeah, I’m aware. I was just wondering why Chelsea thought Quentin needed a breathing tube. What did he do that was quite that stupid?” Mitch let out one of those parent sounds that Uncle Mike used to use around Jace when Jace had done something extreme—like losing his virginity twice in one week, for example. “Oh God. She heard that?” “Yeah. And so did I. So, I was out of it for two days, and Quent, who’s not stupid, does something that causes you to come home and bitch to the fam. He’s my family. Pony up.” Mitch sighed. “You know that whole client privilege, Jace—” “Look. I’m going to get it from Quentin, you know that, right?” “Then do that!” “I’d rather spend that time ripping him a new asshole, thank you!” “Oh God—don’t tell me about your sex life!” Mitch turned to him with a smile, but Jace couldn’t smile. Quentin had kissed him goodbye, and come back for lunch, and promised Jace that Jace wouldn’t have to sign any papers. What papers did Quent sign? “Come on, Mitch. You drew them up, he signed them, I’m sure it’s iron clad. What did he talk you into?” “Look—just let me go take a leak before I drink more champagne, and I’ll tell you, okay?” Which was how they ended up in Mitch’s office when Quent came looking for them to tell them that dinner was served. “We’ll be there in a minute,” Jace said, looking Quent straight in the eyes.

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Quent sighed. “Mitch, you asshole.” “Hey, I’m out of here. We won’t wait for you. Try to leave the office intact before you come sit down to dinner.” “Thanks, Mitch,” Jace said, and Mitch shook his head and stalked out, muttering something stupid about fools in love. “Look, Jace. It’s no big deal.” “No big deal?” Jace’s voice almost cracked an octave. He couldn’t decide if he was really pissed or really touched. His basic instinct was to say that any major emotional upheaval pissed him off. He went with that. “No big deal? You signed papers… you… do you have any idea what you did?” Quent nodded like it was common sense. “Yeah. I put my life in your hands.” “You put your life in my hands!” Jace threw those hands up over his head. “How could you do that!” Quent shrugged. “I signed some papers. It was no big deal.” “No big deal?” Jace looked at him, as close to tears as he had been when he’d been sick and helpless and missing Mike and Jeff. “You… you gave me the power of attorney over everything—the business, the apartment, profits, expansion rights. You can’t touch any of it without my say so. It’s like… like… like I’m your… your prince or something!” Quent shrugged again. “Mitch said he wanted us to be protected. So I signed papers that would protect you if we ever broke up.” “Protect me?” Jace’s voice actually broke, and he couldn’t touch the papers anymore. They singed his fingers. “How?” Quent took a few steps into the office and grabbed Jace’s hands. “You know why I’m here, Jace. You know I’m here for you. If you and I don’t work—I’ve got nothing but what you give me.” His smile was usually so boyish, so happy. Quentin could get anyone in the office to smile with him, and Jace appreciated the hell out of it. This was a different kind of smile.

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It was kind. Kind and understanding, like Quent had seen directly into his soul and maybe had that image he’d had, of Mike and Jeff, living together on their own terms, without the legal system or the state or the church or anyone else telling them what to do. It was a gesture of complete, guileless, childish faith, something that Jace never could have made. Quent could. Quent had. Jace swallowed hard and thought of all those people out in the dining room, sitting down to something elegant and staged, and how he and Quentin were missing it, but he couldn’t make himself move. He took the back of Quent’s hand to his lips and kissed it, not sure if he could kiss Quentin’s mouth or his cheek or his temple, not even sure if he could look him in the eyes. “I want to give you the world,” he said to their clasped hands. “You already did,” Quent said, directly to him. Jace managed to look him in his brown eyes and saw that they were fastened hungrily on his face. Oh God. Oh God. Maybe all Jace had to give him was the truth, honest and unguarded. “You gave it first,” he said, and their kiss was soft and gentle, a pact, and a truth. Quentin’s kiss back was just as earnest, as chaste as a virgin’s betrothal, and Jace made that same promise right back. They were in the dining room before the prayer was said, but they never, ever, unclasped their hands.

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… Your Deal … Quent

OH

THANK God, poker night was back to normal. Between almost

ending up in each other’s pants at the last game and Jace and Quent’s little relationship problem at Mitch’s house over Thanksgiving, Quent had been afraid they’d ruined the testosterone ritual forever. It was exactly the opposite, thank God! It was like their friends had always known about them and had never particularly given a shit. It was completely normal. Jace had been the one to do that. He’d walked in and played like he always played—like he was a shark and money was blood, and his job was to make everyone else in the room bleed until he’d eaten his fill. Something about walking into a room full of tough men and making them your personal ATM machines tended to make them think twice about prying into your sex life and concentrate on the game at hand. And it helped that Quentin and Jace still bantered with (i.e. railed on) each other as they had since they’d started this game nearly five years before. “Fold,” Quentin said, throwing his cards in. Jace peeked at his two pair—ace high, jack low—as the cards hit the table and swore. Usually, you didn’t see a guy’s hand, even when he folded, but Jace seemed to consider himself Quent’s personal poker coach, and the rest of the guys? They let him. “Goddammit, Quent! You stay with a hand like that. That’s a strong hand!”

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Quentin rolled his eyes. Jace bluffed with the steely-eyed blankness of an alligator. Is it sleeping? Is it dead? Is it going to rip your arm off with one deadly snap of a truly spectacular hand? “Sure, that’s a strong hand. Until you beat it with an ace-high flush! Keep winning, oh mighty poker god. I’ve gotta use the head.” As he stood up and threaded his way out of the back room of their favorite bar, where their game was held, he heard a chorus of groans that meant he’d been right. It had been time to show their cards, and Jace, per usual, held the winning hand. He was not prepared to have Jace join him while he was in the bathroom standing at the urinal, though. “Seriously, Quent!” Jace muttered, as though they had never stopped this conversation to take a leak. “When are you going to learn to hold a good hand?” “I learned to hold you, didn’t I?” Quentin cracked, zipping up and moving to wash his hands. Jace hadn’t found his keel after Quentin had signed those legal papers; Quent knew it, and he wasn’t ashamed to use it. “Funny.” Jace rolled his eyes, but in the over-bright lights of the sterile little bathroom, Quentin could see Jace’s blush over his shoulder in the mirror, right down to his stubbled scalp. Quentin’s grin cracked a flash of white through his dark goatee, and he leveled a sideways glance at his lover. “At least you’re not telling me poker is life,” he said wryly. It was one of Jace’s favorite subjects. Poker is a metaphor for life, Quent. If you don’t have the hand, believe you have the hand and your belief will make up the distance. It was how Jace worked and how he played poker, and it was even how he loved. Jace wouldn’t show his cards— not for anything, not even to Quent—unless he knew he had won the game. That was how Quent knew he’d been moved, truly moved, on Thanksgiving. It was maybe the first time in their lives that Jace hadn’t mentioned cards. “It is life!” Jace insisted irritably. “Holding with a fair hand means you believe in yourself, dammit!”

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Quentin swallowed and felt his own face burn. “I do the same job you do, Jace! I can be a cocky bastard too.” Jace dried his hands off and turned around, grabbing Quent’s hips and hauling him forward. “Being a cocky bastard and being a bastard with a cock are two different things,” he purred, and Quent blushed and backed off. It wasn’t easy. Six months. Had it really been six months? God. Quent just wanted him. All the time. A look, a touch, a brush of the hand, and Quent was flashing to the last time they were having sex and Jace was moaning around his cock. Jace’s stubble was rough under his hands, and he was on his knees while Quent’s slacks were in a tumbled puddle around his feet. Quent could hardly stand and Jace was still fully clothed, and all Quent wanted to do was… oh God…. “Jace… gonna come….” And Jace’s rough, blunt fingers up his ass, pushing on his prostate, and…. Quent flushed some more and avoided Jace’s gaze. “If we follow through on that, they’ll never let us in here again.” Jace reached for him again, placing a burning hand on his hip and dragging him back, Quent’s ass to Jace’s front, and splayed his hands over Quent’s stomach and chest. “Who cares?” he whispered in Quent’s ear, and Quentin took a fortifying breath and pulled away, not missing Jace’s taunting tweak of his nipples through his tuxedo shirt and his T-shirt as he did. “I do, dammit—and so do you! You love this bar!” Jace grabbed his shoulders this time and leaned over Quentin’s shoulder in a way that was suggestive and intimate—but not obscenely sexual. “So,” he murmured, rubbing his nose against Quentin’s ear, “you can stand fast with a fair hand.” Quentin had to decide whether to slug the guy, laugh him off, or sink to his knees there in the bathroom and blow him in total submission. He chose “other” and turned into Jace’s embrace instead, rubbed lips with him, and pressed his hand against the bulge in Jace’s slacks.

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He knew he had Jace’s attention when the other man’s eyes closed and he made a reluctant, breathy moan. “Don’t fuck with me on poker night, Jace,” Quentin warned, squeezing. “I like these guys. They’re our friends. I just want to play the game.” And with that he gave a final, vicious, dominating squeeze and turned around to walk out. He could hear Jace’s strangled mixture of laughter and sexual frustration behind him and rather thought he’d be paying for that on his hands and knees with a cockring nestled against his testicles for good measure later on that night. He smiled and adjusted himself. Excellent. Play resumed and then wound down. Nick was winning, which was a change for him. He held that he was so used to being able to snarl at bad guys and gloat when he caught them that he couldn’t hold a poker face for shit, and it was true—he had big brown Bambi eyes that usually gave him away. For once, though, Randall didn’t call his bluff, and Nick was one hand away from being able to totally gloat (and he was right—he was good at that!) when Mitch spoke up. “So, Quent, you going to your folks’ for Christmas this year?” Quent managed a philosophical shrug. Parents? Straight Quent had parents. Gay Quent had a big void in the state capital that wouldn’t be seeing him this Christmas. “Probably not,” he said, flicking his glance toward Jace. For once, Jace wasn’t looking smug, or cocky, or shuttered. He was looking openly sympathetic. “Excellent!” Mitch said, ignoring the byplay. “You two can finally come to my yearly Christmas party. Dammit, your staff has been coming for years!” Quent’s quiet ache eased up, and he grinned at Mitch, happy for the distraction. “That sounds like a plan!” Thanksgiving had been lovely, gracious and warm, like a living Hallmark card. But for the Christmas party, Mitch’s kids went to stay with their grandparents, and the alcohol intake was much higher. There were old-fashioned party games and white elephant gift exchanges, and mostly? The entire circle of their friends gathered and—as Elsie had told Quentin for five years—had a damned fine time. Missing that party every year had

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always been a regret, but Quent hadn’t been aware that Jace hadn’t gone either. “Mmm… no,” Jace said quietly, looking at his cards with careful concentration. “We’re going to the tropics this year.” Quent looked up and frowned. The tropics? Fucking news to him. “I don’t think so!” he said, with enough emphasis to make Jace look up. The table was suddenly very quiet, and Quent felt his cheeks burning. Well, so? You’d think Jace would warn a guy, right? Quent answered Jace’s look. “Well, since when?” he asked, a little bewildered. Jace shrugged and glanced at his cards. “Since now.” Quent sighed. His cards weren’t bad: a full house, but eights-high wasn’t exactly a lock. He placed his bet and took a look around the table, cursing the fact that everybody else there had a better poker face than he did. Except Jace. He didn’t have a poker face. He was staring at Quent with a look both hungry and troubled—and exceptionally needy. Quentin looked at his cards for safety and then back to his inscrutable lover. Jace was trying to teach him something; he did that. Quentin thought he wasn’t as tough, wasn’t as smart, wasn’t as strong, and Jace would pull a lesson from poker and let the Zen guru dalai-poker-lama bullshit begin. Except the Zen guru dalai-poker-lama bullshit was usually just a prelude. The real action happened in bed. The finale was that Jace was perhaps as vulnerable and lonely a man as Quentin had ever met. He looked on Quentin’s love as sort of a miracle: Jace thought he was feared and respected but not loved. He thought Quentin was loved, and Quentin loved Jace. Jace’s miracle. Their time together had been punctuated by small lessons where Jace used sex and poker to communicate, and Quentin followed wherever he led—and showed him that love was not limited to lessons about sex and poker. It worked for them, but that didn’t mean it was easy.

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Quentin looked at his cards again and wondered if it was worth staying in the game. He looked up and saw Jace’s brow furrowed in unaccustomed anxiety and reframed that thought. The poker game—he wondered if it was worth it to stay in the poker game. The relationship was a no-brainer. The ritual of calling or folding began around the table, and Quentin found the words tumbling out of his mouth. “I want to stay here for Christmas. Call.” Jace looked up from his drink, surprised. Maybe he hadn’t meant to start the Zen guru dalai-poker-lama bullshit. Well, too bad. After fucking each other’s brains out for six months, maybe they were sharing the same headspace. It didn’t matter. Jace thought that Quent was his only family and they’d keep to themselves for Christmas. Quent thought that maybe Jace ought to have some more faith in their friends. The play came around to Jace. “I don’t. Raise.” Quent was fully aware that their friends were looking at them, amused. The play came back to him, and he looked unhappily at his cards. “I like Christmas parties. Call.” Jace blew out a breath, sounding almost baffled. “I haven’t been to one since we were in the dorms. Oh… shit, yeah”—because it had taken him a minute to answer, and he, Nick, and Quent were the only three still in play. “Raise.” Nick looked between the two lovers and shook his head. “You know, I had a much better chance of winning when I knew they were definitely talking about poker!” he complained. “Now that I think they’re talking about life, this shit gets really complicated.” “Poker is about life!” Jace and Quentin snapped in tandem, and Nick’s Bambi eyes got huge and there were bursts of shocked laughter from around the table. That was Quent’s cue. He was the peacemaker in any given situation. He’d been the one guy in the poker group not consumed by competition, the one guy who wouldn’t take offense, and the one guy who would back down to keep things copacetic.

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For a moment, he didn’t think he could do it. He sat and glared at Jace with the sort of furious exasperation only someone you really loved could make you feel, and then his basic good nature kicked in. “Except in poker, I’m folding!” he quipped finally, throwing his cards on the table, and the rest of the table laughed, relieved, he was sure, not to have to watch another lover’s spat escalate to the “get a room” stage. Jace frowned, glaring at Quent’s cards. Jesus, didn’t that guy let anything go? “Dammit, Quent, those were perfectly good cards!” “Well, Jace, maybe that’s not the game I’m holding fast for. Now go ahead and dash Nick’s hopes so we can go home and have our big hairy argument and I can give Mitch an answer in the morning!” Nick said, “What in the… oh, Jesus. Jace? A flush. A goddamned jack-high flush. Really? Fuck.” Nick threw in his cards—a queen-high full house, so Quent really would have lost if he’d stayed in—and Jace took the pot. Quent looked over his shoulder at Randall, who was standing with Mitch, Jesse, and Pete, ready to leave when the last card was thrown. “You know, you would have made the next few hours easier if you’d won,” he said, and Randall shrugged and grinned at the same time. “You two have a better time when you’re fighting than most people have when they’re getting along. Just make sure he leaves you able to sit tomorrow, ’cause that would really suck!” Randall tended to talk like the high school students he taught, but tonight it seemed appropriate. “You’re telling me,” Quent mumbled, and then he set about helping Jace and Nick clean up the chips. The cab ride back home was uncomfortable. “You shouldn’t have folded,” Jace said into the silence. “I didn’t.” “Quent….” “Not on the game that mattered, Jace. Why the tropics?”

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“I’m tired of being cold.” “You’ll be more tired of being cold in February. You hate that fucking month in the city.” He did too. Sure, there were days of absolutely dazzling winter-blue skies, but just as often, the fog got to be really depressing around February. Jace turned into a real grizzly about that time. “We stay in the city for Christmas, visit all our friends, and have a reason to not mind the cold, what do you say?” “I’m not enough for you at Christmas?” Quentin had to swallow. Oh, dammit, Jace. Of all the times to look naked and hurt. Of all the times to make Quentin doubt his hand. But Quent had told him he’d hold onto this one, and he meant it. Quentin grabbed his hand and scooted his ass over so that they were touching and not on far ends, leaning their heads against the glass. Instead, Quent leaned the other way and whispered in Jace’s ear. “You’re more than enough for me. But I want more for us.” Jace jerked back and looked at him sharply, and when Quentin had a lock on those steel-blue eyes, he said, “Don’t you want a family, Jace? Don’t you want to be surrounded by friends? I want us to have a family here in the city. We already have them. You just have to make them yours.” Jace looked away, but he kept his fingers laced with Quent’s. “Why haven’t you gone to any of the Christmas parties these last five years?” Jace shrugged, and his usual confidence seemed to desert him. “You weren’t here,” he said simply, and Quent had to struggle for breath. “I’m here this year—” “And I want you to myself.” “And I want us to have connections. My family’s just given me up, Jace. I want us to have something down here that means something.” “Why can’t it mean something with just—”

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Quent kissed him, and kissed him hard. He was missing the point, and Quent wasn’t sure if he was doing it on purpose or if he truly didn’t see the value of making their little circle of friends into family, but either way, Quent didn’t want to hear it. He wanted Jace to open for him the way he only did in bed, the way he really only did when Quentin took charge and insisted. Jace’s mouth opened under his, and he didn’t just kiss back, he accepted, allowed, became the possessed instead of the other way around. The cab ride ended, and the kiss went on until the cab driver actually had to turn around and ask them if they were getting out or not. Jace paid the guy, and they ran up past the doorman with a wave and ended up back on the damned elevator, kissing. They were aroused, yeah—Jace’s cock was tight and thick against Quent’s thigh through their clothes—but it wasn’t the getting off that was the thing. It was the kiss, the connection, Jace being soft, Quentin being dominant, the dynamic that only happened when Quentin really wanted something and Jace acknowledged that he wanted Quentin enough to give in. They broke off the kiss in the elevator, and Jace leaned his head against Quentin’s collarbone. “If I’d known poker got you so fucking horny, I would have moved on you years ago,” he panted. “It’s not poker,” Quentin growled, and Jace looked up at him and framed his face in his hands, and the kiss was back on. They made it to their apartment with their clothes on, but their trench coats hit the floor as soon as the door closed behind them. This was the part where Jace usually shoved Quent against the door and blew him, but Quent beat him to it. Jace looked a little surprised as Quent pressed a hand to his chest and secured him against the door, and then Quent leaned forward and nuzzled the secret place by his ear that only Quent knew. “Let me,” he murmured. He slid his hand down the front of Jace’s chest, feeling every ridge and every muscle under the smooth, pale skin, and started fumbling with the stays of his good dress slacks. Jace arched his hips impatiently a couple of times, and Quentin pressed his hand against him, catching Jace’s head on his shoulder as he shuddered.

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“Want to fuck you,” Jace grated, and Quentin nuzzled his ear again. “Want to love you,” he murmured, and Jace grunted. Jace’s pants slid open and down his hips, and Quentin squeezed him through his cotton briefs. Jace threw his head back then and made a reluctant, pained sound, the sound of someone aroused and confused, and Quentin made it his goal to get rid of that confusion. Quent was on his knees on the hardwood floor, and Jace’s cock… man, every time he saw it/felt it, flaccid in the shower or erect in his ass, Quent thought it was a thing of fucking beauty. Quent liked to lick it from base to tip. He liked to tease the underside and wiggle his tongue in the slit before he hollowed his cheeks and took it in to the back of his throat. Tonight… tonight he was feeling… wicked. Sexually reckless. Dirty, in that rapacious, I’ll-do-anything-for-thisman kind of way that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up with every touch. He crouched a little lower on the floor and tilted his head back, taking Jace’s testicle gently into his mouth. The hair was rough, but he sucked gently on it until the ball of it was slick and hard and Jace was scrabbling for purchase on Quent’s short-cut dark hair. Jace groaned, and Quent took the other one in his mouth and used spit to finger Jace’s sensitive entrance. Touch, retreat, one fingertip, retreat, again, retreat, a little further…. “Quent….” Jace never begged. Never. But his knees were spread awkwardly, and he kept trying to hunch down more in order to impale himself further and deeper. Quent’s hand was still wrapped around the base of his cock, and Jace moved his hand toward the tip to stroke too. Quent let Jace’s testicle slide out of his mouth and grabbed that encroaching hand. “My job,” he murmured. “Then do it!” The order was harsh and strained, and at the beginning of the relationship, Quent might have just jumped to do Jace’s bidding, but Quentin was a little more secure now. Now that he knew Jace loved him, he could tease. That was what he wanted. He swirled his tongue around Jace’s cockhead gently, because he wanted Jace, who even topped from the bottom, to be

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absolutely crazy for him. He was pretty sure of his hand this time—he wanted to make Jace fold. Jace whimpered. Quentin teased his ass again, and Jace whimpered some more. A quick, teasing slurp down Jace’s cock, letting just the edge of his teeth come into play, and Jace tried to impale himself on Quent’s fingers again. Quent thrust his head forward until Jace was in the back of his throat, wiggled his fingers tauntingly over Jace’s asshole, and hummed warningly around Jace’s hard, aching flesh. “God!” Jace thrust his hips forward, and Quentin retreated from the flesh in his mouth and used Jace’s wider stance to invade the tight entrance clinging to his fingers like a wet rubber band. They played like that, tease, retreat, tease, retreat… until finally…. “God… Quentin, what in the fuck do I have to do?” Quentin met his ice-blue eyes and pulled away from Jace’s cock, letting his panting breath feather across it and causing the purpling skin to strain even tighter. His own arousal was bursting at his trousers, and he was damned close to giving in before he’d even thrown out his chips. “I want to stay here for Christmas.” Quentin would forever treasure the progression of surprise, outrage, and, finally, steely-eyed humor that crossed Jace’s face. His blunt hand came out and ran through Quentin’s hair, and Quentin smiled hopefully. Then that hand tightened, and Quentin found himself being pulled slowly up. He let go of Jace’s cock and came painfully to his feet, and then Jace’s hand locked him not quite upright, so he was looking warily into his lover’s eyes. Jace’s lips feathered across his, and then he pulled back and smiled his tightest shark grin. “Raise.” Quentin’s heart rate accelerated to racing speed, and Jace caught his mouth in a punishing, devastating kiss. Quentin went limp, lost his mind and his backbone for a minute, and when he surfaced, he was being turned around and shoved face-first against the wall, his pants in a loose puddle around his ankles and his ass clenching in the cool of the apartment.

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Jace’s fingers scrabbled between his cheeks, spreading them, and there was a moment when only Jace’s hard chest pinned Quent in place. “No lube?” Quent asked, only a little concerned. He and Jace had a rhythm down, and Quent’s ass was no longer virginally tight. Jace was leaking precome and covered in spit, but still, Jace must be really aroused not to worry about lube. “You want lube, go get it,” Jace hissed, and Quentin took his opening. With a quick dodge, he was kicking off his pants and sprinting through their apartment, diving on top of the bed and rifling through the end table to find the lubricant. He got it and started pulling at his cufflinks and his dress shirt and coat, because when Jace was like this, they could both end up coming all over whatever clothes they had left on. Jace came in at a more sedate pace, barefoot, his pants over his arm, and he stopped for a moment to lay his jacket and shirt haphazardly on the chair by the dresser. Quent stayed on his hands and his knees, chest heaving, looking over his shoulder warily as his lover prepared to make him suffer in sweetness for crossing his will. “You want that lube, Quent, you’d better put it on yourself,” Jace growled, and Quent shivered. He sat up on his knees and squirted a fair amount on his fingers, then closed the bottle and supported himself on his other hand. Then he reached behind himself, spread his ass cheeks, and started greasing his asshole for Jace’s pleasure. He heard Jace’s rough and sudden intake of breath first, as he thrust one finger inside himself, and that sound, and the feeling of the penetration, made him wriggle against the coverlet. Comfortable—and uncomfortably aroused—he breached himself with his second finger and groaned. Behind him, Jace’s breath stopped completely. Quent added a third finger and started whimpering into the mattress. Oh… oh God. So good. His cock bobbed at his stomach as he moved, trying to get a rhythm to fingerfucking himself for his lover, and it left threads of precome every time it smacked against his skin.

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Jace growled, “Stop, dammit!” and Quent closed his eyes, lost in the tingle taking over his body. “Make me.” Jace grabbed his hand and pulled him out, and then he was positioned and thrusting that plum-sized cockhead past Quentin’s already stretched hole. Quentin gave up all pretense of control for a moment and groaned into the mattress. Jace… Jace invading his body, uncomfortably large, terrifyingly aggressive… oh God… Jace. How could he have worked with the guy for so long, gone to school with him, and never realized that Jace was all he ever wanted? Jace howled and shoved himself in to the base, and Quentin bit the comforter and made a deep, guttural moan, shaking with desire, with the pain of arousal, and just that quickly, desperate to come. “Grab your cock,” Jace hissed, pulling back until his head started to stretch Quentin all over again and the bite of pain started Quentin trembling. Quentin remembered the reason he could not be compliant, not tonight. “No,” Quent ground out, shaking with the need to milk himself, shaking with the need to come. Jace snarled in frustration and snapped his hips forward. Quentin buried his face into the bedding again and howled. “What’s… it… going… to… fucking… take?” Jace demanded, punctuating each word with another thrust, and Quentin had to think… hard… past his body’s frustrated screams for touch, for stimulation, for orgasm. But what Quentin wanted was too huge, too complicated to put into words, not when his cock ached and his ass burned and he was seeing stars and shaking with the effort not to come shrieking in his own puddle of semen. Fortunately, he and Jace had a code for just such emergencies. “Fold,” he croaked. “Dammit… please… for me, Jace… fold….” Horror of horrors, Jace stopped, shuddering, and came forward, his chest sweaty and hot against Quent’s back. “Your hand’s that good?” he asked, his voice cracking, and Quentin had to swallow.

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“Yes. Yes, dammit, my hand’s that good, and if you don’t fuck me and fuck me and fuck me I’m going to flip you over and ream your ass so fucking hard you’ll have my jizz coming out your eyeballs! Now give in and fuck me!” Jace moved a little—instinctively, probably, not on purpose, and Quentin actually whimpered. “We’ll talk,” he said softly, and, damn the man, turned the moment from angry sex to making love just that fast. “Promise?” Pathetic, Quent, real fucking pathetic. “Yeah….” There was a soft kiss between his shoulder blades, and then Jace’s voice sank to a furious sexual whisper. “Now grab your prick and come!” Quentin did, and his cock was so hard his first squeeze hurt. He squeezed harder, hard enough to see stars, and Jace stroked his flank softly, then pulled back… back… painfully back, his cockhead stretching Quentin out enough to burn some more. Then Jace angled his hips so he’d nail Quent’s prostate just… so…. And slammed into Quent’s ass with enough force to send Quent down to one shoulder, his hand pumping furiously on his cock as he howled. Jace hammered him, hammered his sweet spot, hammered his ass, just plain fucked him into the mattress, and Quentin yanked desperately on his prick, just praying, reaching, begging, gibbering for climax, oh God… oh God…. Then Jace whispered hoarsely, “C’mon, Quent… I need to… you’ve got to first… c’mon, baby….” Quent shuddered almost hard enough to shake Jace out of his body, and Jace finished the sentence. “C’mon, baby… come.” It spattered, hot and thick and wet, over his fist, between his stomach and his chest and the mattress, and it kept on spattering, and Jace kept pumping, and more and more and more…. “Gawwdddd….” “Fuuucccckkkk….”

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And then Jace was lying on top of him and they were both shivering and twitching in the aftermath as their bodies peaked and peaked and spent. Jace didn’t seem to want to get off of him, and Quent couldn’t object. There were touches on his shoulders, along his neck, at the back of his head, and along his cheeks. The tender Jace, the vulnerable one, the lover who only peeked through sometimes, when they were in bed and naked, skin on skin together, was touching Quent softly, and Quent would pass out from lack of oxygen before he said something about being crushed under 180 pounds of muscle. Finally, Jace pulled out and rolled to the side, and Quentin went into his arms and buried his face against Jace’s chest before Jace could turn his back. The movement brought Quent’s sticky front in contact with Jace’s abdomen and sent a gush of fluid trickling down his backside and over his thighs, but Quent didn’t care. They could shower later. They could shower tomorrow. They needed to fix this now. He opened his mouth to speak, and Jace spoke instead and blew his mind. “I wanted you to myself,” he said, his voice like dust. “I know I get you to myself all the time, but… but….” There was an uneven touch in Quentin’s hair, and Quentin almost stopped breathing. “You’re the only thing I’ve wanted. I wanted my degree, but, you know, that came sort of easy. I wanted a business, and we’ve done that. And the whole time… hell, even before we had our first class together… before our first study group, before we got dorm assignments… all I wanted was you.” Quent nodded against Jace’s chest and then propped himself up on his elbow, making tentative, tender touches of his own. Cards on the table? Yeah. This was cards on the table time if ever there was one. “I love you more than I love any single person in my entire life. I gave up my family for you. I’d give them up again in a minute. I would have given them up sooner if I’d even been able to read your tells.” Jace’s stomach stopped moving under his hand, and Quent snuck a peek into his face—and was mesmerized by the intensity he saw there.

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“But you had a family that you loved,” Quentin said now that he knew he had Jace’s attention. “You did, and you’ve been… alone… in the world for entirely too long. I don’t want to give up family altogether. It’s not good for you to think it’s just us alone. We have friends. We have people. So much of our time is just us, Jace—and I love it that way. But for Christmas, can’t it be ‘Quent and Jace, happy couple with friends’?” Quent sighed. This sounded weak, and he knew it, but it felt important. Important enough to confront Jace. Important enough to win. “I want to see you happy, Jace. I want the world to see you as more than ‘top dog and predator’. I think that will make you happy. If it doesn’t, fine. You and me, Christmas in the tropics next year, and we’ll be two gay hermits, only coming out to work and fucking each other’s brains out during all downtime—I’m good with that, as long as it makes you happy.” Jace closed his eyes for a second, and the tight bow of his mouth relaxed finally, and Quent let out a big sigh. “You make me happy,” Jace murmured. “You fought for me, Quent. I didn’t think you’d fight me for anything, but you fought me for what you thought was best. That makes me happy. I’ll do whatever you want for Christmas. Man, it’s your deal.” Quent grinned fiercely and stared up at Jace in complete, weakkneed, long-term, lifetime, I’d-kill-or-die-for-you infatuation. “You know something, Jace?” Jace’s grin was no less fierce—and no less besotted. “What?” “I think the first thing we should do is take up golf or bowling or something.” “Golf?” “Or bowling!” “Wanna tell me why?” “I think we’ve ’bout beaten the poker thing to death!” Jace started to chuckle, and Quentin too, and they were still chuckling when Jace lowered his mouth to Quentin’s in a sweet, soft, open-mouthed kiss.

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… Changing the Game … Jace “ELSIE, can I get those figures rechecked? They look really wonky.” “Sure, Jace. Do you know yet?” Jace looked up from his computer, where he was contemplating the vagaries of the market and thinking that, once again, the whole thing might be going belly-up on them all and he needed to pull some of his accounts from some really key futures if he didn’t want his clients to lose half their savings. “Know what?” he asked blankly. “Know what you’re getting him for Christmas?” “Oh crap!” Christmas was three days away. “You don’t even know yet?” Elsie did the holidays up right—tiny Christmas tree ornaments in her ears, a bright-green sweater with a gold reindeer doing the cha-cha on it—even her customary pencil-thin skirt was Christmas red, and her spike heels were gold. Jace couldn’t have missed the incoming holiday if he’d been blind or blind drunk, and yet, well, here he was. “The market has been….” It sounded weak, but it was the truth. He and Quent had been working twelve- to fifteen-hour days for the last two weeks, trying to make sure their clients weren’t going to get destroyed in what looked to be a hefty setback. They’d made promises, dammit, and that mattered to both of them. “Yeah, I know what the market has been like. He’s got a present for you!” Jace looked at her, surprised. “How in the hell did he do that?” “What do you mean?”

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“We’ve been working the same hours, freaked out about the same things—hell, on the two days I managed to get to the gym, he was with me. How did he manage to get me a present?” Jace had been able to overlook the impending deadline of doom only because he was pretty sure Quentin was right there with him, in the land of epic fail. Elsie cocked her head at him like he was some sort of alien bird. “There’s this amazing thing called the Internet, boss. You seem to have the right fixings for it on your desk, and I’d suggest you give a try now, except you’ve got three days, and nobody delivers in three days. At least not with anything good.” Oh fuck. She was right. “Oh fuck.” The enormity of the situation was starting to seep in. The market was bad, but it wasn’t lose-their-company dire. And Jace, the guy who’d thrown the two of them on the relationship train, was just about to let it derail on the simplest of strictures: give gifts at appropriate occasions. Hell, even when he’d been doing Mary-Lynn and Thad, he’d remembered to give them both something for Christmas. And Quentin… Quentin was so much more than someone he was banging out of convenience. Quentin was… Quentin was… oh fuck. Quentin was everything. “Oh fuck!” Jace hardly knew who he was dialing as he picked up the phone. “Jace?” “Mitch? Have you gone Christmas shopping yet?” “Are you high? I’ve got three kids! I went Christmas shopping in November!” “Well, sue me!” Jace snapped. “Are you going Christmas shopping now?” “No, moron. Now I’m preparing for the Christmas party tomorrow night. You are coming, right?” “Yes,” he said automatically. He had, in fact, forgotten about it completely.

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“You’d better. Bring alcohol. And Brie—my wife’s always going on and on about the Brie Quentin brought to Thanksgiving—” “Are you sure that was Quentin? I thought we only brought wine?” “You brought cheese too. God, Jace—it’s a good thing you picked him. It’s like he makes you civilized or something.” “Tell me about it,” Jace muttered. “Look, do you know anyone who might be Christmas shopping right now? I need….” Backup. Support. A buddy. A sounding board. “A friend?” Mitch supplied sweetly, and Jace dropped his head to his desk. “Whatever. I need one. Who’s available?” “Not me. Sorry, buddy. Maybe try Jesse—” “Out of the country on assignment.” “That asshole. He told me he was going to make my party.” “It just came up. He told Quent.” “Of course he did. You know the real problem here, don’t you?” “The one guy I’m buying for is the one guy everybody wants to go shopping with them?” “Yeah, that would be it. Probably because he’s the only guy on the planet with the patience to put up with you. Try Randall. School’s been out for a while, he’s got three little kids—I’m sure he’d love an excuse to bail on the wife and run away.” For a minute Jace thought about it, and then he cringed. “Uhm… you think he’d be able to help?” “Find you a gift for another man? Why the hell not? He can wrangle inner-city kids—this’ll be a breeze!” But Randall’s wife was out shopping on her own and Randall was making cookies with the kids. Nick was on duty, and Peter was off with his girlfriend, probably getting laid. In the end, Jace had one alternative, and it sucked, but he needed help with this one, and he had no choice.

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“Elsie!” he called, knowing she could hear him through the open office door. “Do you want to go to lunch with me!” Elsie stuck her head in his office and grinned. “Do I want to go shopping along the Embarcadero? Yeah, boss. Sure. Twist my arm!” Jace groaned. “Oh God.” “Let me go see if Toby and Lexi want me to get them lunch, okay?” “Yeah, whatever.” Jace put his head on his desk until he heard a knock at his doorframe. He stood up and pulled on his suit jacket, expecting it to be Elsie, and was surprised when it was Quentin instead. “You don’t have to get me anything,” he said, a half smile on his face. “I know this isn’t your strong suit.” Oh God. Not his strong suit? The last time Jace had a girlfriend or a boyfriend or anything other than “may be involved” during Christmas had been college. He was pretty sure he’d had Elsie send fruit baskets to all of his “may be involved”s since then, but he wasn’t even sure he’d remembered all of them. “I’ve gotten you gifts!” he protested, trying to keep the fine edge of irrational panic out of his voice. God. He’d been staring at a bear market for three weeks, and it hadn’t made his hands sweat like this. “You have,” Quentin said, folding his arms and leaning back against the doorframe. He was wearing his brown pinstripe today, and it looked stunning, and Jace had a minute to wish he’d picked it out for him, but he hadn’t. “You’ve gotten me several wonderful gift certificates for Brooks Brothers. It’s one of the reason we both look so sharp in public. I get it, Jace. A Christmas gift is not necessarily an immutable token of undying devotion. Sometimes, it’s just a gift, okay? Don’t stress yourself out.” “What’d you get me?” Jace asked desperately. There wasn’t any play in his voice at all. He was nakedly begging for ideas. Quentin sighed and walked forward, closing the door behind him. Ever since the closet episode, that seemed to work as a signal for them that they weren’t to be disturbed. “What would make you happier? To

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hear that I got you something big and cool or something little and thoughtful?” Jace swallowed. “To hear that you got me something little and lame so I don’t have that much to live up to.” Quentin laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling up and his surprisingly full lips pulling back into a gentle smile under his goatee. “You want to get me something that will make me happy?” he asked, and he rubbed his hand on Jace’s scalp stubble. “Grow your hair out for me?” Jace looked at him uncertainly. “My hair?” “Yeah. It was this really great color—sort of a brown gold. I mean, I know why you shaved it—I didn’t then, but I do now, but—” “Wait.” Jace ran his hand over his head, feeling the prickle like he had for the last three years. “Why do you think I shaved it?” “That’s easy. You shaved it right after, and I mean the week after Uncle Mike and Jefferson died.” Jace swallowed. It was true. He’d come back from the funeral, and Quent had come over to his apartment with a bottle of vodka and what looked like every intention of sitting down with him so they could have some serious bonding, and Jace hadn’t been able to do it. He’d said “I’ve got to get a haircut” and bolted out of his apartment, leaving Quentin to drop the vodka inside the door and follow him down the hall. “Yeah,” he said, because he couldn’t deny the incident had happened, but he didn’t want to elaborate. Turned out he didn’t have to. Quent was every bit as smart as Jace was. He just didn’t use those skills the same way. “See,” Quent said, cupping Jace’s cheek and then rubbing his stubbly head, “the way I see it, the hair made you look cute—boyish. Sort of everyone’s all-American, right? So you went and said goodbye to the last people on the planet who thought of you as their boy, and decided it was time you didn’t look like a boy at all. Am I close?” Jace nodded, leaning into his touch but avoiding his eyes. “You’re very astute,” he said, his voice as neutral as he could manage.

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Quent leaned forward and put his lips close to Jace’s ear, close enough to tickle him with the goatee, close enough to send a shudder through Jace that was not even purely sexual. “You’re my boy,” Quentin said softly. “Mine. I’d love to see your hair in your eyes again. That would be a present just for me, okay?” “It’s not enough,” Jace said, proud that his voice didn’t even quiver. God. God. This man… this man. No one knew Jace like Quentin—no one. Jace didn’t trust another human being on the planet with the places he’d given Quentin, and every day, every moment, Quent proved to him that he couldn’t have chosen a more trustworthy partner, in every sense of the word. “It’s all I want.” Jace shook his head. “No. No. It’s not enough. You gave me… you signed your life into my hands—” “You could sign it back,” Quent said, smiling playfully, and Jace shook his head with force. “Not on a bet. No. That’s mine. You’re mine. But.” Jace swallowed again. “Something,” he said, squaring up his shoulders. “I’ll find something, Quentin. I promise.” Quent stepped back and dropped his head, rubbing the back of his neck. “God, you’re a pain in the ass, and no, not just that way, either. Jace—I swear to God, all I want for Christmas is Mitch’s party, and Peter and Nick and Toby and his roommate over for dinner on Christmas Day. You stayed for me. That’s my gift, okay?” Jace grunted and then grabbed his overcoat and scarf, because it was forty-five degrees outside. “I’ll be back in an hour.” He winced. “Or two.” “I’ll see you at home,” Quentin said, and he leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, then opened the door and gestured grandly for him to proceed. Elsie was waiting in the hall, her long parka going down past her knees and her bright-red-and-green gloves keeping that whole “Christmas-’til-your-eyes-bleed” theme that made Jace both dizzy and queasy. “Do you want me to bring your laptop?”

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Jace felt the weight of all the work he had to do beating against the back of his eyes. “Yeah,” he sighed. “Yeah. We can pull an all nighter, and then, maybe, we can leave the computers at home for Mitch’s party.” “Sounds like a plan. Take care of him, Elsie!” “Sure I will,” Elsie promised. “Once he buys me the diamond tennis bracelet of my dreams!” Jace looked at her, feeling a little hunted. “Did we bargain for that?” “Sure. Just now. You’re not the only one with work on the table. You guys work late, I work late, and I got two kids home from school who seem to think I’m still breastfeeding. Let’s motor, Cochise, your gift ain’t buyin’ itself!” No. No, the gift did not buy itself, and Jace didn’t buy it either. But four hours later, Jace was buying Elsie that tennis bracelet just as an incentive not to quit, and Elsie was seriously considering doing just that. “Jesus fucking Christ, Jason—” “It’s Jace or Mr. Spade,” he snapped, wanting to kick something. “It’s my spiked heel taking the place of that stick in your ass! Fucking picky, much?” Jace dropped his head in defeat. “I know, I know, I know. I’m sorry. Do you want an emerald on that? A ruby? Some sort of exotic opal?” “No, the platinum and diamonds will be fine. What I really wanted was to know Quent was going to be taken care of this Christmas. That family thing of his hit him hard!” “You know about that?” Oh shit. People were gossiping about Quentin? For a moment, Jace wondered whose ass to kick. “His mother gave me an earful the last time I put her through.” Wait. “When was that?” “The week before Thanksgiving, when you were sick. Wasn’t the last time she called, just the last time I put her through.”

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Jace blanched. “Why haven’t you been putting her calls through?” Elsie twirled her wrist, the better to let the tennis bracelet sparkle on it, and then caught the jeweler’s eye and nodded to Jace. Jace pulled out his personal card, because he wasn’t going to expense this—this was his own dumbassery—and gave it to the jeweler with his ID, then turned back to Elsie for the rest of the story. “A, because Quentin asked me to stop putting them through, and B, because she was getting psychotic and shrill, and Quentin doesn’t need that bullshit. I thought you knew.” Jace’s jaw tightened, and he shook his head. “We were dealing with something else when I was sick.” “You mean the cohab papers? How did you get Mitch off your back?” “Is there anything you don’t know?” “Whether or not Toby is actually banging his roommate or if they’re both as straight as Toby claims.” Jace grimaced. “Not the way Toby follows Quentin around, they’re not.” Elsie laughed like a high school student. “Yeah, I noticed that too. But then, Toby’s been hitting on Lexi too—” “It’s a front,” Jace said sourly. “She’s on the prowl. If he’d meant it, she would have been in his pants by now.” Elsie shrugged. “She’s a sweet kid. I think she thinks he’s being a gentleman.” Jace groaned. “God, he could be. I don’t know. The only person who’d probably know is Quent, but he wouldn’t think Toby wants his ass, so he’s not reliable either.” Jace got the credit slip and signed it, not even flinching at the cost. Christ. Christ on a fucking cracker. “He gave me everything,” he mumbled, not sure why he couldn’t keep this to himself. “I’m sorry?” Elsie asked, genuinely shocked. “The cohab papers. He signed over the company, the apartment, all of his possessions—he put me in charge of any divided property

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decisions… he just… just consigned his life to me.” Jace shook his head. “Said if I left him, he wouldn’t have anything anyway.” Elsie sucked in a breath. “Oh.” Abruptly she turned around and left the jeweler’s store, the clicking of her stilettos lost in the bustle of the Embarcadero mall. The mall itself was madness—three stories of holy-shit-are-youkidding-me?, rushing people and frantic activity and nipple-piercingpink/eyeball-splitting-green Christmas decorations, complete with enough sparkly lights to light a landing strip. Jace hustled to catch up with her, so desperate for something, some sign from freaking God, some sort of bolt of lightning from heaven, that he couldn’t bear to let her go. “Oh what?” “We just spent four hours shopping. We went to the sports supply store, looked at golf clubs, bowling balls, racquetballs, and tennis balls. We went to Plants-R-Us or some such bullshit, and you were a porn star’s pube away from buying an entire Amazon fucking jungle. We went to some place we could buy a leather thong with a little band of elastic that could hold your junk up so it looks bigger, and you couldn’t even look that shit in the eye.” “You could,” Jace muttered, and Elsie’s grin returned with wattage. “I’m going back for the dominatrix thing. My husband’s having a very merry Christmas. My point is, nothing was good enough. Now, I get thinking that nothing’s good enough for Quent. Quite frankly, Lexi, Toby, and I were on the verge of learning how to knit so we could knit him a sweater—” “What did you get him?” “We can’t tell you—it’ll give away his gift to you. Anyway, I get why nothing’s good enough.” “Yeah? Why’s that?” “Because nothing’s good enough.” Elsie stopped suddenly at the Disney store, which was running over with frantic parents, over-hyped children, and brand-new incompetent salespeople doing their best. She

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looked inside for a moment longingly, and Jace’s brain had a near-miss train-wreck from trying to put together the Elsie he knew with someone who would have a hormone surge in front of the Disney store. “My boys used to love shit from here,” she said, the attitude all gone. “I would buy them Buzz Lightyear jackets and the entire plushy line from Toy Story. I used the boxes that came with the clothes, so when they unwrapped the present they knew where it was from. They always squealed loudest, you know? It was like… like our thing.” She swallowed and gave him a watery smile, which, considering the amount of eye makeup she wore, could have been disastrous if it got much more liquid. “Here. Wait a sec. I’ll be right back.” Jace stood there and watched her look through the store with that same bullet-like concentration that she showed at work. She picked out two adult T-shirts, sized XL, and two Disney prints, one with Buzz Lightyear and one with Woody, and made a big deal about getting them wrapped. She was quick, efficient, and apparently unemotional about the entire exchange, until she came out of the store, an absolutely beatific look of triumph on her lean, tanned face. In that moment, she looked like any young mother spoiling her child, beautiful and fond, and in that moment, Jace got it. This was their thing. This was something that meant something to her boys, whether they were young or old or in that cusp of time between adolescence and adulthood, when your home décor and fashion still let you be your parents’ child. Christmas in South Dakota had been hunting, fishing, or camping equipment from Mike, and something fashionable from Jefferson. When he’d been very small, right after his parents had been killed, Mike had given him things like teddy bears and action figures. Jace remembered those things languishing in the corner of his room. He would rather have read a book about wildlife or gone out and fished, even at the age of four and five, than played with imaginary people. Jefferson had eventually put those toys up in a box, in the corner of his room, where, as far as Jace knew, they still sat. He’d hired a groundskeeper to check on the place once a month, keep the roof repaired, make sure the light fixtures worked, and keep

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him appraised of taxes and fees for owning a piece of property that was actually gaining value with every year, but he hadn’t been there. The thought of going to the little three-bedroom cabin where he’d grown up without anyone there who cared for him had just seemed too big a void to contemplate, and he couldn’t contemplate it now. Instead, he thought of what Quentin would think of it. Quentin, who had grown up taking things like fine wool suits and first-rate computers for granted. Last month, Jace might have been afraid of censure from Quent, a little bit of disdain, maybe some pointed remarks at something Jace really loved. Jace couldn’t have taken that. Not only would it have tarnished the memory of something ineffably dear, it would have tarnished Jace’s belief in Quent, and that wouldn’t have been tolerable, not even a little tiny bit. It would, in fact, have ended Jace’s world. But Jace didn’t think that was something he’d have to worry about now. “All done, boss,” Elsie said, her former impatience relaxed by the apparently successful foray into the maddened crush. “Do you have another idea, or am I free to go home and vent my impatience on my husband’s poor scrawny body?” Jace smiled slightly. “Vent away. Make him the happiest man on earth.” “Yeah? What are you going to do?” Jace tried a real smile and was surprised when that beautiful, almost girlish look came back to Elsie’s not-even-close-to-girlish visage. “I’m gonna try and do the same for Quent.” “You let me know how that goes?” And instead of her usual brash assumption, there was an almost gentle tone, and she rested her hand— replete with long Christmas-red nails bedecked with sparkly studs—on his sleeve. She was honestly interested, and she honestly cared. “Yeah,” Jace said. “Within reason. Of course.” She smiled, and he escorted her to the curb and called her a cab, making sure to pay her fare home. He didn’t do the same for himself.

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Instead, he walked back to their apartment building, seeing but not seeing the crowds, the closeness, the bright sparkle of the holiday city under the fog. He pulled out his phone again and called Mitch. “Oh Christ. Remember when you were straight and we never talked? I liked those times.” “I was never all that straight,” Jace said, actually relieved. His life would have to be really fucked up if Mitch was ever not an asshole. “Is the paperwork to South Dakota all in order?” “You mean that property you never touch and refuse to sell?” “Yeah. I sort of want to change the name on the title.” “Oh for shit’s sake.” “This way you can quit telling Quentin what a moron he is.” “Jesus—” “If you could do it by Christmas Eve—” “Fucking—” “I would be your friend forever.” “Christ. Yeah. Sure. But I’m keeping your yearly box of chocolates and eating it while I draw up the papers.” “Understood. Thanks, Mitch.” “Is the drama over? I’d hate to come to poker before New Year’s and find out we were doing our hair and nails.” “Shove it up your phobic ass, Mitch.” “That’s the guy I love. Fuck off, Jace. See you tomorrow.” “Fuck off, Mitch.” He laughed quietly to himself all the way to the apartment, and in spite of the fact that he was looking forward to being up until two in the morning not having sex, it felt like a tight wire between his shoulders had snapped. He was so joyful he almost sang.

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… Winning a Hand … Quent “PLEASE?” “No.” “Please?” “No.” “C’mon, Jace, please?” “What are you, six? No.” “I’m just asking—” “I know you are. But we can’t.” “But it’s so arbitrary. We were going to open our presents Christmas Eve, and then you wanted to open them Christmas morning—” “Maybe the tree changed my mind, you think?” “Are you still holding a grudge about that?” Quentin gestured to living room, where the short tree that he’d set up on Jace’s coffee table that night still sat. He’d had plenty of time—Jace had left with Elsie at twelve for “lunch” and hadn’t returned until eight that night, and no, there was no package in sight. Quentin hadn’t expected him to be anything but late, really. He was pretty sure the guy was out there searching for the perfect, Anumber-one present that didn’t exist in his all-fire quest not to let anyone win. Except it was more than that, and Quent knew it. God, Jace put so much pressure on himself.

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Anyway, Jace had gotten home at eight, and Quent pulled a casserole out of the oven and served him, watching him eat so he could make sure he’d had something warm and filling. Yeah, it was a mothering thing to do, but Jace—Jace hadn’t been quite himself since Thanksgiving. He seemed to be himself when he came in from the cold, though. He’d started cracking jokes and teasing Quent unmercifully about the tree and what an unabashed sentimentalist that made him out to be, and Quent had taken his teasing in stride. For one thing, he’d seen Jace’s eyes kind of light up when he’d walked in the room, and Quentin was damned positive Jace had liked it immediately. For another, Jace was teasing him, and not looking at him nervously or inscrutably, not trying to bore holes through Quentin’s head with his I-can’t-define-thisrelationship glare. Either Jace had found a way to make peace with Quentin’s name on those cohab papers or he’d found a way to define the two of them that made sense. Either way, Quent was thrilled. The two of them were stressed, sleep-deprived, and beyond busy, but for the first time since he was ten, he felt like a little kid at Christmas. And he was going with that. If he was going to be a little kid at Christmas, he was by God going to try and wheedle his Christmas gift out of Jace before he had to present his. For one thing, he wanted to know if he should even bother—his gift felt really lame, grand, and overblown, and exactly the sort of thing that Jace would hate, even when (especially when) it had been mostly Jace’s idea in the first place. “Pleeeeeeeease!” Quent begged, putting the stamp on the final Christmas card. “Please give me at least a hint, Jace? My gift is stupid. You’ll probably take it back. I want to know what yours is so I can prepare myself for total embarrassment.” They were sitting with their backs up against the headboard of the bed, wearing their sleep pants, tube socks, and sweatshirts, working, and Jace finally looked up from his computer in exasperation. “It’s three in the morning. I know why I’m up. I’m up because I decided to bail out of Triax at the last moment and reinvest in Cadre,

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and I didn’t want to make you suffer for that, so I did all the notifications.” “Are you bragging?” “No.” Jace fought back a yawn. “I just wanted to hear myself say it to see if I sounded any less anal-retentive that time through.” Quentin sobered. “Your instincts are right on,” he said, nodding and stacking the cards before securing them with a rubber band. He put them on the end table with the other three stacks and thought ruefully that was a job well done. “You probably saved those people’s investments. I had a niggle, you know? But I couldn’t put my finger on it. You followed through.” Jace shrugged. “You followed through when it counted.” He looked more surprised than Quentin when he leaned over in the bed and kissed Quent’s cheek. Quent closed his eyes then and touched the place the kiss had been. “Mmm… you know what we haven’t done in a long time?” Jace groaned and rubbed his eyes. “Gods, don’t get me started. It’s been a week. That’s like… like… forever!” Jace stopped rubbing and looked at him. “But you look like death warmed over. Like I said— I know why I’m up, but why aren’t you sleeping? I’d go into the living room if you were ready to sack out.” Oh geez, now that Jace had rubbed his eyes, Quent was really feeling the lack of sleep. “I put in the order for the company Christmas cards late,” he said apologetically. “I was stuffing and addressing the envelopes. If I get them out tomorrow morning, most people will get them by Christmas Eve.” He was expecting something sarcastic, something snarky about getting his shit done on time, but instead, he got Jace’s warm hand on the back of his neck. “You didn’t tell me.” “About the cards? I missed a deadline—it wasn’t that big a deal.” “About your parents. I’d be distracted too.” “My work wasn’t falling off!” Quentin was wounded. No, he wasn’t the brilliant partner, but he’d never been accused of incompetence.

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Jace sighed and removed his hand. He made one last notation on his computer, saved his work, and snapped it shut, then turned off his light and shoved his legs under the covers. “Lights off,” he commanded. “Now.” “I was done anyway.” Even to Quent it sounded peevish, and he did what Jace said because suddenly keeping his eyes open was so not happening. “I know you were. Close your eyes.” Quent did, but not before extending his arm so Jace could throw his arm over Quent’s waist and burrow in. Jace did, just like he had that first night, resting his stubbly head on Quent’s shoulder, and Quent ran his palm over it, really wishing Jace would cave about that hair thing. The last couple of weeks, Quent had really missed it. “You could have told me about the fact that they kept calling,” Jace said unexpectedly, and Quent sighed. “And give you a reason to be afraid or guilty or whatever? I don’t think so.” “I’m not afraid,” Jace snapped, rolling over and away from him, and Quent sighed/yawned, followed him, and wrapped an arm around his waist for a change. “Oh, sure you are,” Quent muttered, tired enough to be tactless. “Why all the poker metaphors, Jason? Why not confront me about the stuff you’re worried about? In a couple of months we took the one relationship you really had and turned it on its ear. Of course you’re afraid. I was afraid for nearly nine years—you think I don’t know how that looks? All the times I wanted to say something, thought about saying something, thought about asking you to stay late to work just so I could see your face, thought about… I don’t know, holding onto a pen I was giving you long enough to brush your fingers, or putting my hand on your shoulder longer than protocol allowed? You think I don’t recognize the signs—doing things obliquely because the bad things that could happen if you did them face to face could be so very, very bad? That all didn’t go away the first time you came on my skin, dammit! That just got worse, because now it wasn’t something we wanted or imagined that we could lose, now it was something we had. And you

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have me, but you’re afraid. You’re afraid that the same bastard part of yourself that I’ve seen for nearly a decade is going to drive me off. I doubt it. You’re afraid that I don’t love you enough to fight for you. I passed that test, we both know it. And now you’re afraid my parents are going to take me away, no matter how many times you tell yourself that you earned me fair and square. You did. You earned me. I’m here. They won’t get me. But I don’t want you to hear about it. I don’t want you to be afraid of that. I don’t want it to touch you, okay?” Jace lay there in the dark and heard him. For a moment, Quent was afraid he hadn’t—afraid that exhaustion had caught up with him and he’d fallen asleep as Quent went off. Then his hand came up and twined with Quent’s fingers and squeezed. “Did you really dream about me?” “Yeah.” Quent leaned forward, touched the back of Jace’s stubbly head, and again wished for hair. “I didn’t say the word in my head— didn’t say ‘gay’. Just thought about you.” “We can have your mom’s calls blocked at the switchboard,” Jace offered pragmatically. Quent sighed and relaxed into him. “I would really like that.” She’d been getting… shrill. Shrill and hurtful, and a little bit psychotic. The Jackson family went to church for Christmas Mass, Ash Wednesday, and Easter Sunrise. In his entire life, Quent never thought he’d hear his mother scream things like “You’ll burn in hell if you don’t fix this!” over the phone like she meant it. “I’m sorry, Quent. I had no idea you were dealing with that. I’ve been….” He trailed off, and Quent had to laugh. Jace was sort of unused to the idea of something major going on in anyone’s head but his. He really had been loved growing up—and really had been alone. “You’ve been stressing about us without wanting to admit you were stressing about us.” Jace’s shoulders shook with a shuddered breath. “Yeah.” “So what’d you get me for Christmas?” “A giant butt plug. Lube up.”

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“Fuck you.” “In your dreams.” “You bet.” Quent yawned and squeezed Jace tight enough to stop his breath for a minute before he let go. “Maybe—” Yawn. “—on Christmas—” Yawn. “—we’ll be able to fuck for real.” “Yeah. That’s why I seduced you, so you’d reach for the stars.” Quent snuggled. “I caught one. He’s prickly, but surprisingly soft inside.” “Aw, shut up so we can go to sleep.” Quentin was pretty sure he actually giggled himself to sleep.

THE next day they were up and out of the apartment early, walking because they didn’t have time to go to the gym, the both of them so focused that they didn’t really didn’t have time to talk. Jace was on his Bluetooth during the walk, barking instructions, and Quent was relying on Jace not to walk into anything because he was texting in transit, and if he kept his shoulder lined up with Jace’s, he could manage not to trip or go sprawling. They’d made it to the line for bagels when Jace switched lines on the Bluetooth and Quent heard him say, “He doesn’t want to talk to you.” There was a space, and Jace looked thoughtful, then darted his eyes to Quent. “Really? Does he know? Jesus, and people say I’m closed off. Yeah, I’ll ask him. As soon as I hang up and order our bagels, Sam, bye!” Jace turned to the clerk and ordered—whole wheat for Quentin, sourdough for himself, both of them with tomatoes and ham, Jace’s with avocado, Quent’s with fake bacon sprinkles, neither with cream cheese. They went to the side to wait for their orders, both of them as warm as they could be in their wool coats, scarves, and gloves. The day was fog-free and crystal clear. If you looked down Mission, you could see the glint of the sea, and it was blinding.

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“So what about my sister?” Quent asked, trying not to be impatient. He’d told the client he was texting “BRB” and looked up. Jace shrugged. “Says she wants to bring the kids down for Christmas.” Quent fumbled his phone and Jace caught it, then slid it in his pocket with a reassuring pat. The girl called their order, and suddenly they were shivering in the shade, their earlier focus gone as they shared breakfast and conversation by the food kiosk. “I’m sorry?” Quent asked through a mouthful of food. His hands were shaking—it just seemed easier to keep stuffing his face than it did to stop and deal with his shaking hands. “She says she and the girls will stay Christmas night in a hotel— she already has reservations—but she wants to spend Christmas evening with us, and, I assume, Toby and his roommate and Nick and Peter and any other of our poker friends who get kicked out on their asses.” Suddenly Jace’s hand was there, taking Quent’s bagel and transferring it to sit with his own, and then covering Quent’s hand through their gloves. “Take a breath,” he ordered evenly, and Quent tried for one of those. It worked. He tried again. “That’s fine, isn’t it?” he asked, his voice sounding surprisingly normal. “Yeah, baby. I’ll call her back and tell her.” “Her husband’s not coming?” “She says Alan’s out of the country on business.” Still, that hand, clasping his tightly. “Well, that sucks. She probably misses him like crazy. Of course she should come.” Jace’s hand gave that reassuring squeeze again, and he pulled it back and gave Quentin back his sandwich. “I’ll make sure she’s got a good hotel suite. If she needs it, I’ll get them an upgrade.” “I was going to send their gifts up right after Christmas,” Quent said, nodding, and Jace nodded back. “This way I won’t have to.”

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“Yeah, Quent. That’s why this is good. You can save on postage.” “Shut up,” Quent said thickly, and he took a deep breath and tried to pull himself together. “I have to work for the rest of the day. I can fall apart when we’re getting ready for Mitch’s party.” “No falling apart,” Jace told him pragmatically. “It’s all good news.” Quent nodded and took a bite of his bagel, and the two of them started for work again, but Quent didn’t get out his phone, and Jace took the Bluetooth off. They didn’t say anything, but for ten minutes, they were quietly together, their shoulders touching as they plowed their way through the crowd.

HE DIDN’T fall apart when they were getting ready for Mitch’s party. In fact, he was as excited as a puppy, practically wriggling with enthusiasm, until Jace threatened to tie him to the bed to make him calm down. “Oh God,” Quent complained, “now I’ve got a hard-on!” “Tough,” Jace said mildly. “You wanted to do family this Christmas—and you know what? Now I do too. No sex for you.” Jace was getting dressed for the party, standing in front of the mirror and taking care of his five o’clock shadow, fresh from the shower and wearing only a pair of boxer shorts and an undershirt. His skin was pale, paler than Quent’s, and Quent felt the need to touch it. He feathered a kiss across the bare skin of Jace’s shoulder and was rewarded with Jace’s indrawn breath. Oh God. Had they really not had sex in a week? He kissed again, this time on the little bare place above his collar, and when Jace shuddered, Quent reached around him gently and took the razor and set it down on the counter. “No sex for Quent means no sex for Jace,” he murmured in Jace’s ear, and he watched as Jace’s eyes closed and his throat worked.

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“Need to leave…,” he protested, and Quentin ran his tongue around Jace’s earlobe. “Quent!” Quent kept his voice in the hollow of Jace’s neck, laving and nibbling Jace’s neck and ear as he spoke. “We’ll get there, I promise.” “But… on time. I promised on time—oh God!” Quentin pulled Jace’s backside up against Quent’s front side, and Quent was aroused and thick and engorged between both layers of their underwear, nestled in the convenient little cock-rest between the cheeks of Jace’s taut bottom. He dropped his hand down to Jace’s front, rubbing it through his boxers while he ground up against Jace’s back. “Don’t worry,” Quent said roughly, his hands shaking badly with want. “This won’t take long.” Jace turned in his arms and captured his mouth in a savage kiss, backing Quentin up against the door until it snicked shut behind him. Quentin groaned, returning the kiss, thrusting up against Jace in a moment of absolute need. Jace’s hands were on his abdomen, his ribs, his chest, and it just all felt so good. Quentin whimpered inside Jace’s mouth, and Jace ground up against him so hard it hurt. Quent reached back with one hand, cupped Jace’s ass, and held him tighter, and with the other, he reached down his pants. Jace growled, thrust against Quent’s hand and thrust hard, and Quent squeezed the base of his cock with the same intensity. “Ahhh… Quent… God….” Quent kissed down his cheek and his chin and his neck, wanting to fall to his knees and worship him, but Jace wasn’t letting him. “Don’t go,” he whispered, and Quent stayed, opening his mouth, taking Jace’s plundering, and keeping his careful, hard stroke on Jace’s cock. Jace lost focus on the kiss for a moment, broke off, tipped his head back, and brought his hands up in fists to Quent’s chest. Quentin kept stroking and moved his other hand up to the back of Jace’s head, guided his face to the naked crook of his neck, and kept stroking while Jason Spade, god of poker, god of finance, general god of men, keened, gasped, moaned, and came all over Quentin Jackson’s hand. Quentin kept milking him, still hard, and then fumbled and shoved his own boxers down so they were cock to cock. He took them

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both in his slick, slippery, hot hand and thrust, feeling the glide of Jace’s still-hard flesh and softest skin next to his own. Jace whimpered, his hips still bucking, and Quent thrust again, and again, their cocks sliding against each other, the squeeze of his own hand at the base making his balls nut up and clench, and sending shudders through his limbs. His orgasm rushed his spine, exploding from his groin to his scalp, crashing black behind his eyes. “Bwauaghhhhhh….” He threw himself back against the door because his knees wouldn’t take him, and Jace wasn’t supporting his own weight either, so Quent ended up sliding down until he landed on his ass with a thump as Jace landed on his knees, both of them still in each other’s arms. He’d let go of their privates somewhere in the fall, and his hand smacked, wet with come, on the white tile underneath his bare ass. And Jace was still limp in his arms, and they were sweating and disheveled anyway, so he wiped his hand on the back of Jace’s undershirt before clenching him close in a hug that might have made his ribs creak. Jace gave a hard shudder in his hold. Eventually they caught their breath and Jace’s lips moved softly, questingly, on his neck. Quent tilted his head sideways, and Jace shifted his weight back and touched foreheads with him. “Did you wipe our spooge on my back, you bastard?” Quent laughed. “Merry Christmas, Jason.” “I love you, Quent.” “I love you too.” “We’re going to have to shower alone, you know that?” Jace sat back on his heels and held a hand up to Quent’s face. Quent nodded, although he trapped that hand there against his cheek. “I am aware.” “I’ll be reloading in a hot second. We’ll never get to Mitch’s place.” “I hear you.” “I have to go to Mitch’s place. He’s got your Christmas present.”

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Quent’s eyes flew open. “What’s my Christmas present?” Jace’s smile was uncertain and young, but his words sounded just like Jace. “You’ll find out on Christmas. I’m not that fucking easy. Now I’m going to take a five-second shower, and you’re going to call Mitch and tell him why we’re late.” “I’ll tell him the truth,” Quent threatened, staying on his ass, his eyes half-closed, appreciating the view as Jace stood up and wiggled his boxers down to the ground as he pulled his undershirt off. “Do that. He’ll be thrilled.” Quent groaned, then just sat back and smiled. Jace looked up before he got in the shower and blushed. “Proud of yourself, aren’t you?” “Yup.” “You should be. Now move your ass.” Quentin washed his hands and went to tell Mitch they had an emergency client meeting and were running a little late. “Thanks,” Mitch grunted. “For what?” “For not telling me you were fucking each other silly or some such bullshit. I really could not have stood to hear one more round of the Jace and Quent show.” Quent grinned to himself, so pleased he was almost dancing alone in the living room, wearing nothing but soiled boxers. “Mitch?” “Yeah?” “Merry Christmas.” He hung up and giggled until Jace shouted that the shower was ready. God. It was Christmas, and sometimes that was just as much fun for grown-ups as it was for little kids.

THE party was exactly what Quentin wanted. Happy people, drinking a little too much, maybe, but happy. Elsie brought her husband, thin,

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stoop-shouldered, with a homely middle-aged face and thinning hair: he was obviously the center of her world. She doted on him, brought him drinks and snacks, and sat behind his chair, with her hand on his shoulder, and introduced him to everyone she knew at the party, as excited as a kid at school. Toby brought his roommate, “Mack.” Mack was short for Mackenzie. Mackenzie was decidedly female—and yes, odds were pretty good that Toby was banging her. “I’m glad I knew that before they walked in the door for Christmas dinner,” Quent muttered to Jace, and Jace hid a smirk in his shoulder. “You and me both. How did we miss that?” Quent looked hard at Toby, who blushed across the room. “That little shit. He let us think… why do you think he did that?” Jace smirked with superiority. “Because I was right. That little shit was hoping for your ass too. I knew it!” Quent blushed so hard he started to sweat. “That requires another drink,” he said with dignity, and Jace, who had pulled his underdriven, expensively maintained Dodge Viper out of its pricey parking space for the night, told him to knock himself out. “I’m driving, I’ve got nothin’ but water,” he said virtuously, and Quent made a note not to drink too much, or he’d leave Jace hanging while he slid into the toasted zone. The next day was the office party, and then Christmas Eve, and then Christmas morning, and finally, they could give presents. Because giving voice to your inner six-year-old did that to a guy.

CHRISTMAS morning, he felt anything but childish. “Really?” He looked at the papers that had been in the gold folder, complete with red bow, and looked back at Jace. “Really?” “It’s not good?” Jace sat on the ground in a new bathrobe over his sleep pants and new leather moccasins, which were secondary presents that Quent had

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gotten him because as lovely as the apartment was, sometimes it was cold as hell, and Quent didn’t want to see him sick again. He had his legs crossed like a little kid, and he’d plopped there immediately after Quentin had stumbled from the bedroom in a haze at six in the morning, wondering where he’d gone. He’d gone to make coffee and to start Malt-O-Meal, which, surprisingly enough, they both loved, and to look at the small tree with its colored lights and crystal ornaments reflected in the big window overlooking the city. Quent hadn’t seen a laptop or a book or a TV remote anywhere in sight. He had been, apparently, just up, in the chill predawn quiet, and Quent looked at him carefully through the caffeine fumes and the blur for signs of loneliness or melancholy, and didn’t see a thing. Then Quent had made him open the robe and slippers, and Jace had laughed, and Quent had told him that the bigger present could wait until later, and Jace had taken the envelope from under the tree, dropped it in his hands, and then sat at his feet, in spite of the abundance of furniture scattered throughout the room. Quent looked at the envelope curiously and looked at the insides even more so. “South Dakota?” He wasn’t stupid. He knew what this meant. “You’re giving me South Dakota?” Jace’s lower lip pouched out like a little kid’s. “Not all of it. Just part.” “Well I get that! Just… just….” Oh geez. “Jace, are you sure? That’s your past—” “You’re my future. That’s what you get for being my future.” Quent looked at him, feeling like his entire life he’d been waiting for this present. He swallowed hard, and his throat worked, and for some reason he thought of his sister, coming over in the early afternoon, and of her girls, who called him Uncle Quentin, and of how he got to have his past and his future in the same room, and that was what Jace had given him. “It’s awesome,” he said, feeling silly and emotional and not able to hide it. “It sure beats the hell out of a trip to Hawaii.”

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Jace sat up really straight. “That’s what you got me? A trip to Hawaii?” Quent nodded, feeling dumb. “Over Valentine’s Day. You were such a good sport about Christmas, about putting up with all of the parties and the shopping and the coming home to find the tree in the apartment, and… I just thought for the big V this year, you could go to Hawaii and not give a shit. With me, of course. But, you know. Sort of a big ‘let Jace off the hook for being a good sport’ sort of present.” Quent honest-to-Christ sniffled and looked at the paper in his hand. “It wasn’t this,” he mumbled. “It wasn’t a ‘you can hold my past because you’re my future’ sort of present. This one is… God.” Jace was looking at him with so much naked affection it would have made Quentin uncomfortable on almost any other day. “Hawaii on Valentine’s Day?” Quent nodded. “Yeah, Jace. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go to South Dakota so I can see the cabin?” “Are you crazy? In February? Hell no! We’ll see it over the summer. We’ll invite the guys, they can hunt, they can fish, we can go on hikes, and then come home and you can have Wi-Fi. We’ll retire there if you want. It’s good. Grand romantic gesture accomplished. Hawaii?” Quentin started to laugh a little helplessly. “Yeah, Jace. Hawaii.” “So… so I don’t have to do this again on Valentine’s Day?” “Come up with a card and a present? No. You’re off the hook there. You have my permission to forsake Valentine’s Day while we have mai tais on the beach.” Jace launched himself off the ground in an explosion of giddiness Quent had never seen in anybody. Suddenly he was lying on top, hugging Quent like he’d just given him a check for a million dollars. “Oh God. Quentin, I love you. You are the best boyfriend ever.” Quentin started to laugh, big, whooping belly laughs that left him gasping for air. “Merry Christmas, Jace.” “Merry Christmas, Quent. I swear, next year? I’m getting you slippers.”

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… Death by Poker … Jace

“SO, HAWAII next week!” Peter was saying as he dealt the cards. “Nice!” Jace unbent enough to grin at him. Peter was maybe the quietest member of their little group, both in appearance and demeanor— average height, average build, a small, pointed face, and just the faintest bit of ginger in his hair to save him from being completely unremarkable. To hear that much enthusiasm in his voice, he must have really been jonesing for a holiday. “Oh God,” Jesse said, sagging in his chair and stretching carefully. “Yeah. Why can’t I get sent to Hawaii? I’m not really excited about going to the Mid East anytime soon!” He’d been injured on his last out-of-country assignment—a broken wrist from jumping out of a helicopter a little before it was safely down, and then landing wrong. His wrist was still a mess of plaster, and Jace couldn’t help wincing in sympathy. He was glad Quent didn’t do anything more dangerous than racquetball and walking while texting. Jesse was a very pretty man, with blond hair and brown eyes and a winsome smile, but Jace was also happy he’d set his sights on Quent very early on. He wasn’t sure he could stand knowing someone he cared about was in that sort of danger for as long as Jesse or Nick often were. Quent looked at Jesse dryly. “Well, I’m not sure the press corps is going to assign you to Hawaii anytime soon. If you want to go, you’ll have to get your own tickets.” “Or have your boyfriend get them for you!” Nick quipped. God, he was incorrigible. Big, boyish sloe eyes, wicked grin. Jace remembered that long-ago night in the rain and how Nick had looked

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longingly at the two girls in the cab. He’d often wished Nick would get a second chance at that, but not at the expense of the rest of that night. “Yeah, well, next year I’m getting him an electric razor and Giants tickets,” Quentin snapped back, but Jace caught the look Quent sent under his lashes. Next year he’d be trying just as hard to find something wonderful, because that was what Quent did. No one had been more surprised than Jace when Quent’s sister and her two small daughters had shown up on Christmas afternoon and Quent had pulled out the perfect gifts. Jace didn’t know what he’d thought—gift certificates, maybe? But Quentin and Samantha had talked frequently before Quent came out, and apparently he’d nursed a quiet, forlorn hope that his relationship with his sister didn’t have to die when his parents cut him off. Maybe not such a forlorn hope. Samantha had bustled in with big bags of gifts of her own and some first-rate takeout to contribute to dinner, and a whole lot of hope herself that the big brother who had kept her entertained when their parents weren’t there would still want her in his life. Jace had been a little overwhelmed at first. He’d met Samantha in passing—taken her out to lunch with Quent when they’d been going through college, and he’d even attended her wedding. But that hadn’t been in his own home, and that certainly hadn’t been with Quentin at his side. Besides. She was a woman. The only way he really knew women was that he liked to have sex with them about as much as he liked sex with men, but not nearly as much as he liked sex with Quentin. That whole consideration was obviously off the table, and since Samantha didn’t have that whole brazen bitch “I’m talking to you on my own terms so you can fuck off if you don’t like it” thing that Elsie had going, Jace had actually been a little afraid of her. What he remembered was that she was shy—the thought of the two of them in the same room without Quent to smooth the way had given him the willies. He needn’t have worried. Toby and Mack, the now infamous notmale roommate, showed up, and they talked effortlessly, finishing each other’s sentences and being generally entertaining. Nick and Jesse were due later in the day, so Jace sat back with a tumbler of scotch and

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listened to them chat, and watched Quentin’s nieces play on the floor with the ungodly number of toys Quent had bought them. In the meantime, he cast covert glances at Quent and his dark-haired, darkeyed sister working in the kitchen, and listened to them remembering how they had learned to cook. Quent had sent his old housekeeper a card and a gift certificate every year since he’d moved out of the house. Jace’d had no idea, but Quent’s sister seemed to think it was one more reason her brother walked on water. Jace couldn’t argue with that. He’d been all about the hanging back and simply observing when suddenly he looked up and Samantha was by his side, a dainty little cup of alcoholic eggnog in her hand. She gave Toby and Mack a game of Trivial Pursuit to set up and then turned quietly to Jace. “You make him really happy,” she said, just loud enough for Jace to hear. She sipped her eggnog with tiny little lip twitches. She smiled nervously at Toby and the voluptuously beautiful Mack, and Jace figured that maybe some of her shyness from her college days was still there. So was Quent’s, to some extent, but he’d learned to mask it by the end of their senior year—especially in front of Jace, who had, maybe, not appreciated that until now. “I try,” Jace said, blushing. “Don’t… don’t let our parents get him too down, okay?” “I think,” Jace said carefully, hoping it was true, “that the person he was most concerned about was you.” Samantha turned a brilliant smile toward him then, just as her youngest toddled up, waving a little plastic doll back and forth and screaming “baby!” excitedly. The girl’s slightly older sister (they were, what? Two and four? Sam hadn’t even graduated from college before she got married) came up and tried to explain what was wrong, and Jace watched with some amusement as Samantha turned and tried to sort it out. The girls looked just like their mother and just like Quentin—big brown eyes, lots of straight dark hair—and Sam’s obvious earnestness as she tried to listen to her daughters charmed him. He’d met Quent’s parents a couple of times, and he saw more warmth now as Samantha stood up and went to sit with her children than he had

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in those few awkward dinners or Samantha’s wedding. Musing, Jace looked up and watched as Quent, alone in the kitchen the way he liked it, wandered happily from stovetop to oven to refrigerator. It was pretty obvious who had made that difference of warmth in her life, and in his. Jace thought that same thing now as he looked out at his poker table and took a look at his hand, that sly look from Quentin still warm in Jace’s mind. “Yeah, Quent. An electric razor and Giants tickets, we’ll do that for Christmas next year. Right now, it’s Hawaii. Anything special you’d like to try?” “Parasailing!” Randall spoke up excitedly, and Mitch threw a poker chip at him. “Quent, you asshole. What Quentin would like to try?” Randall turned to him in exasperation. “I’m taking my wife next year. I want to know if it’s as cool as it looks!” Quent had the same apologetic, skeptical expression he’d had on his face when talking about camping. “Really? Parasailing? I’m thinking maybe I should keep my feet on the ground.” Jace’s shark grin came out, and he knew it. “C’mon, Quent. Live a little. I dare you!” “What are you, six?” Quent rolled his eyes and took a sip of his vodka. Jace had a sudden emotion that almost felt like a stomach cramp. He tracked it down and realized that he was actually just getting all… gooey. God, Quentin was adorable. Just… just adorable. And Jace adored him. That was just… ew. “Yeah, Quent. I’m six. I’m six, and I have an irrational urge to watch you dangling from the fucking sky. No, you idiot, I just want you to try something different!” Quent made a suspicious sound, and suddenly everybody at the poker table was smirking, including Jace. He fought hard, though, and managed to kill the smirk and narrow his eyes.

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“Winning hand, then?” Quent’s smirk died a tragic death. “Poker—” “Is life!” A vivid impression of Jace’s Uncle Mike flashed up in front of him, talking to Jefferson after he thought Jace had gone to bed. “You really think teaching the kid poker is a good idea?” Jefferson looked a little worried, which, in turn, worried Jace. Jefferson had been the fun uncle after his parents died, the one who could make him laugh. Mike, on the other hand, was the one who made him feel safe. “I think it makes him feel in control of the world,” Mike said seriously, and they both sighed. “Yeah, well, he needs that. The world sort of threw him a loop, didn’t it?” And Jace, five years old and so very confused about where his mother and father had gone, understood. Poker really was life. If he could learn these lessons here, at Mike’s knee, the world would make sense once again. And now, faced with this gooey sense of, oh, God, happiness? Yes, happiness. Completely focused on the smile and well-being of one man, Jace knew, somewhere in the center of his heart, that if he could just control the game, then he could control this feeling, keep it contained, keep his life with Quent in the nicely quantified mechanics of spades and hearts and clubs. So he was gratified and highly relieved when he saw Quentin’s resignation. “Yeah, Jace. Sure. Winner gets to say yes or no on the parasailing. I hear you.” Jace’s world aligned itself, and he started dealing. Peter looked at his first cards with a sigh. “Oh Christ. We may as well just give it up now”—and the rest of the group backed that up with equally deep groans. “God,” Mitch grumbled. “It was better when they were making out and we had the table to ourselves. At least one of us had a chance

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when he let us win.” His high-cheekboned sharper’s face with the saltand-pepper widow’s peak was full of disgust. “That wasn’t my game at the time,” Jace said mildly. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have won.” “God, you are still a cocky sonofabitch,” Nick muttered, taking his cards as Jace dealt. “I still don’t know where he gets the stones to say that.” “It’s easy,” Quent said, eyeing his own hand with a sigh. “He doesn’t let anybody win.”

LATER that night, Quent was staring out of the cab in moody silence. “What?” Jace asked, and Quent shook his head. “Nothing.” “You’re sulking.” “Absolutely.” “Why are you sulking?” “Because it was a stupid bet, and I didn’t want to make it, and I let you talk me into it.” Jace sighed and made what he thought was an incredibly generous offer. “I could let you out of it.” “Are you shitting me?” Quent snapped. “That’s exactly what you want. You want to let me out of the bet so you can think I’m weak and this whole little experiment will unravel from there.” Jace opened his mouth in hurt and then shut it. “I wouldn’t do that!” Quent looked at him and sighed. “Maybe not. Maybe. All I know is that one minute, we were playing poker, and you looked at me so… so softly. Like I was your life. And suddenly, I wasn’t your life anymore, poker was life all over again, and you were trying to fit me in it.”

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Jace opened his mouth to say that wasn’t true, but… but, oh God. He prided himself on his integrity. Quent did too. He couldn’t. He sat back in the cab with his arms folded and looked out the window. “Did it scare you?” Quent asked quietly into the silence. “To think maybe I’m bigger than poker?” “What do you want me to say?” “Nothing. Go ahead and don’t say anything. I’ll probably love parasailing. But you probably could have talked me into it just by asking.” Jace sighed and didn’t say anything else until they got to the apartment. It was early February, and the fog was so thick Jace almost couldn’t see Quent as he got out on the other side of the cab. Jace paid the fare because he always paid the fare, and Quent had been humoring him since they’d come to this city, fresh out of school. Quent came around to him and waited patiently, and Jace was struck by that. Quent was unhappy and hurt, but he didn’t stalk off into the apartment; he simply waited for Jace to pull his head out of his ass and walk up with him. Jace did, and they were shoulder to shoulder through the doors and then up the elevator. There was an older woman who looked vaguely familiar to Jace in the elevator. Quent greeted her by name. “Hey, Mrs. Schoenberg. How’s Travis today?” The woman, who had perfectly coifed white hair, a white wool coat, and tiny gold heels, smiled at Quent beatifically. “He’s wonderful, Quentin, thanks so much for asking. He went to the vet’s today—they trimmed his toenails and squeezed his ass. He always likes it when that happens.” Jace’s eyes flew to Quent’s face, and he managed to keep his poker face only because he could see that Quent was barely holding on to his own.

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“Well who doesn’t like that?” Quent asked diplomatically, and as the woman got off the elevator onto her floor, Jace reached back and obliged him. Quent laughed a little and looked at him, that sly look again, the one that had so undone Jace in the first place. “Couldn’t resist, could you?” he asked drily. “I still think poker is life.” “I know you do.” “Maybe I should… I don’t know. Stop trying to make life like poker?” Quent nodded, then reached out and grabbed his hand. “I think that might make our lives a little easier, right?” “Yeah. Maybe in real life, I should start letting people win.” Quent nodded and smiled again, and Jace’s chest went all soft and warm and that other part of him went all hard and aching. He leaned forward and brushed Quent’s lips with his own, and Quent responded before pulling back. “God, poker makes you horny.” “Yeah, Quent. That’s what makes me horny. Go with that.” Quent smirked all the way into their plant-ridden apartment, where Jace made it his mission in life to wipe that smirk off his face and make him scream instead.

TWO weeks later, Jace stood on the beach of Kauai with his heart in his throat as Quentin was hooked up in the parasailing harnesses. “Now when you feel the tug,” the boat pilot was saying, “simply start running. Lift your feet off the sand when you feel the sail catch. See, the sail is out behind you, and it will take very little tension to make it catch in this wind, you see?”

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Quentin nodded gamely, apparently not frightened in the least. Jace, on the other hand, was suddenly starting to see the absolute enormity of what it was he’d committed his partner to. “Quent, the resort’s right behind us,” Jace said nervously, looking out at the turquoise water and the blinding white beach. It was lovely— tropical island at its best; Jace could see why Quent had gone to the tropics when Jace went camping. The hotel had been first notch too. They’d arrived the day before and gone snorkeling, and then after a first-rate dinner, they’d made love into the wee hours of the morning. Something about having tropical breezes cooling your sweaty bodies through an open window made it that much better. As they had checked into the hotel, Quent heard another guest talking about a gentleman’s game table in the evenings. After Jace had ambush-kissed him and then taken him against the hotel door, Quent had breathlessly teased Jace about ignoring the possibility of playing his favorite game. Jace had assured him that he’d be at the table on their second night, and that Quent could watch him win. Quent had rolled his eyes and then pulled up his dress slacks. “Maybe you should have some faith in your protégé, oh poker Yoda— I’ll bet I could do pretty damned decent after this last year.” “Yeah, Quent. You’re Obi-Wan to my Yoda, I hear you. Were you really putting your pants back on already, because I haven’t blown you, and that’s on my to-do list.” Quent had thrown his pants over the couch in the suite so they wouldn’t wrinkle, and they hadn’t talked about poker again for the rest of the night. Now, watching that whole harness thing go around Quentin’s chest in the festive Hawaiian shirt that the office staff had given him, Jace was having a mini panic attack. Quentin, who could barely play racquetball when he wasn’t pissed and who would go tripping and sprawling at least three times a week if Jace didn’t hold his elbow while he was texting and walking at the same time—that was the guy he was sending up into the sky, dangling from a really big dishrag? The guide was still talking quickly, a thick island accent making his words hard to track. Quentin nodded like he understood, though.

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“And this is my quick release?” he asked, and Jace snapped, “Don’t touch it!” just as he was about to. Quent grinned. “You jealous because I’m going first?” Jace just shook his head. “Maybe sit this one out. I was stupid. It was a dumb game of poker and a dumb bet. I shouldn’t have—” Quent’s grin washed away like the surf at their ankles. “I’m going to be fine, Jace. What’s got you?” Jace shrugged, unwilling to put a voice to his sudden lack of balance. It was as though losing his parents first, and then Mike and Jefferson, had left him off-kilter for his entire life, and he’d managed to hop on one foot just fine and had never noticed his lack of belief in the solidity of the universe until right now, when he was about to send Quentin up in the sky with what seemed to be a flimsy jury-rigged halter between him and the ground. The guy went to get in the boat, and Quent got into position with his typical obedience and paused once to wave cheerfully in Jace’s direction. “Wish me luck!” he said, and Jace replied, almost on automatic, “You don’t need luck, all you need is a good hand!” And the boat took off, and Quent ran a couple of steps, and then the sail caught and there he was, up, up, up—oh fuck! He was tangled in the harness somehow, struggling, dangling when he should have been sailing. Jace could hear his calm cursing from his position on the beach, and he watched as his hands grappled for something, anything, to help him right himself. And then his hands went to— “No, Quentin, not the damned safe re—shit!” And then Jace watched helplessly as Quent dropped out of the sky.

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… Go Fish … Quent “HAWAII, Jace. Parasailing. All for you. Just remember that, okay?” Quentin glared at his partner in life, work, and love, and Jace had the grace to flush back. “Sorry, Quent. Seriously. Sorry—didn’t mean….” “If you say you’re sorry one more time, I’m gonna break your fucking leg so we can match, okay? It wasn’t your fault that whole parasailing thing didn’t work for me.” Jace sighed and sat gingerly down next to Quent on the hotel bed, careful not to jostle the big, ungainly temporary cast that immobilized the nasty fracture of his ankle. Quent tilted his head back against the frame of the hotel bed, grateful for the effort. He was trying to keep his customary sense of humor here, but truth? Hard truth? Was that it hurt. If it weren’t for the painkiller, Quent would be in a really ugly mood, and Jace felt bad enough as it was. But Jace, being Jace, wasn’t going to let himself off the hook that easy. He cupped fingers around the back of Quentin’s skull, massaging gently. “Quent?” “Yeah?” “You want me to stop feeling guilty?” “God, yeah!” “Then you’re going to have to get better so you can break my leg like you promised. I feel like shit.” Quentin opened one eye and looked at him, unsure of what to do. Jace prided himself on being as tough and unemotional as a cheetah on

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the chase. For Quentin to see his cheetah all forlorn—and because Quent himself was as graceful as a fat housecat stoned on catnip—well, it hurt Quent almost as much as his leg. “Stop guilting all over my cast,” he muttered. “You’re making the painkiller fade.” Jace harrumphed and turned his head away, and Quentin closed his eyes again. Even with his eyes closed, he could find Jace’s hand as it rested on his thigh. “I’ll make you a deal,” he muttered, and Jace’s hand tightened in response. “Yeah?” The amount of hope in that one syllable made Quentin’s chest hurt, and he thought irritably that he needed a whole other painkiller. “I’m stoned to the gills right now. Let me sleep off my painkiller, then feed me. Then we can play a couple of hands of gin—if I beat you at cards, it will feel like breaking a leg, okay? You hate to lose. We’ll have something to do for the next ten days, and your guilt will be all spent so we don’t have to lug that shit home like a cheap souvenir— whaddya say?” Jace was scowling at him. “Jesus, you are stoned. Guilt like a cheap souvenir? I didn’t know you had a fucking poet in you, Quent!” “Shut up and let me sleep or I’ll recite a love sonnet to your prodigious cock, all right? Do we have a deal?” Oh Jesus! Did he really just say “prodigious cock”? Jace really did need to let his King of Hearts take a little day trip, didn’t he? “I am without words,” Jace muttered. He tucked a pillow under Quent’s head and one under his foot in the cast, and gave him a sip of water from a nearby cup with a straw. He went to move out of the room, and Quent grunted. “What?” “You’re gonna stay with me, right?” Quentin asked. “I keep falling in my head.” God, he felt stupid. There were probably six failsafes there to make sure falls like his didn’t happen, but somehow, Quent had managed it.

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He was okay, he thought loopily. He’d be perfect, except he kept remembering the fall from the sky to the shallow water, where he’d landed hinky on his ankle. It kept making him jerk awake, and that hurt too. Jace sat down heavily next to him, and Quentin managed to crack open his heavy eyelids to see his partner’s expression. Quent’s eyes opened a little further at the complete misery he read there. “Yeah, Quent. I see you falling too.” Quent closed his eyes and held out his hand. “Well, lie down here, and we’ll stay on the ground,” he mumbled, and Jace grabbed his hand again, and then the drugs well and truly took over. Sometime later, he felt Jace get up. He woke up enough to eat a very hazy dinner of room service, and then a blanket was thrown over his legs. Jace snuggled up to him, one possessive arm thrown over his middle, Jace’s cheek pressed into his ribs, pretty much the way Jace always slept, ever since they’d started sleeping together. Quentin woke up in the middle of the night, startled by a dream of falling, and rubbed the two inches of hair growing out of Jace’s scalp trim, and fell back asleep. The next morning he had to piss like a racehorse and had relatively few options for how to do that. “The doctor said don’t move until he comes in and fixes the cast!” Jace snapped, and Quentin glared at him. “I am not pissing in that!” Quent snarled, looking at the plastic receptacle that the concierge doctor had left for just such an emergency. He glared at it some more, hoping it would melt as Jace held it so he could make Jace see sense. Jace was glaring at him in the same way. “Look, Quent—it’s a basic body function, okay? Like, you know, going to the bathroom to break wind in the morning.” Quentin blushed. “There’s a reason I go to the bathroom to do that.” Jace nodded furiously in agreement. “Hell yeah—every other man I’ve known has just let loose under the sheets. I’ve got to say, your way is much appreciated!”

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Quent’s fury turned sour. Excellent. Now they were talking about Jace’s past lovers. There were a lot, male and female. That was all Quentin needed to know. “Thank you,” he muttered, mortified and irritated. “I’m so glad you approve. Now can you help me to the can?” Jace shook his head and held out the plastic thing. “Look, Quent—you know that whole moving in together thing, that was a better or worse situation, right? I’m not going to bail on you because I see you piss in a plastic jug, right?” Quent let out a sigh that shook the bed, then held out his hand for the offending vessel. “I defy you to find a poker metaphor for this,” he sulked, and to his surprise, Jace snickered. “You stick your poker in that thing and pee, and I’ll guarantee I won’t even try.” Quentin brightened up a little. “Really? Do you promise?” Then the pun caught up to him, and he was forced to laugh. “You asshole! Dammit, you never let me win!” Jace grinned at him, a little of his usual fierceness back. “Not when it’s for your own good, you stubborn bastard. Now go ahead and pee, and I’ll get your shaving kit and doll you up so we can eat before the doctor gets here.” Quent had to admit that he felt better after he’d brushed his teeth, washed his face, and—with Jace’s help—trimmed his goatee until it was bald in the places he liked it to be and closely shaved in the places he wanted hair. He looked up from his trimmer and shaving mirror to see Jace chuckling down at him. “What?” “I never realized what a ritual it is. It’s like women blow-drying their hair straight so they can curl it later!” Quentin grimaced. “Would you rather I shaved it regular?”—and he was gratified by the horror in Jace’s expression. “No!” he said, a little panicked. “I, uhm… well, you know, I thought it was sort of dorky, right after we got out of school, but, I kind of like it now.”

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Quent found himself quietly beaming—and quietly blushing—as he put away his shaving kit. “Well, you know. If you like it, I’ll keep it.” Jace took the kit from him and started to smile, and then he sobered. “You do that a lot. Do things my way to make me happy.” Quent tried to lighten the moment. “It made us a lot of money after we started the business, right?” Jace swallowed and nodded. “And it got you involved with me and alienated from your folks—” “That’s their problem!” Oh no—Jace wasn’t kidding about the guilt. Quent wasn’t going to make it through the next week in a hotel bed if Jace felt this shitty about the whole thing. “And it got you here in Hawaii with your leg in a cast!” Jace finished, like he was determined to flog himself, and Quent pinched the bridge of his nose like that was going to make Jace see the same spots in his vision. “No, Jace. My own dumbfuckery got me here on the bed with my leg in the cast. Look, can you take a break from kicking your own ass and get me another painkiller? When the doc comes to start prodding that thing like a big swollen cow, I want to be incredibly stoned.” He would have punctuated this with wiggling his toes, but that would have meant moving his foot. Ouch. He felt better after the concierge doc came and fitted him with a sturdier cast. “You will be able to get up and walk—but not much. I would stay in bed for today and tomorrow, maybe shower at the most. But the next day, I will come in and tighten it, and you can go out on the beach. You will like that, yeah?” The doctor smiled hopefully, his teeth blindingly white in his dark face, and Quent smiled back hopefully. “It would be nice to see the beach for part of the trip,” he conceded. “Now would you tell Jace he can go outside without me? If I can get up and use the head by myself, he can ditch me to go have some fun.”

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“No fun without you,” Jace grunted, and the doctor gave Quent a sly smile. “Play cards, watch movies, put together a puzzle. Anything you can do on a bed, you can do.” The doc punctuated this with a waggling of the eyebrows, and Quentin had to laugh. “Didja year that, Jace? We can play cards!” The doctor’s hearty laugh was still rumbling down the hallway when Jace shut the door. “Yeah, right,” he muttered. “Play cards.” “Gin!” Quent said, determined to keep Jace from that horrible path of self-flagellation. “And if I kick your ass, you’ve got to stop doing it for me, deal?” Jace turned a scowl in Quent’s direction, but Quent was the peacekeeper, and he knew for certain Jace loved him, so when he turned on his most winsome smile, he was pretty sure his lover was toast. And sure enough, he moved to his baggage with a sigh and came back with a deck of cards. “Gin?” “Poker’s not a lot of fun with two guys, Jace.” “We could do cribbage.” “What do you have against gin?” Jace scowled. “It doesn’t make any sense! Sometimes when you think you’ve won, you haven’t really won. You knock, the other guy shows his cards, and suddenly, he’s got all the deadwood points and a bonus!” “Well yeah, but sometimes the guy who thinks he’s lost has really won, so that’s nice too, right?” That scowl intensified, and Quentin fought back a wholly inappropriate giggle. “That’s not the purpose of winning.” Jace glowered, and that giggle escaped.

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“Well, it is when the game you’re playing isn’t really cards,” Quent told him, knowing that having the whole poker-is-life Zen-dalailama-guru thing turned back on him would chafe Jace worse than itchy balls. “Oh Jesus,” Jace muttered. “I can’t even believe you said that!” Quentin’s giggles completely escaped him, and Jace threatened to put the cards back if he didn’t stop acting like a stoned college kid, and they had to wait another ten minutes while Quentin got over cracking himself up. “The trick,” Quent said confidently as Jace dealt their first hand, “is not to knock. The trick is to go out with gin or nothing!” Jace eyed him speculatively over his ten cards. “That sounds like a guy with giant granite ball-balls. You don’t play poker like that!” Quent shrugged. “Poker is a sort of a no-mercy game. Gin is more forgiving. Just because you’re not first to the finish line doesn’t mean you don’t get the trophy, right?” Jace’s speculative look deepened, and he drew and discarded carelessly, without seeming to look at what he was throwing away— something Quent had never really seen him do. “You don’t believe in winners and losers?” Quent smiled, most of the loopiness gone, and drew a jack so he could discard a three. “I don’t know, Jace. Every time one of us loses a hand of poker to each other, we win something bigger together, right?” Jace looked at him. Just looked at him, before taking his turn again carelessly. “If you start telling me that gin is like life, I’m going out to the pool to get drunk.” Quent rolled his eyes and took his turn. “You will not. You’re not that tough, you know.” Jace glowered, but Quent saw a little smile—the little boy’s smile that only Quentin got to see—peek through. “I am too,” he said with a trace of a sulk. “Your turn, tough boy—try not to knock out before you can get gin.”

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Jace discarded and then looked up with an unholy, almost demonic glee. “Gin!” “Aw, fuck you!” Quentin said—but he was laughing as he said it, and it was his turn to deal. They played for most of the day, and Jace won every damned hand. Fuck. Quent was supposed to be winning, because Jace’s guilt was still stinking up the place—not enough to get him to lose, because he just didn’t do that, but every now and then his shark-sharp tongue would turn loose on himself, and Quent couldn’t even beat the shit out of him, because he was laid up in bed. (He actually found himself longing for crutches, so he could do it from a prone position. Alas, not yet.) Finally, Quent shoved Jace out the door for an hour to go swim or run or something, because being cooped up in the hotel room sucked, and Jace shouldn’t have to suffer. Besides, Jace’s guilt was so corrosive that Quent was suffering too. Jace came back with some sort of fried meat and some fruit, and for a moment the recrimination was gone, and they were… them. They bantered, they railed on each other, and they generally amused themselves with the same shit that had amused them in college and kept them compatible for the five years they’d spent in business together before they became lovers. So this night, even far away, in a place with tropical smells and the sound of a warm ocean coming in through the patio door, they were still at home because they had each other. After Jace arrived, they ate companionably. Jace showered. They watched some television and went to bed. “Jace?” Quent said into the ocean-drenched darkness that was not at all like the darkness from their top-floor apartment at home in the City by the Bay. “Yeah?” Jace was a burrower, with one arm flung around Quentin’s shoulders or waist or wherever it landed and his face burrowed into Quent’s side. But that arm was always there in some way, as though Jace reached for Quentin in his sleep. “I really want a shower.”

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“I want you to have one too, you stinky fucker. Now go to sleep, your words are slurring.” Quent had taken a pain pill right before bed, because the damned ankle ached, and Jace was right. “I don’t fall when you hold me,” he muttered, and Jace’s arm tightened around his stomach. No matter how ripe Quent’s pits probably were, that arm didn’t move all night.

OH

THANK God for hot water and fiberglass casts. And shower

benches—those too. And liquid soap that had man smells in it, and Jace’s hands, massaging shampoo through his hair and his beard and sponging his back, and even making him lift up to sponge all his creases and… and…. “What are you doing?” he asked slyly as Jace’s slippery, soapy finger probed him gently. “Touching you?” Whoop! There it went, right inside. Quentin shifted a little so his hands were against the shower wall and his thighs were propped up against the shower bench and his backside was sticking out for Jace’s enjoyment. “Uhm… wanna touch something else? Or join me? Or… ahhhhh….” Jace’s other hand, hot and soft from the shower, and strong and tight from the gym, wrapped around his cock. Quent’s knees trembled—it was hard to put weight on his ankles—and he was relieved (and disappointed) when Jace’s hand moved from his backside, patting him gently on the flank, before Jace shifted to take Quent’s elbow and set him down gently. But that other hand stayed on his cock, and Jace’s bare arm circled his shoulders so Quent’s head could fall back against Jace’s chest as that skilled clutch squeezed and stroked, and squeezed the base and stroked the head and squeezed the base and tickled his balls and stroked and…. “Oh, God, Jace….” “Shhh… just fall, I’ve gotcha….”

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Quent shuddered hard and came, shooting across the shower, the come blending with the squish of soap all over his crotch and lubricating Jace’s hand some more as he kept stroking, milking him for every quiver of orgasm he had. When he was done, he lay back against Jace and panted until the pounding shower sluiced away the soap and the come, and thought happily of what should probably happen next. Jace was an aggressor, always. Even on the bottom, he was in charge, and Quent’s body, singing from the disuse, wanted to be thrown across the bed and pounded like a tenderized steak. It didn’t happen. Jace turned off the water and greeted Quentin with a big fluffy towel and bathrobe and, after toweling off himself, sat Quent down while he walked naked to the bedroom and brought back some shorts and a Hawaiian shirt (which he had teased Quent about unmercifully when they’d packed) and dressed him. Quentin couldn’t contain his disappointment. “But…,” he practically whined. “But, you know. This is when… you know. We… why aren’t you naked?” “Because you’re hurt!” Jace snapped, looking annoyed. “I was naked ten minutes ago, and you still got me off! We can be naked! You heard the doctor!” “I heard him say you could do anything you usually do in a bed. I didn’t hear him say it wouldn’t hurt your ankle.” Quentin squinted at him. “Aren’t you supposed to be the smart one? That’s his job to tell me not to have sex! If he goes out of the way to tell me I can have sex, that’s a good thing!” “It’s not good if it hurts you,” Jace said stubbornly, and Quentin looked at him in dawning horror. “Jace… Jace, we’ve got a week left. We’ve got a week left in a tropical island paradise, and I’m allowed to go outside tomorrow, but mostly, all I can do is lounge around and lounge around and lounge around some more, and you just told me that we can’t have sex? I thought you cared about me!”

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“Stop being a dumbass! Of course I care about you! That’s why you’re not getting any sex!” Quentin’s steely-eyed glare defied him to explain that, but Jace— who was never afraid of confrontation and never afraid of a fight— avoided his gaze and started helping him with his clothes in silence. In minutes, Quentin found himself hustled to his bed and sprawled out, customary pillow under his leg, remote control in his hand, and pillows propped behind his back. Feeling a little helpless (and unexpectedly tired), he glared at his significant other. “We’re not even going to play cards?” “I kicked your ass yesterday!” “We could play cribbage instead!” “I’ll kick your ass in cribbage too!” “Oh, I doubt it! Shut up and cut the cards, asshole!” Quent snapped, and Jace got out the cards and score pad in a huff, and away they went. Of course Jace cut a jack of spades, for two points at the beginning. Of course he dealt. It was like fucking fate or something. “I am, you know,” Jace mumbled after they’d played in icy quiet for a few hands. “Fifteen, for two,” Quent muttered, laying his five down in front of Jace’s queen and scratching his points on the paper since they didn’t have a board. “You are what?” “I’m an asshole. Twenty-five.” Jace laid down a ten. “Not to me. Thirty-one for two.” Quent laid down a six, part of a pair. “I am. Nobody in the office would even talk to me if it wasn’t for you. Ten.” “Are you kidding? They think you’re the best boss ever! Twenty.” “You didn’t even want to go parasailing. You didn’t even want to come on this trip. You only did it to bribe me to stay home for Christmas. Twenty-seven.”

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“No, I gave you Hawaii over Valentine’s Day because you were such a good sport about Christmas. Thirty.” “That’s a go.” Jace dealt the next four cards as Quent marked his points. Quent looked at the score pad curiously for a second. It looked like he was winning, and he wondered how long that would last. “Seven,” Jace muttered into the sudden quiet. “That’s the same thing as having to be bribed.” “Fifteen for two,” Quent told him, dropping an eight. “No, it’s the same thing as buying you a Christmas present because I wanted you to know I appreciated you. It’s pretty fucking awesome, actually.” “Twenty-three and a pair is two.” Jace scratched his own points on the pad. “You gave up Valentine’s Day. You like Valentine’s Day in the city. You used to buy your girlfriends flowers and candy and shit. Don’t think I don’t remember.” “Twenty-eight,” Quent muttered, dropping a five. “And you used to dump your girlfriends before Valentine’s Day so they didn’t get too attached.” “That’s a go,” Jace muttered, and Quent scratched his point. “See, I’m an asshole.” Quent looked up from the paper and made sure Jace’s vodka-blue eyes, the ones that Quent used to think were cold, were looking right back at him. “Not to me,” he said softly and was relieved when Jace swallowed and blushed, a small, lean smile playing with the corners of his mouth. “I try,” he muttered. “Yeah, well, when you’re not imposing some sort of arbitrary sex ban on us, you do all right.” “I just don’t want to hurt you,” Jace said, looking as miserable as Quentin had ever seen him. Quent sighed, thinking he wasn’t going to win this hand, but, like in cribbage, he might be able to win the game. “Shut up and deal,” he grumbled and scooped up his cards to begin play.

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Quent proceeded to kick his ass in cribbage for most of the rest of the game—right up until the last hand. Jace had the crib for the last hand—and, dammit, he got fourteen points out of it, and there they were, Quent glaring at him in pure frustration and Jace gazing imperturbably back. “I don’t let anyone win,” Jace said without a trace of guilt. “Not even yourself, apparently,” Quent snapped back. “C’mon, Jace—the only language you speak is winning, and the only way you’re going to let yourself off the hook is if I take you in cards. You either let me win at cards or give it up and take me to bed. The only other option is being the two crankiest gay men in the history of Hawaii because dammit, I was planning on getting laid!” Jace’s expression was a terrible mix of triumph, irritation, and hurt. “Well, maybe you should have thought about that before you scared the shit out of me!” he roared, and then he stood up and stalked out of the hotel room like a lion stalking out to the plains to hunt. Quent watched him go with a growl of frustration and threw his head back against the bed frame. Worst. Vacation. Ever. Achingly, he longed for a hand of poker. At least when they were playing poker they had the language for their relationship. But Jace, competitive, closedoff Jace—he wasn’t going be able to face any of this unless Quent could convince him that winning the game had nothing at all to do with cards! It all has to do with the cards. Since Jace’s voice was all in his head, Quent had no problem snapping back. I’m not going to bet my relationship on a game of go fish! Suddenly Quent had a vision that made him chuckle. Then he thought about it seriously and didn’t chuckle at all. About ten minutes later, he got a call from Jace. “I’m sorry.” He sounded incredibly contrite, and Quentin had no doubt that he felt like shit. That was the problem. They were on vacation in one of the world’s most romantic hot spots, and they both felt like shit.

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“I know you are. That’s the problem. I don’t want you to be sorry. I want you to be happy.” “Keeping us happy is my job.” “Yeah, well, you’re a selfish bastard. That’s why you need me.” Jace’s voice sank a little further. “I really do need you, you know that, right?” Yeah, Quent knew. He hadn’t, not really, until he’d seen Jace’s expression after his fall. Quent had been scared. Jace had been terrified. And Jace, being Jace, wasn’t going to take that well at all. “Look, how long are you going to be gone?” Quent asked, not wanting Jace to say the important shit over the phone. “I was going to be about two hours,” Jace said, surprising him. What could he do in two hours? “Call me about ten minutes before you get back,” Quent said, hoping he didn’t sound too cryptic. “Yeah. What do you want for dinner?” You, you stupid asshole. “Anything you want to bring me.” “’Kay. Uhm, Quentin?” “Yeah?” “Uhm. You know.” “I know what?” Quentin really didn’t, and he couldn’t figure out why Jace’s voice kept getting lower and lower. “I love you, dammit.” The proclamation was followed by the beep of the phone hanging up, and Quentin put his head back and laughed softly. Jesus. You thought you knew a guy. He must have dozed off, then, which was good, because if what he planned was going to work, he was going to need his rest.

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QUENTIN woke up to the buzzing of his phone next to his thigh as it went to voice mail. Oh shit! Jace was on his way back, and he was tracking drool! It took him some effort, and a whole lot of thumping across the carpet and swearing, but he managed. By the time the key card slicked into the slot, Quent was exactly where he wanted to be: sitting on the turned-down bed, an afghan over his waist and thighs, bare-chested and dealing two hands of seven cards each. He was also… well, uncomfortable. Very, very aroused and uncomfortable. He looked up at Jace and almost stood up and totally spoiled the bluff. “Roses?” he said, stunned. Of all the things he had not suspected. “You brought me roses?” “And chocolates!” Jace replied, sounding annoyed and put-upon. It was hard to see his face—the roses pretty much covered him from chest to forehead. The arrangement was huge. “It’s Valentine’s Day, dammit!” “You hate Valentine’s Day!” “Not with you,” Jace muttered, looking for somewhere to put the ginormous flower arrangement. He managed to get it on the little desk table by the patio, and the box of chocolates too, and was left with two takeout bags swinging from their handles over his arm. “Yeah, but when did I get to be a woman?” Jace scowled. “Well, it’s not like I’ve got a protocol for this shit! I just… you know. You agreed to carry out that stupid bet, and then you… you fell. And the trip sucked for you, and I’m sorry….” He stopped and set the takeout down abruptly. “Why is your shirt off and what are you dealing?” Quent smiled, and there must have been something faintly predatory in the smile, because Jace blinked and tried to reassess. “My shirt’s off because it’s off. And I’m dealing go fish.” “Go fish?”

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Quent nodded deliberately. “Yup. I figure it’s the one card game I can kick your ass in.” “No, seriously—what are you dealing?” Quent tried not to giggle like a little kid. God, this seduction stuff was hard. Fortunately, so was he. “Go fish. Now sit down and play.” “Fine, whatever. Did you even look at the fucking flowers?” Quentin lost the urge to giggle. “They’re gorgeous, Jace. Seriously. I’ve never actually gotten flowers before. Thank you.” Jace rubbed his hand over his growing hair and glared down at his cards. “I’ve never gotten them for anyone personally. You know—girl, boy, whatever. You’re it. My long-term commitment. With flowers. You got any threes?” “Go fish,” Quentin said, caught between laughing and groaning. God, the guy was spilling his guts. You’d think he’d forget about a game of go fish, right? “Okay, fine. Where’s the draw pile?” “Under my balls.” Jace actually dropped one of the cards in his hand. “Come again?” “I hope to!” “No, seriously. The draw pile?” Quent caught Jace’s eyes and smiled that slow predator’s smile, the kind that Jace showed him all the time but that was apparently blowing his mind now. “It’s under my balls. Wanna see?” Quent could actually see Jace’s Adam’s apple bob up and then down as Jace swallowed. The air, always a little humid so close to the sea, grew suddenly hot and close, and Jace’s forehead gleamed with a little bit of sweat. “Uhm, yeah?” Quent grinned the unashamed victory grin of a shark and threw back the blanket over his waist.

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He’d had just enough time to stroke himself to hardness before Jace had walked through the door, and sitting there, his erection rampant and open under the blanket, had done nothing to ease his aching arousal. There, just under his ball sac, was the deck of cards, the cool wax surface of the top one close enough to tease. “Ther’ya go, Jace. Go fish.” Jace reached out his hand very slowly, so slowly it shook as it passed over Quent’s exposed thigh. It was like planting a chocolate bar in a minefield—there was Jace’s greatest addiction, right in the middle of the things that could bring him down. He managed to slide the card out all right, but as his palm grazed the silky dark hair on Quent’s upper thigh, Quent could hear his breath catch and knew this game of go fish might very well be Jace’s Waterloo. “Didja find what you were looking for?” Quent asked, grinning fiercely, and Jace swallowed again and shook his head. “No.” “My turn. Do you have any aces?” Jace closed his eyes—not without humor—and shook his head. “Go fish,” he said with some fatalism. Quent nodded. “Okay. Here….” His breath hitched. “Yeah. There’s something in the way here.” He grabbed his cock at the base and squeezed. “Let me move that.” Very slowly, very deliberately, he stroked himself from the bottom to the top, spending a moment to tease the head and slit of his cock with his thumb. “It’s moved,” Jace said roughly, and Quent threw his head back and stroked slowly again. “Okay,” he panted. “Yeah.” He finished the deliberate caress and licked the precome off his thumb, then reached down and slid the next card out from under his equipment. “Not an ace,” he breathed. “Your turn.” “Seriously, Quent,” Jace complained, and Quent looked sideways at him, trying to see if Jace, the über-serious “poker is life” Jace, would try to compromise his much vaunted honor by wriggling out of a game of fish.

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“Seriously what?” Quent wasn’t touching himself anymore, but he knew Jace was looking at him with hunger in his eyes, and that was enough to keep him hard. “You really think you’re going to solve this with a game of fish?” “You said I’d have to kick your ass in cards,” Quent murmured wickedly. “If I can kick your ass in go fish, you’ve got to pay the wager, right?” “We haven’t wagered anything.” Jace’s voice was strained, and Quentin started another slow stroke, just to make his point. “Guilt, Jace. It’s the only thing you’ve got to lose. Now call your card!” “Uhm.” Jace’s eyes were glued to Quent’s hand, and his tongue seemed to be glued to the inside of his mouth. “Card?” Quent teased. Jace fumbled for a moment more before saying, “Threes.” “You said that already.” “Yeah. Fuck. Eights.” “Go fish,” Quent whispered and cocked his legs up just a little, so Jace would have to touch him this time. “I just,” Jace muttered, sitting up on his knees a little on the bed so he could maneuver and not touch, “I just don’t want to….” His hand was there, at the cards, and he peered around Quent’s knee at Quent’s lower body, exposed and vulnerable and almost purple with desire. “Hurt… you?” Jace’s voice cracked up an octave, and Quent knew he saw it then. “Is that what I think it is?” “The bright-pink sex toy with the soft rubber handle?” Quent asked innocently. “Buried to the hilt in my ass? Oh yeah. Do you have your card yet?” “That’s my ass!” Jace growled. “I’m the one who tells you what goes there!” It was irrational—but Quentin was counting on that. Jace was very possessive about Quent’s ass, and how it was treated, and how long and how well it was invaded, stretched, and fucked. “Card, Jace,” Quent purred. “Do you have your card?”

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“Fuck the card!” Jace snapped, and Quent smiled at him, the sleepy, satiated smile of a well-fed panther. “Are you conceding the game? Already?” “Augh. Christ. No!” Quent’s chuckle let them both knew he’d won. “Stubborn bastard. Your hand has been down there long enough to stroke me and fuck me and squeeze my balls. You need to either grab your card or get me o— fffffff….” Jace had feathered a touch across the base of his prick, and Quent almost came from that alone. He purred a little and arched his back, even as Jace snagged the card and brought it into his hand. “Got a pair,” he said hoarsely, and Quent chuckled again. “Excellent. Only six more pairs to go!” He had to admit that Jace almost made him come more than once. He would “go fish” and brush Quent’s cockhead, or his shaft, or, oh joy and horror, the soft rubber handle of the plug buried in Quent’s asshole, and Quent would have to hold onto himself through chattering teeth and a cock leaking precome. But it was worth it. Jace must have asked for threes four times—and each time, Quent made him go fish. His hands were shaking with desire and want, and the touches he grazed Quent’s cock with were trembling, sweating, earnest moments that were worth the entire tortuous game. “Come on, Jace,” Quent breathed, fist tight around his cock in prelude to “going fish.” “You want me. Do you give?” “I….” Quent’s cock spurted a little bit of precome, and Jace groaned and tried again. “I… God, Quent. Why are you doing this to me?” “I don’t want you to be sorry, Jace. I just want you.” “Do you have any… uhm… fives?” Quent rubbed the precome into the skin of his abdomen, then brought his hand up to taste. He showed Jace his entire hand then, because he’d won and he knew it. “Come fish, Jace,” he whispered, and

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Jace dropped his cards and lunged, his mouth closing over Quentin’s cock in one whole gulping swallow. Quent groaned and cupped Jace’s head in his palms as Jace tightened his lips on the base of Quent’s cock and swallowed and slurped, his usual technique lost in desire, his usual control shattered. God, it was sexy. Quent rubbed Jace’s head again and groaned some more, thrusting up into Jace’s mouth and pumping his hips slowly, restrainedly, to keep from just losing his cool and fucking Jace’s mouth until he came. Jace moaned around Quent’s cock, and Quent felt fumbling at the base of his ass and knew… oh God… there was the tightness… the stretching… ah… ah… ah…. The sex toy was pulled right past the tightened ring of Quent’s flesh, and then it slid, hot from his body and slippery with lube, down the inside crease of his thigh. The space behind Quent’s eyes went blinding white as he came, dumping come down Jace’s throat as Jace sucked his cock like he was sucking happiness through a straw. The blanket was thrown aside and Jace’s pants and boxers were puddled on the floor, and his shoes went flying as they fell. Cards crumpled and melded to their bodies as Jace shifted up the bed and thrust urgently against Quent’s stretched entrance, and Quent whimpered in complete surrender, welcoming Jace into his body with his good leg wrapped around Jace’s hips and his cast planted solidly into the mattress to help support them both. Jace lunged against him, teeth bared, eyes glaring, fucking Quent with fury and desire and a control that had been strained until it snapped. Quent moaned and whispered, urging him on. “Think you’re so tough, Jace? Trying to be all in control? Come on… control this! I dare you! Control yourself as you’re fucking me blind! Come on, Jace! Fucking control this!” And Jace, who could dirty talk like a porn star, did nothing but fuck Quentin harder, and harder, and harder, until he nailed Quent’s prostate hard enough to make Quent howl and contract around his cock, even though most of his come was already spent. Jace howled too, burying his face in Quent’s shoulder and throwing his hips forward one

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more time as he climaxed furiously, dumping come into Quent’s body and shuddering helplessly in his arms. Quent hushed him then, as Jace’s body still quivered inside his, and talked him down. “Shh…,” he whispered. “It’s okay. I gotcha.” “Sorry, Quent…,” Jace muttered. “Can’t be sorry, remember? You lost the game. No more sorry. Lost the sorry.” Jace shuddered in his arms again. “You were falling, Quent. I’m still stuck there. You were falling, and I was so afraid….” Oh. Oh God. Jace. Jace, who was so vulnerable but who refused to show it. Jace, who could be so easily hurt but never let Quentin know. “I’m here, Jace,” Quent said as Jace’s lean body started to shiver in earnest. “I’m here. I know you were scared, but I’m okay, right? I’m okay.” Jace pulled back, and Quent could see it now, the terrible, terrible fragility of his great heart, written plainly in his miserable expression. “I really love you, Quent. I mean… God. I couldn’t… I just saw my whole life, crashing to the ground with you. Man, don’t ever fucking leave me, okay? Ever.” Quent swallowed and rubbed Jace’s shoulders, making sure his eyes never broke with Jace’s limpid blue gaze. “Never, Jason. I swear. You and me—we’re, like, inseparable, okay? I’ll never leave. Not if I’ve got anything to say about it, right?” Jace nodded and buried his face in Quent’s neck again. They were both covered in sweat and come and random playing cards sticking to their skin, but they didn’t move for a very, very long time. Eventually, they had to get up, though. Quent needed help up, and they managed to shower together. Jace made Quent sit in the bathroom and dry off while he picked up the playing cards and threw them away. (“I don’t see us using that deck again, do you?” “No, Jace. It’s pretty much toast.”) They put on robes and ate the takeout sandwiches quietly, making small comments to each other but not saying anything important. Jace

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cleaned up the sandwiches, and they watched some television until Quentin started falling asleep, and then Jace turned off the television and all the lights and they crawled naked under the sheets—luxurious cotton sheets, because it was a very nice hotel—and simply graced each other with random touches. “Hey Jace,” Quent murmured before the ocean-roaring darkness took over. “What?” “I can go outside tomorrow. Wade in the surf. Read a book in the sun. Get on a boat. How’s that sound?” “Awesome,” Jace mumbled. Per usual, he had an arm thrown over Quentin’s middle and was burrowing into his side. “You know what we don’t have to do tomorrow?” Quent asked, clearly delighted by the thought. “No idea.” “Play cards!” Jace was still chuckling when Quentin fell asleep.

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… Meditations on the Game … Jace

PETER the architect was a thin, wiry guy with the sort of build that implied speed, and for the life of him, Jace couldn’t figure out why he was dragging his ass on the racquetball court tonight. “Wai… wait!” Pete stopped, leaning on his knees and catching his breath. “Nick’s turn.” “Wait? Nick’s here?” And sure enough, Pete walked to the door and rapped twice, and then Nick came in, all suited up for a game. Jace grimaced at them both in disgust. “Seriously? One of you couldn’t keep up for one game?” Pete nodded and walked to the door. “Mitch warned us about you,” he panted. “He refuses to come out here anymore now that Quent’s down for the count.” “He told me he had a client!” Jace protested, more than a little outraged. Was it too much to expect a little honesty from your lawyer? “He lied like a rug,” Nick said calmly, giving Pete a reassuring smack on the back. “I’m warmed up and hydrated, I just checked on Quent at the weight machines, he’s doing fine, now it’s time for the switch off. You ready, Jace? I’m all rested—I can take you!” Jace growled and smacked a serve that almost took Nick’s head off, and Nick struggled to keep up for the next five serves. No. Nick obviously could not take him if he was all puffed out and winded by the end of the set. “Oh God,” Nick panted, letting the last ball just zing right by without even trying to retrieve it. Sweat was sopping through his sandy-brown hair, and his broad chest was heaving in and out in an

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attempt to pump oxygen. “Geez, Jace, when does Quentin get his cast off?” “Tomorrow,” Jace growled, seeing where this was going. “But it’s going to be another two weeks or so before he can play on that ankle.” “Oh Christ—how much will it cost us to bribe him to fuck you into submission?” Jace glared at him. “To what?” “Something, anything… buddy, this much hostility can not be good for you! You’re not going to make it until he’s back to 100 percent if someone doesn’t do something to fix you!” “I don’t need fixing!” he snapped, and then, because Nick had that cop’s ironic eyebrow thing going on, he felt compelled to tell the truth. “I just need Quent,” he sighed, some of the fury that had sustained him through the racquetball game seeping out his spine a little. “He’s still living in your apartment!” Nick kidded, but even that cut to the quick. “It’s our apartment,” Jace snarled, because it was true. Jace had added his name to the lease when they’d gotten back from Hawaii. It had been something he’d meant to do from the minute Quent had moved in, but hadn’t. “Oooo-kaaaaay,” Nick said, holding his hands up to ward off Jace’s bad temper. “So it’s your apartment, Quent’s living in it and the rest of us are dying to know what big bear-sized bug crawled up your ass and started giving sphincter lessons, because I gotta tell you, you’re making being an asshole into an art.” Jace grunted and looked at him, pained. He couldn’t deny it. It wasn’t just his friends on the racquetball court who’d been sliced by the fine edge of his temper in the last few weeks. Just that morning he’d gone looking for Elsie and had found Lexi in the copy room, wiping red eyes. When he asked her what was wrong, she’d taken one look at him and burst into sobs. Quentin had needed to go in and calm her down and give her a half day off with pay and a free lunch. Quent had walked by Jace on the way to his office and smacked him on the back

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of the head. “Get over it!”—and then gone back to his own work with a long-suffering sigh, and Jace had needed to agree. It was just… he missed his friend. They were still together at the end of the day, but they worked in separate offices, and, well, their routine had been disrupted. There was no more working out or walking to their office—Quent had tried the walking thing and had spent the rest of the workday stoned on painkillers. Their morning walk, shoulder to shoulder, didn’t happen anymore. Their afternoon routine—at least three days a week—of racquetball and some other competition, whether it was the treadmill or basketball or anything else, was in shreds. And Jace, for all his acknowledgment that he loved Quentin, was now forced to both admit and live with the absolute impossible. He needed him as well. “I’m a real bastard without him,” Jace apologized, and Nick gulped some water and nodded. “Yeah, I hear that. Why?” Jace looked at him in outrage because the question was… was self-explanatory. “Because! Because he’s… he’s Quent!” Nick cocked his head to the side like a small child observing a bug. (The look was only enhanced by his boyish face and big brown eyes.) “Do you have a poker metaphor for that, Jace, because I need more to go on. I love the guy like a brother, but if I had to see him every day, I might throw him off a building. You need to tell me why you get Quent withdrawals when all you’re missing is the walk to work and your gym routine.” Jace scrubbed his hand through his sopping hair and missed the days when he practically shaved himself bald once a week and left it at that. “I… he… he’s nicer than I am! He… he talks to little old ladies in elevators and remembers the secretaries’ birthdays and tells me when I’m being an ass. He… he makes sure I’ve got my research done and knows how I like my bagel, and… and… he’s just… you know….” Nick continued to look at him like a science project, and Jace flailed for words. “He’s just the other half of my goddamned soul, okay? Is that so damned hard to understand?”

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Nick wrinkled his nose and took another drink of water. “God, do you think that’s just because you’re gay, or am I going to have to deal with that too when I find a nice girl and settle down?” Jace thought of that feeling, that reassuring feeling of having Quentin by his side in the morning, of watching him cook something simple at night. Then he thought of watching Quent fall from the sky and the lines of pain etched on his face as he dealt with an injury and didn’t want Jace to know how bad it really hurt. “I’m a bastard,” Jace said with passion, “because I hate this feeling enough to wish it on everybody.” Nick blinked, picked up his towel, and led Jace out of the court and into the hall, both of them heading for the weight room, where Quent would still be struggling gamely with the exercises he could do. “Wow. I never really thought of love as being a curse before.” “That’s because you’ve never had it jerked away,” Jace muttered and then wanted to bang his head against the wall. Nick didn’t want to know his bullshit. That was a rule. Guys didn’t want to know one another’s bullshit. It was like every quiet, painstaking revelation made to Quentin had been made under duress. The only reason Jace had managed it was because it was Quentin, and because half the time he seemed to read Jace’s mind anyway, and the other half the time, he was more than ready to learn. Nick was still looking at him like a new bug, and Jace thought he could handle that. Good. Jace would be the new stink beetle, and Nick would poke him with a stick a few times and then walk away with his hand over his nose. Excellent. Jace couldn’t have planned it better. Except if Jace had been planning this, he should have blurted out his personal information to Peter, who would have simply passively let whatever it was wash over him, or maybe Mitch, who would have plugged his ears and run away screaming. Nick, Randall, or Jesse— they all worked in professions that demanded they get a little closer than that, and suddenly Nick’s vice cop was all in the forefront. “Who’d you lose?” Jace shrugged, feeling foolish. “My uncle and his partner. It was three years ago—I missed a game, remember?”

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Nick made a “d’oh” sound and nodded. “Quent didn’t give us too much info. He said they raised you and then said it was personal.” Jace felt better. That was Quentin, having his back. “They raised me. It was personal. But you know what it really was? It was instructive. You want to know why?” “I have no idea.” “Because the thing was, they went out together. And that’s… that’s all I want. I want to go out the same way we’ve done everything. Together.” Jace shook his head again, still shaky from the idea. “If he ever drops out of the sky without me again, my heart is going to just fall out of my fucking chest.” Nick sighed. “God. Thanks. If I was ever thinking of falling in love, you just fucking cured me. And about all I’ve got for you is to talk to him. Just talk to him. Man, Quent’s a smart guy. He’ll come up with a way to help you deal with this. Me? I’m just glad I’m not in your shoes.” “God, you’re a pussy,” Jace muttered, but the truth was, he felt better for the conversation. Any conversation that ended with “talk to Quentin” pretty much met his requirements for sound advice. They found Quent being spotted by Peter while doing bench presses, and Jace bumped Pete aside so he could spot the last set. Quentin grinned up at him, pushing up with all his strength, saying, “Last three!” Jace understood and held the barbell for three more before setting it down in the notch. “So,” Quent said cheerfully, “are we ready to buy these guys dinner for their trouble? You played them both into the ground, it’s the least we can do!” “Uhm, we’ll take a rain check, right, Pete?” Nick punctuated the social evasion with an elbow to the ribs that merely left Pete looking puzzled. “But they said Korean barbecue, and I was really looking—ouch! Jesus, Nick, what in the hell was that for?” Nick rolled his eyes at Jace and gave a long-suffering sigh. “That was because Jace wants to have a nice talk with his boyfriend so he can

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deal with his emotions and stop being such a fucker to the rest of us, okay?” Pete just looked at him. “So. You go from being too subtle to spilling their business all over the gym. Do you have a middle ground, Nick, or do you hop from the lava island to the iceberg in a single bound?” Nick blushed, obviously uncomfortable. “Middle ground is for pussies who can’t commit. Now can we go already? At the rate Quentin hobbles, we can beat them out of the shower and pretend this never happened.” Quent watched them go with bemusement. “Shit. I was really hoping for Korean barbecue too!” Jace sighed. “We’ll get takeout on the way home. I’m sorry. I had no idea he was going to do that. C’mon, I’ll give you a sweaty shoulder to lean on.” Quent took him up on it, and together they began the trek to the showers. The health club took up three stories in a corner building in San Francisco, and the weight room was on the third floor. They had two escalators and three hallways before they got to the showers, and Quent really did need the help. “So why’d he bail?” Quent’s sweat never really smelled like sweat. Jace always felt acrid and disgusting after working out, but Quent just smelled… well, really damned sexy. Could be one of the reasons Jace had made his first move in the locker room in the first place. He smelled warm, and musky, and a little sweet, and as he leaned on Jace, Jace just wanted to wrap Quent up in his arms and absorb him. So in response to Quent’s question, Jace made a little helpless, needing sound, and the arm he held around Quent’s waist tightened convulsively. “Jace?” Quent stopped walking. The gym was almost empty this night, and Jace was grateful that the hallway was deserted. This idea— the one unleashed when he’d been talking to Nick—was pressing at his chest, and he had the feeling that it was going to be like taking a leak when you’d been in the car drinking coffee for hours. Once he started, he wasn’t going to be able to stop.

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“See,” Jace muttered, looking down the empty hall. “See… the thing is… I used to be mad, really mad, at Mike and Jefferson. I… I used to think it was damned selfish of them to go and die together on me. I… you know. They were my chance to need someone. I… I still felt like I needed them, and they left.” Quent’s brown eyes looked sideways, and then his chin followed. He looked up and down the hallway too, and then turned deliberately and leaned against the wall. And then he grabbed Jace’s hips in both hands and pulled him forward so their stomachs were touching and Jace was straddling both of Quent’s calves. Jace was so undone he didn’t even protest. “I need you,” Quentin said softly, and Jace shuddered and leaned into him some more, resting most of his weight on Quent’s chest, even though Quent was the one with the broken leg. “I need you every day. I need you to keep me from giving up and doing the easy thing, and I need you to forgive me when I do. I need to know you love me, and I need to know you’ll keep loving me, even if I feel like I sometimes let you down.” “You never let me down,” Jace said quickly, and Quent’s full mouth quirked up underneath his goatee. “And I need to know that too,” he added gently. Jace nodded, and his throat worked, and he cursed himself, because Quentin was so much braver than he was where it counted. “I need you,” he whispered after a moment. “I really miss our walks in the morning. I miss being with you at night. And I’m mad, so damned mad, that I need you this badly when I already have you and I trust that you’ll be there in the morning. It’s just that I need you, and I don’t know if I trust anyone to be there in the morning, even when they go to sleep next to me at night.” Quentin reached back and cupped Jace’s head in his plain deskjockey’s hand, and pulled Jace forward until his ear was right up against Quent’s mouth. “No one can promise to live forever,” he said softly. “If you’re going to let yourself need me, you’re going to have to take a really big gamble.”

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The part of Jace that had been learning poker since he was five, that had picked up the basics at Mike’s knee, and that believed that it held the secret to all things, perked up. A gamble he could deal with. “What kind of gamble?” Quent pulled back and smiled. “You’re going to have to bet that this thing you feel, this thing you know I feel, that it goes beyond us. You’re going to have to bet that love’s a deep hand, Jason. That there’s more to life than numbers and research, more than just the cards you see. You’re going to have to bet that when the players are off the table, the game’s still there. Can you do that?” Jace broke out into a cold sweat, and he almost screamed no! and ran away. He thought about it. He thought about letting Quent hobble to an empty apartment by himself, and Jace, who never flinched or ran from anything, on the road in his car, going to hide in the mountains to never risk losing anything or anyone again. But Mike would have told him that was a coward’s mood, and Jefferson would have looked disappointed and sad, and Jace had to own up to the fact that he’d been raised better than that. He’d been raised with poker and fishing, with a predator’s instincts—and a belief in love. “I already do,” he said, surprising himself, and Quent grinned. “Good. Me too. You ready to go back to the apartment and seal that one, or are you going to hump my leg in the locker room again?” Jace laughed a little, because he’d been as randy and as impatient as that long-ago teenager, but it had been worth it. It had made Quent think about them. It had put things in motion. “I can wait for our bed,” he said soberly. “Excellent. Care to seal that one with a kiss?” Of course as soon as their lips touched, there were voices down the corridor, and Jace straightened up quickly for propriety’s sake. Quent grinned at him dryly and took Jace’s shoulder, and together they hobbled gamely to the showers and then, even more gamely, to bed.

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… Leaving It All on the Table … Quent

QUENTIN was pleased—the table looked awesome. He’d tried very hard not to hover when the deliverymen had been setting it up in the loft apartment, assembling the hardwood legs and fixing the ebony cover over the top so it sat almost seamlessly, keeping the kitten-soft red felt inside a secret. And he’d tried really hard not to second-guess himself. Jace had agreed to keep Quent’s furniture when Quent had moved in—the furniture and the houseplants—so he had to like Quent’s taste. Maybe Quent should just trust in that taste now, with this. He and Jace had been living together for nearly nine months and been together for a year. This was it. It was a commitment. It had seen ups, downs, disownment (on the part of Quentin’s parents), birthdays, holidays, and one unfortunate vacation that had resulted in a broken leg on Quent’s part, a panic attack on Jace’s part, and some blinding sex as the two of them found equilibrium. It had also planted the seeds for this table. It was sort of a wedding present. Quentin ran his hands over it, liking the way the wood warmed with his touch. It was beautiful. It was big enough to accommodate all of their friends for poker night. It was sturdy—really sturdy—with thick, plain legs instead of something ornately carved, because they all liked to drink when they played, and they were big men, and no one wanted to worry about breaking the table into splinters when they stumbled against it. It also had a clever compartment underneath to keep their chips and their cards—and Quentin had purchased a complete set of chips (wooden, not plastic) and several new decks to

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warm that spot right up. He’d also purchased a bottle of everybody’s favorite liquor and new tumblers to go with it. The poker table was sitting in the open space that most people might use for a dining room table (Jace and Quent usually ate side by side at the counter that separated the kitchenette from the rest of the loft), and it had cost a shitload of money. It was also the only thing that had entered the apartment as theirs—not Jace’s or Quent’s—theirs. And it was poker—the water they swam in; the air they breathed; the language they spoke; the solid, bass, masculine sound of love that had no soft edges. This table, and their friends coming to their apartment to play on this table, was a very definite statement. Jace didn’t always take those the way Quentin thought he would. And hence, the nervousness. Quentin’s contemplation of the table was interrupted by Jace himself breezing into the apartment with his key. “Oh shit! You’re early!” Wow. That was smooth. Maybe next time Quent wanted to make a statement about their relationship, he could drive them out to a cattle farm and stand knee-deep in cow chips to profess his undying love. Jace looked at him in surprise. “I was coming home to change for poker night. I thought you were going to the bank. What in the hell is that?” “I lied,” Quentin snapped. “And that is a surprise.” “It damned sure is!” Jace’s lips quirked in at the corners, and Quentin was pretty sure he wasn’t mad. The love of Quent’s life was hanging up his summer-weight trench coat and taking the steps down into the sunken living area of the apartment, looking speculative, like he usually did when dealt a new hand of cards. Quentin backed up and folded his hands over his chest. “Do you like it?” Jace rubbed his hand over what used to be his scalp trim. He’d let his hair grow in just a little longer, and Quent liked it. It was dark blond, just like Quent remembered it from college, and it was just long

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enough to be soft under Quent’s fingers when they lay in the dark and Quent touched it, thinking Jace was asleep. Jace looked up, and his vodka-blue eyes met Quent’s, the little lines in the corners crinkling up. “It’s gorgeous,” he said, sounding surprised about it. “Why is it here?” Quent hated feeling this uncertain. He was shifting from foot to foot and feeling really uncomfortable. “You said I could decorate,” he offered, stroking his beard a little. “I did.” Jace looked at him sharply. “But you’ve been here for nine months.” Quentin swallowed. “It’s a gift.” “From who?” “From me.” Very little surprised Jace, but that did. He extended his bluntfingered hand and stroked the wood and then looked sideways, blinking rapidly. “For me?” Quentin swallowed again. They were standing a few feet apart, shoulder to shoulder, both of them still in their work suits, Jace in his gray pinstripes, Quentin in the dark brown he knew went well with his hair and eyes. “Does anyone else live here?” he asked, scowling. “Quent, this is a helluva gift.” Quent fidgeted, put his hand on the top of the table next to Jace’s. “It’s, uhm. Well. It’s like a commitment thing.” If anything, the air between them went even more still. “Like a wedding gift?” Jace’s voice was completely neutral. Oh Christ. It sounded so very sentimental. “Yeah,” Quent said, his hands growing cold with sweat. “I don’t do the white dress thing, though.” “Thank God.” For the life of him, Quentin couldn’t think of a comeback to that. “I like it,” Jace said roughly in the weighted silence.

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“It’s yours.” Jace’s hand, which had lain still on the table next to his, moved then, covered Quent’s, lacing their fingers. “Ours,” he rasped. “It’s ours.” Quent leaned a little closer, felt foolish, said it anyway. “I guess it’s me that’s yours.” He was unprepared for what happened next. Jace was on him like a cheetah on an antelope, practically snarling in need, and Quentin could only do what he’d always done— open for him. Quentin found himself pressed back against the table, being devoured, devouring, panting, gasping, as Jace invaded his mouth again and again and again. “Mine,” Jace rasped, and Quent managed “Yours!” before his mouth was taken and savaged again. They thrust their groins together through their suits, and Quent felt Jace’s enormous erection up against his thigh. He groaned, ground back, listened to Jace’s growl against his mouth, his throat, his chest. Jace ripped Quentin’s dress shirt off savagely, the buttons popping in scattered directions, and both shirt and suit jacket were shoved down Quent’s shoulders and plopped on the floor to be left there in a puddle. Jace kissed/suckled/nipped his way down Quent’s chest, past pointy, aching nipples, down to his tender stomach (as Quent almost doubled with the ticklish arousal of Jace’s five o’clock shadow scraping the soft skin there) and then to the stays in Quentin’s trousers. Jace stopped there, trembling, burying his face into Quent’s middle as Quent held his head, rubbing his hands in Jace’s short hair. “Mine,” Jace muttered brokenly, and Quent whispered, “Yeah, Jace, that’s yours too.” “Then prove it,” Jace growled, fumbling with Quent’s belt and trouser stays until Quent’s pants and boxers too were in a pile by his feet. Jace took his time then, grasping firmly, stroking slowly, and Quentin—Quentin was so hard, just from the wobble in his lover’s voice, that every firm touch made him grit his teeth and grunt just to

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keep from whimpering, from keening, from pleading and gibbering and laying his bare ass down on that expensive poker table, spreading his legs, and begging for everything Jace had. So Jace went slow, slow enough to torment, and Quentin struggled for purchase in his hair and finally begged. “Mouth, Jace. Suck… oh, God, suck my fucking cock….” Jace wasn’t slow as he shoved it to the back of his throat, and Quentin made a sound then, something between a groan and a scream, and then Jace spread two fingers and played with the head even while Jace engulfed his fingers and Quent’s cock in his mouth. Quent really did put his weight on the brand-new poker table then, because the feeling was amazing, and then… oh God… and then. Quent loved it when Jace did this…. Jace’s fingers fluttered around under Quent’s balls, along his taint, finding Quent’s asshole, and both of them, wet and slick, invaded him boldly, without apology, and then Quent really did scream and beg. “Jace, dammit, I’m gonna… you’re going to have to swallow… oh, Jesus, get ready… noooooo!” Because that amazing wet pressure on his cock and that tight, sweet invasion in his backside both disappeared, and Jace glared at him and pushed on one of Quent’s hips, turning him around against the new poker table even as he rose fluidly to his feet. Jace was still fully dressed as he leaned over Quent, the fabric of his favorite suit rough against Quent’s bare ass and the backs of his thighs, even against the smooth skin of his back. Jace knew it too—he rubbed his body just enough to chafe, just enough to make Quent arch back against him hungrily, begging for what Jace had pulled away from him at the last moment. “Jace….” Quent lay flat on the smooth top of the table, pressing his cheek against the cool wood and raising his ass in supplication. “God, please, Jace… don’t just….” Jace’s hands went to his belt, and he let Quent feel his now sure movements—the tease of the backs of his knuckles, the cold metal of the buckle, the slither of the leather on Quent’s backside, the cleft of his

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ass, against the backs of his thighs and his heavy testicles—all of that was a vicious teasing designed to make Quent beg some more. Which he did. “Oh, geez, you bastard, just… just… you want me. I know you want to fuck me. Just take me, goddammit, take me!” Jace’s belt and wallet made a clatter and a thump when his trousers hit the floor, and Quent was surprised at the glide of lube on his fingers as he tested Quent’s entrance again. “You want me to take you now?” Jace hissed, thrusting one finger inside deeply and putting pressure on Quent’s gland with the ease of practice. Quent whimpered. “Yes. Yes. Please. Just… just fucking please.” “Say it again,” Jace insisted. “Say what again?” Quent was lost in a painful haze of want and need—for a moment, he couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about before Jace had jumped his bones. “Whose ass is this?” Jace demanded, shoving in another finger, and Quent gasped. “Yours!” he promised, suddenly knowing. “Whose?” “Yours! God, Jace, I’m all yours. From my ass to my toes, man. My whole body, but”—oh, fucking lightbulb, when he was stretched out on their wedding gift begging to be fucked up the ass, but he suddenly knew what this was about—“but mostly my heart,” he whispered, no longer feeling foolish for the sentiment. God, but Jace must have needed to hear that in the worst way. He must have. The flared, plum-sized head of his cock was suddenly right… there instead of his fingers, and he stretched, stretched, stretched, and then slid into Quent as Quent locked down on his shaft. Jace pushed further, pushed further, until he was home, completely home in Quent’s body, and Quent was left trembling with possession and arousal and just fucking need. “I’m all yours,” Quent whispered in the sudden stillness. “I’m all yours, Jace. From my brains to my balls to my heart. Just….” Oh, God, his entire body was throbbing, needing what came next, right down to

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the hand that Jace usually put on his prick to make sure that he came, came fast, and came hard, whenever Jace was ready. “Just fuck you silly, right?” Jace whispered, a breath of humor, of security, in his voice, and Quent relaxed just a notch, just enough to take the moment from pain to pleasure, and then said the words that would set Jace free. “Man, I love you to death, but would you just fuck me already? Just fuck me into the fucking ground.” Jace pulled back his hips until his cockhead was stretching Quent again… and stayed there until Quent half whimpered, half groaned, “Jace!” Jace’s palm flattened on Quent’s back, his thumb rubbing a gentle circle for a moment, and then Jace thrust forward with everything he had. “Yes!” Thrust, thrust, thrust. “You like that?” “God, yes! “You like me inside you?” “Oh yes… yes, yes, yes, yes, yes….” “Only me.” “I’m yours.” “All of you.” “All yours.” The pounding continued relentlessly, and Quentin was almost tearful with gratitude. Oh yes, oh yes, come on, Jace, keep fucking, keep fucking, keep loving me, feels soooo good. “You want me?” Jace gasped, his frantic rhythm never ceasing. “Only you.” “Only me!”

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Like he could doubt it? Ever? Quent’s first male lover, the guy to pull him out of the big colorless closet he’d lived in for years? “Only you, Jace… please!” Oh, there it was. Jace was approaching climax, his movements becoming jerky, all his rhythm lost, and in the middle of that, his hand reached around Quent and grabbed his cock hard, almost painfully hard, but that was okay, that was great, because Jace wasn’t in a gentle mood, he was in a greedy, taking, begging, needy mood, and Quent was needing and desperate too. He gibbered into the table, his sweat making him stick uncomfortably to the wood, and gasped as his entire body started to tingle, from his stretched ass to the base of his cock, up his spine to the base of his skull. Oh, God… oh God, this was going to be fucking amazing— “Jace!” Oh holy Mary mother of crap this is huge. Quentin’s entire body shuddered, his hips jerking against the table and his hands banging, flailing against the smooth wood. He climaxed, exploding in come, all over Jace’s fist, up over his stomach (oh, dammit, on the new table!), his vision going blind and gray and spotty, and giving a shout that could probably be heard on the street many, many stories below. Jace groaned, pumping inside Quent for what seemed like ever, until he collapsed over Quent’s back, spent. Quent could feel frantic, calming little kisses on the back of his neck, his shoulder, and, as he craned his head as far to the side as he could, on his cheek. They lay there for a second until the edge of the table began to dig into Quent’s stomach and his spine started to protest from being forced onto the unyielding tabletop, and Jace began to shrink inside Quent’s body, sliding out in a gush of fluid and leaving Quent feeling vulnerable and used. “So,” he joked feebly, still out of breath, “is this what they mean by leaving it all out on the table?” Above him, Jace groaned. “Man, we almost managed, you know that?” He straightened and started working at the buttons of his own shirt (he’d lost the jacket earlier; Quent couldn’t place when). Quent pushed himself up off the table, thinking it was a good thing the

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damned thing was sturdy. There wasn’t a wobble to it, even after supporting the both of them. “Managed what? Managed to get through sex without a poker metaphor?” He turned and knelt to gather his clothes when he saw the spatter across the table and gave a little groan of his own. Still kneeling, he took off his soft undershirt and started to wipe feebly at the stain, aware that he was naked, dilated, and sweaty and doing housework at the same time he was wondering what you used to clean that sort of thing up—lemon Pledge? “I guess since we were having sex on a poker table, I’ll forgive us,” Jace joked and then said, “Hey—what are you…?” “We’ve got company in two hours to play on this thing!” Quent complained, and Jace was suddenly under the table with him, his own T-shirt balled up as they tried to make sure it was clean. “Why’d you do that?” he asked seriously, their tight fit under the table making Quent feel like a little kid in a blanket fort. “Invite company?” Quent asked, turning. Jace was close enough to rest his chin on Quent’s bare shoulder, and he did. “Yeah. Why the table, the poker night here instead of the club. Why?” Quent swallowed. “Because I love you, only you, and you love me and only me, and that’s who we are to our friends, and that’s how I wanted them to see us.” Jace blinked rapidly, his vodka-blue eyes suddenly losing their sharpness, growing shiny. “Aw, crap,” he said. He ducked his head and rocked back, ending up sitting bare-assed naked on the floor and using a clean spot of his T-shirt to wipe his face. “Jesus, Quent, you really know how to get to me sometimes, you know?” Quent decided that they really would need the lemon Pledge to get the last smudges off the hardwood and came out from under the table and sat down next to the love of his life and the man of his dreams—even when he’d denied he should be dreaming about a man. “Do I know how that feels?” he said, leaning his head on Jace’s sweaty shoulder. “To be totally undone because the person I love does

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something amazing? Every damned day, Jace. Why do you think I bought you the fucking table?” “Yeah?” Jace turned his head and dropped a kiss on Quent’s hair. “Yeah,” Quent answered, rolling his eyes. “I mean, you know. It feels like our whole relationship started because of the damned poker table. I thought… you know… it would be….” Words failed him, and he knew he was blushing furiously. “Symbolic,” Jace filled in quietly. “Like something old, something new….” “Except that’s not us. With us, it’s always been ‘cards on the table’.” Quent felt Jace’s fingers on his chin, pulling his face up for a kiss. This one was gentle and sweet, healing in its way, and kind. Jace pulled back and rubbed noses with him, a sort of peaceful smile on his lean mouth. “Cards on the table, Quentin? I love you. Forever and ever amen.” “Cards on the table, Jace? I love you, and only you. Forever and ever.” They searched each other’s eyes for a moment, and Quentin liked what he saw. Jace, who always kept his emotions so guarded, was, in this moment, as open as a hand of cards at the end of the game. His lean mouth quirked up, his eyes were shiny and crinkled at the corners, like there was a sweet, boyish smile threatening at any moment. Jace was happy. Quentin made him that way. “Amen,” they said together and kissed to seal the bargain.

EVENTUALLY they hit the showers and got dressed—not quite as fancy, since the game wasn’t at the club, but still nicely, dress casual. Eventually Quentin got out the lemon Pledge and cleaned the table up like new, and then the food delivery got there, and then their friends started to arrive. The table was a big hit.

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Randall, the shop teacher, arrived first, and he was impressed by the table’s workmanship. Jesse the newspaperman was impressed by the clever little compartments. Nick the vice detective was impressed by how much it looked like something he’d seen in an illegal gambling ring. Pete the architect was impressed by the design, and Mitch, their personal lawyer, was impressed by the cost. It wasn’t until they’d all gotten their food and sat down, ready to break the seal on a new deck of cards and take the table on its virgin run, that someone asked what the occasion was. “Us,” Jace said with one of his tight little smiles. “Quentin got it for me as a wedding present.” Quentin was so surprised he almost dropped his vodka on the brand-new red felt tabletop. He gaped at Jace for a minute, and so did the rest of the party, and Jace ignored them and positioned their cards. “You, uhm, make a trip to Vermont I didn’t know about?” Mitch wanted to know, obviously already drawing up the papers in his head. Jace rolled his eyes in disgust. “The wedding is here, moron. This is it. The table’s our altar; the cards are the vows. Now sit down, shut up, and play.” Nick smiled a little, looked around the penthouse apartment with its big windows overlooking the city, then at the two men who lived there. “Nice place for it,” he said appreciatively. “Does that mean I should have brought a gift?” Jace looked at Nick from under steely eyes. “Did you bring money?” Nick smiled back, his game face on. “Always.” “That’ll do. It’ll be mine soon enough.” Jesse tossed back his blond hair and grimaced. “That’s hardly fair—if we brought you money, what did we bring for Quent?” Jace shrugged. “Well, what’s mine is his. It works out.” “Yeah?” Pete asked amicably. He’d been the quietest when they’d both come out as a couple—it had taken Quent a few games before he knew if Pete was really okay with them or not. “That sounds like a marriage to me. Is this really the wedding?”

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“You’re our friends, I just spoke our vows, and poker is our holy place. What—you want Quent in a white dress?” Quent was suddenly on the receiving end of five very amused and interested glances. “Not on your life and fuck you all for thinking about it,” he told them with a smack on the back of Jace’s head. Jace rubbed his head and grinned up at Quentin. “Hey—I was trying to get you out of it!” Quent shook his head and rolled his eyes, and the guys laughed. “Wait a second,” Randall said, looking at the table, and for a minute, Quent’s heart failed and he thought he’d missed a spot. “Quent actually bought this as a gift. I know, I’m the one he had check it out to make sure it would stand up. So if this is his ‘wedding vow’, Jace, what’s yours?” “A trip to South Dakota,” Jace said, and he said it so quickly, Quent realized with a faint shock that he’d already planned it. “Really?” he asked, entranced. Jace shrugged and shot him a sideways glance with those ice-blue eyes that had so captivated Quent from the very start. “I actually have the tickets already online. I, uhm, sort of had them ordered and everything before I came home and saw the table.” Quent tried manfully to keep his complete enchantment from shining out of his eyes. “Really?” he asked, and he sounded like a besotted schoolgirl, knew it, and didn’t care. “Yeah,” Jace said quietly, looking at him directly. “I was going to do it during the summer, but things are going to be busy. I thought we’d go at the end of September. It’s really beautiful in the fall.” Quent couldn’t help it. He felt like he was glowing. “You know,” Mitch said, looking at him speculatively, “the only part that this is missing is when you guys kiss to seal the bargain.” “Haven’t you seen enough of that?” Jace snorted, but suddenly Quent wanted nothing more than to kiss Jace there in front of their friends.

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“Nah,” Nick said, his eyes dancing as he placed his hand. “Say ‘I do’, give us a kiss, and let’s christen this table!” Jace moved his lips close to Quent’s ear. “Should we tell them we already christened the table?” he whispered. “Not if we want to keep them here playing,” Quent whispered back. Jace pulled back and grinned what Quent used to think of as his shark’s grin. Now that Jace was his, it didn’t look nearly as bloodless as it used to. “I do,” Jace said, vodka-blue eyes wicked. “I do,” Quent responded sincerely. Their lips met briefly, in promise of more when they were alone, and then Quent pulled back and sat down among the applause of their friends. “Now that’s over with,” Jace said, his game face on, “who’s in, gentlemen? It’s time to play the game.”

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… Winning … Jace

WEALTH has its privileges. Jace had hired someone to come in and spruce up the place, washing linens and airing quilts, shoring up the roof and stocking the refrigerator, cleaning the chimney, stocking the firewood, and fixing the flue, so that it really did feel like home. The guys were coming next week, when their little cabin would officially become a hunting cabin, and no fish or deer would be safe on the hundred and twenty acres of property that now legally belonged to Quentin, and Jace was looking forward to that. But first, he was looking forward to seeing how Quent saw his old home. Quent hadn’t stopped smiling since they’d rented the car and driven the nearly two hundred miles from the airport to the lake cabin. He hadn’t been gushy about the whole thing (because if he had been, he wouldn’t have been the man Jace loved), but he’d smiled quietly and looked around with interest. When they’d passed the main drag through Point Taken, South Dakota, and had seen the high school with the season’s football stars posted on the billboard, Quent had practically giggled. “You were up there?” he asked, and Jace rolled his eyes. “Of course I was,” he said, and Quent had grinned at his arrogance too. And now, they were pulling up to the unassuming little cabin— three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a fold-out couch, and a small kitchen. The outside was stained wood with a shaker roof, and the inside was plain paneling and hardwood flooring, with giant throw rugs to warm the feet. Quent, city boy that he was, seemed to be charmed with the

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entire effect, but it wasn’t until he went scurrying for the bedrooms that Jace really knew what he was excited about. Jace was busy turning on the thermostat and getting a fire started in the already chilly cabin, and by the time he saw what Quent had been doing, it was too late to stop him. “Oh God,” he muttered. “My yearbooks? My old photos? Jesus, Quent, isn’t it enough to know who I am now?” “No,” Quent said, his lower lip coming out in a pout that maybe only Jace ever saw. “No. You’ve met my sister, you’ve dealt with my family crap; you know all about me, I’m an open book. But you—this is the only glimpse I’ll ever get into you as a child.” Jace took two steps into the room and flopped down on his old bed, the brown-and-gold quilt that had kept him warm as a child looking no different now that it had been taken out of storage than it had his last night here. It was, he realized, the night before he’d met Quentin Jackson and sighted his future like a shark sights prey. “I haven’t changed much,” he admitted shyly, looking at the picture of him in the yearbook. The picture was of him on the football team, calling plays. “That is the same look you use now, when you’re bullying the staff,” Quent conceded with a smile, and Jace ruffled. “I do not bully them! I just… urge them to a better performance— ” He glared at Quent and then had to concede. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I told you I haven’t changed much.” Quent’s look back was charmed. “Tell me you love me,” he said, and Jace rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I love you.” Quent lowered his voice and grew very, very sober. “Tell me you need me.” Jace’s throat worked, because this was still damned hard to say. “Yeah,” he whispered. “I need you.” Quent shrugged and leaned over to capture his mouth in a sweet kiss. “You’ve done all the changing you need to do,” he pronounced

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when they were done. “If you change your underwear at least once a day after this, you’ll be good.” Jace couldn’t help it—he snickered like a little kid, and Quentin took advantage of his weakness and kissed him again, and again, and again, until Jace was the one sprawled out on the bed and Quentin was the one propped up on his elbow and smiling down at Jace like he’d won something. Well, maybe he had. “So,” Quent asked, tracing Jace’s chin carefully—it was a rather frivolous gesture for them, but Jace figured he could let Quent get away with it. “We missed this week’s poker game—you going to make it until next week?” Jace grinned wickedly. “We could always play gin,” he said, “or cribbage, or….” He waggled his eyebrows, and Quentin blushed. “Go fish,” he finished, obviously embarrassed. “Best. Card game. Ever.” Jace nodded fervently, and Quent cracked up some more. “Doesn’t matter what we play,” Quentin said when his fit of the giggles was over. “No?” “Nope. I’ve got you. I’ve won.” Jace shrugged uncomfortably. “I thought I didn’t let anybody win,” he said, wondering if Quentin was maybe wondering if this last year had been worth it. Quent rolled his eyes. “No, no, baby. You didn’t let me win this one. I threw my back into it.” “You don’t throw your back into poker that way!” Jace protested, but not too hard. “Poker isn’t this important,” Quent said soberly, and Jace nodded back in kind. “Yeah. And poker wouldn’t let both of us win,” he said, meaning it.

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“Excellent. How about we finish looking at these pictures and then play that game of fish!” “That’s a plan. I love you, Quentin. Needed to be said.” “Never needs to be said. I love you, Jason. Let’s hurry up and play fish.” Turned out, go fish was still the Best. Game. Ever. And one they both still won.

About the Author

AMY LANE is a mother of four and a compulsive knitter who writes because she can’t silence the voices in her head. She adores cats, knitting socks, and hawt menz, and she dislikes moths, cat boxes, and knuckle-headed macspazzmatrons. She is rarely found cooking, cleaning, or doing domestic chores, but she has been known to knit up an emergency hat/blanket/pair of socks for any occasion whatsoever or sometimes for no reason at all. She writes in the shower, while commuting, while taxiing children to soccer/dance/karate/oh my! and has learned from necessity to type like the wind. She lives in a spiderinfested, crumbling house in a shoddy suburb and counts on her beloved Mate, Mack, to keep her tethered to reality—which he does while keeping her cell phone charged as a bonus. She’s been married for twenty-plus years and still believes in Twu Wuv, with a capital Twu and a capital Wuv, and she doesn’t see any reason at all for that to change. Visit Amy’s website at http://www.greenshill.com. You can e-mail her at [email protected].

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