“I’m actually kind of cold now,” I finally say. “Your body heat was helping.” It’s a flimsy excuse, but it’s the best I have.
Ace studies me for a long moment, then a slow smile spreads across his face. “You want me to warm you up?”
“If you don’t mind,” I say, trying to sound casual, but my pulse is hammering.
“I don’t mind. Not at all.”
He moves back over me, but this time, he stretches out on top of me, skin to skin. The heat of him is immediate, a blanket of warmth that seeps into me. His chest presses against my back, his legs align with mine, and his arms settle on either side of my head. His full weight pins me to the sleeping bag.
“How’s this?” he asks.
“Good,” I breathe.
“Better?”
“Yeah.”
I can feel everything. The steady beat of his heart against my back. The tickle of his chest hair against my skin. The hard planes of his muscles molding to my softer frame. My hard-on is crushed between my body and the sleeping bag, and the pressure is just on the right side of painful.
“Still tense,” he murmurs. His breath stirs the hair at my nape. He moves his hips slightly, a small rolling motion, and I let out a choked gasp as the friction shoots through me likelightning. The wet spot in my boxers is spreading, a sticky patch that clings to my cock.
“Sorry,” Ace says, but he doesn’t sound sorry at all. “Just getting comfortable.”
“Right.” The word leaves me in a puff of air.
He does it again, another slow roll of his hips, more purposeful this time. Something hard presses against the cleft of my ass, digging into my flesh through the thin fabric of my boxers.
“Feel that?” he whispers.
I can only nod, my throat too tight to speak.
“That’s what happens when I’m warm and comfortable.” He rocks forward again, the pressure increasing, and I feel the shape of it now, the length and heft of him, growing harder with each passing second. “And I’m very, very comfortable right now, Simon.”
My world narrows to this moment, to the heat building in my stomach, to the drag of his body against mine. I have never been this turned on. Never felt this out of control.
“It’s not the altitude that gets me antsy,” he says, his lips brushing my ear. “It’s you.”
7
The words settle between us, dense and heavy as the snow outside.
It’s you.
I turn my head, my cheek scraping against the sleeping bag, until I can see his face. Ace is looking down at me, his eyes a darker shade of blue than before, no trace of laughter in them now.
“Me?” I whisper, the word barely audible.
“Yeah, you.” His hips press forward again, and those nine inches I got such a good look at last night are a hot, hard line against me. “From the minute I saw you at the airport. All shy and serious with your little notebook and that huge backpack. I thought, ‘fuck, this guy is cute.’ Then you started talking about yeti migration patterns and vocalizations, and I was done for.”
I’m speechless. My brain is struggling to catch up, to process this information, to understand how I’ve so thoroughly misread every interaction we’ve had.
“B-but you’re straight. You talked about girls. You?—”
“I never said I was straight.” His thumb moves in slow circles on the inside of my wrist, right over my pulse point. “You assumed.”
He’s right. I did assume. Because guys who look like Ace, guys who are so effortlessly masculine, they’re not into guys like me. They’re not into guys, period. That’s not how the world works.
“I’ve been losing my mind,” he continues. “Trying to figure out if you felt it too. The way you looked at me sometimes. The way you got all flustered when I took off my clothes. But I couldn’t be sure.”
