“I know.” He grins. His smile is so contagious it almost makes me forget how badly this is going.
Ace crawls out of the tent, and I follow, pulling on my fleece for warmth. The cave entrance is a wall of white, snow swirling in the wind, but the fire is still smoldering. Ace feeds it a few more logs and melts snow in our pot, then adds the instant coffee once it’s boiling. We sit cross-legged by the flames, passing the M&M’s bag back and forth and sipping bitter coffee from our metal cups.
The wind roars outside. Ace talks about basketball, about a match last season where he got injured. About growing up on the coast, a stone’s throw from the ocean, and how much he misses it. I can feel him watching me as he talks, trying to get me to engage, and slowly, I do. I talk about the first time I saw that picture book with the yeti, about the endless research and dead ends, about my parents and their constant disappointment in me.
By the time we finish the last of the M&M’s, the storm is showing no sign of letting up. If anything, the sky is darker than before. Ace takes the empty candy bag and shakes out the crumbs, licking the last of the sugar off his fingers. My gaze lingers on his hands. On his mouth. On the way his tongue catches a stray crumb from his bottom lip.
I look away quickly, focusing on the fire.
“We should probably clean up,” Ace says, standing and stretching. His thermal shirt rides up, exposing a strip of toned stomach. “Wash off the travel sweat.”
“How are we doing that?”
He’s already melting more snow in the pot, stirring it over the flames. Then he pulls a few small towels from his pack, along with a bar of soap. “The old-fashioned way.”
My pulse kicks up. The thought of stripping down to wash while he’s right there makes my skin prickle.
But Ace doesn’t hesitate. He pulls his shirt over his head in one smooth motion, and suddenly I’m face to face with that muscular torso in broad daylight. Dark chest hair trails down between the grooves of his abs and disappears beneath the waistband of his pants. There are a few scars scattered across his ribs, probably from basketball. His nipples are hard.
Then he hooks his thumbs into his waistband and pushes his pants down, stepping out of them. He’s left standing in just his boxers, dark blue cotton that fits snugly around his muscular thighs and the heavy bulge between them.
My cock twitches.
“Here,” he says, tossing me a towel. “Dip it in the water and scrub yourself down. It’s like a sponge bath. It works, trust me.”
Oh, I trust him. Just not myself.
I pull off my fleece, my movements clumsy. My thermal pants follow until I’m standing in nothing but my boxers, trying not to meet Ace’s eyes. Goosebumps rise on my arms, and not just from the cold. Fortunately, the flames help warm my bare chest and stomach.
When I glance up from dipping the towel in the water, I realize Ace has taken his boxers off, too. He’s completely, unabashedly naked as he wrings out his towel. His cock rests halfway to his knee, soft but still massive, easily the biggest I’ve ever seen. Even the chilly air doesn’t seem to shrink it.
I want to look away. I really do. But it’s like a magnet. My eyes are glued to it, to the dark curls at its base, to the heavy sac beneath it, probably still full since he didn’t get to finishlast night. I think about how his cock looked then, hard and glistening in his fist, and a fresh wave of heat rushes through me.
Ace starts washing his arms and chest, the soap lathering against the dusting of dark hair across his pecs. He’s efficient, methodical, like it’s just another task to check off a list. He moves down to his stomach, then between his legs, and I watch, spellbound, as he soaps up that massive cock, lifts it to wash his balls, then rinses off with water from the pot.
“You keeping those on?” Ace nods at my boxers. “Or you going for a full wash?”
Right. Washing. I’m supposed to be washing.
I turn slightly away from him, angling my body so he can’t see me fully, and hook my thumbs under the waistband. My hands shake as I push my boxers down and step out of them fast. I hunch forward a little toward the fire, trying to preserve some modesty as I start scrubbing myself with the soapy towel.
“Dude, you don’t have to hide,” Ace says. “It’s just us. Two guys. Nothing I haven’t seen before.”
Easy for him to say. His body is like a goddamn work of art.
“The cold doesn’t help,” I mutter, still facing away from him. “Shrinkage.”
In reality, the opposite is happening. My cock is starting to swell, thickening between my legs, and that makes me hunch even further.
“Seriously, it’s fine.” He chuckles. “You saw me jerk off last night. Pretty sure we’re past being modest.”
My face flames. I scrub harder at my chest, the rough towel scraping against my skin.
“You don’t need to be self-conscious, Simon,” Ace says. “You’ve got a nice body.”
“You’re kidding, right? I look like… a noodle compared to you.”
He laughs. “A noodle? Seriously? No, man. You’re lean. Good muscle tone. I bet you’d be a good swimmer. Long limbs, you know?”
