“That’ll show me. You sleeping more comfortably and all.”
Both of their lips twitched, and they burst out laughing.
“Fucking asshole,” Aaron wheezed and sat down on the bed that he’d clearly been using.
Quinn lifted his hands. “Guilty as charged.”
“Why are you here, Quinn?” Aaron asked quietly, his blue eyes serious again.
“Jimmy offered me coke tonight.”
Aaron tensed. He bit on his lower lip and then seemed to force the question out. “Did you take it?”
Quinn shook his head. “It was a test. Loyalty. I got away from it. Managed to make him feel guilty about asking. I just…” He looked away.
“Didn’t feel like being alone with those thoughts,” Aaron said quietly, in a tone that suggested he knew what he was talking about.
Quinn had noticed the bottles and the smell of old booze hanging around the house. It was a bit less now, but he hated the idea of Aaron self-medicating with alcohol. The scent of weed was present, and he could make an educated guess where it had come from.
“Look, we’re different people now. The chemistry is still there. I don’t want—no, actually, I do want to fuck you, but that’s not why I’m here right now.”
“Go take a shower. I just put fresh sheets in.”
While Quinn got undressed to his underwear, Aaron handled the prosthetic, taking it off and putting it where he could easily reach it when needed.
“Use my towel, I’m not sure if I have extras.”
“Okay.”
The whole time Quinn spent in the shower, his brain and dick had a battle going on. On one hand, he wanted to just sleep next to someone safe. He needed that person to be Aaron for reasons he didn’t want to think about.
But he was also horny after the whole emotional upheaval and his body craved a hit. It didn’t have to be drugs, it could be Aaron instead. He wanted to put his brain on a back burner and let his instincts take over. He wanted to map Aaron’s body, learn it again.
When he dried his body with Aaron’s towel, he wondered what to do with his semi. In the end, he walked out naked, not bothering to hide his dick.
“Can I borrow some underwear?” he asked, and Aaron turned his head away, flushing red as if he’d been staring the few seconds Quinn had faced him.
He pointed at where to find some boxers and Quinn pulled them on, then went around the bed to climb in. He needed to let Aaron drive. It struck him that he reallyneededAaron to make all the decisions. So he just settled down and looked at the man next to him. His fingers twitched between their pillows. And then he waited.
Chapter 10
Addiction was a terrible thing. Lying there in the moonlit bedroom, Aaron could read the history of it on Quinn’s face, in the faint lines across his forehead, at the corners of his eyes, and in the thinness of his face. He didn’t like that Quinn, who’d once been young and vibrant and full of life, had chosen to hurt himself like that. And yeah, maybe that made him the world’s biggest hypocrite the way he’d been drinking lately, but somehow it upset him more that Quinn, who until now had been enshrined in his memory as someone forever beautiful, had ravaged himself with drugs than it did that Aaron was currently working on doing the same with booze. Maybe it was because Aaron had never thought he was special, but he’d always remembered Quinn that way. Despite the way everything had ended between them.
And now here they were, lying on the bed, their faces turned toward one another in the faint moonlight, and Aaron suspected Quinn was waiting for him to make the first move. No, more than that, he needed Aaron to make the first move. That was nothing like the old Quinn either.
Aaron rolled toward him, and then lifted his hand and touched Quinn’s cheek. Quinn’s eyes fluttered closed, and he let out a soft breath, and Aaron’s heart clenched. He’d spent a lot of time telling himself that he hated Quinn MacGregor, but it had always been a lie. Even now, years later, they were drawn together like magnets, unable to resist this. Even if this was the dumbest idea in the world, it felt right in ways that Aaron couldn’t fully articulate. Whatever Quinn had come here for tonight, whatever he needed, he wasn’t the only one.
“I’m gonna fuck you,” he said. “Gonna kiss you too.”
The second sounded even more confronting than the first, and he was sure Quinn would refuse.
Quinn’s mouth twitched in the darkness—nervousness or the start of a sneer he’d tugged back under control, Aaron couldn’t tell. “Okay,” he said. “It’s been a while, though.”
“I’ll take it slow,” Aaron said.
Quinn pressed his mouth into a thin line for a moment. “That’s not what I asked.”
“Shut up.” Aaron slipped a hand behind Quinn’s head, guiding him gently as their mouths met and opened. Quinn’s tongue darted quickly against Aaron’s, and then drew back again. He was nervous, Aaron thought, of the softness of the kiss. This wasn’t the sort of kiss that was a prelude to fucking. This was the sort of kiss that led to making love. Aaron felt a rush of power to have unsettled Quinn in such a simple way, even as he resolved to soothe him with the same kiss. He slipped his tongue into Quinn’s mouth slowly and discovered the taste of his mouth. The bitter aftertaste of coffee and cigarettes.
