The reminder made Morgan look sour for a moment before he shook it off. “Good guess. Maybe you know me better than I thought.” He sat back on his haunches, knees braced on either side of Boyd’s waist, and gave the hem of his T-shirt a tug. “Your turn. I wanna see what I got in the draw.”
Did he know him? Boyd wondered as he searched Morgan’s face. Two hours and a suggestive DNA result ago, Boyd was pretty sure he knew the answer—that Morgan was, somehow, Sammy. But as always, Morgan’s staunch confidence that he was himself rattled Boyd’s assumption.
He wasn’t even sure that it mattered. Not to him, not right now.
But whoever Morgan used to be, it was who he was now, bruised and impatient as he raised a sandy-brown eyebrow at the lack of stripping, that Boyd wanted.
The idea felt almost blasphemous. Boyd was the boy left behind, the one who had to get up, go out, and live his life for two. It was his job to care, to turn up at Mrs. Calloway’s door once a year and let her whet her grief on him.
“Promise me something,” Boyd said as he grabbed his T-shirt and dragged it up over his stomach. The words slipped out of him before he could think about it, and then his brain went blank. Promise what? “Whatever happens, this is just us. Okay?”
Morgan curled up the corner of his mouth in a bitter smirk. He unbuttoned his jeans and let the worn denim slouch around his lean hips.
“You want this to be our dirty little secret?” he asked. “I can do that.”
Boyd snorted. “I can’t keep a secret to save my life,” he said through the folds of his T-shirt. “Not even somebody else’s surprise party, never mind an entire cock. I’ll probably tell the desk clerk we fucked on the way out.”
Morgan snorted laughter as he ran his hands over Boyd’s stomach and grazed his thumbs over his abs and up to rub roughly over his nipples. Pleasure plucked at Boyd’s nerves and made him twitch with a jolt of reaction that shot down his spine and clenched his ass.
“Noted. What, then?”
“It’s not about anybody else.” Boyd pulled the shirt off, left it wadded up behind his head like a pillow, and squinted up at Morgan’s backlit face. “Not Shay. Not Mac.”
Not Sammy, although he left that unsaid because it felt too strange to call his old friend right now, even just the memory of him. He figured they’d both get it.
“Just sex,” Morgan said.
“Just us,” Boyd corrected him.
Morgan leaned down and pressed a kiss to Boyd’s shoulder. His lips curved into a smile against his skin. “Just two exceptionally hot guys and all the fucking they do?”
Boyd exhaled in exasperation at the willful sidestep. He wasn’t entirely sure what, exactly, he wanted to say, but it wasn’t that this was simple… or disposable. But that seemed to be the last thing Morgan wanted to hear, and the more his hands roamed, the more Boyd came around to his train of thought.
“Sure,” he said as he dug his fingers into the heavy bulk of muscle in Morgan’s shoulders. “Why not. Keep it simple.”
He hissed a startled intake of breath through his teeth as Morgan bit him. He scraped his sharp teeth over Boyd’s tight skin and caught on the point of bone in his shoulder. Already stimulated nerves registered the dull throb and filed it away in his balls as pleasure.
“What was that for?” he griped anyhow.
Morgan looked up at Boyd from under his eyelashes, his chin on Boyd’s chest. After a second he lifted his head and propped himself up on his elbow.
“What’s so wrong with simple? This.” He shifted his hips so his cock pushed, hard and insistent, against Boyd’s thigh. “It’s simple. What I want is simple—you, an orgasm, and a good night’s sleep. I’m not the one with ghosts on my back, Boyd.”
Liar.Boyd held the accusation behind his tongue. It would just sound like he meant Sammy—and maybe he did, a bit—instead of the clumsy knob of a long-healed fracture in Morgan’s collarbone and the frantic energy that boiled under his skin whenever he felt trapped.
“You do make simple sound good,” he offered instead. “Maybe I should just shut up?”
Morgan’s chuckle sounded dark and heavy as it vibrated through Boyd’s bones, and he licked a kiss over his stubble-rough jaw. “I don’t care. You don’t piss me off. Most of the time. And when you do, I know how to shut you up.”
Boyd shoved his hands down the back of Morgan’s jeans and cupped the lean curve of his ass. He ran his tongue over the curve of his lower lip as he glanced down between their bodies. “Well, I was kind of hoping I’d get off first this time. I’ve had a long day.”
He glanced back up in time to catch the hot flush that swept over Morgan’s face. His eyes looked pale, more gray than blue, against the stain of pink in his cheekbones.
“I meant kiss you, asshole,” he said. “Not that.”
“Oh,” Boyd said. He grinned as he stretched his head up to claim Morgan’s mouth with a quick tease of a kiss. “Yeah, that works too.”
Morgan followed his head back down, teeth sharp against Boyd’s lips and breath hot between their mouths. He shoved his tongue into Boyd’s mouth and tangled it with his, almost harsh with hunger as Morgan explored him. He cupped Boyd’s chin in one hand, fingers spread along the line of his jaw to hold him in place. The pressure ached in Boyd’s jaw and across his shoulders. It felt like control and desperation stitched together, and it wasn’t how he was used to being kissed.
