Page 39 of Pansies

“Alfie Bell. Are you seriously telling me you watch videos of kittens on YouTube?”

“Uh, no.” He cleared his throat. Climbed to his feet and held out a hand. “Come on, up with you.”

“Are you trying to change the subject?”

“No, I’m trying to help you out of the bath you fell into.”

“The bath I fell into because I didn’t want you to touch me.”

Alfie froze. “Look, you’ve got no reason to believe me, but I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“It’s not that.” Fen’s fingers curled around Alfie’s wrist, hisgrip as rough and strong as Alfie remembered. He was so light and supple, though, that it took only the smallest of tugs to de-bath him and bring him flying into Alfie’s arms like a dancer.

They were pretty much hip to hip now, crushed together in that tiny, grimy bathroom. And Alfie should probably have been letting go and stepping back, but Fen was not only still holding on, he was pressing closer, tucking himself into Alfie like he belonged there. He sighed, the waves of his breath lapping warmly against Alfie’s neck. “You see the problem?”

Alfie really didn’t. “Problem?”

“When you’re touching me, I have trouble remembering why I don’t like you.”

“That doesn’t give me much motivation to stop.”

No answer from Fen. Just the rub and press of his callused palms.11

“Are you telling me to?”

Fen swallowed. Lifted his gaze to Alfie’s. “No.”

He’d meant to be classy about it—he could totally be classy—but the moment he got his mouth on Fen’s, felt it open to him, warm and slick and eager, all he could think wasmore. Fen tasted so right and smelled so…sonice. Man and flowers, which should probably have been weird, but it just made Alfie want to strip him naked, hold him down, and lick the sweat and all that sweetness from his skin. But maybe Fen wanted the ravening-beast version of Alfie, because he came at him just as wild, moaning and clinging and sort of fighty, but fighty in a good way, until everything got full-on, face-sucking, cock-groping porno.

It was strobe-light sensation: electric bright flashes of hands and lips and bodies. Alfie’s belt was half-undone—clumsy fingers against his stomach—Fen’s teeth were at his neck, rough breath in his ears. And his hands were full of Fen, full of that perfect,provocative arse, which fit his palms like it had been designed for Alfie to grab and paw at. Though for all his wiry strength, Fen was slight compared to Alfie, which meant one particularly urgent kiss-squeeze-fumble nearly sent them both toppling back into the bath.

Alfie had just enough of his brain left to try and steady them. Unfortunately, the bathroom was too small for miracles, and the best he could manage was slamming Fen into the wall. Sexy, in a way, especially when Fen flung both his legs around him. Less so when a network of little cracks exploded across the tiles and a fresh shower of plaster tumbled down on top of them.

It was just enough to give Alfie pause.

“Shit.” He realised just how heavily he was leaning into Fen and eased up. “I’m really sorry.”

Fen wheezed, but he didn’t seem upset. The opposite, actually. He was pink and fluffy, his hair a fuzzy halo, and his glasses crooked. The closest to happy Alfie’d ever seen him. Even when they’d been together at the hotel, there’d been other things going on—a legacy of anger and hurt. This was a glimpse of Fen as he truly was, or should have been, breathless and laughing and free. He squinted upwards. “I think we did more damage to the bathroom. But we should probably…um…stop. In case you blow my house over like the Big Bad Wolf.”

“There’s a joke in there somewhere.”

“Only if you want to beobvious, Alfie Bell.”

Truthfully, Alfie was more than willing to risk the future of the bathroom, the house, and the entire building. Partly out of general Fen-based lustfulness, but also because if they stopped touching, Fen might remember he didn’t like Alfie much and get sad and bitter and sharp again. Not that it was fair, or probably practical, to try and keep someone out of their mind on sex. Especially straight after a cease and desist.

Stepping away, he let Fen get his feet back on the ground. And then—in a kind of panic, because now they weren’t kissing, he didn’t know what to do with himself—Alfie found himself going up on tiptoes to examine the place where the shower rail had ripped out of the wall.

“It’s fine,” he declared with great authority for someone who knew absolutely nothing about DIY. “Bit of filler, drill a new hole, job done.” It sounded very like the sort of thing his dad would say.12

It must have been convincing because Fen rolled his eyes. “Of courseyou’dknow what to do.”

“It’s just DIY.” Where was this coming from? This sudden need to prove he could fix bathrooms as well as break them. When Alfie was pretty sure he couldn’t.

“I don’t do DIY. I do CSE.”

“CSE?”

“Call Someone Else.”

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