Page 83 of Pansies

“Well,” said Alfie, “here we are.”

Fen’s eyes danced over him. “Are you intending to stay fully clothed?”

“Not if you aren’t.”

A slightly clumsy shrug and Alfie’s jacket slid off Fen’s shoulders, flumping onto the floor. It wasn’t a striptease by any stretch of the imagination, but the sudden revelation of Fen’s bare, gilded arms was the most erotic thing Alfie thought he’d ever seen. He wanted to stretch him out and lick him. All the way down, from wrists to ankles, and back again.

But Fen was scowling. “You don’t look very naked to me.”

Five seconds later, that problem was solved.

“Oh,” whispered Fen, staring at him. “Oh.”

It felt as real as a touch, as any other sort of claiming, warmth sweeping across Alfie’s skin in answer. And then Fen did touch him, following the thick black swirls of Alfie’s tattoo with unsteady fingers. “You are fucking unreal, you know that?By rights, you should be sprawled on a rock in nothing but a pair of”—Fen’s eyelashes flickered—“straining CK boxer briefs.”

“Sounds like you’ve put a lot of thought into this.”

Fen glanced down, then hastily not-down, then off to the side, blushing a little. “Maybe.”

Alfie was sort of into the way Fen looked at him. But it made him unexpectedly shy at the same time, like it stripped him a bit more, a bit deeper. “It’s just, y’know, bones and muscles and stuff.”

“And a hot-fudge sundae is just ice cream and chocolate sauce and stuff.”

Alfie gripped the inch or so of flesh at the top of his hips. “Yeah, but look at this.”

“So?” Fen’s hand slid over Alfie’s, then over his skin, his thumbs brushing the ridges of his abdominal muscles.

“I want one of those…” Alfie shaped a V with his hands.1

“You’ve kind of got one.” Fen’s fingers were almost but not quite ticklish, and a little bit cold, as they traced down the groove of Alfie’s obliques.

“It’s meant to be more defined. But I think I’d have to stop eating food. And I like eating food,” he added plaintively.

“Please don’t stop eating food.” Fen looked up, smiling a little, but gently. “I heard somewhere you need it.”

Suddenly Alfie noticed something important. “Hey, why am I the only one with my clothes off?”

“Because you distracted me with your hotness.”

He coughed to conceal his stupid, giddy pleasure.

“And if you have a problem with it, there’s a very simple solution.”

One of Fen’s wicked glances was invitation enough, and Alfie was on him like some kind of wild animal, pulling him out of hisclothes. And Fen let him, smiling and shivering a little, sometimes trying to help, so that their hands got all tangled together between buttons and fabric and skin.

At last, Fen was naked except for a single sock that had somehow been overlooked in the chaos. He glanced down at himself and back up at Alfie, shrugged, and…twirled? It was the most ridiculous thing Alfie had ever seen. Also maybe the most beautiful. A one-socked man pirouetting and laughing in a spill of dirty golden light. Fen finished with a flourish, head thrown back, arms extended, gleaming everywhere, from the tips of his fingers, all the way down.

Alfie gazed at him, entranced, bewildered. Was this something else he’d missed in his years of not-gayness? “What are you doing?”

“Well…you know. Naked in socks is just about the least sexy thing in the universe. I was trying to distract you so you wouldn’t notice.”

Like Alfie would have cared about a sock when there was so much else to be looking at. He’d seen Fen before, at the hotel, but back then he’d just been a hot angry guy Alfie had sort of accidentally pulled. He hadn’t beenFen. And now he was so much Fen it was almost too much. Leaving Alfie dazzled, and worshipful, and dizzy with lust. Trying not to make too big a deal out of it, in case Fen thought he was weird.

But, fuck, he looked so good. Effortless in his nakedness. Carelessly gorgeous. Lean and strong and glinting gold. All the mysteries of him laid bare to Alfie’s gaze.2 The long muscles of the legs that had enwrapped him. The tough sinew of the forearms that had strained beneath his touch. The knots of his knees and ankles, the bouquet of small bones that met at his wrists. The edges of his clavicles, his pelvis, the vulnerable places—throatand flanks and inner thighs—where his skin seemed impossibly tender.

Alfie wanted to touch, to taste, to be with him and inside him. To know him completely.

Their secrets spilled together, shared, in a moment of skin.

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