When Cam opened his eyes, it took a moment for him to realise where he was.
A number of impressions occurred to him at once: that it was dark and he was in bed. That the red digits of an alarm clock swam in the darkness telling him it was 23:41. That the warm hand resting on his hip belonged to the man lying behind him.
Rob.
He was in Rob Armstrong’s bedroom, and soon it would be midnight on Hogmanay. The start of a new year.
Cam waited for his worries to creep over him, as they usually did when he woke up, but it didn’t happen.
Regret then, for sleeping with Rob? For saying out loud, probably for the first time in his whole life, exactly what he wanted?
I want you to put me on my knees…I want to—let go.
He considered that carefully, slowly blinking himself awake. No, there was no regret in him either. Not even when he remembered just how much control he’d given up to Rob, how much of himself he’d revealed.
So, no regrets, and for once, no stress on waking. Nothing but the soft darkness and Rob’s warm body behind him. And an unfamiliar feeling of contentment.
Cam shifted, his buttocks brushing against Rob’s groin as he did so. The movement made Rob stir behind him, his hand flexing on Cam’s hip then stroking up over his ribcage.
His breath whispered over the nape of Cam’s neck as he murmured, “What time is it?”
Cam liked the sound of his voice, all husky with sleep.
“Quarter to midnight,” he murmured back.
“Almost time for the Bells. Do you want to…?” Rob trailed off, his tone a little uncertain and Cam looked over his shoulder to read his expression, but all he could see was the outline of Rob’s head.
“What?”
“Get up? See the New Year in?”
“Okay,” Cam said carefully, wondering why Rob sounded so tentative suddenly. “Let’s do that.”
Rob didn’t say anything more, just moved away, clicking the bedside lamp on so that low light filled the room, and rolled out of bed. Cam watched, blinking, as Rob quickly pulled on boxers, then a T-shirt, his back to Cam. No eye contact.
Like he couldn’t wait to put some distance between them.
Perhaps Rob regretted what they’d done?
Ignoring the pang of disappointment that thought provoked, Cam forced himself out of bed and began to search the floor for his own abandoned clothes. He found his jeans and briefs first and pulled those on. His T-shirt was nowhere to be seen though and when he glanced at Rob to ask about it, the wary expression on Rob’s face made him feel a little sick. He looked away again without saying anything, fixing his gaze blankly on the floor. Now, finally, the distant echo of incipient regret was beginning to make itself felt.
He’d let Rob see his innermost self tonight. That wasn’t something he did readily—he certainly wouldn’t have done it with some random pick-up from Gomorrah—but with Rob it had felt right to lay himself bare, to let Rob see him in all his naked need. Except that now he was beginning to feel stupid for trusting his instincts, for letting the depths of that need show, and for giving voice to it.
Please. Oh, please…
The very recent memory of saying those words aloud made a wave of nausea roll over him.
“Cam?”
Cam’s gaze snapped up. Rob was watching him with a concerned expression.
“Are you all right?” Rob asked.
Cam found himself defaulting to his habitual answer to that question.
“Yes, I’m fine.”
In Cam’s experience, that was usually enough of an answer for anyone, but Rob looked unconvinced and when Cam tried a reassuring smile, his frown deepened.
“No, you’re not,” Rob said. He closed the space between them in a few short strides, stopping just in front of Cam and paused there a moment, his gaze searching. Then he reached out, curving his hands over the roundness of Cam’s naked shoulders, stroking the warm skin with slow sweeps of his thumbs.
Cam felt pinned in place by Rob’s attention. Couldn’t escape the feeling that Rob saw him.
“Are you regretting what we just did?” Rob asked quietly.
“I’m not, no!” Cam exclaimed, his face warming a second later at how betraying his words were. Especially when he added, helplessly, “Are you?”
Rob looked almost comically bewildered at that. “No. Is that what you thought?”
Cam said nothing, just tracked the tiny changes in Rob’s expression, looking for clues as to what he was thinking. Rob was doing the same to him, their gazes locked together in a moment as intimate as when Rob had been inside him. There was a wondering look in Rob’s eyes and perhaps a hint of disbelief. And then, with just the tiniest creasing at the corners of those extraordinary eyes, it seemed to Cam that whatever questions Rob had had, they’d been answered because now he was doing that smiling-without-smiling thing, his gaze tender and affectionate.
“I don’t regret a thing, Cam,” he said. “I couldn’t be happier about what just happened. If you really want me to put it out there—what I’m thinking right now—I’ll tell you. I want more than just tonight. I want to do this again. Not just the sex, but all of it. The talking, the dinner, the getting to know each other.” He smiled then, open and unafraid. “If you feel differently, that’s fine, but, that’s where I’m coming from. That’s how I feel about what just happened.”
For a long moment, Cam just stared at Rob, blown away by his courage, by the way he’d just put himself out there, saying exactly what he thought.
It was hard enough to say what you wanted in bed, like Cam had earlier. But this—saying you wanted another person, and for more than just sex—that was so much harder.
In that moment, it occurred to Cam that expressing desire, maybe even expressing need, may not be a sign of weakness at all, but of strength. And that, sometimes—maybe—self-sufficiency might be its own kind of cowardice.
After all, he thought, remembering the landslide up on the Rest, even a mountain can’t keep itself together all the time.
Cam swallowed hard. “I want to do this again too,” he said. He settled his hands on Rob’s hips and moved closer, bringing their bodies into contact. “I want to see where this goes.”
Rob smiled then—fully. Not just with his eyes, but with his mouth too, lips curving and teeth flashing, and God, but it transformed him, that infectious grin. It made Cam’s own smile flash in response.
“That’s good,” Rob said firmly. “That’s very—good.” He slid his hand ’round the back of Cam’s neck, pulling him in for a quick, thorough kiss, then he drew back, still grinning. “Come on. It’s almost time for the Bells. Let’s see in the New Year together.”
Cam grinned back. “Let me grab the Champagne out of my rucksack. We might as well celebrate properly.”
* * * * *
Rob tuned into a radio station being broadcast live from the street party in the capital. It was a couple of minutes to the Bells and Cam was opening the Champagne, unscrewing the wire cage that kept the cork in place.
Once he’d wrestled it off, he took hold of the bottle and with one twist and a loud pop, the cork was out, the wine spilling over in a rush of foam.
“Come on,” Rob said once the fizz was poured. “Let’s go and look out over the water.”
He took Cam’s hand and led him into the dark conservatory. Over the radio waves, the sound of the busy crowds in the city sounded almost unreal. Happy screams and blaring music and a building anticipation of the excitement to come—the fireworks and the kissing and the Bells themselves. But here, on the quiet banks of the loch, a few miles away from the tiny village of
Inverbechie, there was nothing like that. Only the silence, and the darkness, and the quiet loch.
And Cam.
Cam, standing at his side. A man who, just days ago, Rob would have crossed the street to avoid.
It had stopped snowing now, though a thin layer of white carpeted the ground. The snow shone, bright in the darkness, and now that the clouds had passed, the sky was clear.
“It’s almost midnight!” the announcer on the radio shouted over the roar of the crowd. “Here we go: ten, nine, eight…”
Rob glanced at Cam. “Almost there,” he murmured. As dark as it was, the brightness of the snow outside threw a little light their way, enough that he could make out the angular line of Cam’s jaw, the gleam of his eyes, and, when Cam smiled, the glint of those even teeth.
“…three, two, one!”
The first toll of the clock bells over the radio waves was deep and resonant and an explosion of fireworks followed straight after. All the sounds and none of the sights. The sky above the loch remained densely black, pierced only by a few silver pins, while far away, above Edinburgh, fireworks exploded in every colour.
“Happy New Year!” the radio announcer yelled.
The clock struck again and Cam raised a hand, brushing his thumb across Rob’s cheek. He leaned down and touched his mouth to Rob’s in a tender kiss that was very different from the passionate ones of before. There was still heat and excitement, but this time it was contained. This time it held the promise of future passion coupled with all the time in the world.
Again, the bells tolled and Rob slid his arms ’round Cam’s waist, drawing him closer, deepening the kiss, loving the moan that Cam made in his throat as he did so.
And after that, Rob didn’t hear any more bells, or any of the invisible fireworks, or the announcer’s excited chatter. He was entirely too caught up in that perfect kiss to notice.
When they finally broke apart, the closing bars of Auld Lang Syne were playing and hundreds of tuneless, drunken voices were singing along. That song, so well-known for looking back, wasn’t being sung like a looking-back song at all. The band on the radio was playing it at a hundred miles an hour, and the people singing it were gabbling to keep up, laughing along. Whatever the words, the real words, actually were, what it was saying to Rob right now was, something good is coming, something really good is coming.
And that was when Rob realised—he realised that, as much as he’d loved Andrew, this was the first time in his life he’d felt like he was exactly where he wanted to be.
His rolling-stone days were over.
It was funny really, because he was standing in a house that had been a millstone ’round his neck for years, with a man who had been his enemy for months.
But somehow this house—this place—had become home. And Cam? Well, who knew what Cam might become, in time?
Rob lifted his glass, offering it in a toast and Cam clinked his own against it. They drank together, gazes meeting over the rims of their glasses, and it seemed to Rob that the fine bubbles that exploded in his mouth were better than any fireworks.
Cam smiled. “Happy New Year,” he murmured.
“Happy New Year,” Rob replied.
And the words were a promise, to himself, and to Cam.