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Brett awoke to the sun on his face. He squinted and blinked at the open curtains, trying to remember where he was. He lay in an extremely comfortable bed, far more comfortable than the bed at his apartment. Of course, that bed held the evidence of his slide back into sloven living. An empty bowl here, a hardbound copy of his favorite science fiction book there. Nothing compared to what it was before but not exactly the way he’d want to maintain a bed while cohabitating. And this comfortable bed that wasn’t his was certainly cohabitated. There was an arm draped over his side, holding him against a hard, warm body.
Michel. The previous night sauntered back into his brain as it groggily woke up. Michel’s burning kisses, their writhing bodies, the way he’d felt both scared and safe at the same time. Scared of the intensity of his feelings, the fervor of his connection with Michel, the all-encompassing passion. Yet, it was Michel, the man he’d known so well and now knew in a wholly different, physical way. The man he loved. But even as he thought it, he knew last night’s sexual exploits didn’t mark the moment he’d fallen in love with Michel, although they certainly had intensified the feeling. This might be the moment when he knew it, but he’d been in love with Michel for a long time.
The body behind him stirred and hot, soft lips pressed gently against the back of his neck. The lips traveled, exploring his neck and his hairline, meandering over to explore his ear. When that scorching mouth grabbed his earlobe between sharp teeth and gave a tug that shot through him on the border of pain and pleasure, Brett squirmed and rolled onto his back. He looked up to find Michel leaning over him, his gaze soft and sleepy, his mouth a satisfied smirk.
“Ouch,” Brett said but smiled when he said it.
“What can I say,” Michel said, smirking more, “I play hard.”
With that, Michel dove into Brett’s neck, sucking on his throat.
Brett was torn between staying utterly blissed out and pulling him up and onto his mouth. He allowed the neck sucking to go on for another few seconds and then tilted his head down to meet those curious, exploring lips. Michel gave up his pursuit of covering him with hickeys and went all-in on the kiss, plundering Brett’s mouth again and again with his tongue, his hands running down his sides. It was all Brett could do to bury his fingers in Michel’s hair and hold on for dear life.
Michel shifted so they were pressed together from the waist down. He began to move, and Brett rocked beneath him at the delicious sensation. When they were both panting and breathless, Michel broke away.
Brett whimpered and tried to pull him back. “No.”
Michel pushed out of his reach and said gently, “Babe, I needed to get the lube.”
If he wasn’t so damn turned on, Brett might have found the statement hilarious, especially coming from his ultra-famous, serious boyfriend. But he was far too gone to acknowledge it and instead gave in to the sensations as Michel applied cool lube to both of their erections, rubbing them together until they came. Brett hadn’t thought it was a real thing but he saw stars.
It was a long, breath-heaving, sweaty moment before he came down and back to the hotel room to find an equally panting and sweaty Michel slumped over him. He leaned in and kissed Michel’s hair, smelling his shampoo and expensive styling products.
Michel grunted in response.
It wasn’t until later, while they were still sitting naked in bed, post-shower, joined by a room service-provided breakfast, that reality crept back in. Michel brought it up first, taking a huge gulp of his coffee and then saying, “Brett. We need a new plan for dealing with your sisters.”
Brett, his forkful of waffle halfway to his mouth, set it down regretfully and sighed. He couldn’t look at Michel because Michel’s body was naked and it was next to him and all of that meant it was a huge distraction. Michel’s body did things to him, things he’d rather dwell on than discuss his siblings. “Yes, we do. I was thinking we should leave today. Avoiding them clearly doesn’t work, and I don’t want to risk another encounter.”
Michel was quiet for what seemed like an eternity. “We can leave today. But we don’t have to go right away. We can avoid them for a few more hours at least. But we’re not going on another hike.”
Brett laughed and couldn’t resist ragging on his hiking aversion a little more. “Wait, don’t you work out?”
Michel nodded. “But working out is vastly different than hiking. I’ve had about enough nature to last me the next ten years.”
“Weren’t you named an environmental icon last year?” Brett asked, still laughing.
Michel’s face was serious as he said, “I care deeply about the environment, Brett. I just don’t want to be out in it all the time.”
Then he cracked a smile. “I don’t think anyone on the nominating committee thought much of my speech. Although I have noticed that people don’t seem to pay much attention when I talk.” He frowned, contemplating the last bite of omelet on his plate. “Do you think they care more about how I look than what I say?”
Brett’s eyebrows shot up. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You’re just realizing this now? Michel, babe, you do know that half your fame is because you’re hot, right?”
Michel gave him such a serious look that Brett’s eyes widened. Did Michel really not know?
Then Michel broke out into delighted peals of laughter.
Brett smiled and buried his face in Michel’s shoulder. It had been a while since he’d been so calm, so at ease, so at peace with who he was. It wasn’t just the effects of great sex. At least he didn’t think it was. The openness between them, the honesty, it felt like they were in a magical bubble where nothing in the outside world mattered any longer. Not sisters, not labels, not anything.
“Brett,” Michel said, “I think you make me a funnier person.”
Brett straightened so he could give Michel a look. “What?”
“It’s true,” Michel said, cutting a sausage with his knife and fork. “I’ve never been thought of as funny before and here I am, having hilarious thoughts about sausages and making jokes about my appearance.”
Brett laughed. “What kinds of thoughts about sausages?”
Michel stopped cutting, stabbed a piece of said sausage with his fork, brought it to his mouth, and ate it, staring into Brett’s eyes the whole time. He swallowed.
Brett nearly came on the sheets. “Jesus, Michel. If you keep doing that, I will jump you and ravish you.”
“Promises, promises.”
Brett contemplated the breakfast spread out on the bed. He wondered what would be the easiest, no fastest, way to clear it.
A knock on the room door interrupted this devious line of thinking.
“The mimosas,” Michel said.
“I’d go get them, but...” Brett said, hoping Michel got the hint he was rocking an erection and wouldn’t be answering any doors at the moment.
Michel slid out from under the sheets, throwing him a wicked grin. Brett had a moment to enjoy the sight of naked Michel before he put on one of the hotel bathrobes and left the room.
Brett heard Michel talking to someone and then the door closed. He waited, eating his waffle. It should have taken Michel all of ten seconds to get back to the room, glasses of booze in hand. Instead, he waited.
“Michel?” he called. “Everything okay?”
Having a boyfriend who tended to get in life-threatening scrapes wasn’t making this an easy moment for Brett. His bubble of tranquility popped long before Michel returned to the bedroom. Popped by fears of the person at the door not being room services with drinks but someone who was inexplicably pissed at Michel for some reason and wanted to kidnap him. Might it be someone from the crime club? That woman Danielle who’d thought Simon and Michel were an item and had tried to destroy him to get to Simon? Or another member of the club who hadn’t taken well to Michel’s interruption or how he’d led the media to them and broken up their secret meeting? These were very real, and very dangerous, possibilities.
When Michel did return, he wasn’t holding any glasses of orange juice and champagne. He was holding his phone. The phone Michel probably hadn’t checked since the day before.
“Oh, thank God,” Brett began, “I thought someone had—”
Michel cut him off. “Sylvia’s out of rehab?”
Brett, in his relief Michel wasn’t kidnapped, forgot all about not telling him about Sylvia. To be honest, he’d forgotten all about Sylvia. “Oh, that. Yeah, Lucille texted me about it two days ago.”
“But you didn’t tell me?”
The broken moment was squashed into the obscenely expensive carpeting.