Chapter 1

1: Day 17, Night

The night bathed the scene and everyone involved in shades of gilt. Creamy bed-linens, amber lighting, solid wooden posts, swooping draperies. Even the privacy screens framed the scene with tall composed bones and billows. Colby Kent, out of clothing and into the least amount of fabric possible for preserving modesty, dove into sheets. Jill had commanded heaters to be brought, but the air was cold.

Filming, he thought. Filming this scene. This sex scene. With Jason.

With Jason, with whom he’d more or less rediscovered sex. Wanting. Desire. The way his body could feel.

He hadwanted Jason. He still did, though that was complicated. Even now, memories of that morning—and the night before—lingered. They sent shivers down his spine, delicious and bright and amazed.

He and Jason were…something he did not yet have a name for. Whatever it was, they were having it together: a promise that there’d be more than just the one night, a gentleness in Jason’s hands, a shared bed and ridiculous sing-alongs in a stairwell and hope. Above all, hope.

He’d be professional. They’d be professional. He wanted to be. He hated the idea of causing any extra delays, any more work. For any reason. Distress or self-indulgent pleasure.

He wasn’t feeling terribly distressed at the moment. Perhaps he ought to be, but instead he kept thinking about Jason Mirelli and tenderness and brilliant world-shaking orgasms and waking up in that aforementioned shared bed.

Jason peeled off his own robe and came over. Colby watched the motion of those muscles, aware that he wasn’t being terrifically subtle but unable to stop. Jason got into the bed beside him, no real hesitation now, only a brief meeting of eyes for the avoidance of surprise. The crew had thinned out again, mostly just Jill and Andy and Brian behind the camera and Hamid the boom mike operator in what must be a dreadfully uncomfortable position behind the screens. Jill had wanted to make this as easy as possible for Colby. For Colby and Jason.

Jason, of course, hadn’t done sex scenes with men before, on camera. Though he seemed at ease with the idea; more so, Colby’s head observed, than Colby himself, at least at the moment.

Though that wasn’t true either. Because this was Jason, and this was him, and he had the memory of that morning. Very much so. Very detailed. Very distracting. Very unprofessional to be remembering and growing more and more interested in doing it again, right this instant if possible. Drat. No helping that now.

Perhaps if he thought about the scene as a series of sequences. A dispassionate checklist of positions. Ways Jason would fit their bodies together. No, not helping either. Possibly food? Cornish pasties, late-night mysterious take-away pies, very American cheeseburgers, sausage rolls?

The sausage rolls did not solve the problem.

The bed creaked a bit, not complaining but accepting their weight. Jason leaned on an elbow, not coincidentally between Colby and other bodies in the room. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

“Tell me if I touch you anywhere you don’t want. I’ll start off with your stomach. And I won’t hold you down. I remember.”

“I’m doing all right,” Colby said, which was more than true. “I know you have to be on top of me, a bit, after I touch you…we can handle this.”

“I know you can.” Jason’s eyes held happiness like a supplicant at an altar: finding a revelation. Encountering the divine. “I know. Just letting you know in advance.”

“Mmm…thank you.”

“Ready,” Jill called their way. “And…action!”

She hadn’t given them point-by-point directions, though they had gone over the general rhythm of this extended scene: shots they needed to get, close-ups and caresses and bodies moving. Editing would handle the cuts and the stitching together, later. They just had to get enough.

Colby at the moment wasn’t worried. He could take on the world. No: they could. Himself and Jason.

Jason said the first line. Skimmed fingers over Colby’s stomach, sketching ships and sails and seashells. Colby’s whole body responded to the touch, to the call back to the morning, to the music of the afternoon.

He managed to remember to make jokes about piracy and boarding vessels. He let Jason gather up his hand and coax it lower, out of frame. He laughed and rolled over atop his lover, as Will Crawford, as a man given entry into a magnificent universe he’d never previously known.

This position bled into the next. Lying naked, Colby’s leg thrown over Jason’s hips. Jason’s hand stroking his back. A kiss, and another.

Will’s love and need wove themselves into Colby’s, inextricable. Will knew about numbered days and possible doom. Was choosing instead to throw himself into joy, without reservation, for as long as they had.