Instantly - 1. Instantly

I met him on a full moon, though at the time I had no idea of the significance of this. I was walking home from work in something of a funk, because despite having followed every instruction given to me by my supervisor, due to some tiny error deep in the source code of the project, the whole function I’d been working with had failed to run. So I had stayed late, dug through a pile of gibberish written by my predecessor, and worked out why he’d been politely but firmly ‘let go’ three months previously. I had planned to go and enjoy the first evening of good weather in the park on my way home, stretch out on the grass, and forget all about work, and the enormous pile of washing up I had to do, but by the time I left the sun was sinking into the twilight, and the city was full of fast moving tail lights as everyone else tried to get home. A chill breeze had picked up, rolling with it the scent of salt from the river: there was no point doing anything else other than get home, get warm, and lounge on the couch in sweatpants while browsing the take-out menus.

I waited at the corner of Seventh and Charleston for the walk signal, contemplating the potential benefits of garnishing pizza with duck sauce, and as the light flashed green I took a step off the pavement. I wasn’t looking when he hit me, and we collided hard enough that I was forced back and off balance. I didn’t fall only because a big, strong hand wrapped around my bicep, and for a single heartbeat I found myself chest to chest with a man I had never seen before. The image of him burnt itself into my brain, details I wasn’t conscious of until after he vanished: rich tan skin, the strong jaw, a curl of dark hair over his temple, the lines of his throat and collarbone. He was taller than me, broader by a few inches, but in that first fraction of a second all I could see was his eyes; bright burning blue, and hungry. I shivered as he let me go, and he brushed past, clearly in a hurry to get somewhere. I didn’t even think he’d really seen me, but I turned to watch him go.

And then he turned. I only saw half his face around the deep hood, enough of his profile to pick out cheekbones which could cut glass, and strong brows carved out with a chisel, but I knew he saw me. For the longest moment I stared openly at him, even as he gaped at me. Just as I was parting my lips to speak, someone crossed the space between us, and in the next moment he was gone, departed into the darkening evening. I walked the rest of the way home unable to think of anything other than the intense blue of his eyes, and that hungry desperate expression they’d held. I expect I should’ve found it unnerving, because there was a feral-ness about him that I didn’t recognise; but my heart hammered like I’d run a mile, and I buzzed with excitement. Whoever he had been, he was exotic and beautiful. As I dialled up my take-out for the evening, I wondered if it was possible to seek him out.

*

I daydreamed at work. The code swam back and forth in front of my eyes, making it hard to concentrate, and so I opened up another window and began to construct a simple program which would pick out random colours from an image and generate a hexadecimal paint palette based upon it. It was an exercise in stress relief, though it would have some practical application for the type of person who wanted to colour match their web pages to a certain picture. Mostly though, my brain was busy imagining the man I’d seen the previous evening with the blue eyes. I had already spent hours wondering why he’d been in such a hurry, where he’d been dashing off to, and whether or not any circumstances could arise in which he would’ve stayed a moment, long enough to talk. I wanted to know his name, and in truth, everything else about him too. He had seemed about my age, but it was hard to tell accurately, and he could’ve been anywhere in the gap of young professionals between twenty-three and their late thirties. Not that he’d looked like a young professional, not really.

He’d worn jeans, decent boots, and a leather jacket over a thick hoodie; and despite that, all I’d thought about all night was what he might’ve looked like naked. It had been impossible not to, because despite watching a film, and spending half an hour lying on my mattress immersed in an excellent book about the world’s first office computer, installed at the Lyon’s tea shop headquarters, the moment I had turned off the light, all I had been able to see in my mind was his hot burning eyes. So I let my imagination wander, and mostly it went south. Unzipping his hoodie revealed a chest made of flat planes of tense muscle, and he’d looked at me with one dark brow arched up into a wordless question. I stroked his chest, trailing my fingers down his sternum, over the ridges of his abdomen and down towards his navel. Somehow, all the rest of his clothes vanished without a trace, and I could tell he was happy to see me. I glanced down…

So that’s what the hungry look was about… I was just about to reach for him, when something hit me on the back of the head, and my eyes swam back into focus as the little Lego figurine bounced onto the uncluttered surface of my desk.

“Earth to Rick… dude, for fuck’s sake…”

“What? What?” I scooped up the plastic toy and tossed it back across the way to my nearest co-worker Gary. “I told you the next time you threw that thing at me-.”

“You’d set him on fire; I remember,” Gary sighed. “I only asked you the question three damn times.”

I blinked hard, but banishing the lingering image of the blue-eyed man was difficult. When I glanced back at my second work screen, I found that my little paint picker function had chosen me a dozen shades of blue to match the sparking colours in my imagination. I only hoped that Gary wasn’t able to work out what I’d been day dreaming about from where he sat.

“Dude, you were practically asleep.”

“I was not.” I glared at him. “What was your question?”

“I was gonna ask if the work for the recruitment website was done for the new client; but I see you’re busy…” he smirked at me.

“Like you don’t spend your down-time trawling the internet for more bits of plastic.” I gestured to his desk which, in accordance with The Rule of Geekdom, was covered in tiny yellow people, their pets, their plants, and half a spaceship Gary had been constructing during software testing sessions. “At least I was being constructive.”

“Your desk looks boring,” Cindy, our receptionist and quality assurance department chirped as she passed between us.

“Your desk isn’t even visible!” I shot back. Unlike my co-workers I did not suffer from an affliction with Lego, or the small space-warriors painted in frenetic detail that adorned the work stations of Cindy and our supervisor. Apart from a framed picture of my brother, my nephew, and me taken on his birthday last year, the only thing on my desk was a little vinyl painted model of a wolf. It had been the matching pair to the one I had bought my nephew at the zoo for his birthday, only to have him turn round and spend his birthday money on the other one. When I had asked him why, he had declared that I “needed a friend” – and though it was sweet beyond words, it stung for a six year old to be so perceptive.

I played with my little canine buddy as I stared once again at the code for the new client, but my gaze kept drifting back to the super blue colour palette on my second screen. Nearly twenty-four hours later, it was still hard to forget the look in his eyes, or the hard lines of his face and figure: in my mind the picture was clear as a graphic image from a comic novel. He looked like a bad boy; the hoodie and leather jacket combo of modern heroes and broody American television dramas, and I liked it. He wasn’t my usual type; my taste in boyfriends was for clean cut metrosexual kids with Ralph Lauren shirts and preppy coloured corduroy pants. But my imagination was full of the idea of someone different, and who didn’t look like my twin in the mirror.

I left my wolf on the keyboard and wandered towards home with my head already back in the bedroom. Despite the soft end of the evening sunshine, I had no intentions to go and lay in the park, because I doubted that my self-control was going to be able to resist my imagination much longer. Having hastily covered up the fact I had a hard-on under my desk in the middle of the day, I didn’t fancy walking home with my dick trying to wear a hole in my best chinos.

And then I saw him. I knew it was him from the moment I looked up, because my brain had committed his profile to memory in the few seconds we had spent breathing the same air. He was stepping out of an old fashioned butchers shop, holding a striped paper bag in both hands, and my libido lurched at the sight of him: I knew I couldn’t let him get away again. He seemed to pause, not turning one way or the other, and the people on the street parted around him as he stood there. I dodged around a man with a suit and briefcase, and then my world was filled with his eyes as he looked up directly at me.

“Oh, hey…” I couldn’t think of anything clever or witty, or even interesting, to say, and I hoped my complete ineptitude wasn’t about to be totally ridiculed. Worse still, he could brush past me like I wasn’t even there.

“Hi.” I didn’t think I’d ever been smiled at with such… force. His expression was like being hit with a freight train, and I was about to stagger back from the impact when he reached out and touched my arm again, in exactly the same spot he’d gripped so tightly the previous day. That morning in the shower I’d noticed the soft finger-print bruises and touched them with a happy smile: at least it hadn’t been a dream. “An’ how are you doing today?”

I giggled, and then because I was embarrassed, I giggled again, one hand covering my mouth in shock. To my surprise, he grinned.

“You like that, huh?”

“Uh-huh,” I nodded quickly, and then ducked my head as someone stepped quickly around us, obviously in a hurry to be somewhere we weren’t. “I remember you, from yesterday.”

“Well sure,” my handsome stranger pulled the long fingers of one hand through his clean but messy dark ringlets, “I couldn’t forget eyes like that even if I tried.”

“Oh…” I blinked: I hadn’t realised we had developed the same obsession.

“I’m Theo.”

“Rick… er, Maverick.” A moment later I’d no idea why I said it, because usually I tried to keep my full legal name hidden from everyone I knew for as long as feasibly possible. He seemed so… overwhelmingly exotic and strange, and for a moment I wished we had something in common apart from our eye colour.

“That’s nice.” He spoke like we were alone, and his soft tone sent uncontrollable shivers up my spine. “Have you got time to come and have coffee with me, Ricky?”

It was another nickname I’d always hated, but I didn’t think there was a single thing he could say in his rich charismatic tone that I wouldn’t have agreed with, and a moment later I found myself walking at his side along the city street, watching the way we fell so quickly into step, even though his legs must have been several inches longer than my own. I had never been blessed with height, and I averaged out exactly on average, which was sort of boring and predictable.

“So how tall are you?” I asked Theo as he slid without fuss into the leather armchair opposite me. He had stayed at the barista station to pick up our drinks, and had decorated both coffees with cinnamon sugar and whipped cream. I was secretly delighted by this.

“Six three,” he shrugged, as though he didn’t tower seven inches over me. “In my family I’m short.”

“No!” I gaped at him.

“Yeah; my dad and two brothers are all huge. Thank gods I beat my mom; she’s six foot. I’d have never heard the end of it otherwise.” He sipped his coffee and smiled warmly, which was adorably cute with foam on the tip of his nose. I reached forward and wiped it off with my thumb before settling back into my seat. Theo looked surprised, but overwhelmingly pleased. “So what about you Ricky? Any siblings?”

“One of each,” I beamed, “and a six year old nephew called Marcus. My brother decided to stick with a theme when he named his kid.”

“And does he have a wonderfully unusual name too?”

“No, my parents were being sensible; he’s called Matthew, and I got stuck with being teased solid all the way through middle school and high school.”

Theo chuckled softly, and though I couldn’t explain why, his laugh made my insides start to go all gooey: I really hoped I wasn’t going to need to use my limbs to support me for a while, because my skeleton seemed to be made of warm fudge.

“Maverick isn’t so bad: you can have that whole cool, slick, independent thing goin’ on. You any good at cards?” I shook my head. “Shame. I doubt you got it worse than me: after all, my brothers used to help people by telling them my full name.”

I arched an eyebrow at him and ate cream off my latte with a long spoon.

“Theodulus,” I tried very hard not to snigger, “and it means ‘slave of god’. Try going through high school with that and a massive phobia of heights.” He sighed, “Aww, don’t laugh at me.”

“I’m not!” I composed myself hurriedly, but the silliness had helped to take the edge off my desire to abandon the coffee and strip him naked, if only to find out how accurate my imagination was. “So what do you do?”

“Is that really the conversation you wanna have?” He smiled at me again, but this was a different smile: lazy and fantastically confident. I never wanted him to stop looking at me like that. “I like the outdoors, and I kind of love gardening. I can’t dance, sorry,” he paused, “I hate mayonnaise, but I love cheeseburgers, even though they’re full of crap. I hate the gym: I like running. I like awful pulp fiction romance novels and stupid television dramas. And I kind of want to spend the rest of the evening looking at you.”

His last statement was said in the same tone of voice, and I blinked, my brain trying to check that what I’d heard had been real, and not another product of my fantastically tricky imagination. But Theo was still smiling, still beautiful, and I bit my lower lip as I blushed. I couldn’t think of anything to say into the weighty silence that followed, but Theo just drank his coffee, leant back into the comfortable chair, and shrugged fully out of his jacket.

“I work for the animal rescue service. We have our shelter over on Twelfth?” I nodded quickly. Once upon a time my nephew had dragged us almost through the door, but my brother was not really an animal person, unless we were at the zoo and there was glass between him and them.

“So what are you doing up this end of town?”

Theo grinned widely and gestured to the bag by his booted feet.

“Best butchers in the city. I might like fast food every now and then but I love to cook.”

“I’m vegetarian.” He stared at me in complete and total horror, and I couldn’t keep up the façade and dissolved into giggles.

“That was mean.” I had never seen someone like him pout, but it made him only more adorable, and softened up his ‘bad boy’ physical image.

“You should see the look on your face!” I wiped my eyes quickly, because I was laughing so hard. “That was so worth it! You’re too easy, Theo.”

His smile made me melt a little bit more inside, and his bright blue eyes flashed up and locked with my own. I gathered that he liked it when I’d said his name.

“Theo…” To anyone else, my voice would have been lost in the general hubbub of the shop: the people moving back and forth, the baristas steaming milk, and the click and tinkle of the cash register, but Theo was still looking at me like I was the centre of the universe. When I said his name again, a visible shiver ran through his lean body.

“Can I take you out for dinner?”

“Now?” I frowned. “Don’t you have to cook?”

Theo glanced down at his butchery purchase, and grinned.

“Well why don’t I cook for you? You eat pork, right?”

“You wanna make me dinner?” I blinked at him in surprise, but when his smile didn’t fade I knew he meant it. I’d never had someone offer to cook for me so soon, let alone actually cook: mostly dates who asked me to their house for dinner supplied take-out or something which could be reheated from the freezer. After all, food didn’t generally seem so important in such close proximity to a bedroom. “Um… yeah? I mean, I’d really like that.” I glanced down at my work clothes; lived in all day and not fresh on that morning. “I’d need to go home and change…”

“I’ll take you.”

“Huh?”

“My bike is just around the corner; you’ve ridden pillion before right?”

*

I had never ridden pillion before, and standing in front of Theo’s beautiful gleaming chrome and orange motorcycle, I wondered what I’d let myself in for. The passenger seat looked tiny, and even though I was proud of my pert little behind, I worried about how I was going to fit. Theo simply lifted up the seat cavity and placed his purchases inside, removing a spare helmet as he did so.

“This is for you.” He stepped very close to hand me the helmet, and it was only the bulk of the hard object that stopped us from touching. “Do you know how to put it on?”

I shook my head, even though it seemed pretty straightforward, and I knew he’d only asked because he wanted to touch me too. Theo smoothed one hand back over my hair, raising the helmet above me. His curled forefinger under my chin had me looking up into his eyes, and I could not tear my gaze away.

“Theo…”

“Yes?” The weight of the helmet was resting against the top and back of my head, and I wanted to kiss him there in the dark quiet space of the parking garage. His lips were parted, damp shadows between them, but just as I shifted to balance on my toes, he pushed the motorcycle helmet down over my face, and even though I could see him through the visor, the moment between us was gone. “There,” he smiled, more naturally this time, “all set. On you jump.”

I balanced precariously on the pillion seat, finding the little posts to keep my feet on amongst what seemed to be to be a mess of chrome pipes and important looking sprockets. Theo grinned at me, then his face was hidden behind his own helmet – previously chained up along with the front wheel – and he slipped into the slightly lower seat in front. For half a moment I enjoyed the sensation of being taller than him, and then the engine roared to life and I shrieked and flung my arms around his torso. Although I didn’t hear him, I could feel his laughter through his chest. When I tried to let go, I found his strong, warm fingers around my wrist.

“If you don’t hold onto somethin’ you’ll fall clean off!” he shouted through the two helmets. “Tell me when we get there.”

I had given him my address as we walked from the coffee shop, and I was surprised by how well Theo seemed to know his way around the city. But he seemed to drive like the bike had a grudge against the road. After the first few blocks had gone speeding by in a blur of neon, I shut my eyes and held on tight. I could feel the bike thundering below me, vibrating up my spine, but my thighs and chest were hot from where I clung to Theo even through the leather of his jacket and my own clothes. The bike noises faded, and instead I listened to the beat of his heart against my hands, slow and steady like the pounding of a rhythmic drum, and I began to change my breathing to match. By the time the bike slowed and I opened my eyes to see my street, I was no longer holding on for dear life, but sat with my arms around Theo, cuddling my date as if there was no one around to see us.

As he drew level with my building, I flinched unconsciously, not really wanting the moment to be over. Theo pulled the bike over anyway and calmed the engine. The whole machine lurched sideways and I panicked, but soon it was resting on the kickstand.

“Go on then,” Theo’s voice was muffled as he pulled off his helmet, resting it on one knee, “I’ll wait for you.”

“You don’t wanna come up?”

“We’ll never make it to dinner.” He grinned happily at me, and I felt my stomach do something warm and complicated as his eyes sparkled in the starlight. “I’ll be fine; don’t be too long.”

I stood staring at him for a moment, and then I ran. I had never made it into my apartment so fast, and I began to strip out of my clothes before the door was even fully shut behind me. I threw my clothes in the general direction of the hamper and scuttled into a lukewarm shower, scrubbing my hair and chest as fast as I could. There wasn’t time to shave, but I did anyway, and tided up the stubble on my face, under my arms, and scattered across my chest with a razor while I stood under the shower stream. As I dried off, my erection bobbed at me hopefully.

“You’re no use to me at all right now.” I scowled, knowing that if Theo kept on smiling at me like he had, having an erection was going to be a permanent feature of my evening.

It took eighty seconds to blow dry my hair and style it with my fingers, but two whole minutes to stand in front of my closet wondering what to wear. I would normally spend an hour or more dressing for a date, especially for a date with someone as beautiful and charismatic as Theo, but I didn’t have the luxury of time. Instead I grabbed for my favourite skin tight acid pink boxer shorts with navy trim, a pair of good blue jeans, and a largely non-descript and very soft dark blue sweater that instead of a Ralph Lauren or Lacoste logo, sported an embroidered Star Trek symbol on the left chest. I grabbed a thick jacket on my way out of the door, and abandoned my apartment less than ten minutes after stepping through the door.

Theo was leaning against his bike, holding his helmet, and he grinned as he looked up and saw me. His eyes were so blue and so compelling; I didn’t want him to put his helmet on and turn away from me: not then, not ever. He didn’t move as I walked up, but just continued looking slightly smug and very pleased. I smiled back, didn’t stop, and took the last step which brought our chests together with a little thud, and I pressed my lips against his. He was soft and yielding until the surprise of the gesture had worn off, and then I found his fingers in my hair, his tongue in my mouth, and our bodies stuck together from the knee up. He ran his fingers down my back and I groaned against him.

We broke apart when I had no more breath to give, and I stood on the sidewalk, shaking slightly and feeling dizzy, almost not believing that I had just been part of such an amazing first kiss. Theo looked only very slightly less affected than I felt, but he reached out and took my hand gently before moving his fingers through my hair again.

“Sorry… I ruined your careful look there.”

“An’ after I spent so long getting ready and everything,” I quipped, grabbing the spare helmet. “Let’s find out if you cook as well as you kiss!”

“You cheeky little…” Whatever Theo called me was lost as he shoved his helmet on. “Get on the bike!”

*

Theo’s house was nice. I had been kind of surprised to pull up in the suburbs on the south side of the river, a quiet area generally populated by young families with children, to find that Theo lived in a lovely and lovingly maintained house set square in the middle of a big green lawn. He left the motorcycle on the driveway and led me into a house full of the signs of a busy life. The place wasn’t tidy, but it was clean, and everywhere were pictures of animals he had worked with, and the people with whom they had found happiness. If Theo hadn’t told me he had worked at the rescue, I would have wondered how many dogs and cats it was possible to own in a house that size. Apart from a dog bowl of water glimpsed through the kitchen doorway, there were no other signs of animal residence.

“Make yourself at home.” Theo smiled, “Bathroom is upstairs on the right. You want wine? A beer?”

“Yes please.” I stood in his living room, feeling nervous and fingering the tassels of a woven woollen throw which hung over the couch. “Do you have a dog of your own?”

“No, it’s just for visitors.” Theo’s smile was evident, even when I couldn’t see him. “But I’ll let you drink out of a glass.”

Theo hadn’t been joking about his love of pulpy novels, and there was a huge bookshelf, taller than I was, stuffed with paperbacks. I pulled one out at random and read a blurb about a woman abducted by vampires who were able to travel back in time. The cover showed an olive skinned beauty with luxuriant hair being towered over by the sort of man who would otherwise be found modelling knitting patterns before he moved on to do cheap pornography. I pushed the bodice-ripper back onto the shelf and took another with a lurid green spine that featured zombies.

“Found anything you like?” Theo’s voice was incredibly close behind me, and I hadn’t heard him sneak up from the kitchen. The man moved as silently as a shadow.

“You do read the most utter rubbish, Theo.”

I sensed him shiver as I said his name. When he spoke again, I felt his breath on the shell of my ear.

“And what about you, Mister Star Trek fan?” He’d noticed my sweater, even though I didn’t think he’d really spent that long looking at me without my jacket on. “It’s a good job the jumper isn’t red Ricky, because then you’d be dying off screen by the end of dinner.”

“What’s gonna kill me; your cooking?”

“Murdered by space wolves?” he purred. For a moment I could have sworn I felt his lips against my ear, but then the sensation was gone, along with the heat radiating from him, and he was returning to the kitchen. “There’s a beer on the table for you.”

It was the strangest first date I’d ever been on. Theo had dinner on plates after half an hour and I had no idea how he’d managed to rustle up so much in so little time. The pork turned out to be thick chops, rolled in some kind of fabulous spice mix, served with hand cut fries and little glossy onions. I took salad from the bowl in the centre with my fingers, but then froze, assuming I’d made a terrible faux-pas, but Theo just laughed, and stole food from my plate. It was only after I was half way down my second beer, that I realised Theo wasn’t drinking anything, and we had been talking non-stop for well over an hour.

“So you’re a fire sign too? Your birthday is in August?”

“Yeah; I’m a Leo, for all my sins.” Theo shrugged, “I’m really more of a dog person, but cats seem to love me.”

“We never had any pets; my brother is allergic to pretty much everything with fur. Marcus would die to have a puppy though – he’s such a sweetie.”

“This is your nephew? You said he’s six, right?”

“He’s nearly seven now. I’m taking him for ice cream on Sunday.”

“Isn’t it a bit cold for ice cream?” Theo arched an eyebrow, and chewed thoughtfully on the end of his chop-bone.

“The prerogative of a small boy; I’ll get him whatever he wants. I like being the cool uncle though.” I sighed. “Sometimes I think I should get a dog, just so he can play whenever he comes over.”

“Well why don’t you bring him down to the shelter?”

“Oh, he’d never want to leave…”

“You’d be there too, right?” Theo wiped his hands and leant across the table to touch my fingers. “You wouldn’t leave either.”

“Theo…” I breathed his name, and I swore his eyes burnt brighter for a moment as I did so; like the flare of a gas flame behind glass. I could feel his pulse through his fingers, and I was hyperaware of my own heartbeat, the shallow way my breaths were coming, and the synapses in my brain seemed fused because nothing else would come to me.

My date pulled me up out of my seat as he stood, and I was helpless against the force of him as he brought me up against his chest. I stared at him, open-mouthed, unsure what he was going to say with his hands wrapped around my waist and pressing against my spine.

“Isn’t this all a bit fas-?”

Theo interrupted me with his kiss, and I didn’t care for the words I had been about to say, or the doubts which had tried to creep in from the one remaining sensible corner of my brain. His lips were warm and soft, and he tasted like cinnamon, ginger, sugar, and salt. It was as good as eating dinner all over again, and I was surprised to find that I was still hungry and I draped my arms around his neck and pulled myself up a little taller in order to kiss him more. His fingers played over my back, sneaking down to the waistband of my jeans and fingering gently at the fabric of my underwear. My libido wanted nothing more than for him to simply push my clothes aside and for us to have fantastic messy sex on the couch, but his kiss was so fantastic I never wanted to stop doing that either. And yet I would have to if I wanted to hear him talk again, if we were going to laugh together as we had earlier, and if I was going to see his beautiful eyes smiling at me again.

I couldn’t decide what I wanted most, but when I felt Theo retreat a little, I wrapped one hand around the back of his skull, my fingers sliding through his thick, silky hair, and he practically melted in my arms. Even big strong biker guys in leather jackets have weaknesses, and as I massaged my fingertips into his scalp at the base of his neck, I loved that I’d found his. By the time we broke the kiss Theo was practically purring, his pupils huge as he smiled at me.

“Mmmm… tasty Ricky.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah,” Theo’s grin was full of satisfaction, “best second kiss ever.”

I licked my lips, tasting the residue of dinner and Theo and the beer I had abandoned on the table. I glanced over towards the couch, unsure of how to get from where we were to being sat down on something comfortable. I loved being on the back of the bike, but I wanted to be able to wrap my arms around him without feeling like I was going to fall off a speeding vehicle.

“So, what do we do now?”

Theo quirked an eyebrow.

“You wanna pretend to watch a movie and make out on the couch like teenagers?”

It was the perfect answer.

*

I woke with the sun shining through a gap in the blinds, and blinked groggily until I managed to avoid the light by rolling out of bed and into a tangled heap on the floor. I would be late for work if I didn’t get up soon, but I didn’t care, and simply luxuriated horizontally for a while, remembering the best first date I’d ever had.

We’d kissed and cuddled most of the way through a movie I couldn’t even remember, and I’d ended up on my back on the couch, my thighs around Theo’s hips, pressing tight against him until I thought we were both going to explode. After the movie was over, I snuggled against his side, using his shoulder as a headrest whilst we half watched a local news bulletin and he tickled his fingers up and down as much of my spine as he could comfortably reach. After my third yawn he had declared he would drive me home, and I clung tight against his back the whole way to my apartment building. Neither of us invited him up to my place; some unspoken agreement that if we did there was no way he’d make it out again before dawn. I liked him far too much too quickly, and though I hadn’t wanted him to go, the logical part of my brain had won. The perfect evening we’d had would be cheapened if we ended it by having sex. He had left me with a kiss, and a promise he would call, and I had stared at my ceiling for hours, trying to think of anything else so that I could sleep.

Guys who promised to call invariably fell into one of two categories: either they called after a few days, and usually there was a date – often which skipped the actual date and was just sex – and subsequent hook-ups, or they never called, and when you met each other out again you would politely ignore the person who had promised and failed to ring you. Guys who promised to call after we’d slept together often did, but then, fewer of them promised to call, and that was sort of expected. Men who promised to call who I hadn’t slept with mostly did, but never very quickly, and I had never woken up, showered, and rushed to my cell to try and catch it before the call went to voicemail. I waited, dripping in nothing but a towel, for the voicemail notification to flash up, and listened on speaker to Theo’s voice.

“Hey there Ricky…” He paused for long enough that I was trapped by the soft sound of his breathing, and when I closed my eyes it felt like he was in the room again with me. I imagined him there, standing just behind me, his closeness making the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. “I loved- yeah, loved hanging out with you last night. It was the best first date. Look, I can’t dance, but do you wanna go somewhere on Friday? I really wanna take you out somewhere; dinner? Do you want to go to a club?” He paused with a sigh, and I shivered, at his imaginary not-touch, even though I was alone in my room. “I’d do pretty much anything to get your lips on mine again… OK, call me?”

He sounded like he’d been up for hours, and I was overwhelmed with the idea that he had tried to plan his message in his head. I doubted what he’d said was what he had meant to say, but I could feel the warm toffee feeling spreading out from the pit of my stomach. Perhaps I was not the only one falling too fast and too soon. Today was Thursday, and tomorrow couldn’t come quick enough.

*

“Did you hear anything I just said?”

I blinked, pulling myself out of my daydream and back into the smell of boring coffee and the sight of my brother sitting across from me at the little round table. Matthew’s office wasn’t far from mine, and we often found ourselves sitting in a cheap little café halfway between the two on a Friday lunch time, especially on weeks where I was due to come and collect Marcus for our uncle-nephew ‘dates’ as his mother called them.

“What is with you today, Rick? I swear you’ve not been awake this entire time.” Matthew sipped his coffee and frowned. “Nothing’s wrong is it?”

The coffee was wrong. Matthew had ordered, as he normally did, and had just got regular black coffee from the jug the waitress carried around. It wasn’t bad, and it was what I usually drank, but now I wanted it to taste and smell like the milky, creamy, frothy, cinnamon and sugar infused drink that Theo had brought me. I had never been someone who liked fancy coffee, but now I did.

“I met someone,” I admitted quietly. It seemed to be a betrayal of trust to tell Matthew, because I knew he wouldn’t understand. I loved my brother dearly, but we had nothing in common.

“Huh? I thought you were dating that guy… oh, what’s his name? The one who works for the fashion magazine.”

“Casey?” I frowned. “He was an ad-agency executive… and we weren’t dating.”

“Really?” Matthew pulled a face, and I knew he was now being deliberately thick, just to get me to say something I’d regret, or be embarrassed about. “But he dropped you off at the cinema that time…”

“We shared a cab from his place.” I rolled my eyes, “Don’t look so ‘shocked’ Matt; it was just sex.”

Matthew sat back and drank the rest of his coffee as though it had somehow offended him. I knew he was pissed off his sibling-bullying tactics hadn’t worked the way he wanted them to, but I still knew what was coming. I had started out in the same, incredibly strained, conversation with our mother the year Marcus was born despite the fact that I had only been nineteen at the time.

“Why can’t you find a nice guy and settle down?”

“What? Like you did?” I waved away his anger at my oblique reference to his wife being a nice guy, “Matthew, will you please understand that I am not like you?”

“Easily,” he rolled his eyes: it was a mannerism we shared. “By the time I was your age, I was already married with a son! You’re twenty-five Maverick.” I scowled at his use of my full name. “You’re not a teenager anymore and you can’t just keep sleeping with random guys.” A tiny irrational and feral part of my brain wanted to punch him. “What if you get hurt?”

“Did you not hear me say I met someone?” I almost regretted bringing it up again, but my mind was automatically focusing on the memory of Theo again, and his fantastic super-flavoursome kisses.

“Where?”

“What?”

“Where did you meet him?”

“Er… coming out of a shop.” I paused. “Why?”

My brother crossed his arms over his chest with a smug expression: a sure sign he thought this discussion was going his way.

“How do you know what kind of guy he is? He could be a murderer, or a rapist, or something.”

“Oh shut up Matt!” I managed not to actually snap at him, but only barely. “If I remember rightly you met your wife in a bar.”

“Yeah…”

“During a wet t-shirt competition and foam party.” I arched an eyebrow at him.

“Well, Australia is weird like that…”

“Uh-huh.”

“Fine, point taken.” Matthew seemed to recompose himself. “So c’mon then, tell me about this guy.”

“Theo…” I bit my lip and gazed without seeing into the bottom of my coffee cup.

“So you really like him?” Matthew grinned. “You’ve gone all red, Ricky.”

And then I discovered that when my brother used the hated nickname, I still hated it.

*

“It’s my favourite club.”

“I’ve never been.” Theo gazed at me from under his dark brows, and there was a look in his amazing blue eyes that showed underneath his cool, calm, and downright sexy exterior, he found the prospect of what he was about to say slightly terrifying. “But if you want to. I got to choose the restaurant after all.”

Theo had picked me up, but in a cab this time, and we had eaten at a fantastically tiny restaurant which had I not been taken there, I would have walked past without ever knowing it existed. Down some steps and in a brick lined basement, we had been given grilled meaty delights from all over the globe, and everything was served with good bread, great spices, and lots of wine. Watching Theo eat had been fascinating, because I’d never known someone so lean to consume so much.

“Watching you eat makes me feel fat.” I sighed wistfully. I had tried to avoid the bread, but the smell had been too tempting, and I needed something to soak up all the delicious meaty juices.

“Don’t ever say you’re fat.” Theo gestured to my narrow frame with a piece of springbok on a stick. “You’re perfect. Anyway, I am blessed with a high metabolism.” When I hadn’t replied, Theo had paused with a piece of bloody venison halfway to his mouth. “Ricky?”

“You think I’m perfect?” I bit my lip and blinked at my lap. I thought I looked good, but no one had told me I was beautiful and actually meant it beyond getting into my pants for a long time.

“Yes.” Theo blinked, and I was mesmerised by the vibrant colour of his eyes. “Is a second date too soon to say that?”

I didn’t know the answer, but I stole his piece of antelope and ate it before he could try and steal it back. This began a playful game of hunt-your-date’s-dinner, and it was only when the maître ’d gave us a stern look across the otherwise calm dining room that I realised how loud we were being. Theo paid, and said it was his pleasure, and we left the restaurant feeling like naughty children caught playing at an adult’s event.

As soon as we had been out on the street, Theo had caught my hand in his own, and then, as it wasn’t actually very warm, put it into his own jacket pocket. We had wandered aimlessly with his arm around my shoulders, as close as we could get without losing track of our feet.

“So d’you want to go dancing, Theo?” I turned to stand pressed against his chest, and Theo’s hands linked together in the small of my back. I couldn’t have gotten away even if I’d wanted to, and there didn’t seem to be any better place for my lips to be than against Theo’s own. He tasted of red wine, and I drank him down, weaving my hands into his hair to bring us closer together. Theo kissed me back like no one was watching, even though I could feel the eyes of the bouncer and the few people hanging around the club smoking and chatting on us as we stood on the sidewalk in the streetlights.

“Anything you like, beautiful,” Theo whispered against my lips. I hadn’t noticed his firm grip on my jaw, or that his hands were so large, easily able to wrap finger tips around the back of my neck to keep me in place. Truthfully though, I didn’t want to be anywhere else than in his arms. “Can I watch you dance?”

I wiggled my hips against Theo’s crotch, and kissed him quickly.

“Yes please!”

The club was hot and throbbing, even before we were fully inside. Theo nested my jacket inside his own and hung them up together for the cloakroom assistant, tucking his ticket stub into his front jeans pocket as the skinny girl on the door stamped our hands.

“This your new man?” She grinned at me with a wink. We knew each other well enough to gossip with, but I couldn’t remember if she was a Candy, or Chrissie, or Crystal.

I smiled broadly, but I didn’t say anything other than to make an affirmative noise in the back of my throat. The idea of calling Theo my boyfriend, after one and a half dates and three days of knowing him made the inside of my throat feel like it was coated with warm honey and whiskey. I wanted to, but surely it was too soon.

“Have fun boys…”

Theo seemed perfectly relaxed as we stood next to the bar, but I glared at him as I ordered the drinks and he raised his hands in supplication, and didn’t try to pay. It was hard to talk over the noise of the bass, but Theo stood with his feet either side of mine, our heads very close together, and I shivered when he breathed against my ear.

“Ricky…”

I couldn’t remember ever hearing my name turned into an erotic word, but Theo managed it. Our drinks on the bar were forgotten as Theo’s lips brushed against the shell of my ear, his stubble rough against the soft skin of my jaw, and I found my fingers holding the front of his shirt, creeping in between the buttons to touch his skin. He was incredibly warm.

“I’d like it.” I stood on tip toes to whisper in his ear as the music changed. The bass beat was heavier, and I knew I would slip out of his arms to go and dance. “I’d like it if you were my boyfriend, Theo.”

I turned towards the dance floor, my drink back in my other hand, even though I knew I would drain the mojito in seconds, but as I took a step forward I was brought up short. Theo stood behind me, one big hand wrapped around my bicep, and somehow his fingers had found the exact bruises they had left four days earlier. It almost hurt, but I shivered in pleasure as he half growled against the back of my neck.

“I want you…”

I threw back my drink and handed it to him with a kiss that tasted of lime and rum, and Theo’s eyes burnt bright as his gaze followed me onto the dance floor. I didn’t go far, I don’t think I could have, and I wanted him to see me move with the music. I loved to dance, and I was good at it with more than one drink inside me and with the right music to boost my confidence. With Theo as my audience I could have danced completely sober with no noise other than my pounding heartbeat in my ears.

For more than three songs, he never took his eyes off me, and I twisted and spun, wove patterns with my feet, hips and shoulders as he watched. It felt almost exhibitionistic – knowing how he looked at me as I ran my hands down my chest and bit my lip before turning in the space of my own footprints and swishing my hips. The next moment he was less than a pace away, catching my waist as I turned. Once more we were chest to chest, and I was unbalanced on my tiptoes, desperate to kiss him again. Theo cradled the back of my head in his hand and purred in my ear.

“You didn’t let me finish earlier.” He kissed the space where my jaw met my neck. “I want you to be my boyfriend too.”

He stepped back and I blinked at him in the strobe lights. In between the flat, white flashes he looked different; darker, his brow furrowed as he muttered something to himself, and when he looked across at me there was something almost feral about him. He was dangerous in some way, but I knew he was also sweet and funny. I wanted him to be my boyfriend, and lots more.

I grabbed his hand and pulled him close, and in the space between our lips that closed too quickly, I was sure I heard him say something over the music. The kiss was even more wonderful than any other we’d had, and my head spun with more than just alcohol, loud music, and pheromones. I knew I hadn’t heard Theo wrong when he’d said:

“I love you.”

*

I woke in the half-dark just before dawn, and for the longest time after I’d rolled over, I lay looking at the room, wondering how my furniture had managed to move all by itself. Until I realised it wasn’t my furniture at all, and I wasn’t in my own bed. Wide-eyed in panic, I glanced down under the covers, and discovered I was so uncomfortable because I had fallen asleep still half dressed in boxers and jeans, and apparently only one sock. I was also very obviously alone in the large bed, and there was not a recently-occupied warm space beside me, so I had been asleep by myself for a while. I lay and stared at what I safely assumed was Theo’s bedroom ceiling and tried to work out how we had got back to his house.

I remembered making out on the dance floor; another drink, maybe two; and Theo’s suggestion that he should take me home. We had got into a cab, but everything after that was a bit of a blur. My head didn’t hurt, so I wasn’t hung over, but apparently I had been tired enough to simply fall asleep in his arms. I really hoped my being partly dressed was an indicator that we hadn’t had sex, because I really didn’t want to have missed it. I really liked Theo, perhaps more than I had ever liked anybody romantically, and I doubted passing out before or during sex was a good way to go if I wanted to keep him. My mouth was dry, so I hauled myself out of bed in search of water.

Theo’s bathroom was clean and cold and I used the glass that held a toothbrush to rinse my mouth before I drank it twice over. I hated sleeping without brushing my teeth, and there wasn’t obviously a spare toothbrush, so I used his to scrub the inside of my mouth until the enamel felt smooth and shiny against my tongue. As I stood in front of the mirror in the dark I wondered where on earth Theo was. A noise from downstairs answered my question, and I trod softly down to the living room and the big couch where we had made out on our first date and failed to watch a movie, and watched Theo sleeping.

He had the knotted tasselled blankets thrown over him, but it was clear Theo was a messy sleeper, because one long strong looking bare leg hung over the side of the couch, and he had half of the throw wrapped up in his arms. I rather wished I was cuddled up in his arms instead. As I watched, he half rolled over, and then turned back with a sleepy noise that sounded like a spaniel dreaming. The muscles of his shoulder twitched, as did his foot, and he whined. Underneath the tough exterior, he looked like a little puppy sleeping in a tangle on the couch.

I pulled off my remaining sock, unbuttoned my pants, and left them in a puddle on the floor. I was glad I had chosen good underwear for our date, fitted purple jersey boxers with yellow piping, and with nothing else on I took the edge of the blanket and snuck under there along with him. Theo snuffled and stirred, dropping the blanket to pull me close. I smiled softly, and then there was nothing in the room but our four bright blue eyes.

“Theo…”

He shivered, and there came a rumble from deep in his chest that vibrated against me.

“Hey there, Ricky… I missed you.”

“The bed was plenty big enough,” I whispered. I was secretly glad he hadn’t slept beside me without my noticing, because I liked that I got to experience what it felt like to have his bare thigh against my own for the first time. “You’re such a gentleman, Theo.”

“Mmmm…”

Theo’s palm ran up my spine from the small of my back, all the way to the nape of my neck, pressing me closer against his firm torso. His kiss was soft and sweet, and slightly minty, and it was all too easy to just melt against him, kissing wetly and sharing breath between our lips. I tickled my fingers along his side, delighting in the corded muscle definition under his warm skin, and when I reached the fabric of his underwear I grinned and bit my lip, then explored gently south until my palm came into contact with the hot hard length of his erection.

“At least one of us is a gentleman,” he muttered softly. “Look at you waking people up in the middle of the night and molesting them without permission.”

I snatched my hand back, terrified for a moment that he was being serious, but Theo laughed gently, his blue eyes shining with mirth.

“You jerk!”

“Yeah,” his voice rumbled low in his chest. Before I could even think he had wrapped one strong arm right around my narrow waist and rolled, taking me with him, so my whole body ended up balanced over his own. Automatically I parted my thighs around his; bringing my crotch up against the hardness I had wanted to feel. Both of us groaned at the contact through two layers of cotton. He panted softly, wove his fingers into my hair, and I found myself looking down at Theo, his features written with honesty. There was something almost vulnerable about him. “I couldn’t take advantage of you, sleep next to you… you’re special Ricky.”

“I am?”

“I meant it when I said I love you.”

I inhaled a tiny gasp, and tried to drown him in my kisses. Oddly, Theo seemed perfectly happy with this.

*

“Uncle Rick’s here!” Marcus let go of my neck and scrambled off down the hallway to find his other shoe, as my ringing the doorbell had interrupted him in the fight to get them on. He might have been one of the smartest children in his class, but my nephew was still not winning the fight with shoelaces.

“Hey Rick,” my sister-in-law smiled at me as she handed me Marcus’s jacket. “So where are you two off to today?”

I made sure Marcus was still busy before I answered.

“We’re off to fulfil his canine-petting requirement; totally safe, I swear!”

She smiled and shrugged.

“As long as you don’t come back with a dog, I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Her son came skidding down the hallway, already flushed with excitement. “Hey, where’s my kiss?”

Marcus rolled his eyes in the manner that six year old boys the world over have when they think they’re too old for something but secretly want to do it anyway, kissed his mother’s cheek and shouted goodbye to his father before grabbing my hand.

“Where are we going, Uncle Rick?”

“Oh, that’s a surprise buddy.” He secretly loved surprises. “Now why don’t you tell me all about your week while we walk?”

I often felt the conversations I had with my six year old nephew were the most honest in my life. Marcus didn’t need me to be anything I wasn’t, and I didn’t need to impress him. Sometimes I did anyway, purely by virtue of being an adult, and knowing things he could not have had the time to find out yet, but more often he was the one impressing me, showing himself to be clever, sensitive, and perceptive far beyond his years. As we walked downtown, he held my hand tight and told me all about the project he was doing at school. It was a combined science, English and art, and of course he was doing his all about the conservation of his favourite animal: the wolf. He’d been reading with his mother, a study about the reintroduction of wolves in Scotland, and as we wandered towards our destination, I wondered if it would be ten years or twelve before he left us all to go and spend time with his favourite creatures on the planet.

“So, where are we going Uncle Rick?”

“Just up ahead; we’re nearly there.”

Marcus scanned the stores and buildings on our side of the street, and shrieked with joy when he saw the shelter.

“Uncle Rick!?”

“Whoa buddy, don’t get too excited: you don’t get to take one home.” His face fell to his knees for a moment, and I hated that I couldn’t make his best wish come true. “But you get to spend as long as you like giving them all love and cuddles. Would you like that?”

“Yes!” Marcus covered his disappointment well. “All dogs need love!”

“Cats too.” I glanced up to see Theo standing in the shelter doorway, grinning like the sun shone out of his side. The moment I saw him I had to remember how to breathe properly. “You must be Marcus, the wolf expert. I’ve been told all about you.”

Marcus shook Theo’s hand automatically, and then turned to me with a frown. I winced as I introduced the man I wanted to call my boyfriend: we’d never actually finished that conversation, much too distracted by kissing.

“Theo is my friend. He works here.”

“Oh, OK.” Marcus let go of my hand and followed Theo into the outer office of the shelter with the implicit trust only small children have. I had OK’d Theo, and thus he was good.

I followed as Theo explained to Marcus about the history of the shelter, explained to him how people went about adopting a dog or cat and some of the reasons people gave for leaving them behind. He showed Marcus a huge number of photos on several giant corkboards, some faded with time, and many that I recognised from his own house. Marcus wanted to know all of the stories, and as I stood next to Theo, listening to him tell all about a black and white cocker spaniel called Mabel who got abandoned by her owner when they moved out of state, he slipped his hand into my own and squeezed gently. I knew then that though we were here for Marcus, he was here for me too.

“So, you want to meet them?”

“Yes please, Mister Theo.” Marcus took Theo’s hand, and I had to let go as we passed through a locked door, and then another half-height metal gate into the kennel area of the shelter.

“All the dogs get their own kennel, unless they’ve come together and need to be with each other. We have it set up so that unless they stand on their hind legs, they can’t see each other –gives them privacy. We’d love it if all the dogs had outside space access all the time, but we’re really underfunded. We put them in the long ‘outside’ kennels in rotation, so they all get some time on the grass every-other day.”

The dogs were excited to see us, and ran up and down their kennels, most barking loudly.

“Boys! Boys!” The moment Theo spoke, a sudden hush fell over the kennels. Every dog, regardless of shape, size, or general shabbiness, stood in their kennel, tails wagging furiously, all watching Theo. “That’s better. Everyone gets cuddled, just wait your turn.”

Marcus was in his element. I had never seen him happier than as he stood at one end of the long kennel run, throwing a ball for a delighted German shepherd whose only crime had apparently been that he barked too loudly and disturbed his previous owner’s neighbours. There were dogs Theo had mentioned which had bitten people, or done damage, but he said all of it was due to a lack of training, confidence, and exercise and entertainment for the dog. They were not bad dogs – they had just been owned by bad people. Watching him play on the floor with a big black and white husky as though he was nothing more than an overgrown puppy himself, I was inclined to believe him.

Whilst Marcus and Theo went around each and every dog to give them all attention, I sat with a little foxy-coloured terrier of mixed parentage and stroked his soft ears whilst listening to Theo’s voice. Every dog there had a story, and he seemed to know them all. And each time Marcus was distracted, Theo would look at me, his blue eyes shining, and I found myself in a day dream where one day he would tell people our story in his rich and wonderful voice.

Eventually all the dogs had been seen, and Marcus maintained he was not tired at all, entirely whilst yawning.

“I’ll walk with you.”

“Theo…”

He shivered, but smiled, and I wasn’t going to put up anymore argument. As Theo closed up and bid goodbye to his co-workers, Marcus squeezed my hand.

“Thank you Uncle Rick.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Rick?” Marcus only ever dropped my title when he was being very mature and serious. “Is Theo your boyfriend?”

“Er…” I blinked him, unsure of what to say. Theo chose that moment to wrap his arm around my shoulder and press his lips and nose into my hair. Apparently that was enough to decide Marcus’s question.

“Good,” he replied. “It’s not good for you to be lonely Uncle Rick.”

*

“I had the best time today.” I fingered the lapel of Theo’s leather jacket and smiled softly. “You were great with Marcus; he really likes you.”

“Yeah?” Theo smiled softly, “he’s a good kid. I feel bad for his parents now; they’ll probably spend the next week fielding ‘why can’t we have a dog?’ questions.”

“Theo?” He still shuddered visibly when I said his name, but now his eyes burnt bright and hot, gas flames banked with the heat of lust. “Would you like to come up?” There was a lot implied in my question, but I didn’t need to say anything else, and Theo smiled. He looked so charismatic and sure of himself I almost wanted to tease him by saying ‘no’, but my erection had been distracting me all through dinner, and I couldn’t resist him any longer.

“I’d really like to spend the night with you,” Theo whispered in my ear, “I don’t want to leave you.”

“Theo…” I couldn’t believe I was hearing such sweet and serious things from someone who, in the grand scheme of things, I’d only just met. More than that, no tiny part of me doubted him, or questioned how I felt. I more than liked Theo, more than just desired him; I needed to be with him in every way I could imagine.

We didn’t speak as I took his hand, let us in through the empty foyer of my apartment building, and got into the lift. In the enclosed space as we rose up six floors, we stood toe to toe, neither of us looking anywhere else than each other’s eyes, and apart from Theo’s strong fingers in my own, I was almost afraid to touch him. I knew once we started I was not going to be able to let him go, not tonight, and possibly not ever. And I knew, more than just him telling me, I knew he felt the same.

“This is me.” I turned to face him as I opened the door into my apartment. I had cleaned that morning, running around with the vacuum cleaner and straightening everything. Now I wished I had changed the sheets, but Theo simply smiled, inhaled deeply and then nuzzled against my hair.

“Smells like you,” he murmured, “I like it.”

“D’you… want a drink? Or something?” I hated that I stalled: I’d never been so sure of anything in my whole life, but I was scared.

Theo wasn’t, and he took my jaw in his strong fingers and tilted my face towards his for a kiss. It was just the soft press of lips, and then I remembered how to be bold, ran my fingers through his hair over his scalp and he groaned as he opened up to me. Within moments I had my tongue in his mouth, exploring him as we crushed our bodies together. Theo smoothed his palms down my spine, squeezed my backside, lifted me by the thighs as though I weighed nothing, and carried me through my apartment like he was already familiar with the route to the bed. I was too distracted by kissing him, massaging his head and neck to make him produce a rumbling purr that vibrated against my chest, and pressing my hips close to the heat of his crotch, to worry much about it. Only when we reached the bed and Theo laid me down on the quilt did I break the kiss long enough to pant for breath and smile at him.

“Or something.” It took me four full heartbeats to realise he was answering my earlier question. “You taste amazing.”

“Theo…”

“Ahh…” He vibrated visibly in my arms and pushed against the swelling in my pants. “Again; say it again.”

I pulled his head down and curled my back up to brush my lips softly against his ear. I still worked my fingers into his hair, just like I had petted the terrier at the shelter, because it made him purr and rumble with delight.

“Theo.” He almost growled in my arms, and in the next moment had pulled me into his lap as he knelt on the bed. I wrapped my legs around his hips more fully and gasped as his teeth grazed the smooth flesh over my collarbone. “Theo!”

“Ungh…” The pad of his thumb swiped across my lips as he took my jaw and tilted my head back. I panted as he kissed my throat, his chest still rumbling incoherently, and I panted his name once more.

“Theo… AHH!”

His teeth were sharp and sudden, biting into my soft skin in one swift movement. My inner vision exploded with colours, bright against the inside of my skull, and suddenly I couldn’t think of anything other than the way his tongue felt smoothing over the bruised flesh, the nip and scrape of his teeth as he kissed me, and the heat rising from the tender skin of my neck. Even without a mirror I knew I would have a love bite which would last days.

“Ricky…” Theo’s eyes glowed in my vision, and my world was full of hues of blue. “I’m sorry.”

“Never be sorry.” I pressed my lips against his, and wriggled against him.

“Whatever you say Ricky,” Theo grinned, calm confidence spreading across his features, “anything for you.”

“Anything?”

“Always.”

I kissed him as hard as I could. Every sensible nerve I had still told me it was too fast, too deep to fall, and much too soon: but not one of those reasonable voices could be heard as I knelt on the mattress and stripped off my shirt. Theo’s grin broadened, and I knew he was thinking exactly what I was when his fingers hooked into my belt and he summarily removed me from the rest of my clothes. It didn’t matter that we’d only had a handful of dates, because as I ran my hands up under Theo’s shirt, too eager to wait for him to undo all the buttons, I knew we’d both been invested in this since that first moment. I could have kissed him then like I kissed him now, deep and honest and unafraid as we’d stood chest to chest in the street. He might have been a complete stranger, but I’d felt something more than just lust. Theo growled as I knelt over him, pinning my thighs to his hips, and his thumb put fantastic pressure on the bruise he’d left on my throat. I gasped, he moaned, and we both heard me say:

“I love you.”

*

Waking up with Theo was a thing of beauty, and I didn’t think I’d ever get used to it, regardless of how often I arrived into conscious thought with his arms wrapped around me. Theo twitched when he dreamt, and made strange feral noises when he slept, but every morning I would wake up in his arms, cuddled against his chest and shoulder, with nothing but his heartbeat filling my ears. We usually didn’t have the covers anywhere near us by then, so it was good that my boyfriend seemed to burn at a temperature somewhere just less than the centre of the sun, because otherwise I would have frozen to death. It wasn’t summer yet, and my apartment especially was just not that warm. But I had never felt so safe, or so right, as when we woke up together; blinking in a haze of blue, his creaky-jawed yawn, my general uncomplicated griping at the idea of being conscious once more. And it didn’t seem to matter if we missed the alarm, or how little time there was, because neither of us got out of bed with morning wood for a week: on Saturday neither of us got up at all.

“Mmm… hey beautiful.” Theo caught my thigh as I stepped up to the bed, carrying two large cups of coffee. Theo had needed to teach me how to make a latte, but now I had the method perfected, if not my arguments with his fancy chrome kitchen appliances. “Maybe we should install the coffee maker in the bedroom?”

“So I could fight with it while I slept?” I arched an eyebrow at him and his questing fingertips, making their way up the inside of my thigh. “Do you want me to pour hot coffee on you? Get off…” Theo made puppy eyes at me: it was adorable, but it did not make me want to trade coffee for sexual favours.

“So, what do you want to do today beautiful?” I blushed every time Theo used the adjective to name me. I adored him, but I still hadn’t gotten used to his incredible openness about how he felt about me: somehow I doubted I ever would.

“Nothing.” I grinned at him as I settled on the edge of the mattress. Theo’s kiss tasted of creamy fancy coffee, and now I was willing to place my cup on his bedside table and use all of my energy kissing him. There was no pressure, just softness from us both, and I could have happily spent the rest of my Sunday morning melting gently in his arms like chocolate on a warm day.

“Awesome,” Theo purred, “I get to spend as much time lying around with you as you’ll let me.”

I chuckled softly.

“Me tell you ‘no’?” I grinned in surprise.

“Well that’s the only way it’s gonna happen, Ricky. You do recognise I couldn’t tell you ‘no’ even if my life depended on it?”

“Oh, really?” I lay down alongside him, snuggling into the warmth of the mattress and the blankets. I wanted to test this new declaration. “Can I have a kiss?” Theo’s kiss was warm and wonderful; exactly the right balance of overwhelming and leisurely. I chewed the side of my lip thoughtfully. “Will you make me breakfast? Waffles?” I had long ago decided that if you served waffles with enough fruit, it undid the damage done by the starchy carbs.

“Whatever you want, pretty one.” Theo kissed my shoulder, and straddled my hips briefly for a moment before climbing out of the bed. I watched him move around the room naked for a moment before he found a pair of boxers and pulled them on: cooking nude wasn’t nearly so erotic when hot pans spat molten butter at you. I didn’t really want him to leave, but the idea of breakfast was incredibly enticing to my empty stomach, and I pulled myself out of bed and wrapped a towel from yesterday’s shower around my hips as I followed him downstairs at a distance.

I thought of a much more sensitive question as I arrived in the hallway.

“Next time, can I be the one who fuc-?”

“Ricky?” Theo leant around the entrance to the kitchen with a frown. “Is it the nineteenth today?”

“Er… yeah?” I was completely derailed from my erotic train of thought. “Why?”

“We can’t spend the day snuggling in bed again…” I joined him in the kitchen, where Theo was staring at his wall calendar. It was one of those he obviously used to plan his life, and along with the printed on National holidays and phases of the moon, it had a huge number of Sharpie scribbles showing his work shifts, what I assumed and hoped weren’t dates in past months, and a whole host of little red love heart scribbles, the first of which fell on the full moon when we had first bumped into each other. Scrawled over today’s date was ‘dinner w/family @7pm’.

“Oh. It’s not until later.” I tried not to sniff, because the idea of spending a night away from Theo made me inexplicably miserable. “Do they live a long way away?”

“Yeah, it’s about an hour and half’s ride.” Theo looped his arms around my waist and nuzzled my hair. I had already worked out, after one evening snuggled on the sofa with the television on, and one movie date, that it was something Theo did when he was feeling slightly miserable. He said the scent and texture of my hair helped him feel strong. “Ricky?”

“Yes?”

“Do you want to come to dinner with me,” Theo winced as he asked the question, “and meet my family?”

“Umm…” I blinked. It might have been quick to admit to being completely overwhelmingly in love with the man, but trying to share that was another prospect altogether. “I don’t want to cause a food shortage.”

Theo laughed and scooped me up in his arms, dislodging my towel. I wriggled in his arms, but he was much stronger than me, his lean frame made entirely of corded muscle.

“Feeding our family is like dinner for the five-thousand. You won’t hardly make a dent, beautiful.” His voice was full of rich happy tones that I loved, and made me go all gooey on the inside once more.

“Theo…” I whispered softly into his hair.

He responded by purring against my throat as his chest rumbled.

“Again.”

“Theo,” I whispered; and wondered if I would be meeting his family whilst trying to hide dark love bites on my neck.

*

I pulled the collar of my sweater up as I waited for Theo to finish stowing the bike and the helmets in the big open fronted garage. Already there were a couple of trucks and a sleek looking Porsche which Theo had rolled his eyes at.

“I swear one day he’s gonna buy a car that costs more than my house.” Theo took my hand, straightened my outfit for me and then kissed my forehead with his soft lips. “Stop worrying, Ricky: you’re perfect.”

“But are they going to think that?”

“Of course,” Theo hesitated, just for a moment, and I turned to look at him in the light from the stone porch. Theo’s parents owned a turn of the century style manor house far on the outskirts of a quaint little town, surrounded by rolling grassland and trees with their first new spring leaves. It was not the sort of place I imagined my motorbike and leather jackets with hoodies loving boyfriend to have grown up in, and I was more than a little petrified by what they would think of me in my smartest jeans and cornflower blue sweater. “Ricky?”

“I’m not going to like this, am I?”

“Well that depends how you look at it.” Theo kissed my cheek as he rang the doorbell. “You’re the first guy I’ve ever brought home.”

“Ever?” I gaped at him.

“Ever.”

There were a dozen things I wanted to say to him, chief among them to ask if that included guys from high school, but our privacy was ended as the front door was opened by a very tall dark haired man wearing most of a very well cut business suit.

“About fuckin’ time you lazy dog-,” He stared at me with his mouth open, and I put on my brightest smile for the man I assumed was one of Theo’s brothers. “Dude…” His smile widened, and without greeting me he turned back into the house. “Mom! Theo brought a mate home!”

“I think he meant ‘date’,” Theo explained wryly. “Well, that was Leon. Come meet the rest of the family.”

Leon was back in the main hallway once Theo had hung our coats and shut the main door. The front half of the house was apparently a shoe free zone, and we both toed out of our footwear, leaving them in a neat line alongside a pair of super shiny brogues I assumed to be Leon’s and a pair of work boots which showed conspicuous signs of having been recently covered in sawdust. Leon had been joined by another slighter taller man who could have only been Theo’s other brother. Despite their varying heights, they all had things in common, and though Theo was definitely the most lean and narrow, his oldest brother had broader shoulders and looked a little rough around the edges with his shorn hair and beard. Leon was certainly the slickest, and the only one who had heard of hair styling products.

“I told you, Wyatt.”

“Well fuck me…” Wyatt said softly as he glanced me up and down. I didn’t especially like being stared at, so I just shrugged, wrapped my arm around Theo’s waist and smiled very sweetly.

“I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you.”

Leon burst out laughing, jabbing his fist into his older brother’s shoulder. I felt Theo’s arm tighten around me: he was proud.

“Boys!” All three of the brothers froze instantly at the sound of their mother’s voice. It was quite funny to watch, three big strong looking men all suddenly petrified into stillness by one single word. Wyatt and Leon looked guiltily up under their brows at their mother as she entered: even though she was shorter than all of them. “Where are your manners? Theo darling…” She squeezed his arm briefly. “Please introduce us.”

“Mom, this is Rick,” Theo beamed as he put his hand into the small of my back and introduced me, “Ricky, this is my mother, Demeter.”

“Oh, everyone calls me Demi.” She bent to kiss my cheek: I was the shortest person in the room by an uncomfortably large margin. “It’s so nice to meet you.”

“Thank you for having me.” I gave her my best I’m-really-sorry-to-turn-up-unannounced smile. “I hope I don’t cause any trouble to your catering.”

“Oh sweetie!” Demi laughed, and I could hear in her tone where Theo got his rich sound from. “Not to worry. Leon! Go lay an extra place setting for your brother’s date. Come with me hun and I’ll show you around.”

“Your house is beautiful,” I complimented as we walked across the hallway. The floors were hardwood, with thick and hardwearing looking rugs, and all the furniture I had seen looked sturdy and practical, rather than necessarily in-keeping with the period design of the main house.

“Thank you Rick. It’s been in the family for three generations. My grandfather helped to build it. He was friends with the architect. Dad added a wing at the back, you wouldn’t have seen it from the road, and we converted the old stable block into the garage and wood store just after he died. My brother took the horses, thank heavens, and went to set up his own business in New York State. The bathroom is through there, if you need it, and the kitchen is on the right hand side. Hopefully the boys will have finished acting like mad dogs and laid you a place by now – the dining room is this way. Do you drink wine?”

“White?” I still had no idea what we were eating for dinner.

“There’s a bottle in the cellar, don’t worry it’s no trouble. Jules!”

From a narrow passage I assumed lead to the other wing of the house, a man appeared who could only be father to Theo and his brothers, because he was the same height as Wyatt and looked like he could win an argument with a bison. He wiped his hands on his jeans and Demi tutted.

“Rick, this is my husband Julius. Are you still playing with that car? Dinner is nearly ready.”

“Sorry sweetheart,” Julius’s first act was to take his wife’s hand and kiss her fingers. “So you must be the boyfriend? I smelt you coming from a mi-.” He was hushed into silence by a stern look from his wife. “Wine from the cellar? Yes dear. It’s nice to meet you, Rick.”

“Do forgive my husband, sometimes I think years of paint fumes and engine oil has destroyed part of his brain. Go on through.”

I had never known anyone who lived in a house that could have, with different furniture and the application of some classical portraits, been used as the set of a period film. The ceilings were far out of reach, and as I passed down the wide hallway towards the dining room, I stopped to look at the photos which adorned the walls and the surface of every low table. The fascination with pictures was obviously a family thing, and there were pictures of Theo and his brothers at every age, both formal, professionally posed, and random snapshots taken wherever they happened to be. The three of them were standing around a lovely grey horse, all of them aged between about ten and six, with an old man who was certainly their grandfather. There were pictures of each of them at their graduations, birthdays, mucking around in parks, and posing on the couch in Theo’s house. There was a photo from Demi and Julius’s wedding, another of Theo sitting in front of a baby grand piano looking thoughtful, and a lot of Julius and especially Wyatt, sitting on or in, lying underneath, or bent over a number of classic cars, some of them complete and some in pieces.

“Hey Ricky,” Theo’s lips were soft against the nape of my neck, and I hadn’t even noticed him creeping up behind me, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I like your family, they seem mad.”

“I shouldn’t have inflicted my brothers on you without warning.” Theo wrapped his arms around my waist, and his fingers began to creep and tug at the hem of my jumper, trying to find access to my skin. “I’m used to them, but I know they can be a bit… much.”

I turned in the tight circle of his arms, standing on tiptoes to catch Theo’s jaw in my hand and bring his lips down for a kiss. He opened up to me, sweet and soft as we stood in his parent’s hallway and enjoyed each other. I felt his body go rigid and tense before Leon’s voice interrupted us.

“Stop canoodling love-birds! Dinner!”

“Damn,” Theo muttered against my hair. When I peered up at him, he smiled. “I’d actually rather not eat than let you go.”

Theo had not over-sold his families attitude to dinner-time catering, and the big dining table nearly groaned under the weight of the food. His mother was an excellent cook, a fact that I commented upon whilst Theo, his father, and his brothers were all consuming their dinner like ravenous wolves. Demi had roasted the biggest and most succulent prime rib of beef I had ever seen, and there were mounds of golden roast potatoes, a veritable boat of gravy, and vegetables glistening in butter. Apart from one Christmas when Matthew had brought all his in-laws to our family Christmas, I didn’t think I had ever seen so much food in one place. Demi insisted I serve myself first while Julius carved the meat, but after I was done the three boys fought good naturedly, even thought there was enough food to keep a whole football team happy.

Theo was different with his brothers, and I was surprised that I didn’t mind. Whenever no one else was looking, he would touch my hand or my thigh, whisper secrets in my ear or press his face into my hair and kiss me. He was loud and exuberant with them, playful in a more obvious manner but less happy-puppy like he was with me. They shared stupid stories and jokes I didn’t understand, but Theo was very good at filling in the blanks as other people talked. I was full, but Theo was busy wolfing down his second helping of beef-and-everything when Wyatt arched an eyebrow and asked me how we’d met.

“Um… we sort of bumped into each other.”

“When?” Leon queried.

“Like… two weeks ago?” I slipped my hand into Theo’s and he squeezed gently. “Yeah: and then we went for a date the day after. I remember the moon being so big.”

“This month?” Wyatt looked shocked, “Full moon just gone?”

“Yeah,” Theo sounded suddenly defensive, and there was a low note in his voice holding the threat of anger and potential violence, “why?”

“Damn Theo,” Leon’s tone was more appreciative, “you found yourself a damn fine mate, if you like that sort of thing, that quick? Good for you.”

“I think Rick could be happy without you two trying to interrogate him.” Julius clicked his tongue at his sons in disappointment. “Come Rick, let’s leave the pups to clear the table and I’ll show you some pictures of Theo back when he wasn’t so tough and manly.”

“Aww, Dad…”

“No arguments now.”

“Yes, Pop.” Theo glanced up at me with a hopeful and pathetic blue expression, and I giggled. “Oh, I’m glad you think it’s funny.”

“Yeah, I do.”

Julius led me back out into the hallway and then down the much narrower passage into the wing his father-in-law had built on the back of the house. It had lower ceilings and was a touch more modern, but the little sitting room into which Julius led me was full of lovingly worn and comfy furniture, and a little pot-bellied wood burning stove. There was a soft glow from it, and Julius opened the door and threw another few small logs in whilst I stared at the framed photos on a little side table. They were more of the same as in the hallway, but in these Theo and his brothers, all as children, were often accompanied by one or two large and very shaggy dogs. Even I had been hanging out with Marcus and his obsession long enough to recognise the canines as timber wolves. I picked one up and ran my fingers around the outline of little Theo standing with his arms around the wolf’s neck. He was so easy to tell apart from his brothers, and not only because his amazing blue eyes had not changed colour.

“That was taken back when Theo’s grandfather was still alive. He and Theo were really close.”

“Do you still keep wolves?”

“Not as such. The whole family are still very involved in conservation efforts surrounding them though. Demi’s brother is about the only sensible voice in any New York animal rights group at all.” Julius turned to look at me as I smiled at little Theo. “He loves you, you know that?

“Yes.” I blushed, knowing Theo would want to hold me close when he heard me say it. I hadn’t told anyone else that I loved him, even though I felt a bit like shouting it from the rooftops. “I love him too.”

To my surprise, Julius clapped one massive hand on my shoulder.

“Good for you. It’ll be nice to have someone else slightly more normal around here for dinner.”

*

Work had run late, because the software testers employed by the courier client we had written the script for were, in fact, the two most stupid people on the planet. I had spent half an hour explaining in a voice mounting in frustration and anger, the difference between online testing and stage testing, until I had needed to use an analogy to explain how thick she was being and Gary had snatched the phone off me before I had managed to swear and lose us a client and myself a job. I became the latest in a short but not insignificant list of people who were ‘not allowed to talk to clients’. I had been so frustrated I had started walking home, missed the subway stop I wanted, and ended up getting a cab down to Theo’s house. Over the last two weeks I had spent more money on cab fares than I could shake a stick at, though Theo often came to pick me up on the motorbike, and the idea of actually getting my own motorized transport was becoming increasingly attractive, even though there was no useable parking outside my apartment.

I paid my cab driver, thanked him, and grabbed my bag and the few groceries I had found we needed before making my way up towards Theo’s front door. He hadn’t yet given me a front door key, but I knew that if the light in the little hallway window was lit, and it was, then he was in, and he would have left the door unlocked for me. I hadn’t given him a key to my place either, but I was spending less time there. I didn’t miss my apartment, which surprised me, because I’d always been very protective of my space with previous boyfriends, but choosing to be there without Theo just seemed like madness. Four weeks into our relationship I was fully able to admit that the way I felt about Theo wasn’t similar to how I had ever felt about anybody.

Marcus’s acceptance of the man I loved had not been echoed by his father, and I hadn’t really spoken to Matthew in the four days since we had sat down to coffee and café lunch sandwiches, and he has asked me exactly what I thought I was doing, introducing complete strangers to his son.

“Matt!” I had stared at him in horror. “Theo isn’t a ‘potentially perverted psychopath’!” I made finger-quotes in the air and echoed my brother’s suspiciously derisive tone. “He’s my boyfriend!”

“This is the guy you had met two days earlier?” Matt shot our previous conversation back at me. “You didn’t know anything about him!”

“Jeez Matt, have a little more bloody faith in me.” I had ordered the coffee this time, so mine was a tall and frothy latte while my brother drank his black and straight from the jug. “I would never put Marcus in harm’s way. And Theo works at the rescue centre; he would have been there anyway.”

“I don’t think you should be introducing my son to people we haven’t met: it’s not right.”

“Well I promise not to introduce him to any more boyfriends,” I shot back smugly.

“Good.”

“There won’t be any more boyfriends. I love Theo.”

“What?” Matthew’s tone was hard, and the temperature in the cosy café suddenly seemed to have dropped to somewhere around freezing. “You have known the man for three weeks, how could you possibly be in love with him? Or think he’s in love with you?”

“He told me.” I arched an eyebrow at my brother in surprise. He didn’t sound like he was being deliberately thick, and I didn’t think he was joking.

“He told you?” Matthew rolled his eyes, “Ricky, I might not like guys at all, and you’re my brother… but I can tell that you’re a good looking guy. Do you not remember back in junior year when Chase Williams told you he loved you purely so he could get into your pants? And then bragged about it to the entire lacrosse squad?”

I clenched my fist and swallowed bile. I hadn’t wanted to actually punch my brother in a very long time, but those kinds of sibling urges never seem to fully fade away.

“You cried for about a week. Guys will say anything to get their rocks off – we both know that.”

“Yeah, we do,” I took a deep breath, and let it go softly, “but if I remember rightly Matt, you were the one who told Chase that I fancied him, and left your underage brother alone in the house when you had promised to help me with my calculus homework.” I stood up, not even bothering to finish my coffee. “I love Theo, and I know he loves me. We spend all our time together, I’ve met his family, and he was really good with Marcus. If you’re going to doubt me, then you go right ahead.”

“Ricky…”

“And don’t call me that.” I had turned on my heel and left without looking back. The next time I had been home there was a slightly pathetic message on my answer phone, introduced and ended by my sister-in-law using her best I’m-disappointed-in-my-husbands-behaviour voice, but I didn’t much care. Matthew would either come around or he wouldn’t, but it made me ever more nervous about the idea of actually introducing Theo to him face to face.

“Theo?” I shut the door with my foot, and peered into the grocery bag for the chips. Theo had a thing for chips; especially the fancy chilli and goat’s cheese flavoured ones, so I had been to the expensive grocery store to get them for him. We’d been out of milk too, and I got some cheese in the hope that Theo would let me loose in his kitchen to steal his pasta and make the only thing I actually could. When my boyfriend didn’t reply, I called out again. “Theo?” Usually this would make him appear, almost as if by magic, to wrap his arms around me and nuzzle into my hair. Sometimes we never even made it upstairs or even fully out of our clothes. It was a good thing I hadn’t ever brought home ice cream. “Babe?”

He was in the kitchen, and I blinked as I looked at my boyfriend, because I almost didn’t recognise him. He seemed flustered, his back to the stove where three large frying pans were hissing, spitting, and producing rich meaty flavours, whilst he stood at the main kitchen surface with what appeared to be half a dead pig and a very sharp knife. At some point Theo had gained an apron, which was rather heavily blood spattered, but the top half was hanging loose around his hips and he had lost his shirt. I watched Theo carve a hunk of meat the size of my head from the shoulder of the pig and slap it on the thick chopping board with a wet thunk.

“Theo? What’s going on...? I peered over the edge of the pans where chunks of pork and fat were frying happily. “Are we having a party or something?”

Theo looked up at me, and his eyes were blue and wild.

“Oh…” I had never heard such a disappointed, almost shameful tone in his voice before, and far from making me suspicious of what he was doing, I just wanted to cross the room and hold him. But he looked somehow… dangerous. “I didn’t think it was that late yet. I wanted to be done before you got back.”

“I got chips.” I held up my bag of groceries, feeling slightly pathetic in the presence of a lump of dead animal that probably weighed more than I did. “Theo? Come out of the kitchen.”

For a moment, he was still, but I could see his whole body vibrating with tension, and for the first time I was genuinely worried about the man I adored. Then he exhaled, laid down the knife, and I didn’t care that his strong chest was spattered with dried blood and I was wearing my good work shirt when he wrapped his arms around me and hugged me so hard that my ribs creaked. Theo nuzzled into my hair with a soft little whine like a worried canine, and I pushed my fingers into his hair. Theo’s chest rumbled with a happy noise, and his lips pressed softly against the join between my neck and shoulder, pushing my shirt askew. I hugged him tight, and dropped the groceries on the counter in surprise as Theo lifted me up and carried me from the kitchen.

We sat on the sofa, and despite his mucky apron I snuggled into his lap. Without a word Theo un-tucked my shirt from my pants, and placed his hand over my abdomen. Even for someone who was overly warm most of the time, he was roasting.

“I have to tell you something Ricky.”

“OK.”

“I don’t want to,” he sighed. “I’m scared.”

“Theo…” This time my voice brought forth a happy shiver from my boyfriend, and I grinned. “What’s there to be scared of?”

“If I tell you… you might leave.” Theo kissed my throat, and I knew he was trying to avoid looking at me. I couldn’t have said how I knew, but I did.

“Theo!” I pulled back and looked at him. There we were again, inches apart, four bright blue eyes and all I could see in his gaze was the desire to be honest and to love me. And I wanted nothing more either. “Just tell me. I love you; I’m not going anywhere.”

He gulped.

“You have to make a choice, and I can’t decide for you. You have to stay with me, and know this, and keep my secret. It will change the way you see the world.” He touched my lips with one finger, stilling my response in my throat. “Or you have to leave me. I can’t be with you and keep this from you: and I can’t let you walk in and out of my life. I love you too much.” He looked on the verge of tears. “I never knew I could love a person as much as I love you.”

“Theo…”

“Full moon is tomorrow, beautiful.” He stroked my jaw and kissed me. It was a kiss like the first one, full of strange unknown fire. I wanted to grab hold of that feeling and never let go. “I’m out of time.”

I blinked at him. I could feel his pulse through the places our skin touched, and not for the first time, my heartbeat was falling into time with his. I looked around my head for the rational part of my brain screaming for me to get away, but all was silent. Theo held my gaze as he spoke.

“Choose.”

But I already knew.