Corrado chuckled. “Yours is firmer.”
Well ...
“Is it?”
“Maybe. And warmer.”
Alessio grinned, and turned to his stomach where he could bury most of his face into the pillow. Cracking just one eye open, though, he stared at Corrado who laid on his back, a hand splayed over his naked chest, while he stared at the ceiling. He said nothing, simply reached over to drag the tips of his fingers through the longer bit of Corrado’s hair where his high fade started to darken.
Just as quickly, he pulled his hand back, the need to touch him satisfied. He was there. All was good to Alessio—he simply needed the reminder.
He never spoke it out loud, though.
It didn’t make sense.
Why bother?
Corrado glanced over at Alessio, his dark eyes drifting over him in the bed beside him before he stared back up at the ceiling. It was in their quiet moments where Alessio found peace. He had quiet before—time when he was completely alone, no distractions. And yet, it wasn’t the same when it was just him and Corrado.
Here, they decompressed.
Here, nothing mattered.
Here, it was just them.
Silently, Corrado’s hand slipped off his chest to find Alessio’s against the sheets. His fingers curled tightly with Alessio’s, and wove together, tucking their hands next to his hip where their bodies were close enough to hide the touch.
“If I never see another dismantled gun again, that would be great.”
Alessio barked out a tired laugh. “Tomorrow, you’ll have five new guns waiting.”
“Fucking bull—”
“It’s a good lesson to learn.”
“Right,” Corrado mumbled, scrubbing a hand down his unshaven jaw. “I’ll remember that. What’s that file for, anyway?”
Alessio stiffened.
Corrado didn’t miss it.
“What?”
“The one on the stand?”
“That’s the only one in this room, isn’t it?”
Alessio’s jaw clicked from how hard he clenched it to hold the words back. He wasn’t sure why, all of the sudden, he didn’t want to tell Corrado about his assignment, but the urge was strong. They were just starting to figure whatever this was out—if someone wanted to call it that, but he didn’t know if he would.
Nonetheless, that didn’t make it any less true. And here they were, at this unsteady point, and now he was about to head out to a whole different country for three or four weeks? That sounded like a problem waiting to happen.
“Les,” Corrado murmured, waiting.
“It’s ... uh, a job.”
That time, Corrado stiffened. “A job?”
“Mmm.”
A beat of silence passed.
Then, another.
Alessio waited it out.
“Can you say what it’s for, or no?”
“Recon and retrieval—Siberia.”
“Interesting,” Corrado replied.
“Could be a month, maybe a little less.”
“Huh.”
Alessio eyed him, trying to find something. Corrado’s tone gave nothing away, and neither did his shadowed features in the darkness. Still, something just felt off.
“Hey,” Alessio said.
“What?”
“What are we doing? Us, I mean. What is it?”
That seemed important to ask.
Wasn’t it?
Shouldn’t they get that part figured out here?
“Nothing, Les.”
Alessio didn’t move a muscle. “Nothing?”
Corrado looked over at him, still as blank as paper. “Yeah ... I guess.”
He wasn’t sure if that was Corrado’s pride coming out again to make another appearance at the worst fucking time, or if the man simply believed what he was saying. Either way, Alessio didn’t like it, but he also wasn’t in the mood to point out that for people who were doing nothing ... they did it an awful lot, and Corrado still found his way to Alessio’s rooms far more often than he did his own.
But all right.
They could be nothing.
For now.
Alessio rolled over in the bed then, and sunk back into the blankets, ready to go back to sleep. Corrado let him, at first, but then Alessio still felt him tuck into his back when he rolled over, too. The softest graze of his lover’s mouth drifted between his shoulder blades, reminding him that even when he wanted to hate Corrado, he couldn’t.
Not even a little bit.
The air caught hard in Alessio’s chest as Corrado’s arms snaked around him like bars. And then just as quickly, warm, rough hands slipped under his boxer-briefs to find his cock. It took Corrado no time at all to stroke Alessio alive under the blankets.
His mouth, still hot at Alessio’s shoulders, skimmed higher. Corrado’s teeth found the back of his neck while his fingers tightened and stroked him faster.
Dark words hit his skin.
“Like that, yeah?”
He couldn’t speak.
Not when he was already this close to blowing his load. Not when those words caught in his chest because damn, maybe if he said nothing, then Corrado would say more. And there was something wicked and dark in his voice when he was like this.
Something Alessio craved.
There was one thing he found in men that he didn’t find in women when he was in bed with them. Women gave sweetness in their sex, even when it was anything but. Men only gave darkness.
And when Alessio wanted that, he found it. When he needed sweetness, he could find that, too. Right now, he just needed the one.
Corrado had it all.
“Come on,” Corrado mumbled against his skin, “fucking give it to me—I want it.”
Alessio could feel him hard at his back, the length of Corrado’s erection grinding into him in time with the strokes of his cock. In the next breath, he hit that numb place before he was thrown into the orgasm.
There was no holding that back.
He spilled on Corrado’s fingers, and the sheets.
“Shit.”
Sinful, rough laughter filled his ears, and Alessio wanted to swallow it right up. He wanted all those dark, hard sounds against his mouth as he did the same to Corrado that had just been given to him.
Those feelings.
Those sounds.
Corrado needed to have them, too, he thought, and he twisted in the bed. Alessio found him already waiting as he reached back.
12.
Corrado
“Fuck,” Corrado hissed, lifting his gaze from the scope to glare down the barrel of the sniper rifle. He didn’t need to check the sights again to know, in fact, he had not hit the goddamn target four miles away from the complex’s roof where he was currently perched. Or rather, resting on his stomach with the gun in front of him. Behind him, Nathan, his current trainer, sighed loudly. “The wind is too—”
“The wind is fine.”
“I adjusted the way you told me to.”
“And inhaled when you shot.”
Had he?
Fuck.
Again.
It felt like Corrado had been saying that a lot this last week. Propping himself up on his elbow, he used the tips of his fingers to massage at the spot on his temples that were throbbing. He’d woken up with a headache, the day was half over, and it still hadn’t gone away.