Well, shit.
Alessio hoped they enjoyed the show.
Nightly.
Corrado shifted to his side, and Alessio caught his gaze with his own. Not saying a single word, he reached over and pressed his thumb to the corner of Alessio’s mouth. The pad of Corrado’s digit dragged across his lower lip with the softest touch.
The silence stretched on, but that was okay. He’d learned after all these years with Corrado that, sometimes, quiet was better. It was in their stillness where they found the best connection.
They didn’t always need words.
They just needed moments.
Quiet, soft moments.
Sometimes, they came when neither of them expected it, too. Between bursts of busy schedules, and chaotic careers that sent them both running all over the world doing jobs for The League, and different clients. After the danger waned, and the violence was gone, it was just the two of them again.
They ended up back here.
In their life.
Together.
Quiet.
Alessio knew that from the outside looking in, he and Corrado didn’t make sense to other people. They didn’t have a label. Far too many overlooked them, and assumed they weren’t a thing together. Not that they ever gave people a reason to know the truth, either.
You know, beyond living together.
For nearly five years ...
Still, people didn’t know.
They could only assume.
He partly blamed himself, and Corrado, too. Not that he ever said that to anyone, or his lover. A long time ago, they’d decided this was what they were going to be. Together, but only to each other. A thing, but it wasn’t open to public consumption.
Alessio was willing to do that.
It gave him what he wanted.
Corrado.
Somehow, they found a familiar rhythm like this. He didn’t push for something else, or for more, because what else was there to have when ... in a lot of ways, he had it all.
Or did he?
People wouldn’t understand.
They shared everything.
A life.
Work.
A home.
Women.
Sex.
There was nothing in their lives that wasn’t somehow touched by both of them. So much so, that those closest to Corrado and Alessio thought the two of them were often extensions of the other. Without one, the other wasn’t right.
Nothing was right.
“What are you thinking about, huh?” Corrado asked, his voice thick with sleep and bliss. Probably still humming from that orgasm, and if all went well, Alessio would be the next one. “You’re quiet over there.”
“You like that, anyway.”
“Sometimes.”
Alessio grinned.
Corrado smirked right back.
Reaching over, he drifted his fingertips down the line of Corrado’s jaw still shadowed with a few days’ worth of scruff. “You do like it when I’m quiet. Admit it.”
It was true.
Corrado thrived on attention.
Alessio just liked to watch.
“And when you’re a shit,” Corrado added.
He laughed. “Yeah, that, too.”
“And don’t deflect. What were you thinking?”
Alessio sighed, his gaze going back to the large, glimmering light fixture above the bed. Only Corrado would know something was going on in Alessio’s mind when he was quiet. No one else saw him in his silent moments and thought, something’s happening there. They were all too willing to let him stew, even if they didn’t know that’s what he was doing.
Not Corrado, though.
He often wondered, how, at eighteen—although now, just a month or so shy of his twenty-third birthday—had he found his person. He knew some people went their whole lives without ever finding that person that was meant to be only theirs.
He found his early.
Corrado was still there, too.
God.
And he loved him.
Loved him fucking stupid.
Loved him enough to still be here even when shit held Corrado back, and forced them into his strange place where they were something, but they weren’t at the same time. Where they shared women in bed, and had a whole life together behind closed doors, but out in the world ... they weren’t anything. Where they dictated this thing between them with rules that had followed them from damn near the beginning, but neither of them said three little words to cement it.
I love you.
But that was too deep.
Corrado didn’t do deep.
So, Alessio lied.
“I was thinking one of us needs to take the black Porsche out, and open it up,” he murmured, swallowing the emotions in his throat, “it’s been a while since it’s been taken out.”
Corrado glanced over at him, and if he knew he was lying, he didn’t say. Not that he ever brought up that kind of shit; it might open a can of worms that he wasn’t willing to face yet, and Alessio had a bad habit of letting Corrado have what he wanted.
Even if it hurt him.
“Yeah, all right,” Corrado replied.
Crisis averted.
As per usual.
The ringing phone on Corrado’s nightstand saved the two of them from saying anything more. Corrado rolled over, and snatched the phone while Les pushed out of the bed, and started grabbing the few clothes he’d discarded earlier. A shirt, his pants ...
Corrado had nothing on.
He tossed his clothes over, too.
“Thanks,” he mouthed, answering the phone at the same time. “Marcus.”
Alessio stilled, shooting a look over his shoulder. Not that it was unusual for Corrado to get calls from his family because that was all too normal. Usually a couple a day, really. If not his mother, then it might be the man’s twin, his father, or any one of his other three brothers.
All of which Alessio knew.
And well.
It was one of the reasons why this thing between them didn’t make any fucking sense, not that Corrado liked it when he pointed it out. Alessio wasn’t hidden from Corrado’s family like he was a dirty secret to be kept. He sat at their dinner table—he attended their parties, and celebrations. They knew him.
And he suspected, they knew why he was there.
But no one asked.
So, no one told.
He just didn’t understand.
Why?
What did it matter after all this time?
“But can’t they just—” Corrado sighed harshly, telling his brother, “Fine, Marcus. Yes, they can throw a double birthday party for us, and you.”
Then, Corrado added, “I assume Les will come, why wouldn’t he? Tell Ma yeah for that.”
Alessio went back to pulling on his clothes, slightly annoyed. Not so much at the conversation happening behind him, but the topic. His family just expected Alessio would be around for something like Corrado’s birthday party his mother and father wanted to throw in a few weeks—although his birthday was sooner than that—because they had to know.
They had to know what he was to Corrado.
Why he was important.
That this thing was a fucking thing.
Why were they still playing this stupid game together?
He also knew that at least a handful—or a couple, anyway—of people, like Corrado’s twin, knew a lot more about Alessio and Corrado than anyone else did. Like the fact their poly lifestyle in the bedroom often had them sharing women, and otherwise.
But never men.
Those rules, again.