Archive of Our Own

Shane loved his life.

He loved being married. He loved being a father. He loved the house with its noise and its mess and its strange little domestic territories; the tiny shoes by the door, the hair clips that appeared in places hair clips had no reasonable business being, the bath toys colonising the edge of the tub, the nursery bag slumped in the hall, the soft evidence everywhere that he and Ilya had made a family and were somehow keeping it alive.

He loved it with a depth that occasionally made him feel unstable. Sometimes Mika fell asleep against him with one warm hand tucked under his collar, and the whole weight of her trust settled into him so completely that he could hardly breathe. Sometimes Ilya moved through the house carrying laundry, or coffee, or their daughter, and Shane had the terrible realisation that happiness was not a sporting achievement, or a contract, or a house with good windows, but this, the sight of his husband barefoot in the kitchen while a two-year-old accused blueberries of being too round.

He loved his life.

He was grateful for it.

He was fulfilled by it.

He also wanted to fuck his husband so badly he was beginning to feel medically unwell.

It had been three fucking weeks.

Three weeks was not, in the long and humiliating history of Shane Hollander wanting Ilya Rozanov, an impressive record. Before they had admitted what they were to each other, whole months had passed between them, months during which Shane had gone about his life in a functioning approximation of human behaviour while some private, feral part of him kept inventory of Ilya’s hands, Ilya’s mouth, Ilya’s shoulders under a suit jacket, Ilya’s laugh across a room, Ilya’s body in the dark. Even once they were together, properly together, there had been stretches of separation. Games happened. Training happened. Flights happened. Distance happened. Shane could survive longing when longing had geography.

This did not have geography.

This had Ilya in their kitchen in black boxers, eating toast over the sink, sleepy, broad and unfairly hot as fuck, while Mika sat at the table arranging shapes. This had Ilya leaning over the bath to rinse shampoo out of Mika’s hair, his shirt riding up his back while Shane stood in the doorway holding a towel and trying not to become the sort of father who objectified his own husband during a discussion about bath crayons. This had Ilya brushing past him in the hall and sliding two fingers under Shane’s waistband for one catastrophic second before walking on, calm as anything, to find the dinosaur pyjamas.

It was cruelty, domestic cruelty, of the absolute worst kind, because it wore socks, knew exactly where the dishwasher tablets lived, and used that intimate knowledge solely to tease Shane until his ears burned.

Ilya was worse. 

Ilya had a high sex drive at the best of times, and these were not the best of times. These were the weeks of early starts, late games, foundation calls, nursery logistics, physical exhaustion, and the kind of parental sleep deprivation that made Shane once put coffee grounds directly into a mug and stare at them for thirty seconds, waiting for civilisation to happen. They were tired all the time, they were busy all the time, they were men paid astonishing amounts of money to be physically dangerous, but were now being beaten into submission by a child who believed mittens were sentient and emotionally fragile.

They were exhausted, and so thoroughly hard up that their house had developed a distinct atmosphere. It was not romance, nor was it seduction; it was something far less elegant and infinitely more hazardous. It settled heavily in corners and gathered in the doorways, moving with them from room to room like damp, or poor insulation, or an infestation made entirely of horny married men.

Shane could feel it in the pantry one evening while he was reaching for pasta.

There was nothing erotic about pasta. Shane was confident about that, or had been before marriage, parenthood, and three weeks of enforced celibacy altered his relationship with dried goods. The pantry was narrow and badly designed for emotional restraint. There were cereal boxes at eye level, toddler snacks in cruelly cheerful packaging, and a packet of penne in Shane’s hand when Ilya came in behind him and touched his hip.

That was all; one hand.

Shane’s body, apparently no longer interested in maintaining standards, reacted as though Ilya had done something elaborate and illegal.

Ilya’s mouth found the back of his neck, warm and lazy and filthy in intent if not in execution, and Shane’s hand closed around the pasta so hard the plastic crackled. He should have moved. He absolutely should have moved. Mika was napping. Dinner needed making. Water needed boiling. There were vegetables in the fridge already approaching the point where using them would feel virtuous and not using them would feel like a failure of character.

Shane did not move.

He tipped his head to the side like a man surrendering his last scrap of dignity beside a family-sized box of cornflakes.

Ilya laughed softly against his skin, and fuck, Shane hated that laugh. He hated it because it meant Ilya knew. It meant Ilya could feel Shane losing the plot and was enjoying the collapse. It meant Ilya was just as bad, just as wound tight, just as ready to do something spectacularly stupid next to the rice.

Shane reached back, got his hand in Ilya’s hair, and pulled him closer.

For three or four glorious seconds, the world narrowed to Ilya’s body behind his, Ilya’s mouth on his neck, the pantry shelf digging into his hip, and the extraordinary indignity of becoming desperate in a room that smelled faintly of oats.

Then Mika suddenly appeared in the doorway and made it clear, with bright toddler authority, that Papa was not allowed to bite Daddy.

The penne hit the floor, and Ilya moved back so fast he knocked over the rice.

Shane made dinner with a visible mark on his neck and a child intermittently checking whether he needed a plaster.

By Thursday night, they were stupid again.

Mika was asleep. The house was quiet. The baby monitor sat on the coffee table, silent and smug. Ilya was sprawled on the sofa, watching a terrible action film, and eating a bowl of grapes. He was wearing black sweatpants and a shirt that had once belonged to Shane. It had been a perfectly normal shirt on Shane. On Ilya, stretched across his chest and loose at the collar, it looked indecently ideological.

Shane stood in the doorway for too long.

Ilya looked up, and he put down the bowl. 

The film paused before Shane had even crossed the room, which was, Shane thought dimly, efficient, and therefore somehow sexy.

He climbed into Ilya’s lap with no dignity at all.

Ilya’s hands landed on him immediately, greedy and warm and familiar, not gentle in the everyday domestic way, not a passing touch in the kitchen or a sleepy hand on his back, but want with heat under it. Shane felt the same three weeks wound tight beneath Ilya’s skin. He felt it in the pressure of Ilya’s fingers at his waist, in the impatient lift of his hips, in the way his mouth opened under Shane’s as if kissing was essential and also nowhere near enough.

It turned ugly quickly, which was exactly what Shane wanted. Not sweet, not careful, not married in the respectable sense. Too much teeth, too much heat, Ilya’s breath catching, Shane’s hand in his hair, the sofa shifting under them, Ilya’s laugh breaking apart into a rough sound that made Shane’s stomach drop.

Shane rocked into him before he could stop himself, and Ilya swore into his mouth.

Shane’s whole body went stupid with victory.

Then the monitor crackled.

Mika’s voice came through, sleep-thick and distressed, crying that her penguin had teeth.

Shane closed his eyes.

It was possible, he thought, that no man in human history had ever been so personally wronged by imaginary wildlife.

Ilya’s head dropped back against the sofa. His fingers tightened at Shane’s waist once, as if his body had not yet received the news that he was being recalled to parenthood. Shane remained in his lap for one suspended moment, hot and breathless and painfully unfinished, before they disentangled and took time to become decent for parenting. 

Mika ended up between them in bed because she was small, frightened, warm, and smelled of baby shampoo, and because Shane’s love for her arrived all at once, enormous and automatic, even as it stepped politely but decisively over the corpse of every filthy plan he had once had for the evening. Ilya lay on the other side of her, staring at the ceiling with the hollow expression of a man who had gone to war with a toy penguin and lost.

A few mornings later, he woke in the pre-dawn light to Ilya already touching him. They were married. It was their bed. Their child, through some temporary administrative oversight by the universe, was still asleep in her bed down the hall. Ilya, half-awake, was unfair. Fully awake, Ilya had jokes, provocation, deliberate filth, a whole arsenal of smugness Shane could meet with irritation and structure and, on good days, self-control. Half-awake, Ilya had none of that. Half-awake, Ilya was rough warmth and slow hands, mouth soft against Shane’s shoulder, body heavy with sleep and wanting, not clever enough yet to be cruel but awake enough to be dangerous.

Shane turned into him.

Ilya smiled against his mouth.

The shift from gentle to catastrophic took almost no time at all. The duvet twisted around their legs. Ilya’s shirt disappeared somewhere beyond the edge of the bed. Shane’s palm found the hot skin of his side. Ilya’s thigh pressed against his. Shane bit down on a sound because the house was quiet and because, theoretically, he was still a man with self-command.

Ilya had no such interest in control. His patience had clearly died in the night and left no forwarding address. His hands were everywhere, restless and blunt and nearly clumsy with wanting. He kissed like he was annoyed that kissing was not enough, and Shane loved it with an intensity that was almost embarrassing. He loved Ilya like this, sharp and hungry and too honest to joke. He loved being wanted by him in a way that felt inconvenient, bodily, married, young and old at the same time.

Ilya rolled him onto his back and looked down at him, hair wrecked, eyes dark, mouth open.

Shane felt a ridiculous flare of triumph go through him, primitive and hot and so fucking grateful that for one foolish moment he believed the morning had chosen mercy.

Outside, something rumbled.

Shane ignored it with the full commitment of a man prepared to let civilisation fall.

Ilya did not.

His body went still.

Shane had barely registered the change before Ilya launched himself out of bed with a furious Russian curse and sprinted down the hallway in only black boxers, leaving Shane flat on his back, flushed, breathless, and abandoned in the wreckage of their sheets.

For one wild second, Shane thought the house must be on fire.

Then he heard it.

The low mechanical groan in the street. The violent scrape and rumble of wheels being shoved down the drive at a speed that suggested years of professional training had finally found their true domestic purpose.

Shane stared at the ceiling.

His husband had just abandoned imminent sexual fulfilment for recycling.

What made it worse, what made it unspeakably worse, was that Shane understood. The situation in the utility room had become untenable. Mika had entered a phase in which every box that crossed their threshold became emotionally significant. There were castles, rockets, boats, caves, hospitals for injured spoons, one structure whose purpose was never explained but which caused hysterical grief when Shane moved it six inches to sweep. If the collection was missed, the house would not recover.

But really, cardboard for fucks sake!

Ilya came back flushed, panting, barefoot, wet from the path, looking ridiculous and gorgeous and dangerously proud of himself.

Before Shane could decide whether to kiss him or smother him, the monitor came to life.

Mika had heard Papa running.

After that, their standards collapsed.

Not their moral standards, not entirely. They remained responsible parents. Competent adults. People with calendars, emergency contacts, life insurance, and a working knowledge of which paracetamol syringe was clean. But their standards about timing, location, and whether a room was appropriate for hands under clothing eroded with frightening speed.

Ilya kissed him in the laundry room while holding a pair of Mika’s tiny leggings. Shane kissed him back against the washing machine because apparently that was who he was now, a man who could be undone beside a basket of toddler clothes. For twelve glorious seconds, he forgot the washing machine existed. Then it made an alarming metallic clunk, shuddered with the drama of a dying animal, and released water across the floor with deliberate comic timing.

Another evening, Ilya came home from training still cold from outside, cheeks touched with colour, mouth tasting faintly of mint when Shane kissed him in the hall. It should have been a normal kiss, one of the brief domestic acknowledgements of return, like hanging up keys or asking whether Mika had eaten anything green. Ilya made it not normal by pressing Shane lightly against the wall with one hand at his waist, and the weight of his body still wrapped in a coat and cold air.

Shane’s hand slipped inside the back of Ilya’s jeans before his conscious mind had filed the paperwork.

Ilya made a sound so gratifying that Shane briefly understood why people invented religion.

The front door, which had not latched properly, drifted open behind them.

Across the drive, Mrs Patel looked up from retrieving her post and waved with the bright neighbourly cheer of a woman who had just seen either nothing at all or far too much.

Ilya waved back.

Of course he fucking did.

Half-wrecked, mouth swollen, Shane’s hand still in his trousers, and Ilya waved back like a friendly slut with community spirit.

Shane spent the rest of the evening avoiding the front window and reflecting darkly on the failures of modern door hardware.

There was also the kitchen incident, which Shane refused to call an incident because that suggested accident, and there had been nothing accidental about Ilya finding him before bed in an old soft shirt, looking him slowly up and down, and making Shane put his glass of water on the counter with the solemn resignation of a man abandoning hydration in favour of sin.

They did not make it out of the kitchen. Ilya had him against the counter, hands under his shirt, mouth at his throat, one knee between Shane’s thighs, and the fridge hummed beside them with obscene indifference. Shane’s thoughts reduced themselves to heat. Ilya, yes, fuck, now, while Ilya laughed under his breath like the whole thing was both unbearable and hilarious.

Then the doorbell rang.

They froze.

It rang again.

Shane’s body remained pressed against Ilya’s while his mind, traitorous and competent, supplied the answer from somewhere cold and administrative.

The delivery driver was young, polite, and visibly determined to preserve the fiction that Shane’s shirt was not inside out and Ilya’s was not buttoned in a way that implied a recent struggle. Shane accepted bags of bananas, yoghurt, cereal, oat milk, dishwasher tablets, strawberries they had not asked for and could not keep, and a substitution involving coriander that made Ilya curse in Russian.

A few days later, Mika was at nursery, Shane had no meetings until lunch, and Ilya had finished training early with a minor groin strain, which should, in a fair universe, have made him less sexually dangerous. Instead, he lay shirtless on their bed in black joggers, supposedly resting, looking like an erotic workplace safety violation.

Shane tried to be responsible. He really did. He moved carefully because of the injury, and that care made everything worse. Hotter. More intimate. Less funny for several dangerous seconds. Daylight made Ilya too visible. The flush in his throat, the movement of his ribs beneath Shane’s hand, the way his mouth softened when Shane slowed down, the way his fingers twisted in the sheet as if he needed somewhere to put the want.

Ilya loud was one thing. Ilya, filthy and provoking and smug, was familiar. Shane knew what to do with that. He could meet it with irritation and heat and the kind of self-control that occasionally survived first contact.

Shane was braced above him, one hand pressed to Ilya’s chest, the other in the sheets beside his head, when the front door opened downstairs.

For a suspended second, Shane’s soul left his body, looked down at the scene, and declined to return.

Someone had arrived.

Someone with a key.

Someone cheerful, professional, and completely unaware that there were two men upstairs in a state of interrupted fuckery.

Ilya’s eyes widened, and then he started laughing. Silently, at first, which was worse. His shoulders shook, his face went red. Shane clapped a hand over his mouth, which made him laugh harder, the absolute bastard, the love of Shane’s life, the man Shane was going to murder the moment he was not quite so naked.

Shane rolled off the bed and grabbed blindly for clothes, ending up in Ilya’s black dressing gown, tied badly, hair destroyed, dignity reduced to ash. Downstairs, their cleaner displayed a frankly remarkable level of professionalism as she took one look at Shane and announced she would start downstairs. Shane thanked her in a voice that had been scraped off the underside of his soul.

When he returned, Ilya was laughing into the pillow so hard he had to hold his injured groin.

Later that week, Mika went to Shane’s parents for an hour and a half.

Only an hour and a half, but by that point, an hour and a half looked like obscene luxury. Shane had barely closed the front door before Ilya had him against it.

There was no warm-up, no joke, no slow glance across the room. Ilya simply put his mouth on Shane’s, one hand at the back of his neck, the other already under his shirt, and Shane understood in a bright flash of relief and terror that Ilya had also been counting minutes.

The quiet house made everything worse. No cartoons, no nursery songs, no tiny voice asking why bees did not wear trousers, no monitor hissing like a little state surveillance device. Just Ilya’s breathing, Shane’s pulse, the thud of someone’s shoe hitting the floor, possibly his, possibly Ilya’s, who gave a fuck.

They stumbled upstairs, still kissing. Ilya nearly tripped on a plastic dinosaur. Shane kicked it aside without looking. They hit the bedroom doorframe, Ilya laughed against his mouth, breathless and filthy with it, and Shane got him onto the bed with enough urgency that for a few perfect seconds there was nothing funny at all.

Ilya looked wrecked. Open shirt, hair everywhere, eyes dark and fixed on Shane like Shane was the only thing in the room. Shane’s chest went tight, then Ilya’s hand hooked in his waistband, and the tenderness died a quick and welcome death.

The world narrowed to heat and hands and Ilya’s mouth. Shane bent to kiss him, felt Ilya’s hands drag down his back, felt his own body answer so sharply he nearly lost the thread of himself. They were not even properly started, not really, but they were near the edge of something, near enough that Shane’s thoughts became bright and useless, reduced to Ilya, Ilya, Ilya, fuck.

Then his mother called out from the front door. 

Ilya’s expression emptied with horror.

Yuna had returned early because Mika had fallen in a puddle and required dry clothes, which was the sort of innocent family sentence that should not have had the power to destroy two adult men. Shane became presentable at a speed and came downstairs with his hair wet from the sink, pretending this explained anything. Ilya followed barefoot, shirt twisted, looking like a man whose entire body had been insulted by family logistics.

Yuna noticed everything and said nothing.

By the end of the third week, Shane had become superstitious in the way of men who had seen too much. He did not trust household sounds, household silences, household appliances, household visitors, household admin, or the dangerous stillness of a room that appeared empty. Hope, he had learned, was how the universe lured you into taking off your underpants before revealing that someone had vomited, arrived, leaked, texted, delivered vegetables, witnessed too much, developed animal-related trauma, or needed help finding a single sparkly shoe.

Ilya, meanwhile, had become feral.

There was no other word for it. He touched Shane constantly, in passing, in doorways, against counters, hand under his shirt, mouth by his ear, fingers at his waist, always just enough to make Shane lose the ability to complete whatever adult task he had been attempting. He kissed Shane in the garage beside the bins, which Shane found both disgusting and horribly effective. He got a hand inside Shane’s back pocket during a foundation video call and then left the room smiling, while Shane stared at a spreadsheet on youth mental health programming and wondered whether desire could be classed as a governance issue. He murmured something in Russian against the side of Shane’s neck while Shane was making Mika toast, and Shane burnt it so badly Mika became genuinely concerned that the bread had died.

It was mutual. Shane was not innocent. Shane had stopped pretending to be innocent somewhere around the second failed encounter, and the third time Ilya stretched in front of him, wearing compression shorts.

They were becoming a public health concern in their own home.

So, Shane planned.

He did not hope. He had learned the limits of hope. Hope was for idiots and people without children.

Mika would stay overnight with his parents. His mother was delighted. His father promised pancakes. Mika packed pyjamas, a rabbit, three plastic dinosaurs, a wooden spoon, and one sparkly sock for reasons Shane chose not to investigate.

Shane checked the house with the grim thoroughness of a man preparing for siege. He checked schedules, doors, timings, messages, household arrangements, and the calendar twice. He removed variables. He neutralised threats. He approached domestic life like an opponent with a weak left side and a history of dirty play.

He made dinner. Actual dinner, not protein and vegetables arranged in the joyless geometry Ilya liked to mock. There were candles, pasta, bread, salad, and wine, but not too much wine, because Shane had learned through bitter experience that excessive wine made him handsy, emotionally undisciplined, and occasionally sick in a way that was not compatible with seduction.

He put both phones on do not disturb.

He locked the door.

He looked around the quiet house and, for one terrifying second, allowed himself to believe he might have outsmarted fate.

Ilya was upstairs.

Shane looked up and saw him on the landing in black trousers and a dark shirt, the top buttons undone, hair damp, freshly shaved, looking deliberate and expensive and devastating. It was not fair. It was so not fair that Shane nearly missed the bottom stair and would have died there, in his own hallway, killed by lust and poor foot placement.

Dinner was good.

Too good, almost. Ilya was relaxed and warm and funny, and Shane was still wound tight enough to feel his pulse in his fingertips, but the candles helped, the quiet helped, and Ilya’s bare foot sliding against his under the table absolutely did not help, except in the sense that it helped Shane remember what the entire point of the evening was. They ate slowly. They talked about Mika, and the foundation, and nothing, and somehow the nothing was the most intimate part. No one interrupted. No one cried. No one appeared in a doorway with urgent news about a damp shoe or an imaginary predator.

When Shane reached for the plates, Ilya caught his wrist.

No spoken argument was needed. Shane understood the look immediately. The plates could cope. The plates could develop resilience. The plates could sit there and witness whatever happened next, like every other household object that had seen too much.

Shane laughed so hard he had to sit back down.

Then Ilya came around the table and kissed him until the laughter left his body entirely.

They made it upstairs without incident.

In the bedroom, the lamps were low. The sheets were clean. Shane had changed them earlier and refused to feel ridiculous about it. Ilya shut the door, and the click of it in the quiet room nearly undid Shane before anything had even happened.

For once, neither of them made it funny.

Ilya touched him first, one hand sliding beneath Shane’s shirt, palm hot against his side, and Shane exhaled as if three weeks of wanting had been lodged under his ribs and had only now found a way out. He kissed Ilya slowly because they had time, because they had earned it, because he wanted to remember the unbearable luxury of finally not listening for disaster.

Ilya allowed slowness for perhaps four seconds.

Then his control snapped with a rough, impatient sound against Shane’s mouth, and Shane’s whole body answered with relief.

Fine. Slowness was overrated. Reverence had its place, and apparently, its place was before Ilya got both hands under Shane’s shirt and pulled him closer like the last three weeks had been a personal injustice requiring immediate correction.

The kiss turned hungry. Ilya’s shirt opened under Shane’s hands, buttons slipping loose too slowly and then all at once. Shane pushed the fabric off his shoulders. Ilya’s skin was warm. His mouth was hotter. His hands moved everywhere with greedy familiarity, not exploratory because there was nothing left to discover, but possessive in the way that said he remembered everything and wanted all of it again.

Shane could not stop smiling, which made kissing difficult.

Ilya noticed and bit lightly at his lower lip.

Shane stopped smiling.

They reached the bed. Actually reached it. Ilya sat on the edge, shirt open, looking up at him with dark eyes and ruined composure, and Shane had the brief, absurd thought that after marriage, after a child, after bath toys and foundation calls and the slow accumulation of adult life, Ilya could still look at him as if wanting him was urgent, as if Shane was not familiar but necessary.

For a while, there was no joke. No domestic life. No schedules. No chaos. Just Ilya under his hands, Ilya’s breath against his mouth, Ilya arching into him, Ilya wanting him so plainly that Shane felt almost dizzy with it.

The house stayed quiet.

The world held.

Shane began, foolishly and beautifully and dangerously, to believe they had won.

Then he reached for the side table.

Nothing.

His hand moved through the drawer again, more urgently this time, and found a receipt, lip balm, one of Mika’s hair clips, the corner of a paperback, and a tiny plastic animal that had apparently annexed the bedside table on behalf of the toddler state.

No lube.

Shane went still.

The silence changed.

Ilya opened one eye and immediately understood, because of course he did, because his face moved from bliss to betrayal with a speed that would have been funny if Shane had not also wanted to set fire to the furniture.

They were out.

They were out of fucking lube.

This was not, technically, an emergency. Before parenthood, they had kept lube in half the rooms of the house with the casual optimism of men with disposable income, flexible standards, and no child. They were older now. More mature. More organised.

Which meant it lived in precisely two places.

One of them was not currently useful.

The other was in the glovebox of Ilya’s Mercedes SUV. Do not ask why.

Shane pulled his underwear back on with grim focus and left Ilya on the bed looking wronged, beautiful, open-shirted, and so thoroughly edible that leaving the room felt like an act of violence against himself.

He ran through his own silent house in his underwear, past the abandoned dinner plates, into the garage, and rummaged through the glovebox of Ilya’s ridiculous car because married life was apparently an endurance sport with household obstacles.

His life was absurd.

His life was perfect.

His husband was waiting in their bed.

Shane came back upstairs victorious, breathing hard, bottle in hand.

He opened the bedroom door.

Ilya was asleep.

For a full three seconds, Shane did not understand what he was seeing.

Then he understood, and all the air left his body.

Ilya had fallen backwards across the bed, shirt still open, one hand resting on his stomach, the other curled in the duvet. His hair was a mess. His mouth was slightly open. He looked gorgeous, peaceful, exhausted, and so completely, offensively asleep that Shane felt personally betrayed by biology itself.

Of course, he was asleep. He had been up early all week. He had trained, played, done foundation calls, carried Mika, cooked breakfast, endured the collapse of every attempt they had made to touch each other like adults instead of fugitives, eaten pasta, drunk wine, and finally relaxed in a silent house. He was fucking tired.

He was also half-undressed on clean sheets after weeks of sexual catastrophe, which Shane felt was rude.

Deeply rude.

Criminally fucking rude.

Shane stood there in his underwear, holding lube like an idiot.

Then he sighed.

He put the bottle on the bedside table with more force than was strictly necessary and sat on the edge of the bed.

Ilya shifted towards him in his sleep.

That was unfair.

That was fucking unfair.

Even unconscious, Ilya reached for him. Even after ruining a carefully planned romantic evening by possessing normal human limits, he turned towards Shane like Shane was warmth, like Shane was home. The movement was blind and automatic and devastating in a way Shane resented almost as much as he loved it.

Shane leaned down and kissed Ilya’s forehead.

Ilya slept on, beautiful and shameless.

Shane turned off the lamp and climbed into bed beside him. Ilya immediately rolled closer, heavy and warm, throwing an arm over Shane’s waist with the absolute confidence of a man who knew he was loved even when he was impossible.

Shane lay in the dark, still horny, still fond, still faintly furious.

The house was quiet.

Mika was safe.

Ilya was warm against him.

The lube was finally on the bedside table.

At least they had tomorrow morning.