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Luca leaned forward.
“Sandy?” he said, staring at the receiver. When no response came, he banged it against the table. “Sandy!”
“Yeah?” she said, eventually. The smirk was heavy in her tone.
“Oh, I see how it’s going to be,” he muttered—half in frustration and half in admiration.
“Good. Now help me with seven down, college boy.”
It was three days later—deep in the afternoon on the first day of proper summer. Luca was spinning slowly on the chair, the binoculars bumping his chest hair with each push of toe against rug.
Luca was wearing nothing but a white-and-blue jockstrap—the result of getting bored and re-sorting his clothes for the fifteenth time. He wasn’t sure why he’d brought it, given there wouldn’t be anyone to see him in it. Probably the same reason he kept his pre-booked sexual health checkup before leaving home. It just felt weirder not to.
But still, there was something slightly thrilling about having his bare ass against the leather, despite the lack of an audience.
Different men were built for different clothing. There were some who just looked better in a cap than others, more relaxed and street confident. Others looked perfect in a business suit, exuding money and dominance and that sneer of someone who knew the proper names for wine and could buy a yacht without thinking twice.
Luca was made for jockstraps—particularly this kind, the classic 1970s version, with the two-inch waistband and no-nonsense elastic under each cheek. Something about the sheer size of his furry bubble butt and round belly and thighs so powerful they could crush a watermelon. It was a combination that made all the stocky studs at the gym salivate whenever he started his squat routine.
Not that there was any risk of ogling here. The closest guy was probably some lonely Mountie in the distant north, and it seemed unlikely that he’d cross the border just to visit.
The thought made Luca groan at the ridiculousness of being dressed for sex but having zero access to it.
He stared at the typewriter—a cipher for his wilderness goal. That would be the thing to do, right? Just get on with it and write the story that would kick-start his future as an influential journalist.
I went to the woodsbecause I wished to live without the temptation of sexy men, with their cute butts and even cuter smiles...
And yet, something kept Luca from the keyboard. Probably the realization that writing about celibacy was the opposite of taking his mind off the frustration.
Instead, Luca rummaged among the meager pickings in the pantry.
It was a pointless distraction, given he already knew what was there. He’d signed up too late to have a say on the first food delivery, and whoever had packed the supplies was totally devoid of imagination—tinned fish and vegetables, rice and pasta, white flour and whiter sugar, and god-awful packets of hot chocolate that tasted like a cocoa bean had been cremated.
In the end, he reluctantly settled on a fat bag of trail mix—dried fruit and unroasted nuts. They were at least good to throw at the ceiling and catch in his open mouth, although he did have to keep chasing down almonds when they escaped under the desk.
And it was on one of these food retrieval missions—with his jockstrapped ass exposed to the door and his stocky knees splayed wide for maximum reach—that the first hiker of the season arrived at Bleeding Heart Tower.
“Whoa!” came a deep exclamation from a few feet behind.
The sounds of another voice—particularly one not filtered through radio crackle—was so unexpected that Luca immediately tried to stand.
Unfortunately, the desk got in his way, smacking hard against the back of his head and collapsing him into an even more revealing heap on the floor.
Dazed and disorientated, he scrambled out to find...
Oh, wow!
The midtwenties stranger was the most stunning man that Luca had ever seen. He was strong and tall, a six-foot collection of spheres—in his stocky shoulders, beefy arms, broad chest with its big tufts of exposed fur, well-fed belly, fertile bulge and an ass that barely fit into his aged jeans. His thick beard was copper red, a shade darker than the curls that poked in cowlicks from his mesh trucker cap. His round cheeks and surprisingly cute nose were covered in freckles.
And his eyes. Sweet baby bear Jesus, his eyes.
They weren’t green, because that word didn’t carry enough meaning to describe the allure of the shade. They were shamrock, perhaps? The lucky symbol of the Irish hills this beefcake must have descended from? Or pear skin, maybe? Shifting between verdant and flaxen depending which way the light hit. But whatever their shade, they carried with them a soul beyond any that Luca had ever seen.
Luca swayed a little, confused why the room was so swirly.
This stranger was obviously a poet. A tortured artist. A virtuoso. Luca could see that just in his expression, though he was sure that most were blind to it. This was the kind of man who could sit and brood and dream—always dream.
On their first date he would take Luca to a Parisian-inspired café, Moleskin pad of tormented scratchings gripped betwixt knowing fingers, as he ordered strange herbal drinks like Chartreuse and Benedictine.
