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Luca smiled. “To the summer, Artair.”
That night, free of guests for the first time in ages, Luca dreamed a strange dream.
He dreamed himself a little guitar tune of summer sun and rain showers and grass seeds catching the breeze. He dreamed of slow, blissful days in the forest. Of unhurried hikes to distant campsites. Of unhurried hands over his body. Of swimming together. Of wandering off into new and interesting parts of the woods. Of laying under the stars, the gentle pop of cooling coals serving as their serenade.
Of talking for hours.
About music and lyrics.
About rush and quiet.
About city and stream.
About everything and nothing.
And in the deepest parts of the dream, he imagined himself sitting at the typewriter, weaving supple stories from the cloth of reality, passionate and raw and real. Unbothered by words like acceptable and mainstream.
He dreamed long of those tapping keys, percussion to match the man on the bed behind him—focused and lost and wandering the land in that same musical moment.
The man was nursing his guitar. A fox was curled in the gap between his folded legs. A bronze-skinned companion was breaking his concentration momentarily, as he brought him food and kissed him gently.
And both of them would smile.
In lust.
In love.
In lazy, languid longing.
In the knowledge that they had nothing to do all summer but bask in the halcyon glow of a perfect life.
NINE
Red Wood
Luca snapped awake, eyes half open and sun half risen.
He was alone in the bed, as he had been every night for the last fortnight, with he and Artair coming together for boisterous afternoons and slippery evenings, but ultimately sleeping apart. Luca had initially feared that the change of location would mean spending much less time together. However, the opposite was true, with them spending every sunset so far in each other’s arms and asses.
Yeah, the long walks back and forward between their camps were time consuming, but what was the other option? Not spending all his free time riding Artair’s cock?
Mmm. Artair’s cock . . .
Just as that lovely thought made him drift back to pleasant dreams, another clang dragged him to reality. The sound—clanking metal and the smack of wood—was coming from the sheds.
Some people say that the test of a man is how they respond to an unexpected noise in the middle of the night. A few leap into action, with middle-school karate ready in their fists. Most freeze and say a silent prayer that it was just the house settling.
It was a testament to Luca’s two months in the wilderness that he rolled out of bed with a grunt, slipping on unlaced boots and not a single other thread to cover his swinging nakedness.
“Fucking squirrels,” he muttered, wobbly on his morning legs.
However, when he stumbled down the dew-heavy grass, blushed tangerine orange from the horizon, it wasn’t a squirrel that had gotten into the sheds.
It was Artair.
His visitor grimaced in the low light, fully dressed and fully awake. The awake part was typical—in their time together during the storm, Artair had proved himself a much bigger morning lark than Luca’s journalistic night owl.
But what wasn’t typical was the half-dozen gardening implements he was juggling under his arms, with handles and dirt-covered metal jutting out at all angles. Somewhere in the pile was the cabinet of vegetable seeds, balancing precariously on the flat shelf of a hoe-blade.
