There's something almost overwhelmingly euphoric about being at the center of a writhing mass of ravers, with the music lining the walls like a shivering foundation of steel-silk. It's not really necessary to accept or use the pills that float around the room like candy. You don't have to be high to feel like you're floating.

There are crazy moments when you wonder what in the hell the place would look like if the lights were on, or if the music were suddenly turned off. But that's the beauty of it—you never know. You arrive and subsequently leave with the place just as dark and loud as it was before you even knew it was there.

These are houses of primal human expression. It seems ancient, almost, the need to gather, the need to move endlessly and with no rules, the need to feel sound and rhythm up from your toes to the very center of your body. It's exciting; it's arousing; it speaks to something simple inside us.

The bass goes through you and it almost hurts for all its depth—the treble screeches and grinds. And it comes together like a wave of ocean tide, the only difference being that the ocean tide waxes and wanes, and this musical wash of noise stops for nothing and isn't ruled by natural law.

Maybe it is that tempering of primal instinct by contemporary, sterile safety that makes being on the floor of a wild dance club feel like so much more than it really is. Maybe it's the fact that the every day rules of personal space are suspended. Sure, you can't just start groping some random girl up, but who knows, she might just start groping you first—and then it's all cool, right down the line.

It's being a speck in the crowd, maybe—but a speck connected to all the other hundreds of specks around you, and that brand of minute togetherness is almost religiously appealing.

And there's no threat to stay here, like a cult has—there are side rooms with glaring fluorescent lights, shelves of bottled water, and mats for exhausted, overcome dancers. There are a half dozen people there; staff tags neatly pinned to their shirts, just waiting to escort you safely to a mat or to a cab.

And so it's all the fullness of a tribal cult experience without any of the attached strings or real dangers. It's fuckin' amazing.

You can forget who you are. You can forget where you are, because no matter what town the club is in, it's all the same. Sometimes it doesn't even matter what country you're in, because club music shares a common base that spans continents and cultures, anyway. Different brands of the same product.

But sometimes it's even more amazing. Because sometimes you are someone or are doing something that would be very hard to forget, even if the club experience was outrageous.

It's amazing, because for about three hours, I forgot about being Merry Brandybuck. I forgot about the Shire and about the One Ring.

I forgot about being in Queenstown, New Zealand

And the night only got weirder from there. Went something like this.

So, I'm on the floor, right, busy forgetting who I am, just about fifty yards from the massive black speakers near the DJ's booth, and if you've ever been that close, you know that you can't hear shit over the noise, and that the only thing that gets your attention is someone touching you. Like, if your mate wants to get a beer, he's got to grab your arm and drag you; or else you have no idea what the bloody hell he's trying to say.

Anyway, I have this girl in front of me, this gorgeous little slip of a thing; all fragile bones and smelling like hemp. But she's fantastic and I don't mind the weed smell. Under the spastic multi-colored strobe lights, she looks like a goddess, her strawberry blonde hair's exact color never registering because the lights keep changing it.

She's grabbing my hips to keep me close, because the crowd could separate us by yards in seconds, and her tiny rump grinds into my crotch whenever she can manage. Sometimes I can see the goosebumps on her skin, sometimes the sweat at her temples, sometimes the dark color on her fingernails.

She's all tingling and pulsing and I know for sure that she's taken ecstasy or some other upper. She doesn't know who I am. Who could under these lights? I could be her brother for all she knows. Except for the fact that I'm having very unbrother-like thoughts about her.

God, I've got to get this girl somewhere private, I think, and run my hands up her back to pull her close. She's so small. How can she keep on like this? She's probably sweated half her weight already.

I don't know where Billy is and in the back of my mind I think it'd be the best friend thing to do to go and look for him before disappearing with this piece of sugar and cream that keeps pressing the inseam of her hip-huggers against either side of my thigh. After all, I am driving—the designated driver, actually, so Billy's probably passed out drunk on one of the backroom mats anyway. Hmmm.

The girl's tiny hands rub up my sweaty neck and grab my ears, pulling me down.

"Wanna take a break?" she shouts in my ear. I can barely hear her, but I get what she means well enough to let her tug me through the crowd.

Near the door of one of the crash rooms, a guy with a dark blue shirt that has a white logo over the breast pocket thrusts bottles of water into our hands, and we collapse on the nearest, free mat.

Laughing, she shakes her head and pants for a few minutes between huge gulps of water. She grins and flops across my lap, then, water bottle spent. I'm leaning back by now on my hands, grinning knowingly at her, and I push the hair back from her face and behind her ears.

"Alive there, love?"

She practically squeals. "Oh, my God, your accent is so cool."

An American. Interesting. Wondering if she has Kiwi relatives, I smile. My pulse is still going a hundred miles an hour.

"Thanks. I'm just working here for the year."

She crawls up into my lap, sitting straddled over my legs, and I can see the drugs in her eyes and in the lack of coordination of her fingers.

"What'd you do?"

Supporting her, I weigh the two ways to answer—truth or not. Truth will get me laid almost immediately, but excludes anything else I might get beyond one night of sex. Not-truth might get me more than one night, but in the end I'd have to break it off anyway because I didn't tell her the truth to begin with.

And, staring at her sleepy, excited eyes and her hard nipples through the thin material of her halter-top, I realize a night of sex is just fine with me. Besides, the surprise factor is just too rich.

"Well," I drawl slowly, coy and evasive, eyebrows a-waggle; "it involves really big feet..."

She giggles and wraps her slender arms around my neck, one of her knees traveling between my thighs on the mat.

"Seriously. Is it something weird? Weird is fine with me."

And it doesn't matter, I think, because I'm not going to see you past sunrise, anyway.

"I'm making a film, actually."

Her cornflower-blue eyes widen. "Yeah? Which?"

"Lord of the Rings, ducky," I smile, gripping her sides between my fingers.

She laughs, her jaw lax, and then widens her eyes again. "Nuh-uh. You're lying."

"I am not!" I protest, using the playful moment to pull her against me. Her nipples are digging into my shirt and I imagine wrapping my fingers around her throat and pulling her under me.

"Oh, really? What's your name, then?"

"Dominic," I answer, intentionally leaving off my last name. It's early on in the shooting, so not much press has gotten out about us besides our names—but still.

She goes still all the sudden, growing serious and then collapsing into amusement again.

"Dominic? The M last name, right? Holy shit, you're one of those habbit guys. God, my brother hasn't shut up about the movie hype since June..."

By this time, I'm rubbing my face against her neck and letting my chin bury against the swell of her breasts, and I couldn't give a shit less what her brother thinks about Lord of the Rings or "habbits," because I only want to have her naked and moaning.

The more she talks the less interesting she gets, and the more I realize she's taken something heavy. She actually starts to wobble a little and her eyes close every now and then.

Fucking hell. She's one of those people that come down off shit real fast and real hard, I think. Before I know it, the crash room staff is pulling her off me to a cot of her own, laying a blanket over her, and checking her ID for a home number. Nursing the pretty decent beginnings of a hard-on, I grumble, fall back against the mat, the glaring lights stabbing the center of my brain.

I overhear one of them tsk-tsking that a seventeen-year-old somehow got into the club. I look over, and they're still hovering over Blonde and Yappy.

Oh, bloody hell. I was going to fuck an underage American girl. Feeling the night collapse into a pile of bollocks, I drape a damp cloth over my eyes and manage to fall asleep for fifteen minutes.

When I come to, there are several new, exhausted faces on the mats around me, and one of the staff comes over to help me up. Then he asks for my autograph. Obliging with as full of a smile as I can muster, I fall back out into the crowd, scanning the ever-moving mass for Billy.

I skim along the walls, the music still pulsing with a rhythmically dangerous volume that eats at my eardrums. I end up in the men's loo, because the contents of the water bottle I drank have finally circulated. Standing there in front of the urinal, I'm reading the graffiti on the tile when I hear hushed, funny noises coming from the stall behind me.

I chuckle to myself, thinking that it could be me with that pretty American in that stall, had she not passed out and been underage. Ah, fame has done such wonders for my shagging record, I think. Bravo to the film industry.

And then it comes to me that one of the pair of voices has just mumbled something with a distinct, Scottish brogue.

No way.

Going still, I zip up my pants, trying not to attract attention. I reach down and hit the speed dial on my cell-phone that's programmed to Billy's number. A faint trilling and vibration noise comes from inside the stall, just above the noise of heavy breathing. If I look long enough, I can see the light rocking of the bathroom stall's wall on its hinges.

No fucking way!

Billy, shagging in a bathroom stall? I wonder who the girl is. Usually Billy makes a show of taking girls back home. Hell, he's borrowed my flat more times than I can say.

And for some twisted reason I can't quite put my finger on, I am drawn to the noise.

I move closer, hoping the couple is too busy to notice my feet. I close my eyes, wondering what it might look like inside, and listen to the faint noise of flesh moving against unidentified flesh.

I see two pairs of feet shifting, and it's hard to tell which is Billy's and which is the girl's, but I do hear a low, harsh exhale.

"Yeah..."

That's Billy. A strange tingling seizes my belly, making the spot cold and hot all at once. I get wrapped up in listening, the delicious sense of taking part in something that is one hundred percent not my business zinging along the back of my neck.

And then suddenly, there's a commotion in the stall. A body backs up, bumps the far wall, and I can hear arms grappling.

"What did you just call me?"

"Fuck. Wait—"

"Don't touch me. God. I said don't touch me, faggot!"

"Fer Chrissake, woman..."

A sharp metallic sing of a zipper and an elastic band snap here and there, and the girl's busting out of the stall, red in the face, totally disheveled. She wheels around near the door, clutching a pocketbook to her chest, and spits out one last comment before disappearing.

"Whoever Dom is, I hope he'll enjoy the ass-fucking you're planning on giving him."

I forget momentarily that I'm in the room and that I'm visible. Billy stays inside the stall, the open door that almost hit me in the face blocking him from seeing me. Not wanting to see him right after this—gotta let a bloke take his punches in private—I quickly duck into the next stall and close the door.

And then what the girl said processes. Tension floods my chest along with a good dose of confusion. The fuck?

I can hear him gather himself slowly, shrug his shirt back on, fix his pants. He leans against the wall that connects our two stalls; I can see his weight pushing on it. And then he reaches into his pocket and gets out his cell-phone; I can hear him pushing the buttons. There must've been five or six missed calls from my number. I hadn't left any messages.

"Dom," he sighs, going down the list of calls. "Dom. Dom Dom Dom. Annnd Dom. Always Dom. Or Merry. Dom and Merry, Merry and Dom. Fuck." He punches the side of the stall lightly, pushes himself upright, and is out of the bathroom seconds later.

No more than two minutes after that, I find him outside the club, trying to get reception on his phone—presumably to call me. I have to pretend everything's cool and I do fairly well with the acting—hey, that's what they're paying me for, after all. I throw an arm around his shoulders, bringing him close to my side.

"Bad turnout?" I ask.

"Yeah. What happened with you?"

"Girl passed out on me. Found out that she was only seventeen, though, afterwards. Probably for the best. You?"

"Don't want to talk about it. You drink at all?"

"No, just water. C'mon, car's this way."

In the car, I tried again.

"You sure you're alright, then?"

"Yah."

God, he's an awful liar.

If I would've been in that stall, I know I would've seen a wounded-Billy expression. I know he's angry or upset or both. And over what? Over what, indeed, I think to myself, remembering what the girl had said.

Shit. I sort of like this.

Weird to not have the rest of the boys with us, but sometimes we do like this, just us two hanging out. We've got something between us that has to do with our characters—or maybe that something between our characters has to do with us. Either way, we're great mates, and I feel like I've known Billy my whole life.

I keep reminding myself I should feel weird being alone with him ever since that night in the club. But I just can't feel wrong about it. Billy has always felt right, whether in friendship or while acting and, for some reason, that rightness has extended rather easily to this new addition.

I think all along that it's been something more, no matter how much we chalk it up to amazing friendship. It was too fast, too easy—has to be more to it, yeah? Yeah. Gotta be. But I can't say a word. It would embarrass the fuck out of him, not to mention probably make him mad for eavesdropping on his private goings-on.

Besides, he seems to have brushed it off. Not sure, really, but maybe a long day of work put things back into perspective for him. Hard to maintain bad feelings around your best friends. They remind you of who you are—which is not who some rude little lass at a club thinks you are. That rush of protective feeling always leaves me kind of dizzy.

And then something funny happens in the middle of a particularly bad slasher movie. I look over at Billy, and the protective best mate feeling bunks up against the funny tingling feeling from the bathroom incident. And it processes in my sloshy brain folds that the reason why I had been attracted to the stall was because I was picturing what it might be like to be inside that stall in place of that bitchy girl.

It all falls into place like slide projector images behind my eyelids after that: seeing Billy at our first script reading, seeing Billy in makeup, seeing Billy request porridge for breakfast in the trailer every morning, seeing Billy in a pair of slacks and a silk dress shirt and not being able to stop staring, seeing Billy hopping around the Cantina in hobbit feet while trying to get me to touch all the tables faster than him and how he kept "forgetting" to start the stop watch. Seeing Billy try to teach Elijah to play tig-tog over and over, seeing Billy in boxers after every late night drinking game, seeing Billy talk so fast in an Scottish brogue over the phone to his friends back home that I can't follow at all. And on and on, documenting the fixated feeling that come along with seeing Billy and didn't come along with seeing any of the others.

Kind of not dramatic, I think, to realize this while watching some blonde virgin get all sliced to bits. Huh. Well, that's us, I s'pose. What else would we be doing?

What to do, what to do. Drumming my fingers against the arm of the couch, I think.

I'm not gay. Okay. Fine. Next. I'm not straight. Yeah. Check, Dom-boy. I think Billy's fucking sexy. Ergh, that feels weird. Okay, shut your trap, because you do think so.

Okay. I think so.

Have I ever thought another bloke was sexy? Not really. But then, I've never really thought about it seriously, either. And the idea isn't too unappealing, now that it's up there for discussion.

Girls are a given. Sure, of course. Who couldn't like girls? I think about Liv. Ahh. Eye candy and a nice lass, to boot. Now that's fine, too.

But Billy. No, Billy's not eye candy. Maybe that's why it took so long to realize it, I think to myself. Eye candy kind of shoots straight southward, if you follow me. Stuff that means more isn't as obvious. Takes longer for a thick guy like myself to notice it's actually there.

I review it all. Why do people go through years of guilt over sexuality? This is pretty simple.

Hmm.

Drumming my fingers again, steal a glance at Billy: Billy, bathed in the pale light of the TV, with that pretty mouth, those deep laugh lines, and the slightly receded hairline.

God, he's so warm looking. Wonder if he'd like to snog.

I have a real advantage in having overheard that bathroom encounter, though I feel right awful for him. He must think I'm completely and totally straight, I think.

He's got to be going mad, I think next. Poor guy. Imagine me, lusting after some completely hot girl that turned out to be a lesbian and never being able to tell her. I'd be glad she was happy and all, but I'd always regret the fact that it wasn't in my favor.

Is that how Billy feels? Is Billy thinking that maybe we could have a whole long thing if it weren't for me being a ladies' man? How many times has our friendship been labeled with the sentence: "We're like a couple; just without the sex!"

Source of Billy's drinking—Scottish decent or unrequited attraction?

Probably both.

Hmm.

'Course, I'm too chicken shit to say or do anything now that I've got it all straightened out in my head. So we go to sleep after drinking a little too much bourbon, him flopping onto the floor next to the couch and me claiming the couch for myself.

I lean down and prod Billy with my foot.

"What'reyouonabout, then?" I mutter.

"Feckin' floor's very uncomfortable," he says, flopping over onto his back.

"Get your arse up here," I growl, all set to go back to sleep.

He hoists up his blankets and falls in front of me, his back plastered down my front. We're squished, but that's okay at this hour, usually. We've done this plenty of times.

Sure. Not a problem. Not a...well. Okay. Problem. Annoying, tingling sort of please-please-go-down problem. Shit. I hope he's asleep, or this could get squicky.

Why is all this coming on now? Why have I never noticed how good he feels right there, tucked into me? Why do I like it so much when he falls asleep, because the stiff in-your-personal-space-and-have-to-pretend-I'm-trying-not-to-be thing in his shoulders goes away and he relaxes into me? Why do I notice the smell of his after-shave or how tight his thighs are as they spoon back against mine?

Well, alright, I tell myself. The sexuality part has nothing on the actual attraction to an individual you really, really adore part. This is difficult.

Want to wake him up and tell him now, skip the subtly. Want to tell him that I like his wide back and that I'd like to kiss right between his shoulder blades.

Feeling all romantic-like towards a bloke is kind of weird. Can I do this the same way I do it with girls? Not the sex, I mean, I explain to myself. That's kind of something you just understand after a while. And I've had plenty of gay friends. But the romance part, the stupid part, the gift-buying phone-calls-late-at-night part.

Don't Billy and me do that already, though? Well. Yeah. So...

And then I realize he's not asleep. He seems to be listening to me breathe. Little Dom's calmed down by now, so that's all in the clear. If he'd just roll over, I think, I wouldn't have to initiate anything. We'd be so close that not touching would require effort.

A moment later, with the blue of the overcast sky a shade lighter, he moves a little, and I feel the broad curve of his backside press slowly back into my lap. I close my eyes, absorbing the conscious pressure of his body.

Fuck. Okay. Deep breaths, then, Dom-boy, he's... Okay.

Maybe he thinks I'm asleep. Gotta say something. Oh, buck up, you prissy little cunt, just say something. Kind of ridiculous, isn't it?

What the feck do I say? Blokes don't say sexual shit. They do it. So do it, my inner voice answers, all spiky and annoying. Can't just do it, I answer back. All sorts of sexuality issues unspoken. So kick unspoken in the arse and grab him. Yeah, well, what if he doesn't want to be grabbed?

And on and on until I realize my pulse is pounding and I'm starting to sweat from the heat of the blankets and Billy's body. And suddenly I can see his profile against the lighter blue of the room, and it's just Billy's face—quiet, thoughtful, and a little sad.

Oh, Billy. A sigh issues from my lips just before I lift my arm and wrap it around his waist. Whatever his reaction, he can give it to me as he pleases. The split second of absolute pleasure that I get from pulling him close drives out all other thoughts.

He stiffens just a little and then I see his eyes close. All the breath gets squeezed out of his lungs. And then he rolls over—I can almost see the decision to do it in his face—and puts his free arm around me and buries his face into my throat. I hug him tighter, feeling all sorts of sticky, rampant emotions wriggle in my chest.

It's everything warm and soft and good in the world between our bodies. We fit together perfectly and I'm suddenly dizzy with wanting the morning to never come, wanting this moment to go on and on forever.

And then the confession rolls out of me in one breath.

"I was in the lav at the club the other night. I heard the whole thing."

He stiffens again and sits up to look at me, and the sudden closeness of our faces is intimate and frightening. He frowns, scanning my eyes, all serious. It's unimaginable how beautiful Billy Boyd is when he's got the serious face on.

"You..."

"I didn't want to embarrass you," I say.

"You're not..."

"Angry? No. The opposite of angry."

He raises a brow and flatlines, "Indifferent?"

His expression makes me laugh. I shake my head, trying to figure out if guys require different kissing, trying to figure out how to do this without looking really, really green.

So I wrap my arms around him again, our eyes losing contact, and that makes it easier. His right hand pans down my t-shirt covered side and the lazy touch of his firm, wide palm is new all the sudden.

"What were you thinking of, when you were with that girl?" I ask against his shoulder.

"You," he breathes against my throat, his lips brushing my skin. He takes the accident further, kissing deeply there on my pulse, which trips hard in response. "Always you. Ever since we arrived here, Dommie, every time, it's always been you..."

"What do you think of, when you think about me?" I ask secondly, feeling drowsy and almost high off the feeling of his mouth.

He lifts his face, eyes flickering briefly over mine. But then he kisses me softly, slowly, his fingertips sure, wrapping around my jaw-line. The feeling goes right to my cock, right to my chest, right to my toes: jabbing-jabbing-tingling.

And then we're kissing each other, and it's not alien at all, it's Billy, it's Billy's peppermint breath and Billy's hot tongue and Billy's teeth. Kissing, kissing, gripping, kissing. God, yes.

He pulls back a little, his lips brushing mine as he speaks.

"Of you...touchin' me...kissin' me...all over me...of you in the shower, covered in water and tinglin'...of you laying on top of me, inside me...hard..."

Fucking hell. I don't think even a straight guy could listen to this and not get instantly aroused. Some of my hesitance goes away.

"God, Billy," I grumble, grabbing his shoulders and dragging him against me and kissing him hard. I forget he isn't a girl and that I've never kissed a man before and I just devour his mouth, licking, nipping, sucking, feeling his hands push and pull at me, feeling his cock, hard as a rock against my belly.

"Ever since I laid down with you, you've been..."

I sigh and nod. His hand goes down my side, brushes my hip and then wraps around the right half of my ass, squeezing and bringing my arousal against his body. Shuddering, I press my fingertips to his shoulder blades.

"Let me," he exhales against the corner of my mouth, his fingers slipping beneath the waistband of my shorts. I usually don't whimper; but I do now, because the desperate, going-to-explode feeling seems to be racing just ahead of Billy's fingers.

And I do let him. I let him with an eagerness that rivals anything I've experienced before. I roll onto my back when he urges me, and suddenly he's on top of me and between my legs, kissing his way down my body.

My t-shirt goes. I stop thinking, because with soft presses he's biting my nipples, something not many girls had ever bothered to do before. And it hurts and feels amazing, and that's fucking good as hell.

I close my eyes and let him further. He kisses my ribs and my stomach for maybe fifteen minutes until I feel like I've been raked over half a dozen times with silk; sensitive all over and raw, but pleasantly so.

There's this moment when I look down, and I realize it's morning and that the sun's coming over the mountains far in the distance, and his hazel green eyes are burning up in my direction, and then his face is against my boxers, nuzzling and pressing the rock-hard bulge there. My eyes roll back in my head when he pulls them down.

And then his hands are all around me, so much harder and surer than any woman's have ever been; knowing just where to put the right pressure and for how long before stopping. Squeezing and pulling me, lazy rolls of his wrist, lazy swivels around the head around the head around the head until I'm writhing.

"Fuck," I sigh.

I don't see him grin, because I'm throbbing all over and my eyes are closed, head back on a pillow. I spread my thighs when I feel him urge me to do so. And the flickery wetness of his tongue traces the head of my cock with a precise twirl, bringing up an immediate pearl of fluid.

I look down just in time to see his wide eyes smack dab staring into mine and his pink tongue, broadly stroking upward and smearing the moisture across his tongue just before he lifts his head and swallows me down his throat.

I think I shriek like a little girl. Or, at least, that's what he'll tell me later when I'm conscious. And it doesn't take much of that deep bobbing of his head and the slick squeezing swivels of his wrist before I'm bucking off the couch like I've got an electric prod under my arse.

Pumping, hot, sweating, Billy, God, yes—incoherent, jumbled, abso-fucking-lutely perfect.

I can only imagine the picture; me, red from the exertion, tensed from head to curled toe, hips off the couch and doing slow rolls into Billy's hot, wet mouth; his patience with my squirming as he works me harder and faster and slower and then faster. Him, rubbing my pelvis and my stomach with his free hand, pressing my nipples between his fingertips, then cupping my balls with a careful shift of his hand.

And his knuckle rubs against some spot just behind them—and the third time it does that, sending electricity to short out the circuit breakers of my resistance, I come wildly, squirming off the couch cushions, sweat broken out on my forehead and stomach.

He barely flinches as I come, swallowing like a trooper—as if he'd do anything else, my Billy.

I lay there afterwards, panting, drained of all muscle strength, eyes still closed as I feel him licking and caressing me to softness. Then the rush of tenderness comes—the silly gratitude that I always feel after this kind of selflessly given pleasure. But it's a whole new kind of tenderness, because it's for Billy, and it's all draped and strewn with love, and that's insane, because I can't really be in love with him that fast, but whatever, shut up, just enjoy this.

He crawls back up my body and lays himself there. And then I'm kissing him, my taste all in his mouth, which is more or less no taste at all, except it gets in the way of the peppermint.

And I do silly things: run my fingers through his hair, kiss his eyelids, kiss his nose, kiss his ears, trace the outline of his back with just my thumbs.

"Merry," he sighs heavily at me; emotion and lust etch the lines of his face.

"Yes, Pip?" I query back playfully—grinning all the sudden.

"I'm going to say something very, very stupid and premature and I need you to promise me that you'll hate me quietly for laying it on you."

"Right then."

"I love you."

"Oh, Bills."

"I know. It's been like this forever. And I wish I had the ability to...like a younger guy to just...turn it off. But I'm a sentimental old man and I don't want you to think that all I want is this. If this is all we can have, tell me now, please. Because I don't think I can handle that."

I laugh. "Yeah, you're so bloody old, it's not even funny."

He pins me with a patented Billy glare.

"You also talk too much when you're nervous."

Another glare. I can't help but grin again.

"I love you, too, you idiot."

His expression softens. "You're not just sayin' that?"

"No, I'm not," I say, just realizing how honest I'm being all at once.

He laughs suddenly, and I can see the relief and the hope spread behind his eyes.

"Fuck, man," he says, looking overwhelmed.

"We've got the whole day off," I remind him.

"We'll have to fight off the Fellowship," he reminds me right back.

Grabbing the TV remote from the end table, I hold it high. "For the Shire!"

He falls on top of me, laughing, and suddenly we're both giggling like school kids, clasping each other's still-warm bodies.

The sun streams like tangible joy through the gaps in the curtains, slices of dusty citrus perfection, and all at once the world is as beautiful as its ever been.

"What if someone walks in?" I manage to get out between Billy ripping my shirt off and Billy tugging my belt buckle free of its closure, light metal-on-metal clinking as he steers me backwards.

He pins me back against the makeup counter, the mirror and multiple light bulbs illuminating anything and everything of our bodies. I'm stiff as a board inside my pants, having spent the last half-hour with the boys and with Billy's hand not so innocently stroking my inner thigh.

"Since when are you not the risk-taker in this family?" he grinds out, sucking my lips, kissing them deeply until they turn red. He pushes me up onto the counter and I sit there, thighs spread, and he presses between them. Closing my eyes, I feel the excitement of the semi-public location and his rushing; makes my cock throb inside its prison of cotton and denim.

I lean back against the mirror, shivering from the cold-hot contrast, and I watch his face as it takes in the rippling stretch of my stomach.

"Fuck you," I say, grinning, and he waggles his eyebrows and takes my legs from behind my knees, dragging my bottom half forward until my legs wrap around his weight.

"Oh, no, no, bonnie boy. It's the other way 'round..."

"Shit, Billy, here?"

His fingers deftly undo the button and zipper of my jeans and our angle makes them slide off quickly. He reaches into his pocket and I can see the white glint of a tube of lubricant, which in and of itself sends a throb down the length of my cock.

He leans over me, covering my body with his and pressing me into the mirror.

"I want you now," he whispers against my earlobe. "Want to fuck you now. Want to watch you turn red and hot in the mirror...see your muscles clench around me... How about it, Dommie, hmm?"

This man is going to kill me. He's older than I am by quite a few years and he's going to kill me with his raging hormones. Fuck, I love him.

I lay my head back, my eyes rolling with it, and my hands fly to his zipper. I'm so tight and hot from just his urgency and his talking that I crave what he offers instantly. There's very little preparation here, because by the time his fingers are coated and pushing into that tight ring of muscle between my thighs, I'm begging and dying and dying and begging.

I want it to hurt. I want him to stretch me harder. And when he finally sits up and pushes his flushed erection steadily and deeply inside my aching body, it's all I can do to stifle my low cries. This is rushed and wonderful—slow and wonderful can happen later.

Without shame my legs go around his waist and he's working my prostate with these slow side-to-side round-and-round rolls that make me sob; his cock going hard and deep, to the point where it just might really hurt, and then stopping. And then pulling out a little, relief and need layering hotly—please, don't stop, oh fuck, please, harder. And back inside again, holding me close against him as I fall forward, my thighs squeezing around us, my weight bearing my body down onto him as he thrusts.

When it gets there finally, it feels like being pushed off a cliff: the lack of control, the squirming anxiety, the dangerous teetering. And then there's the intense milking of my erection between his hot, pink fingers as he pounds my body into the counter so that we both feel it at once.

Sticky and hot and breathless, we push the hair back from each other's faces, and he kisses me long and soft.

"Got a towel, love?" I ask, eyebrows shooting up.

And I'm lucky enough to be sharing that last thing with Billy.

I don't know how long we'll have before we have to go to our respective home countries, but I hope it's not for a while. I feel awkward bringing it up. He's been so silent about the future that I can't be sure about anything.

Just after they call out our flight number to board, Billy slips an envelope into my hand. He looks fantastic in a leather jacket, dark jeans, and sunglasses.

"Happy birthday," he says.

"My birthday was three weeks ago. You already gave me a present," I reply, turning the envelope in my fingers.

He grins, waggling his brows, and that's all I can see due to the tint of his shades.

"If this explodes, you're ass is mine, Boyd," I say, smirking.

"It already is yours...but in the spirit of indulging your violent streak, I'll accept the terms."

I spread out the sheaf of papers that are inside the envelope, giving him a suspicious look. Oh, legal documents, how sweet. I'm all set to say just that when I catch the header of the letter.

"This is the deed to a house."

He nods, smiling.

"This is the deed to a house with both our names on it."

He nods again, grinning.

"This is the deed to a house with both our names on it...and its address is in Los Angeles, California, in the U-S-of-A, Mister Boyd."

He nods thrice, his grin wild.

"No fucking way, man," I breathe.

"Thought you might like to be closer to the gang." He smiles, tipping his sunglasses up onto his forehead, his hazel eyes all brimming with affection. "Thought you might like to live with me forever and ever." He smiles softer. "That last part's a guess, though."

I would cry, but I don't like crying particularly, and I feel too happy. The sensation swells just behind my Adam's apple and nearly chokes me.

And then I pounce him, wrap my legs and arms around his body, and nearly knock him flat on his back. He catches me, sets us right, but still holds me tightly.

"Yes," I say, laughing. "Hell fucking yes, Billy."

We started to walk forward.

"Amen to that. Cost me a bundle."

I swat him really fast in the arm, grinning.

We walk side by side, arms and shoulders brushing as the line of passengers shuffle forward, boarding passes in hand.

I smile to myself and then look left, watching our reflections in the window that overlooks the landing strip outside. I reach down, lightly run my arm through his, and then nod approvingly at the image darkly etched in the glass as it stares back at me.