One of Cyril’s hands pressed into the center of his chest, weight pinning him to the complaining mattress. He wet two fingers of the other with his mouth and then—

Aristide made a sound he might have been embarrassed of, under any other circumstance. After that, it was all over rather quickly. And that, too, might have embarrassed him. But not tonight.

Sated now, but remembering the sudden bloom of lust in those bright blue eyes, Aristide reached between Cyril’s legs. Nothing, still.

Rolling over, Cyril put his arm across his face, looking as ashamed as Aristide should feel. “I’m sorry,” he said again, less desperately this time.

“Shh.” Aristide stretched out beside him, luxuriating in his own nakedness against someone else’s skin. Against, miraculously, this skin. With as much wonder as he now traced the ridge of Cyril’s hipbone, he said, “There will be other times. Plenty of them.”

Cyril glared from the crook of his elbow. “If you don’t drop dead first, old man.”

“I’m not even sixty,” he protested.

“With the lives we’ve led, that’s quite an age.”

“Well then,” said Aristide, and leaned in to kiss him. Deeply, as he had not kissed anyone for years. “We’d best rick our hay before the rains.”

The wind picked up, past midnight. Something in Cyril’s deep memory of the place said rain, though still a long way off. Nights like this in late winter and early spring, he remembered the smell of damp sweeping across the plains from the sea. But despite the draft, tucked beneath the blankets Cyril finally felt warm.

They laid in silence for a time, listening to the loose panes of glass rattle in their frame. Aristide, beside the wall, lifted one hand to scratch at a chip in the paint.

“Small lies,” he said. “Do you promise?”

Cyril tucked his chin. “Mm-hm.” Even without a segue, it didn’t catch him off guard. The hour was right for confessions, skin pressed on skin in the dark.

There was a pause in which it seemed Ari had chosen not to speak. Then, after too long, he said, “You got the letter. Why didn’t you come?”

“I tried to. But … I was afraid of Lourdes. I thought he would lead them to you.”

“So you killed him.” Aristide said it so reasonably, made it sound as simple as it had been in that moment: a hard decision made in haste, the only possible outcome. “I read it in the paper. I … stopped reading papers, shortly thereafter.”

“It wasn’t my first choice,” said Cyril. “I didn’t go there to shoot him.”

“Then why did you?”