The storage unit smelled of dust, pine lumber, and their sweat. James’s back was against the rough plywood of a half-built cabinet, Matt’s calloused hands gripping his hips hard enough to bruise. Outside, the voices of Matt’s cousins faded, their fishing trip lie holding. James’s heart hammered against Matt’s chest, the terror of being found twisting together with the ache of Matt still inside him. This was their world: stolen, desperate, real.

Matt didn’t move. His forehead pressed against James’s shoulder, his breath hot and ragged on James’s skin. He was still buried deep, a thick, full presence that made James’s thighs tremble. The silence after the cousins’ footsteps was louder than any sound.

“They’re gone,” Matt whispered, the words vibrating through James’s chest.

James could only nod, his throat tight. His fingers, which had been clawing at the plywood, slowly uncurled. The grit of sawdust coated his palms.

Matt lifted his head. His eyes were dark, pupils blown wide in the yellow light of the single bulb. He searched James’s face. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” James’s voice was a scrape. He was more than okay. He was alive, electric, every nerve screaming with the aftershock of near-discovery and the relentless heat of Matt inside him. “Don’t stop.”

A slow, deliberate roll of Matt’s hips was his answer. The friction was exquisite, a sharp bloom of sensation that made James gasp. Matt’s hands tightened, anchoring him.

“Quiet,” Matt murmured, but he was smiling, a fierce, private thing. He began to move again, a slow, deep rhythm that had nothing to do with haste and everything to do with claiming this stolen space, this stolen time. Each thrust was a measured reclamation. The world outside the corrugated metal door ceased to exist.

James let his head fall back against the cabinet. He watched Matt watch him. The focused intensity in Matt’s face, the way his jaw clenched with each push forward. This was the Matt no one else saw. Not the quiet carpenter, not the dutiful son. This was the man who looked at him like he was the only solid thing in a shifting world.

James reached up, his fingers tracing the tension in Matt’s neck, the sweat-damp hair at his temples. He pulled him down into a kiss. It was messy, open-mouthed, a sharing of breath and fear and want. Matt groaned into his mouth, the sound swallowed between them, and his pace deepened.

The cabinet creaked against the wall with their rhythm. The sound was obscene. James loved it. He wrapped his legs higher around Matt’s waist, pulling him in impossibly deeper. A sharp, perfect burn. “Right there,” James breathed against his lips. “God, right there.”

Matt obeyed, angling his hips, hitting that spot with devastating accuracy. Pleasure coiled, tight and white-hot, low in James’s belly. His cock, trapped and leaking between their stomachs, throbbed with each impact.

“Look at me,” Matt said, his voice rough, stripped of its usual quiet control.

James forced his eyes open. Matt’s gaze held his, unwavering. In it, James saw the same terrifying cocktail of emotions that churned in his own chest: love, a desperate kind of joy, and the ever-present shadow of loss. It was all there, laid bare in the thrust of Matt’s body into his.

“You feel it?” Matt gritted out, his rhythm starting to fracture. “You feel how much—”

He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. James felt it in the possessive grip of his hands, in the broken way he said James’s name, in the sheer, overwhelming fullness. “I feel it,” James gasped. “I feel you. Matt—”

It was the use of his name, the raw need in it, that shattered Matt’s control. His thrusts lost their precision, becoming faster, harder, a frantic pursuit. James clung to him, nails biting into the hard muscle of Matt’s shoulders, his own climax roaring up to meet Matt’s. He came with a choked-off cry, heat spilling between them, his body clamping down around Matt in rhythmic pulses.

Matt buried his face in the crook of James’s neck, a low, guttural sound tearing from his throat as he followed. James felt the hot pulse deep inside, the final, claiming shudder of Matt’s body against his.