...“I’m taking my book and hiding in the berth, if no one else wants it.” Daniel always liked a little solitude before appearances. A habit he’d begun when he played concert piano. They all knew, and left him alone as he made his way to the front of the plane.

He passed Melanie, asleep on one of the couches in the lounge. She was covered in gooseflesh and shivering more than the temperature in the pressurized cabin accounted for. He considered waking her and letting her have the berth, but the bruised look around her eyes made him hesitate to disturb her. She looked exhausted.

They had a concert in twelve hours. He let her rest, but grabbed a couple of blankets from the overhead and covered her before making his way forward to the plane’s only bed. The last thing they needed was a sick fiddler on her opening night.

The berth was colder than usual, too. Shutting himself in the tiny room, he kicked off his shoes and removed his belt, then reached for a blanket.

Icy fingers ran the length of his spine.

His reaction was instantaneous. He jerked from the touch, dove for the door. A hand grabbed him by the collar, hauled him off his feet. His face met the bulkhead.

“No!” The shout lodged in his throat.

A hard body leaned into him with easy intimacy. A very solid erection burrowed into the crack of his ass through the denim.

“Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.” The curses squeezed past the steel grip of fear binding his throat. His panicked gaze bounced wildly within its limited range, searching for anything to make the solid body pressing against him real. Finally, he had to close his eyes against the unseen, shrinking from whatever came next.

Wintry lips slid over his jaw—gentle lips, just the breath of a kiss. An arm slid between Daniel and the wall, across his abdomen to clutch his hip.

The move was all too familiar. He thrust out his arms, shoving against the bulkhead, trying to escape before the ghost completed the embrace, but it easily restrained his flailing limbs, holding him fast with an unyielding hug across the chest.

Daniel felt himself lifted away from the bulkhead. He hung suspended, feet barely touching the floor, subdued by an invisible master while gentle, cold kisses caressed his face, neck and shoulder. As though answering a hypnotist’s command, his body remembered and submitted.

Tears streamed down his cheeks. A tremor of fear and lust swept through him and settled in his groin. His balls tightened. His already rigid cock stirred. The kisses paused at the joining of neck and shoulder and words formed against the skin, tickling, silent, undecipherable.

Josh used to hold him like this, slow fucking him, until their need grew unbearable. Then any surface would do, the bed, the wall, the back of a chair, but Daniel’s piano was a favorite. Draped across its gleaming lid, Daniel had joyfully taken every vicious stroke Josh wanted to give.

The hand on his hip slid to his cock, caressing him through the denim. He groaned, but could not move a muscle to either stop or encourage the intimate contact. Nothing moved but his voice, producing low moans and whimpers. Fingers ran the length of him, beating a rough arpeggio in one direction, sliding the scale in the other, then closed around him with sure familiarity.

His hips jerked. Remembered images and sensations ebbed and flowed in time with the movement of those ghostly fingers—Josh, kneeling on Daniel’s legs, pressing his arms to the floor, restraining him while his mouth traveled, sucking, nibbling, on his neck, on his chest, on his cock. The bites to his nipples, to his thighs that sent fire rushing through him. The toys, their sting, the everlasting burn deep in his gut. Their legs interlocked, straining—