Geno is sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why Sidney has a dresser drawer full of sex toys, but right now he's drawing a blank.

There are plenty of people in the world who are better at sex than Sidney, basically everybody who's tried to do it more than three times and got past handjobs, so when he decides he needs some help, he seeks out experts--or rather, sexperts.

The thing is, Sid's filthy. Or he's pretty sure he would be, if somebody would just give him a chance to be filthy.

Sidney’s wedding day doesn’t go quite as he’d planned. When he’d bothered to imagine it at all, he’d thought of a nice June wedding in Nova Scotia, outdoors with the sun streaming down. He hadn’t imagined this hurried affair on the tarmac on a rainy and unseasonably cool day in early September, a month after his twenty-fifth birthday.

“Geno? Are you okay? Physically,” Sid asks, which is good, because Zhenya doesn’t think he can put into words how he’s feeling emotionally. He imagines saying, The person I’ve loved for ten years finally took me to bed last night, but it turns out he didn’t want to, and now I can read his mind. No, thank you. “Feel fine,” Zhenya answers. “Even head feel fine.” And suddenly he realizes how fucking odd that is: he was concussed, and the room is brightly lit – he should be hiding under a blanket right now. He narrows his eyes and asks, “Sid, why head feel fine? What happen to concussion?” Sid takes a halting step closer to the bed and says, “Our bond, it’s—it’s a healing bond.” “Holy mother of God,” Zhenya breathes. So. They’re definitely not breaking the bond, then.

“Is normal,” Geno says firmly. “Nealer has stupid hair, Tanger has dumb tattoos, Sid has no dick.” Sid laughs. “I have six dicks, I don’t wear them for hockey,” he says.

The package arrives the day after Sid gets back to Pittsburgh. Sid recognizes the discreet wrapping, and the lack of a return address is so obvious they might as well have printed Sex Toys R Us all over the damn box.

“I deserve to suffer.” “Sorry to hear American alphas aren’t good enough for your fussy little Russian asshole,” Seryozha says. “Now, stop pouting. Just because you think you need to suffer, doesn’t mean I’m going to suffer through all your drama with you. God knows you’re already insufferable enough on normal days.” Zhenya spends a few more seconds definitely Not pouting, no matter what the sullen purse of his lips might suggest.

It was Sid’s dirty little sneaky plug, buzzing merrily away inside his asshole, and they could hear it.

“Here’s the key,” Gonch said after they got Sidney’s luggage out. “The doorman knows who you are. Are you going to be okay?” “I’ll probably be more than okay,” Sidney admitted. “Forget I asked.” In which Sidney spends his heat in Russia with his long-distance boyfriend, Geno.

Geno makes a request. Sid does his research. Geno starts without him.

Geno is ready to make the transition from his kink.com men in bondage subscription to real life.