Cabin Nights Read online

  Cabin Nights

  By Ashley John

  About Cabin Nights

  Author: Ashley John

  Released: November 24th 2015

  Words: 30,000

  Standalone: Yes

  Cliff-hanger: No

  Oxford University student, Ben thinks a skiing holiday in the French Alps is his idea of hell, so when his best friend, Jonny suggests they spend Christmas there he isn’t impressed. Taking to the slopes like Bambi on ice, Ben isn't having much luck, until charming bearded beauty, Cal, comes crashing towards him in a flurry of snow at fifty miles an hour. From the moment Cal offers to help Ben get back on his skis, the attraction is instant and Ben is convinced that a man as perfect as Cal is out of his league.

  Womanizer Jonny wastes no time asking out a girl he meets on the slopes and he makes her promise to bring along a friend to keep Ben occupied that night in the Après-Ski Bar. When that friend turns out to be Cal, he's given the opportunity of a lifetime to wine and dine with a man of model like beauty, with a charismatic personality to match.

  When Cal invites Ben back to his Cabin, they find themselves trapped in an extreme whiteout and with the men forced to spend the Christmas holidays together, they quickly find they are doing more than roasting marshmallows next to the warm and inviting fire.

  Copyright © Ashley John 2015

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  For questions and comments about this book, please contact the author at [email protected].

  To find out more about the author of this book, sign up to his mailing list for exclusive content and to be the first to find out about new releases, visit his official website:

  www.ashleyjohn.co.uk/newsletter

  You can also follow Ashley John across social media:

  Facebook

  Twitter

  Instagram

  Goodreads

  Other books by Ashley John

  Joshua & Ezra

  BOSS (Out now)

  STEELE (Coming 2016)

  Surf Bay

  Lost & Found (Out now)

  Full Circle (Out now)

  Saving Michael (Out now)

  Love's Medicine (Out now)

  Sink or Swim (Out now)

  George & Harvey

  The Secret (Out now)

  The Truth (Out now)

  The Fight (Out now)

  Romance Standalones

  Shelter (Out now)

  Cabin Nights (Out now)

  For all of the people who allow me to do what I want to do without judgement.

  Ben knew his skiing wasn’t great. It wasn’t even good. No matter how many times his best friend, Jonny cried ‘Bend your knees’ it didn’t mean they were going to bend. Jonny had spent many winters on the slopes but it was Ben’s first and it showed. He dreaded the moment he agreed to tag along on the ski trip, knowing he would be wobbling and falling ungracefully on the slopes.

  Ben knew he would dislike it even before Jonny dragged him on to the indoor slopes to show him how much ‘fun’ it would be. Ben’s practising had been almost as bad as the real thing.

  Jonny, a born and raised posh boy, couldn’t understand how Ben had gotten into Oxford University, the oldest University in the English speaking world, without ever having to learn to ski. Jonny came up through the status and money and Ben came in through the side door, thanks to a grant from his Sixth Form college grades. While Jonny spent his summers and winters in the French Alps skiing with his parents, Ben would have been sitting in a chalet in Butlins, wishing it would stop raining so he could get on with his cheap and nasty holiday.

  Ben should have called it off when he launched head first into the fake snow at the indoor place. He would have happily lost his deposit, no matter how many shifts in the Student Union Bar he had worked to save up for the expensive trip.

  Looking around as he attempted to bend his knees, he didn’t notice anybody laughing at him. Not yet, anyway. Jonny was in front, racing ahead in his perfectly snug skiing clothes. Ben knew Jonny would be too busy imagining how good he looked to notice how his best friend was coping at the top of the slope.

  Ben wobbled, almost falling. Digging his heels into the snow, he managed to stop just as his goggles fogged over. Wiping them down, he looked for Jonny again. Jonny had stopped but he didn’t look like he was waiting for Ben. Jonny was chatting to a girl who was wearing a tight Lycra ski suit and his eyes were firmly planted on her chest. She didn’t seem to mind. She tossed her frizzy blonde perm over her shoulders while laughing silently at something boyish he had probably said. Ben knew Jonny enough to know it was probably something along the lines of: ‘Nice tits, love. Mind if I cop a feel?’. He would have said it in such a charming way that she wouldn’t be able to resist him.

  Part of the reason Jonny had wanted to drag Ben along was to get Ben laid. He thought if he got Ben out of the country, he would suddenly attract women. They could probably sense that he was gay and Jonny was the only one in the world blind to it. Ben wondered if he had told him before the trip, would he be snuggled up at home with a book and a hot water bottle, getting ready for Christmas? A text from his mum that morning had told him it was snowing back home. Ben used to love the snow but it was suddenly starting to lose its appeal.

  Ben moved forward a couple of meters, dragging his body along with the poles, never letting one leave the snow long enough for him to fall. Jonny edged closer and closer to the girl. Ben knew he needed to grow some balls so he could finally tell Jonny that he was gay, but he doubted Jonny would still walk around their student flat semi-naked. Ben secretly looked forward to the days that Jonny left the shower without a towel. Ben knew that Jonny didn’t even think his best friend would look, but Ben could always tell when he had been jacking off. He was not Ben’s type at all, but a man had needs and he was attracting as many men as he was women: none.

  Sleeping with a woman had crossed his mind more than once, if only to get Jonny off his back. Whenever he got close, he always remembered what was between their legs and the idea jumped straight out of the window. Jonny probably never noticed that whenever he and Ben watched porn, Ben’s eyes were firmly focussed on the man.

  Ben finally made his way slowly to Jonny. Looking back at how far he had to ski to get there, his stomach knotted because it was nowhere near as far as he thought. He wondered if Jonny would notice him crawling on his hands and knees back up to the chairlift.

  “She has a friend,” Jonny smirked and Ben imagined Jonny winking at him from behind those shiny blue goggles as he slapped him on the back, “tonight’s your lucky night my friend. We’re gonna get that sad little cherry of yours popped.”

  Jonny sounded more excited for Ben than he did for himself. If only he knew that Eric Banter had popped Ben’s gay ‘cherry’ back in his first year of Sixth Form. Ben never liked Eric Banter all that much, but they were the only gays in his Sixth Form so it was only natural that they ended up in bed together. Eric didn’t know that Ben was a virgin on the way in but he knew on the way out.

  “I thought we could have an early night,” Ben snapped his goggles up into his frosty blonde hair, his vision suddenly turning grey, “skiing is tiring, don’t you think?”

  Jonny laughed, taking what Ben was saying as a light hearted joke. With another hearty slap on the shoulders, almost knocking Ben off his skis, he reminded Ben of the promise he had made during last night’s early night. Ben had promised to loosen up and open himself up to whatev
er Christmas in The Alps threw at him. In the cold light of day, he wasn’t so sure why he had promised that.

  “Race you to the bottom!” Jonny cried, leaving Ben to figure out how to correctly bend his knees to make it look that effortless.

  Ben didn’t think you could pay to visit your own personal hell, but apparently £4,564 would get you a short break there for the Christmas holidays. Ben waited until Jonny was out of sight before he slowly set off.

  His legs seemed to stop wobbling as he found the right bend in his knees. His confidence grew, so he pushed forward harder, even daring to manoeuvre around one of the plastic slaloms with a little more force than he thought possible. He felt like he was racing through the wind, snow tickling his frost bitten cheeks. The blurs of the other skiers darting around him let him know that he still wasn’t going all that fast.

  Feeling adventurous, Ben attempted the slaloms again to see if he could really teach himself something he hated. He bent his knees further and veered left, ready to show that slalom he was the boss.

  The force of a mass twice his size crashed into him. A blur of skis, sky and snow whizzed by as he lost all sense of gravity; bodies and equipment becoming one. Thoughts of falling off the edge of a mountain filled his mind as his vision fogged. With a heavy thud, Ben landed even more ungracefully than his skiing technique, face down in a heap of deep snow.

  Clenching his eyes tight, Ben let his mind catch up. The world around him suddenly stopped moving and he dared to open his eyes. One of his feet felt free from its ski restraint, so he attempted to stand up. Like a drunk Uni student after spinning around on a pole, he staggered sideways and landed back in the freezing snow. Looking around, he tried to see the poor bugger he must have crashed into, an apology already on his tongue. He shouldn’t even be on these particular slopes but Jonny insisted that he would pick it up in no time.

  Ben looked for a man or a woman like him, flat on their backside, but what he saw was a beard and metallic orange goggles walking towards him with a hint of an amused smile. The snow in his beard let Ben know that he had hit the mountainside too but he seemed to have recovered much faster.

  Preparing for a verbal assault, he pathetically sat in the snow, one ski still painfully attached to his other foot. The stranger dragged down his goggles past his beard and to his neck. Ben assumed he would be glaring behind those goggles, but his chocolaty doe eyes were kind and sympathetic as he squinted through the bright December sunlight.

  “I – I – I –,” his beauty consumed Ben’s thoughts, “sorry.”

  He laughed, a deep and husky growl coming from low within his stomach. It tickled Ben inside and he blamed it on a possible concussion.

  “First time on the slopes?” his accent was American and unexpected, “Here.”

  The American tugged off a glove and outstretched a hand, long fingers wiggling out for Ben to grab hold of. For a second, Ben just sat and stared, looking beyond the fingers to those doe eyes. They had him transfixed. When one of the American’s thick brows started to rise toward his thick, windswept quaff, Ben shook his head and grabbed the offered hand. With one forceful tug, Ben was pulled back to his feet so they were face to face.

  “No damage done,” he smiled down, standing a couple of inches taller than Ben’s five feet and ten inches, “everything feel okay?”

  Still clutching the stranger’s hand, Ben nodded like a simpleton. When he finally let go, a surge of white hot pain shot up Ben’s leg, stopping somewhere in his lower back. Like a man made of old newspaper, he crumbled back into the snow.

  “My knee!”

  The bearded beauty bent down, still steady on his skis. He hooked his arm under Ben’s to drag him up by his shoulders. The American felt strong and it didn’t take much of Ben’s imagination to visualise a haired and chiselled body underneath that dark blue skiing jacket.

  “Can you stand?” he asked calmly.

  Ben nodded, forcing a smile. The smile of reassurance caused the stranger to let go of Ben for a second time but his knee repeated the same move and he toppled down again. This time however, he was caught in a pair of thick, strong arms.

  “It’s definitely your first time,” his smooth laugh washed over Ben, blocking out the pain that was trying to flood his brain.

  “Skiing isn’t my sport,” Ben winced, trying to smile, feeling uncomfortable being so close to perfection.

  “What is?”

  “Is reading a sport?”

  Another rich and dark laugh left his beard-framed mouth, a crescent of teeth glittering as white as the snow.

  “I’m Cal.”

  “Ben.”

  “Ben?” he nodded, “Nice to meet you, Ben. On a scale of one to ten, how painful is your leg?”

  Ben’s name sounded foreign and exotic in his thick accent, forcing the hairs on the back of his neck to stand to attention.

  “Eleven?” Ben winced.

  “Let’s get your other ski off, so you can walk. Is that okay, Ben?”

  He nodded, the strength of Cal’s gaze sending him weak in both knees. With an air of leadership, he motioned for Ben to sit back in the snow. When he was back on his arse with the weight off his leg, Cal busied his hands with unbuckling the other ski. He was gentle, his eyes darting up to check that he wasn’t hurting Ben. Goggles around his neck and his mucky blonde hair fallen across his eyes, Ben smiled back, probably looking like a madman. He found something strangely soothing in the way Cal methodically tugged off the ski, not rushing to just get the job done. With the ski in his hand, he walked slowly over to retrieve its partner, which was jutting out by a pine tree. Broad shoulders swayed through the baggy ski jacket, leading Ben’s eyes down to his round cheeks. Even through the thick and loose material of his ski pants, he could see them moving. Ben found it too easy to imagine Cal naked, wearing nothing more than those orange goggles as he walked confidently through the snow.

  After quickly pulling off his own skis, he jammed both pairs into his backpack. He did all of this silently, shooting Ben reassuring smiles every so often. Cal made him not feel embarrassed or stupid, even if his knee was burning. There was something about the way Cal looked at him, with such reassurance, that his brief lingering gaze stopped Ben feeling like such a loser.

  “I’m not letting you go down here on your own on that leg, Ben,” he helped him up again.

  “I’m fine, honest.”

  As though to demonstrate a point, Cal let go for a moment before catching Ben from falling again.

  “We’re not far from the next chairlift station. We’ll walk down and catch a ride to the bottom. Is that okay, Ben?”

  Ben wondered why Cal kept saying his name but he didn’t want him to stop. It was the strangest turn on he had ever experienced. He had never thought his short name could sound so sexy.

  “Sure,” Ben’s cheeks burned and not from the cold, “sorry for ruining your run.”

  “I was going too fast. I should be the one apologising,” he flashed his teeth and a quick wink.

  Using his poles as a crutch on one side, Ben let Cal absorb most of his weight in an effortless way. Cal didn’t falter or complain as Ben took each step painfully slow. His knee hurt more than he wanted to admit but a small part of him was glad that he was getting to spend this time so close to a man. Ben found it depressing that this was the most male on male contact he had had all year.

  When they were both buckled into a chairlift, sitting a little closer than strangers should be comfortable with, Ben looked down at his dangling feet, wondering if Jonny was down there waiting for him. Knowing Jonny, he was probably chatting to that girl he had met on the slopes. Ben thought about the date that he had somehow agreed to go on and he felt sick. Every time he started to think the trip couldn’t get worse, it did.

  He looked to Cal and he suddenly didn’t feel so bad. The cold sun licked his slightly tanned skin as he looked out into the distance with a content look on his face.

  “I’m sorry again,” Ben offered, rea
lising they were almost at the base of the mountain, “I think I got a little over confident with it.”

  “Don’t worry, Ben,” Cal looked his way, his eye contact unusually strong and direct, “I’ll just catch some tomorrow.”

  “You on holiday here long?”

  Cal chuckled.

  “I love how you Brits say holiday,” he smiled, his cheeks peaking above his beard, “I keep meaning to visit England. I live here, temporarily.”

  “Oh,” Ben mumbled, unsure of what he meant.

  “I travel,” he added, possibly sensing the confusion, “Alps in the winter and then I move on for the summer months. Europe mainly.”

  “Your accent, American?”

  “Californian born and raised,” he nodded with an air of pride, “I started travelling when I was seventeen and I never looked back.”

  “Don’t you miss your family?”

  Ben sensed the ground coming up beneath his feet and he found that he wanted to suggest they stay on for another round so they could keep talking. When he realised that would probably sound weird, he bit his tongue and let Cal jump down onto the snow. He landed with a thud and to Ben’s surprise, he didn’t leave him high and dry. His arms opened, motioning for Ben to jump down into them like a child. Confidently, Cal caught him and planted him firmly on the ground.

  “I’m an orphan,” he said with no emotional attachment, “I like travelling. I feel free. How’s the leg, Ben?”

  “Better,” he lied with a smile through the pain, “the air must have done it good.”

  “’Done it good’,” he laughed, “you Brits and your sayings. We’ve got the cleanest air in the world.”

  Cal breathed in deeply to imitate it with that carefree look still in his eyes. Asking him out for coffee would seem like the adult thing to do, but when Ben felt the silence between them growing, he remembered that Cal had seen him flat on his arse and covered in snow. Ben bottled it up and kept quiet.