Jack unbuttons my old jeans. Shoves them off my hips. I brace a hand on the sink as he stoops to slide them down, those rough fingers brushing my skin again, before he stands, and that’s where he slows. At the end of the dance, me almost bare to him, waiting for him to turn away as if he’s reached the dead end of a tunnel.
Except tonight…he doesn’t turn away. He reels me in and his hands hover at my waist, not touching, as if he’s gauging something. Listening to a part of himself he doesn’t fully trust yet.
His gaze descends my torso. Pauses at my aching dick before he drags it back to my face.
He swallows, hesitation creeping into his features, though it doesn’t mar the desire my daft heart thinks I see in his eyes. “I don’t know what I’d do if you were naked.”
“Jackie, you don’t have to do anything?—”
“I want to.” Jack doesn’t blink as he cuts me off. “I want you to feel like I did the other night—I want to see that, Sol. I want you to fly.” He leans in for a kiss so sweet I can hardly stand it. “Come to me when you’re done?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer.
He steps back. Gives me space.
And he leaves me with the choice in my shaking hands.
13JACK
The wait for Sol to wash the sea from his skin is endless and yet, I don’t mind it. I don’t fear it. My brain is forever flawed, I know that. But it doesn’t cross my mind for a single second that Sol won’t come to me. There’s no room for that in how right this feels.
And so I stand in the dark by my bedroom window, listening to the shower run, drawing a slow breath when it shuts off. I’m ready when Sol slips into my room and shuts the door behind him.
He’s carrying a damp towel and wearing the loose cotton trousers that make him look like he should be dancing in the starlight at a hippie music festival, a memory I still own, but he was so fucking young—we both were.
I haven’t felt young for a long time. But Sol…aside from the frown threatening his face and the thicker stubble on his jaw, he looks the same as he did when we were twenty.
He doesn’t frown much. I hate that he’s frowning now. I go to him without thought, but I leave space between us this time, a narrow gap that seems to add weight to whatever’s troubling him.
Hate that too.
Feels like death.
“Where’s Fiadh?”
His voice startles me, and it shouldn’t. I hear it in my fucking dreams. “With Mal.”
“Is he?—”
I silence Sol with a finger to his lips. I don’t want to think about my brother. About Skylar or Folk Whitlock, or even the silver dog who saves my sanity every moment Sol’s not here to ground me. I want to think about him—about him and me—and at least try to figure out why it’s taken me so long to do it.
Why haven’t I kissed him before?
Now I know how it feels, it makes no fucking sense.
Sol has his back to the door, his bare skin against the old wood, his curly hair as dry as he’s ever going to get it without me bossing him around. I reach for him, ease him away from it, and bring him close enough to me that my own skin jumps with anticipation, a sensation I’m starting to realise is pure desire—purewant—flooding my senses.
My finger is still pressed to his soft lips. I let it fall and the text message I thumbed out on Skylar’s phone comes back to me.
I can’t stop thinking about kissing you.
It was true then, and it’s true now. And I don’t care that Skylar probably saw that message when I gave him the phone back. I don’t care about anything except Sol, and the sudden fear that maybe the apprehension in his gaze exists because he doesn’t want this.
Because he doesn’t wantme.
I’m so close to kissing him again, though what comes next, I have no fucking idea. But I hold myself still and ask, because I have to know. “Am I forcing this on you?”
It’s not quite what I mean to say, but it’s out in the wild before my brain and my mouth have another chance at communication. And Sol…