Chapter Fourteen
Jake
It’s easy to say that Darren and I haven’t had this particular kind of sex when I've only been inside him twice before, but tonight feels likeusin a way that’s too difficult to define beyond that. We laughed and teased and tripped our way here, I took a minute to taste him in a way I hadn’t before, and now it’s all heat and speed and the hunger I’m happy to feed until my appetite changes.
With my heart pounding and enough sweat to make me shiver, I watch Darren’s body welcome mine over and over again. He’s saying my name, profanity filling the spaces in between, and I don’t know how to offer what he needs in return when I’m still not used to using my voice in a moment like this. I’ll get there soon, but I feel him clench around me and I stay buried inside him for an extra beat or two, frustrated that I can’t kiss him while we’re connected so perfectly.
It's when I decide perfect isn't enough.
I’m working from memories I won’t dwell on for long, careful when I separate myself from Darren too, the reasons for it practical and not.
“Jake.” It’s so soft. It’s all it needs to be now that our bodies are still and the room is quiet. When I don’t answer right away, Darren rises onto both hands and looks over his shoulder at me. “Hey, talk to me. You don’t—we can stop. We can lie down and stop everything else.”
The raw need bleeding into Darren’s words suggests it’s not what he wants, but I don’t doubt the sincerity of his offer, and I shake my head because it’s not what I want either. My next move is probably clumsy, and I can’t explain myself as well as I’d like to, but I use what leverage I can to encourage him to move forward, away from me and closer to the wall we face.
“Hold on to the headboard. Let me hold on to you.”
Darren does as I’ve demanded, his hands curled around the top edge of the wood and his body on display for me take just as roughly as I had minutes ago. It’s not unlike the night I’d watched him in his bathroom mirror, but nothing is the same either, and I move until I’m pressed against his back and can reach around to stroke him while I kiss his shoulder. I’m still so aroused and can’t keep us apart much longer, but I give myself another few seconds to do nothing but tease his opening with my tip. He’s patient with me in a way he must despise, but I think I reward him just fine when I finally thrust into him again, no warning provided to give my intention away.
His long moan rattles something I thought was left hollow. I bite into his skin to keep from saying so.
I don’t return to the same unforgiving pace right away, and my slight size advantage means I can curl around Darren once I’ve put us back together. His grip on the bed suggests he’s not going anywhere, but I like having my arms around him, and when he turns his head to catch me for a messy kiss, I figure he has no plans to break free. I’m moving plenty—our embrace means the rhythm is easy to keep—but his mouth is a stunning distraction for as long as it’s open against mine.
“Thank you,” he murmurs. “For coming back.”
Whether he means tonight or just seconds ago, I don’t know.
It’s hotter now, our bodies slicker with each slow slide. Darren breaks away from the kiss and drops his head between his arms, time punctuated by the pretty sounds he makes all because of me. One of my hands rests over his heart, certainly accidental and a reason for me to hurry after a beat I can’t ignore, and he trembles enough for me to discard the fear that something is wrong and decide instead that everything is very, very right.
“Thank you for letting me fuck you like this.”
The expletive slips free before I can remember swearing isn’t a bad habit of mine. Darren goes in search of another one when he opens my mouth with his tongue again, rough and pleading, and I’m so close to indulging him further.
I slow my hips but he speaks first. “You can fuck me any way. All ways. Always.”
It’s the last thing either of us says—that either of uscansay—for a while.
I’m holding him like he’s my tether to a world I’m just discovering, and I suppose that’s exactly right. It’s all gratitude more than desperation, and I assume that’s part of why I’ve been given carte blanche in a bedroom that doesn’t see guests. The tension coiling in me is driving me forward, more selfish by the second even if I’ll be encouraged long before I’m damned, and I give into it now, reckless with the way I’m using him. For a moment, I tell myself it’s fine because Darren will take care of himself, before or after I’m done, but then I’m letting his body go just to cover his hands with mine, our knuckles white around the headboard. He’s left without the ability to do anything but come untouched again, and maybe we’ll break his bed before it happens, but I’m not sure that matters more than anything else I’ve forgiven myself for.
What’s left of my control stutters then, and my release rockets through me before I can try to memorize the moment.Moments, actually. Many of them. I can’t quite catch my breath and I’m not at all bothered by the loss, sucking somewhere near Darren’s spine when I finally stop thinking about myself. My hands fall away from his, and I’m weirdly relieved when I look over his shoulder and find that he’s not done yet, understanding with abrupt certainty how to make him come apart in my arms.
I don’t know how we fall to the mattress—only that we do—and while I should’ve removed the condom right away, it’s destined to be a disaster now. I’m on my back, sated and spent with my head at the foot of the bed, and Darren lands mostly ontop of me, facing heaven as though it's something he believes in. My mouth is close to his ear, and when he wraps his hand around his length, I could talk to him forever.
And because I clocked his reaction when I first told him to wait, I have the right words now. He doesn’t need anyone to praise him for his bartending skills or his enviable abs or his ability to make a stranger unravel while upright and hurried. But this subtly sensitive man needs to believe, if only for a moment, that he was something more.
Something harder to let go.
“You were so good for me. So, so good,” I whisper. Darren arches into his own grip and drops back onto my chest again, his whimper a sound with an echo of its own. “You’re so beautiful, sweetheart. So undone. And now you can fall apart while I hold you. Please. Fall apart while I watch.”
He does almost immediately, arching and whimpering all over again. I’m mesmerized, maybe more so because I’m still dazed by my orgasm and the things I’ve spoken out loud, and I don’t think much before I drag a finger through the mess he’s left on his stomach.
If Darren minds, I can't tell.
And I’m certainly not going to ask him to move.
Eventually, he does anyway, but only so he can face me, so wonderfully careless when we kiss like we have all night. I’m not ready to tell him we don’t, his tongue welcome against mine.
“Sweetheart?” he asks somewhere before and after it all.