Chapter Sixteen
Jake
My hold on Darren tightens because I need to remember who he is.
And who he’s not.
This early in the morning, with the sunlight just peeking in, thoughts of Michelle cut through my bedroom, and wishing away the warmth they offer will be a sin I’ll carry to church a few hours from now. I’m plenty warm here, with him, and I haven’t figured out whether the pull at my heart is a wound reopening or one being stitched back together. Either way, I try to get closer to Darren’s heartbeat just so I don’t have to feel my own.
When it doesn’t settle right away, I remind myself that this is just sex, something that was never true with Michelle, even when we fumbled our way through a series of teenage firsts. It’s physical pleasure, and I know I’m allowed as much. Any distance I’ve tried to keep over these past several weeks has been from a dozen less carnal moments—drying dishes, making curry, and the very idea of hosting a pool party—the sacred things Darren’s acknowledged from the first night I had him in my bed.
I’m allowed those, too. Michelle had made that explicitly clear before she said goodbye. But I’m a stubborn old fool, and the wrong one of us was left behind.
“God, you feel so fucking good.Christ,” Darren hisses, so painfully slow when he rises and falls that the blasphemy makes itself at home between us, and I don’t look away. It’s just more forgiveness to seek. “I needed this. I needed you.”
The idea of that hits harder than it should when I’m the second person he’s been with since he left Trailhead, and I can’t figure out how honest he’s being with himself while he’s in my lap. I lift my hand to his lips, and I think I mean to tell him to be quiet if he feels the need to lie. Instead, I slip two fingers into his mouth, another chance for me to think about that first night, when he’d done the same to me.
I’ve changed since then, but it turns me on just the same. “I needed this, too.”
Darren sucks my fingers while he rides me, and my other arm remains wrapped around his back to feel the play of his muscles as his body moves up and down, still lazier about it than I would’ve imagined. Staring into his eyes is intense, morning sex a different experience, the intimacy of it usually reserved for those who have spent an entire night together. This isn’t that, for at least a couple of reasons, but we’re lost in each other anyway, and I’m finding it harder and harderto care.
Eventually, I pull my fingers free and let them drop to where Darren’s dripping for me, the pad of my thumb teasing him until my hand finds its perfect fit around his length, each stroke matching the pace he’s set. His hands angle my head upward for a kiss that makes me feel more naked than I already am, the way he reads me almost painfully undeniable. I try to read him back, and begin to meet each slow slide of his body with a careful thrust of my own. The guttural noise he makes suggests I’ve done something right, and I take my time when I do it again, his mouth open against my cheek and his breath warm while I moan.
“Mmmm, you were so good, telling me why you’re here. So good, sweetheart.”
He clenches around me as he chokes on a sob my words have pulled from his chest. I chase another kiss and catch his lower lip between my teeth before I let him go.
“Nothing else—nobody else—” he starts.
“No, shhhhh,” I say, moving with him in a way that belies whatever out I try to give him. "I'm here. I’m coming undone, and you don’t have to make promises. Just be you. Be honest and beyou."
Darren’s the one to bite his lip this time, maybe as afraid as I am of all the other things he could say. There’s an expiration date to an arrangement like this, but I don’t want him to think he has to put on a show before we reach it. And endless trivia questions will keep us close as long as we play this part right. It’s why my slow strokes stop altogether, and I release him there just to keep him closer everywhere else, both arms around him when we getrough.
He uses me—maybe it’s what I told him to do—and we find a new rhythm together, sweating and panting while we leave at least a couple of marks on each other’s skin. It can’t be painless for him, but it’s not the same as when he’d needed to get out of his head weeks ago. The confession of his restlessness is on my mind, but it’s not heavy enough for me to want less than this, my physical strength outlasting anything else Darren takes from me.
“Jake, Jake, Jake,” he chants. Whines, really. He’s breathless about it, and it’s real. “Just you. Jake. Needed you.”
I kiss him wherever I can, all of it fleeting when I can’t fight anymore. “You can have me. For as long as you want.”
Darren kisses me back, or tries to, but when I feel him tighten around me again, some practiced talent wielded against me, I growl or swear or pray for a way to keep going.
He mewls. I become feral.
I flip him over, a long-buried instinct surprising us both. We’re sideways across the bed, I think—diagonal, maybe—and I brace myself above him while his knees are bent to his shoulders, his hips raised so I can rock into him relentlessly. He’s not reciting vows now, and his blue-gray eyes grow so damn dark in the morning light when he uses my name again, his hands fisting the sheets.
“Jake, please.”
“Please, what?”
“Jerk me off. Make me come while you fuck me like this. That’s not—it’s honest. It’s me. I want to make a mess.”
It’s honest, but it’s not new. We’re back to that first night one more time, but I liked the mess then, and I’m more than ready to like it all over again. Shifting my weight as smoothly as I can without pulling out entirely, I reach for him and care little about being gentle. And Darren definitely doesn’t care, torn between chasing each of my thrusts and arching into my grip, every whimpered plea more obscene than the last.
I find myself wishing I could take off the condom, and just barely stop myself from saying so.
I can’t stop anything else. “I’m so close. I’m—”
My warning gets lost when Darren comes, convulsing beneath me when he spills all over his stomach and chest—and all over my hand. I look down at where it covers my skin, and that’s all it takes for my control to snap, my body falling against his as I thrust those last few times and wish I could’ve made a mess of my own.