Chapter Seven

 

“Did you hear from Kevin today?” I asked Jake over dinner.

I’d picked up a couple of bottles of Singha beer to go with the takeout from Saladang Song, our favorite Thai place. Jake swallowed a mouthful of beer, put down his mug. He speared a bite of shrimp Pad Thai. “No.”

“Me neither. I expected to.”

“Disappointed?”

My heart skipped, and I looked at him in surprise. He stared back, and for a moment his face looked like a stranger’s. Hard. Unfriendly. Come to think of it, not the face of a stranger at all. He looked like the old Jake.

As the thought crystallized, his expression changed, twisted into apology. “Sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.”

“Why did you say it?”

I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then his mouth tightened as though he was in pain.

“Maybe because somewhere in the back of my brain is the fear that there are some things you can’t put right. That I had my chance and I blew it. And that all this”—he nodded at the dining room where we sat—“is just a way station on the road to wherever I’m going to eventually wind up.”

It was so unexpected, and hurt so much—for so many reasons—that I felt for a second like I couldn’t get my breath. Kind of like the bad old days when my heart had leaked and floundered like a sinking ship.

“Are you saying after everything we’ve been through, you think this is temporary?”

I thought I sounded steady enough, but his eyes turned dark with fierce, unreadable emotion. His chair scraped back, and he came around to me, folding me in his arms. “Don’t look like that, baby,” he said softly.

“Because this is it for me,” I told him, and that time my voice wasn’t so steady.

“This is it for me,” he whispered against my ear. “Till death do us part. Nothing could change how I feel about you.”

I pulled away to scrutinize his face. “You think I might change my mind?”

He shook his head.

“What, then?”

I know he could hear the pain in my tone because I could hear it. It just wasn’t possible to hide what I felt for him. Not anymore.

“It isn’t logic. It’s jealousy and fear. Because I didn’t appreciate what I had when I had it. And maybe deep down I don’t know that I really deserve another chance.”

“Jake. Don’t. Don’t say stuff like that. Those words don’t belong between you and me…”

He pulled me back into his arms, muttering, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. It’s just hard sometimes to believe.”

He was holding me so tight it was hard to breathe, like he was hanging on for dear life. I clutched him back. I was pretty sure this—whatever it was—had been triggered by his meeting with Kate and the continued ostracizing by his family.

How could they do this to him? When they knew better than anybody who he was inside. When they had to know how much they were hurting him.

I wanted to fix it for him, and since I couldn’t, I wanted to comfort him any way I could. I lifted my face to his and said, “Are you still hungry? Because I don’t know about you, but right now I need more than Tom Yum Goong soup inside me…”

 

 

The scent of warm, naked skin…

The lamplight threw a summery radiance, kind to the goose bumps, and five o’clock stubble, and shadows under our eyes. Hiding the boxes—and maybe some of the baggage.

It couldn’t have been more different from the first time we were together, but something in the way Jake smiled at me made me remember. Like that night at the ranch, he looked a little self-conscious. There was a flush across his cheekbones, and his brown-gold eyes were very bright.

“Have I ever told you I love you?” he asked.

I smiled, smoothing his hair back from his forehead. It was a good face. There was strength and discipline there—also kindness and character. But it was not the face of a saint. His jaw was too stubborn. The line of his mouth was too passionate, too sensual. “Once or twice.”

“I love you. I’ll love you till the day I die. And afterward. If there is an afterward.”

That seemed to go unexpectedly dark. I said gently, “I know. It’s the same for me.” I angled my head and kissed him. I could taste the beer and hot chili spice as he pushed his tongue against mine. Playful and sexy.

As the kiss came to its lingering, reluctant close, he whispered, “I want you to fuck me.”

He might as well have been speaking in Thai. I stared into the fierce emotional blackness of his eyes and couldn’t think of anything to say. He nodded at whatever he read in my face.

“I trust you.”

My mouth dried. My throat dried. My heart was crowding my chest. “You don’t have to prove anything to me,” I said at last.

He actually laughed, though he sounded breathless. “I know. It’s not about proving something. I want this. I want to share this with you.”

Without waiting for my answer—like it was in doubt?—he reached over to the bedside table, yanked open the drawer, and pulled out the tube of clear gel. He tossed it to me, and I caught it automatically.

He got on his hands and knees, which was also…rather basic. But okay. I couldn’t help staring at him, and my expression must have been dubious because he said indulgently, “Come on, baby. I know you haven’t always played catcher.”

No. Not always. But then I hadn’t exactly thought of what I did in terms of sports metaphors either. If I had, it would have been something like men’s singles tennis champ or extreme ping-pong player.

I squirted a blob of silvery gel onto my fingertips. “Are you sure about this?” I stared down at the shiny glob of lube in my hand, rubbed my fingers, feeling the slick squish, trying to warm it.

His brows drew together. “Don’t you want to?”

“Yeah. Of course.” Hell to the yeah. Never had I expected it, and certainly not on what seemed like spur of the moment. “It’s just— I just—”

“I’ve thought about it for a long time.” Jake sounded strangely calm. Like somebody in a trance state. “I knew if I was going to do it, it would be with you.”

It made me smile, but it scared me too because I did not want this to disappoint him, did not want him to do something he would regret, or take advantage of a moment of weakness simply because he believed he’d wounded me at dinner.

I ran my hand lightly over the muscular, round globes of his ass, stroking him. So beautiful. Hard and lean like something wild that had lived alone a long time. His skin felt warm and supple over those hard juts of bone and cartilage. I could feel the pounding of his heart beneath his ribs.

And the pounding of my own.

Jake shuddered. Kind of like the way a horse shudders when a fly bites him. Hopefully more pleasurable than that.

“Did that tickle?”

“Nah. Go on, baby.” He sounded more urgent now.

I gently parted his butt cheeks, tracing a finger down his crack—not quite teasing, but not invasive either.

Jake swore softly. It didn’t sound like anger, though. Didn’t sound like no.

Delicately, I brushed a fingertip against the hot, tight—and clenching tighter—entrance to his anus. The nexus? A Celtic knot. My heart was beating so hard and so loudly the thump seemed to fill my chest.

Jake sucked in a breath. His fists and knees punched sharp indentations in the pale sheets and mattress beneath.

“You okay?” I asked.

He threw a quick look over his shoulder. “Yeah. And you’re okay. I want to do this. I want you to do this.”

Jesus, did I want to do this. I kept thinking of the first time Jake and I had made love. Because even then it had been love for me, even if I had been afraid to admit it.

I continued lightly stroking, and Jake said suddenly, roughly, “That feels…crazy.”

“Good crazy or bad crazy?”

“Just…” I heard his swallow, that revealing catch.

I leaned forward, pressing my lips to the heated velvet of the small of his back. Kissed my way up each link in his spine, like the most devoted of priests working his way down the rosary.

With my body, I thee worship.

He gave another of those shivers, said suddenly, “I had to wonder. Your face is so beautiful when I fuck you.”

I leaned back on my heels and pressed my finger against the clench. He tensed and then relaxed. I pushed harder, and then I was in. He gasped. I think I might have gasped too. It was intensely, shockingly intimate to do this to him.

His cock was lifting, starting to harden, which was a relief. My own was almost painful in its swollen rigidity. I wanted him so much I felt almost dizzy with excitement and longing.

Jake said quietly, gruffly, “Yeah, that feels good. You touching me there like that. Christ. That’s…”

I pushed the oily tip of my finger in and then out, very lightly, giving him friction and rhythm. I knew how good that felt. His sphincter muscle automatically gripped my finger.

I pressed a little farther. Taking my time. Lots of time. And why not. This was pleasurable in itself. I pushed my finger in deeply and continued stroking. Jake moved instinctively into it—he never did anything halfheartedly—and then when he was relaxed enough, I worked a second slick and glistening finger inside.

“Yeah, that’s it,” he muttered as I sought delicately, experimentally for the nub of his prostate.

Jake sucked in a breath, tensed. I felt the flush of heat on his back, like he was lighting up inside.

“Chr…ist,” he said unevenly.

I took the opportunity to slide another finger inside. Jesus, he felt molten. So hot, so tight. I desperately wanted inside him, wanted to feel that fierce grip-and-grab down the length of my cock.

I got out, “Okay?”

“Yep,” he said in a compressed voice.

“God, Jake,” I breathed. “The feel of you.”

He grunted. It wasn’t distress, but I wasn’t sure it was pleasure either.

I eased my fingers out, stroking his back, his buttocks, as I awkwardly, one-handedly slicked my cock. Lots of gel. A ridiculous amount of gel probably.

The head and footboard squeaked as I got into position, resting my hands on his hips, lining the head of my cock against the entrance of his body. He tensed. And I didn’t blame him. The age old question: how the hell was Tab A ever going to fit inside Slot B?

And yet it did. It would. I was living proof of that.

I hesitated, though. If he didn’t really want it, it wasn’t worth it. “Whatever you want,” I whispered. “It’s always good with you.”

He reached beneath himself, briskly, almost impatiently coaxing his cock back to life.

“Come on, baby,” he said, and for a funny moment I wasn’t sure who he was talking to.

I pushed in.

It hurt. I could feel it hurt. I wanted to withdraw, but that would be worse, so I held very still, barely breathing, giving him time to get used to it. Kept my mouth shut because anything would be too much. Jesus, it was so hard not to move. That snug, velvet grip seemed to stop time. All that overwhelming physical sensation—his body clasped mine so tightly that every fractional movement sent jolts of exquisite sensation flashing up and down my spine—but it was also the mind fuck of it. Of this reversal. Which would ordinarily not be a big deal, but because it was Jake…was a very big deal.

He shivered and then backed into me.

I couldn’t help it. I pushed into him, plunging in farther, then pulling out, rocking against him. Biting my lip to keep from crying out at the sweetness of it.

So hard not to tear loose and go for it. I groaned with the effort, and he whispered, “That’s good, baby. So good. Harder.”

I could have cried with the relief of that permission. Having come this far—well, or not come thus far— I gave a sob, and began to thrust into him. Jake shoved back strongly, and for a few strokes it was humpy and out of sync; then we had it, found a tempo, the beat of a very different drummer.

He didn’t try to control or guide it; he simply slipped into the cadence, and it was like driving a very powerful foreign car. Complete with steering wheel on the wrong side.

Racing, almost flying, with no brakes and no seat belt, crashing right through the barriers…sound, speed, light…habit. We were hurtling to an inevitable collision.

My hands were going to leave marks on his hips, and when I spared a look, I could see my cock, pale against the darker tone of his skin, flashing in and out, faster and harder.

I remembered my manners and changed the angle, and I felt the delighted shock of it flare in his belly and roll up his spine, orgasm blazing in his brain and body.

So fast. Too fast. Ridiculously fast. I wanted it to last and last, but he began to come, and I began to come, and the world seemed to explode in a glittering, white-hot mess of broken glass and twisted metal and engines on fire.

The complete and exquisite wreckage of everything I thought I knew. And in its place, something astonishing and new and exhilarating. We collapsed together, a sweating tangle of arms and legs, gasping for breath.

Release had never been quite so…had never felt so much like deliverance. Like religious ecstasy. I felt exalted, and at the same time weak and light, muscles and nerves quivering at the tiny aftershocks of pleasure still zinging through me.

Jake whispered something. I turned my head. “Okay?”

He looked at me, and his face appeared…younger, happy, moved. “Another first,” he said.

I let out a sound. I meant it to be a laugh, but it was pretty shaky. He rolled over, hauling me into his arms.

“It was beautiful,” he whispered. He grabbed my chin and kissed me, wetly, strongly. “You’re beautiful.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You know it was.” He smiled. “You are generous and graceful…and…” He gave a funny laugh. “Christ, you’re good in the sack.”

I think it was the wondering note that did it. I started to laugh for real, and Jake began to laugh as well.

“Yeah, but it’s true,” he said.

Not really. That is to say, I knew my way around a mattress, but what made this—well, every time we made love—special, unique, was the intensity of feeling. His emotional engagement was part of why he thought it all felt so fucking good. It was funny to me that he hadn’t realized that yet, that he was still thinking the difference somehow had to do with my superior technique.

We quieted, and I said, “Jake, what you said at dinner…”

He said, “It kills me when I do something that hurts you. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t ever have to— There’s never going to be anyone else for me. Not now.”

“The problem is not you. The problem has never been you. I will get better at this.”

“Okay,” I said. “I won’t stand in the way of progress.”

His mouth curved, but it was too gentle, too regretful to form a real smile.

It pushed me into saying the rest of it, although maybe it wasn’t the kind of thing you should admit—too heavy to lay all that on another person. “But I want you to know that I’m happy in a way I didn’t think was possible. Not for me. I didn’t think I’d ever have anything like this. I’m serious when I say if I ended tonight, I’d be sorry for what we won’t have, but what we did have these last months is worth a lifetime. I can’t put it into words, but that’s the truth. I would take these last six months with you over sixty years with anybody else.”

“Baby.” His eyes glittered, and he put his face to mine. Not kissing me, just resting his face against mine, breathing with me. I could feel the flicker of his eyelashes and the heat beneath, the unsteadiness of his lips.

He didn’t say anything. But somehow his silence said it all.