The ghosts played hard, and in the shower, Gray felt it again, that gentle brush of lip against shoulder blade, a quieter please for control. For a moment he gripped around the showerhead.
“Yeah. I know I hurt you.” A touch drifted down to where water ran over Gray’s lower abs. “You okay, mukka?”
Easing his grip off the shower, Gray turned around and let his arms snake Jack’s shoulders. Pulling him in close, he closed his eyes, ignoring how he buried relief at hearing the familiar call of “mukka” now.
Jack had done this once or twice a week since they’d been back, getting up in the morning and coming into the shower with him. Always after Gray had gotten in, after the sickness hit, but still always covering his hip. Gray tightened his grip around Jack for a moment and eased into a sad smile. “Morning, stunner,” he whispered in his ear before kissing it.
Black hair coiled around Jack’s face, almost hiding the look there in his eyes as Jack glanced up. Concern battled heat, building with each time Jack had come into the shower. The heat there was the look off the late teen, a time when Gray had pulled up outside of Alan Shaw’s house, the policeman Jack had put in hospital. It had been raining then. Jack had just come out of a six-month trial with getting Cutter sent down, and Gray had tried to sever the connection with Jack, break away before he fell and cried out his own fall. But he’d been met with this look: this need to fuck, to ask if they were okay, only Jack hadn’t known how to voice it. It offered such a dark beauty in those grey eyes, how they cried out to fuck, to feel, to touch, to try and heal.... And as much as Gray wanted to stop the fall back then, take away the hurt, he wanted to fuel it, to make him understand how to ask, to fight, to fuck, let himself be exhausted to the core, because in the aftermath...
Jack’s hand was on his hip now, hiding the branding mark that he’d cut out, hiding parts of himself despite the conflict of emotions. Gray eased out a breath. Damage was on full display and all of Jack’s confidence faltered with it, twisting Gray’s stomach and stirring more sickness.
Kissing at Jack’s neck, Gray eased his touch down, one hand tracing Jack’s side, his hip. As he let his touch drift over the hand covering the scar, Jack went to take a step back, his “No” crying his panic. Gray breezed a caress at the back of Jack’s hand, his demand to be allowed to touch.
It seemed to come so naturally. Jack pulled his hand from underneath Gray’s, to rest at his side. Full access given to his hip.
“No hiding from me, Jack,” Gray mumbled quietly. “Please.” He brushed just above the scar, and he caught Jack’s unsteady breath. The V that Vince had branded into his skin was gone, cut away into a perfect square, aligned perfectly with the contours of Jack’s fine body, as though he’d inched it into pristine precision, then started picking at it when he thought it kept moving and slipping out of place. Most was healed, except for the top right hand corner. A hint that Jack had left a bloodied kink in one corner of the photo so he could come and rip it up, then inch it back into position when life got too much. Vince’s denial of letting Jack go casual with his photo had seen Jack tear at his own body, trying to order life by straightening and bloodying his own wounds, like a dog made to ease his own hurt by biting it away.
Gray stroked over the scar tissue, then skated on water over the smooth, tanned skin to trace the finer V of Jack’s abs. “Sorry, stunner,” said Gray, leaning into the curve of Jack’s throat and kissing softly at his collarbone. “So fucking sorry I wasn’t there for you and Jan.”
Jack made sure Gray found his gaze and came in for such a rough kiss. “I remember the alley,” breathed Jack against his lips. “I remember getting dragged to your interrogation cells, mukka. And I remember the bastard... the electronic tagging that came after.” One kiss was given, then two, three—the fourth offering a brief taste of tongue against tongue, then every ounce of heat and need came in the final fight to feel as Jack didn’t draw back for breath from the fifth tonguing. “I remember everything about you, Gray. And knowing that”—he pulled back slightly—“you ever apologise again for loving me, I’ll fucking floor you for it. We clear?”
Gray damned his own soul for running with the exchange of breath, for missing this, and in that instant took Jack’s mouth just as hard, just as rough, bodies so tightly pressed together that Jack’s hard-on dug into his thigh with every slight grind of hip off them both.
Dangerous ground, Gray knew that, and it would be so easy to fall, to push Jack up against the wall, pin his hands above his head, fuck him until he cried loud enough to stir life into Jan... but instead Gray calmed, pulled out of the kiss. “Jack—”
“Gray. I miss the fuck out of the way we touch, full on. Heat and chain.” A brush of hand came at Gray’s jaw, followed by a soft nip of teeth on lip that caught all of Gray’s attention. Then Jack looked down his body, tracing the reaction of his own heat and running the back of his hand down his own cock, just once. “Fuck. Talk to me, Gray....” He shivered. “Talk to me about BDSM. About ways to get back to touching your life, mukka. To touching you.”
Gray frowned. Jack changed from that one stroke to a gentle grip down his cock, and the frowned heat about him had Gray stroking at Jack’s side, to calm, to cool him down. He had every look of needing to be fucked, of missing being fucked in old ways, but—
“Have you touched yourself yet?” he breathed against Jack’s ear, although he knew the answer already.
Jack choked a soft smile, a blush, and it hurt to see this awkwardness at such a simple question. “I play.” His look said just that. “But it’s alone, it’s... it’s... alone.”
“And Jan?” Jack had found it hard, but Jan...? “Has he played alone yet?”
Jack shrugged, and Gray caught the fall of his shoulders. “He...” Jack came in, kissing at Gray’s shoulder, nibbling. “He shakes every time I go near him. I don’t know if he’s wondering who’s touching him... me or Martin.”
“Easy.” This time Gray kissed at his neck, adding a harder bite. “And you think you’re ready to talk about getting back into BDSM, stunner? You think Jan’s ready to see you back in the BDSM lifestyle, knowing that?” Gray had sworn not to interfere on Halliday’s psychological evaluation of them both. Records and sessions were kept private, no matter how deep the temptation. They all talked when they needed to, not because they had to.
“He had no question over coming back here to you, Gray,” breathed Jack, his hand coming up Gray’s neck, his head tilting more, wanting the kiss at his throat to turn into something... more. “I think he knows it will happen eventually. And me... I’m so fucking tired of fighting this heat. I need us; what we are to each other.”
Gray screwed his eyes shut, controlling his breathing, but refusing to run with Jack a little more even though his bite was almost hard enough to mark Jack’s throat now.
Jack sighed, body relaxing into the rougher touch. Maybe he was ready to talk, to at least look at ways to coax mind and body into play, but....
Jack had found it hard just to come into the shower and be seen. The gap between concept and the reality of what he wanted seemed so far apart, and Gray still felt the cuts and bruises from the last time he’d tried to put a pair of handcuffs on Jack. There were ways to calm and care for a sub, to help lessen the width of the steps he wanted to take, but....
Gray pulled away a touch.
“You’re scared too, mukka,” Jack breathed quietly again, and this time Gray felt a hand slip between them. “I know what I’ve done.” Jack pressed his cock flat against Gray’s hip and rode a few strokes. “You’re hiding from me too.”
Now Gray eased back for a different reason, watching every line on Jack’s face, every change in emotion as Jack found solace in very old habits.
Breathing was heavy, Jack’s hips dipping, curving, his cock riding Gray’s hip and leaving a wetness there of its own that had Gray wanting to cry out and encourage. But he stayed back, kept quiet, and just let Jack use him to chase away ghosts.
Then it came, a slight drop of brow, almost lost under the mass of black wet hair framing Jack’s face. Eyes were closed, screwed tight shut now, calling out past fights and struggles, and Gray reached a hand under Jack’s jaw, knowing this was where life became hard.
“Me,” he said quietly as grey eyes flickered open. “You stay with me, stunner.” Gray pulled him in by the gentle touch on his jaw and kissed him deep.
Gray took control of Jack’s touch on his cock, playing one slow and long stroke down his shaft as he covered Jack’s hand. Feeling the thickness and heat through Jack, Gray’s body reacted, his cock crying out its own need. Ignoring it should have been second nature, but damn his soul, he’d missed this, this way of Jack’s, to find and take comfort through innocent play of his body up against Gray’s. And feeling that slip of hard cock against his hip brought back a familiarity all of its own that Gray wanted to wrap his soul around and claim back. From the cries in Jack’s sleep, Vince had asked him to do this at some point, taking away all of Jack’s peace and twisting the most basic innocence behind self-exploration under a Master’s careful eye. And it must have been what broke Jack all those months ago back in Gray’s bedroom.
“C’mon, stunner,” Gray breathed before going in for another, deeper kiss. His breathing matching Jack’s despite having no touch on his own cock, Gray took Jack’s shaft harder, faster, feeling every tension, every build of release as Jack ground his body in so close, hips now riding the touch as much as the touch rode Jack. “Fucking c’mon, cariad,” he whispered, the Welsh running off his tongue in the heat of the moment.
“Fuck.” Jack came so quickly, burying a cry in Gray’s shoulder in a bite that would bore into bone, let alone draw blood. Gray instinctively grabbed a hold around Jack, one hand seeking his ass, the rough grip there encouraging Jack to ride the last few ounces of come out of him, the other threatening roughness down his back.
“Fuck,” breathed Jack again, gripping at Gray’s ass and pulling Gray off the wall, his cock rubbing hard into Gray’s. “Fuck...”
There was a moment where Gray felt Jack shift, move to kiss his way down Gray’s chest, repay the first touch, but Gray stopped him with that hold under his jaw, keeping him on his feet, then went in for a long kiss.
He wanted this. The taste of his lips, nothing more. There was a time and a place for sex. This wasn’t it.
Jack sighed, easing a nip at Gray’s lip, then traced a run of slow kisses along Gray’s jaw and nuzzled back into the curve if his throat. Jack cuddled in close as his heart started to slow. Gray could feel it, that pounding chasing a normal beat, chasing calm, and Gray stroked gently at Jack’s ass, happy to stay there as he found it. This... the hold in the aftermath, this was what life was all about.
“Where did you go?” Jack stopped the playful kisses on the curve of Gray’s throat, now holding on for life. “Those five months away... where the fuck were you?”
Gray let his fingertips skate over toned skin. “Too far from here,” he mumbled quietly. “Too fucking far from here, stunner.”
A hand eased off Gray’s ass to come between them and stroke distractedly at Gray’s stomach. Jack nipped, occasionally licking at the moisture on Gray’s throat, then he pulled back slightly and ran a hand over the stubble making its presence known on Gray’s chin.
“Keep it,” he said quietly.
Gray frowned as grey eyes searched his. Heat was still there in his cheeks and Jack offered such a soft smile.
“Fucking gorgeous on you, mukka.”
A kiss brushed Gray’s lips, then Jack eased the door open. He stopped for a moment and glanced back. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Fine now, stunner.”
Jack nodded. “Then we’ll talk, yeah? Maybe about looking at ways to get things back to normal in the bedroom, if only that? All three of us?”
Gray offered a smile, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Small steps—”
“Yeah,” finished Jack. “Time. I know, mukka.” His gaze saddened. “We all need it. Hm... who was on the phone?”
“Hm?”
“Just.” Jack thumbed back to Gray’s mobile.
“Work,” said Gray.
After a brief glance back, Jack nodded. “You... you just stay safe, okay?” Then he was gone.
Giving a rub at his jaw, Gray looked over at his shaving kit, then his phone. An investigation into Ryan Keal from the SSTP was something he didn’t need. Not today. He rubbed at his head as he got out of the shower.