“Do you want me to be with someone else?” I ask, intent on provocation.
Jack’s head whips back around, and he pins me with a look bordering on ferocious, jealousy momentarily burning so brightly in his eyes it looks painful. His instantaneous snarl of possessiveness and the way his hand tightens on my throat, hard enough to choke, feels like enough of an answer.
When Jack calms himself, with some difficulty it seems, and release my throat enough so I can talk, I ask, “Do you want us to be two people who are friends and also fuck sometimes?”
Jack’s reaction is less extreme this time, but his glare of negation makes it clear he doesn’t like the sound of that either.
“Then I don’t know what else to tell you, Jack.” I sigh out tiredly. “Either you’re willing to accept the fact I think you’re worth loving”—and I’m proud of myself for not flinching on that last one—“or we have to stop pretending that us fucking around isn’t going to ruin everything just because we’ve saidout loudwe know it will ruin everything.”
Jack dips his head, lowering himself far enough to lightly brush his lips over mine. It isn’t a kiss, more something meant to convey intimacy, to re-establish our connection. He breathes out slow and pulls back, an aggrieved look on his face. “We’ve been lampshading ourselves pretty hard,” he agrees.
“You know, I don’t want to come across as desperate right now,” I say, allowing some humour to leak into my voice since the brave part of this conversation is mostly over, “but if you wanted to expand on the whole ‘you’re incredible’ thing, I’d be game for that any time.”
I expect Jack to laugh, but he doesn’t. He fixes me with a contemplative stare instead as if weighing up potential responses. For a second, I think he might actually list all the reasons he likes me, which would make me extremely uncomfortable, just for the record. Accepting compliments, real ones, has never been something I’ve excelled at. I low-key hate it; makes me squirm like mad internally.
But Jack will likely never be one to wax poetic about anyone or anything, not even a person he has genuine feelings for. He proves me correct in the best way, by offering something better than a list of my supposed attributes.
Something honest.
“Okay, then, Leo,” Jack murmurs soberly. “You’ve been a nightmare since the second we met. Reckless with your own safety. Fucking suicidal in your apparent need to help people. Sometimes, you piss me off to the point I want to throw you out a moving train, just so I won’t have to deal with your lunatic tendencies and bloody, blinding sunshine smiles.”
He gets that exceedingly rare, soft look on his face. The one I’ve only ever seen him give to me. His voice lowers, deepening into a profound tenor. “But then you do those things you do. Like breathe. Or exist. And Leo, for real? That shit really works for me.”
A thunderstorm of emotions hits me all at once; I almost want to laugh out loud in an attempt to expel this fizzing, uncontrollable sensation writhing around inside me from stomach to throat.
It’s just. It’s so unabashedlyJackto be unnervingly blunt with his admission of feelings for me.
With a sharp tug on his T-shirt, I grin up at him and demand, “Kiss me right now or forever hold your peace.”
Jack’s mouth cuts up into something that manages to be both achingly sweet and dangerously sharp. “Think this time it’s you, getting your wedding rules wrong,” he muses before swooping down to lay the kiss I wanted on my lips.
I go at Jack’s mouth like it’s the first and last time I’ll ever get to have him like this, which is ridiculous since this whole talking thing we just did should mean the exact opposite is true.
We share open-mouthed kisses and wet heat. We trade moans and grasping touches. Our straining, hard cocks grind together as we move against one another, choppy and frantic like we’re trying to make a point, do something official to seal the deal, like a promise or evidence of our resolve to be this thing, this thing we are that transcends every other relationship, platonic or otherwise, we’ve experienced before.
Jack finally releases my throat, only to start yanking at my clothes. Worked up as he is, he’s less careful than usual when getting us skin to skin. He quite literally rips the fabric off my body like fucking tissue paper, I swear, Jesus Christ. I find his mad need to have me, to touch me without barriers, sexier than I probably should.
More than ever, I want those hands, those dangerous hands capable and guilty of so much violence and ruthlessness, on my body, scraping and squeezing across my skin, leaving bruises behind.
Jack is quick to remove his own clothes along with my help, and the second we’re both naked, we’re back on each other, returning to our fevered grabbing and stealing oxygen and drenched-up heat with a vengeance, as if in between someone or something tried to tear us apart.
My patience snaps faster than ever before, and I urge Jack to get the lube from the side drawer, which he does, dragging me with him along the bed, utterly unwilling to let go of me for even a second.
Jack flips the cap on the lube and coats his fingers, bullying me into the middle of the bed again so he can start working on opening me up. There’s some initial resistance, considering how long it’s been since we last fucked like this, but when Jack sees the slight crease of discomfort on my face, he slows down some, takes his time pushing his fingers into me and watching my reactions intently. He seems to enjoy eliciting gasps of sensation, a mix of both pleasure and pain colliding together into one congealed feeling. I put my hand on my own cock, stroking it to increase the depth of sensation lighting up my belly and groin.
When we get to the point that Jack is confident enough to lube up his own thick erection, I make a decision. I sit up and put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. He looks at me questioningly.
“Okay if I ride you this time, babe?” I ask, voice barely more than a husked-out whisper because I’m so turned on. I just want this man inside me as fast as possible, as deep as possible. With me on top, I get to control the trajectory of that.
Jack doesn’t hesitate to nod his agreement with this change of plans, and he lets me push him onto his back.
I climb on top and take the lube from him. He lays back, hands going to my thighs and fingers digging in hard. I squirt out some more lube and stroke his cock, getting him ready so my hole is able to swallow it with ease.
Jack stares up at me, rapt with his attention, like in this moment, nothing else truly matters despite how false I know that to be. I can’t help but stare right back at him, captivated by the sight he makes. He looks so fucking gorgeous, splayed out beneath me, his perfectly crafted muscles straining and flexing with desire. He’s like an exposed nerve, pulsing with the need to drive up inside me.
Once we’re both about to come out of our skin with need, I throw the lube aside and guide Jack’s cock to my hole. We maintain eye contact as I lower myself down onto his cock. He splits me apart, pushing past all resistance and filling me deeper than ever before. When he bottoms out, Jack releases a loud groan, an answering call to my own gasp.
Jack lets me get away with setting a slow pace for a while, lifting myself up and dropping back down onto his cock, drawing it out each time so I can feel every inch of him stretching me open. I raise my hands to play with my hard nipples, tugging and rubbing over them to give myself yet another layer of sensation to add into the mix. Jack’s eyes flare at the sight, dragging another groan out of him, his fingers tightening on my thighs.
