Slowly, I continued my pace. He was so tight and hot around me, and I told him so, slowing even more to kiss him when I could, delivering the fast, pounding need I had there at his mouth, but relentlessly going slow into his body. He was slick with sweat, beads and streams of clear fluid all over him and me, and he started quivering beneath me, panting, but well past trying to form any words I was supposed to understand.
I could feel the heat knotting in my lower spine, wanting to fan out everywhere.
“Look at me, Perrin,” I said, my voice ragged with my own need, deep and desperate. Instantly, his eyes—so impossibly dark—locked on mine. “I love you,” I said, pulling back to enter deep and slow.
“Love–oh fuck, love you, Jack,” he managed in a voice that begged me just with its tone.
There was no need for the words now. So I slid into him, and lighting him up at the spot I knew so damn well. This was no longer slow or controlled, but I had his eyes locked on mine and I pulsed into him over and over.
I left something of myself in those gold-brown pools each time, but he gave it back to me in so many other ways. The orgasms took us both at the same time, blinding my vision and sending hot aftershocks through us both. Finally, we both were still, with me on his chest reversing our roles from this morning, regaining my ability to breathe and his strong legs holding me where I had collapsed on him.
After slipping from his body, I couldn’t resist the sight of seeing me leak from him, and I bent my head to clean him up with my mouth. He called out and gave me a heated glance and I knew the only reason he let me, or that it didn’t lead to anything else, was because we were both as possibly sated as two people could be. It was worth it for his curses and ragged breath. It was doubly worth it when I kissed him right after and felt his soft moan at the taste on my lips.
But the real prize was that he relaxed into that intimacy, into me.
“I won’t always be like this, I promise, Jack,” Perrin says, running those fingertips down my cheek.
“Just keep being Perrin,” I tell him, “and I will love you. This version, and any other.”
Both of our phones were on my side of the bed, so that he didn’t trytoreach for his out of habit and hurt himself, and I climbed up when I noticed they both lit up within a minute of each other. Perrin ran fingertips over my abdomen, then my back as I untangled myself enough to sit on the side of the bed.
I laughed at mine, it was a text from Matt.
Get your clothes on. You got an hour.
“What is it?” Perrin asked reaching clumsily to see his phone. The light lit up his face for a moment, and he laughed, showing it to me. It was a similar text from Quinn.
Quit debauching my brother. Family is headed that way in 60.
Perrin laughed as he read the one I had from Matt.
“At least we got a warning. Think they have the place bugged?” He said, sitting up, fingertips now on my legs.
“God I hope not,I think it’s just maybe we are easy to figure out,” I said, looking out to the snowy day. What the hell else did they expect us to be doing, I wondered. But, I knew they had kept, for them at least, a respectable amount of distance for a while.
I looked over at Perrin’s flushed cheeks, and his still caressing fingertips. “You up for this, baby?” I asked.
He did the best we could manage to lace fingers together with the merely sprained and braced hand. “Of course,” he said, a small smile playing on his lips. “Can’t say I will be recovering from that one any time soon, anyhow,” he said.
I laughed. “You will be half-hard in the shower, and we both know it.” I leaned up so that I could kiss him. “You are insatiable—not complaining.”
Perrin’s eyes were bright when he looked at me, but his expression was serious as he brushed fingertips across my cheek. “That’s your fault, Jack. I can’t get enough of you.”
I let his words warm my chest, and our foreheads dropped together for a moment. I stroked the facial hair beneath my hand, and he turned more of his face into it. Somehow, we both knew that getting past Holden Davis was getting us to a future together, but we had not talked about what that would look like. We didn’t really need to. But it was clear, at least to me, that the only future was one with Perrin in it.
“You wait here,” I said with a kiss, “I’ll tell you when the shower is warm.”
Perrin
As the Mann clan rolled in to my apartment, I was thankful for many things. On the superficial level, I was thankful to have the warning Jack’s brothers had given us. I was glad to have Jack’s tendencies toward neatness as I was somewhat unable to do all of that for myself given the conditions of my hands, or at least do it very well. As it was, by the time his family was there the atmosphere in my condo was pretty relaxed. Both of us had opted for lounge pants and long-sleeved tees after a shower. I had the fire roaring in the fireplace, with much help from Jack.Jack had stripped the bed and remade it, and I hoped to god that when his family arrived it smelled more like the coffee I had just made, soap, and firewood, rather than the other activities that had taken up the most of the day.
Honestly, I would have thought it would be awkward, to open up what had become mine and Jack’s cave and retreat to everyone, but it wasn’t. I was thankful for his family. They had come by, in small groups or one at a time, but they seemed to understand without anything having to be said that I needed weeks alone with Jack before I could handle them all at one time.Apparently,that time was now up.
Ellen and Rita were the first to arrive, enveloping me at the door with hugs. Before I could get too choked up about the emotions their love always made me feel, especially in the last few weeks, Quinn was there, flanked by Matt, carrying in large disposable trays like this was any regular Mann family convergence.
As soon as Matt had his hands free he clasped my shoulder.
“How you feeling, brother?” he asked with a smile.
