Yeah, okay. River rubbed his hands over his face. “Terminal?” he asked sheepishly.
“Well.” She gave him a smirk. “The little death, at least.”
So that was one less thing to worry about. Amanda left him to his own devices, and River spent the rest of the day poking at things in the studio. He fixed the rough parts in the patter song and tried out a couple of effects on some others, but nothing quite fit. The songs ended up sounding more different than similar.
“Ugh.” What River really needed was—
Probably to wait for whoever Amanda was going to set him up with. He was too close to the music to be able to see it. And his brain was buzzing with nerves, with hope, with something that felt like it might grow into a foundation he could build his life on. He needed to do something. Take a walk. Take a swim. Go rock climbing. Learn parkour. Try BASE jumping. Get another tattoo—
The doorbell rang.
River blinked at his computer screen, then got up and went see who it was.
Normally he didn’t get people on his doorstep, what with the whole needing privacy thing. He had a security gate. He hated it, because it made him feel likehewas a psycho cult leader, but it was a security gate or live in an apartment with a doorman, and he liked his privacy.
So the fact that the person had gotten this far meant they had the gate code, which meant River wasn’t worried about it when he pulled the door open.
But he also wasn’t expecting Jem.
The surprise must’ve shown on his face, because the first thing Jem said was, “You left the gate opener in the Subaru.”
He didn’t say anything after that, because River was kissing him, pulling him into the house with both hands on his face. Jem made a short, surprised sound of approval and let himself be pulled as he kicked the door closed behind him.
Yeah, said the insistent buzzing in River’s brain, now vibrating at a whole new frequency as Jem’s mouth opened under his.This’ll work.
River couldn’t let go of Jem’s perfect face, which made navigating to the couch difficult. He stumbled backward into the conversation pit and narrowly avoided falling on his ass. Jem followed with grace and even more enthusiasm, clutching at River’s shoulders, waist, ass until the backs of River’s knees hit the couch and he sat down with Jem already in his lap.
God, he felt incredible. River didn’t know for sure if he could bounce a quarter off Jem’s ass, but his dick was certainly interested in finding out how pliable it was. From the way Jem’s breath caught when he ground down in River’s lap, it seemed like Jem wanted to know too.
River carefully bit his lip and shivered when he felt the heat of Jem’s flush under his fingers.
Somewhere in the back of his brain, he recognized that he didn’t want to fuck Jem on the couch. At least not this time. But despite the grinding, and the kissing, and the handsiness—Jem had his long fingers threaded through River’s hair now and River was half a second from purring about it—neither of them seemed to be in a rush. If Jem wanted to make out on the couch for two hours, River would happily resign himself to stubble rash. Eric and Ward would mock him endlessly and River would bask in it just like he was doing now, with Jem in his lap.
Hopefully with a less obvious boner.
Before the stubble rash could fully form, Jem pulled his mouth away from River’s—terrible, but River made do kissing down his neck instead—and gasped gratifyingly into the quiet house. “River.”
River fell in love with the way Jem’s vocal cords vibrated beneath his lips. “Mmm,” he agreed.
A sharp tug as Jem pulled River away from his neck. His mouth was swollen pink and a dark flush stained his cheeks—a perfect vision.
River watched him lick his lips.
Then, “You’re going to let me this time, right?”
Let him? Maybe River’d accidentally held his breath too long, because his brain couldn’t piece that together. What exactly had he not let Jem do before? “Let you what, sunshine?”
Impossibly, the flush deepened. Jem flicked his gaze down to their laps, to where the bulge of River’s dick in his jeans was visibly straining into the pressure of Jem sitting on him.
Oh. That.
“Whatever you want, sweetheart,” he said, which was a pretty big blank check, but he already gave Jem a car, so.
Jem seemed to have something specific in mind, because he cleared off River’s lap so fast River got dizzy with the sudden return of circulation, and then Jem was kneeling between his thighs and River hadn’t known you could get pants off that fast, actually. Was that some kind of stealth golfer skill?
The question fled his mind when Jem made a noise like sweet music and put his mouth around the head of River’s dick.
River was promptly ruined for anyone else. If the way Jem looked on his knees hadn’t already flooded his lizard brain, the sounds he made while sucking cock would have. And then there was the gentle press of his hands on the sensitive insidesof River’s thighs, the fingers of both hands teasing over his balls before pushing in further to cradle them. Riverfeltthe warmth of Jem’s satisfied sigh on his taint, like what was he even supposed to do with that? Jem didn’t suck dick like he wanted River to come. He did it like he wanted to make a mold of River’s cock with his mouth, like he was having the time of his life, like—
