“So is Beckett.”
“He is indeed. But he wasn’t with you.”
Arden’s eyes widened. “He…w-wasn’t? That wasn’t vigorous?”
Pinching his lips together to hold back his smile, Jack shook his head slowly, black eyes gleaming.
“Are you…? You are joking with me. You’re not? Jack. I got astitch, he was so…stop laughing!”
“He was sweet with you. Sweeter than he’s ever been for me.”
Beckett had knocked the breath clean out of him with his powerful thrusts. He’d pinned Arden, overwhelmed him, scraped stubble rash over his thighs, left fingerprint-bruises on his hips.
Arden had loved it. But…
“That wassweet?”
“Oh, yes.”
Again, he flashed back to that night—the first one, when the anger and that horrible distance hadn’t been there.
The first night, Beckett’s strong, glittering body had moved over his, pushed and shoved against his, rubbing. The muscles of his big arms had bulged beside Arden’s head as he held himself over Arden. Arden had been surrounded. Mastered.
Sweet?
“And you…ah. You…?”
“Have never been sweet like that.”
“Oh,” Arden said in a small voice.
“I won’t risk you, Arden.”
“Well, what risk even is there?”
Jack gazed at him sombrely. “I like to fight my bed partners,” he said, and nodded when Arden’s eyes rounded. “You wouldn’t like that, would you?”
Arden’s gaze flitted from Jack’s face to his biceps, his hands, and back to his face. He swallowed hard. “I don’t think any fight between us would would last long,” he said. “Two, perhaps three seconds.”
“I don’t suppose it would.” He stroked back Arden’s hair off his hot face. “I like to fight for dominance. I like to strain for it. It is a battle. There is, I am sorry to say, very little tenderness in me.”
Arden wrapped his fingers around Jack’s wrist and held him. He was cupping Arden’s cheek.
Tenderly.
His thumb was brushing back and forth along Arden’s jaw.
Also tenderly.
Arden didn’t point it out.
“The thought of looking down into your face, of pinning you beneath me, and seeing your fear…no.No.” Jack shook his head sharply.
“I understand,” Arden said.
“But now…”
Arden perked up, and didn’t even care when Jack got amused all over again.
