Page 10 of A Man To Remember (Skin on Skin #3)

The silk is soft against my knuckles, a stark contrast to the harsh sounds we're both making, the wet slide of mouths and the friction of skin against fabric.

I wrap it around my fist like a leash.

Like he belongs to me.

Like I finally get to keep something I want instead of watching it slip through my fingers.

Memory fragments flash behind my closed eyelids like a broken film reel someone keeps trying to splice back together.

I try to escape the images, but I can't.

The party.

The door swinging open.

The disgust on his face.

The day after.

That fucking day after that changed the course of my life. Because of him .

I pour all of that into the way I touch him now, every ghost and scar and sleepless night.

"Fuck," Jesse gasps against my mouth, his movements becoming more erratic. Desperate. I can feel him getting close, see it in the flush spreading across his chest like spilled wine.

My own orgasm is building like a storm system, pressure coiling tight in my belly and spreading outward until every nerve ending feels exposed and raw.

Jesse's responsiveness is like gasoline on a fire—every moan that vibrates against my lips, every arch of his back that presses him closer, every time he says my name like a prayer I never deserved to hear.

The heat between us is unbearable now, sweat slicking our skin despite the air conditioning, making every touch slide and burn.

Jesse's hands are everywhere, clutching at my shoulders, my back, trying to pull me closer even though there's no space left between us.

I can taste desperation on his tongue, can smell arousal and need and something that might be affection if I believed Jesse Walsh was capable of feeling anything genuine.

"Please," he whispers against my mouth, and I don't know what he's asking for.

Release, maybe. Or forgiveness for crimes I'm not sure he even remembers committing.

Or just more of whatever this is between us, this twisted dance of desire and resentment that feels more real than anything I've experienced in years.

His hips are moving against mine in a rhythm that's becoming increasingly frantic, and I can feel his cock twitch through the fabric separating us. The boxer briefs are soaked through with pre-cum, the outline of his cock obscene and beautiful and everything I used to picture.

I reach between us and press my palm against him, feeling the heat and hardness of his cock through the wet fabric. Jesse cries out like I've branded him, his whole body jerking in my arms.

"You want to come?" I ask, my voice rougher than broken glass.

He nods frantically.

"Yes, fuck, yes, please—"

I squeeze him harder, feeling him pulse in my palm, and the desperation in his voice is like a drug I want to mainline.

This is power.

This is Jesse begging me for something, finally, after all these years of me being the one who wanted and needed and got nothing in return.

"Then come," I growl against his ear, and bite down on his earlobe hard enough to make him gasp.

The command pushes him over the edge like I've flipped a switch.

His whole body goes rigid in my arms, his back arching as he comes with a broken cry that sounds like my name torn apart and put back together wrong. I feel the heat of his cum through the fabric, soaking through to my jeans, marking us both with evidence of what we've done.

The sight of him coming undone in my arms—face flushed, mouth open, eyes squeezed shut like he's in pain—is enough to end me.

My orgasm hits like a freight train, pleasure so intense it borders on violence, made sharper by the ten years I've been waiting for this moment without even knowing I was waiting.

"Jesse," I groan against his mouth, his name torn from my throat like a confession I never meant to make, like admitting he still owns pieces of me I thought I'd buried.

For a long moment, we just cling to each other, both of us shaking with aftershocks, hearts hammering in syncopated rhythm against each other's chests.

Jesse's face is buried in the crook of my neck, and I can feel the flutter of his eyelashes against my skin, the whisper-soft brush of his breath on my throat.

He's trembling, small earthquakes that run through his whole body and into mine, and something about his vulnerability in the aftermath undoes me more completely than the sex did.

This wasn't supposed to happen like this.

The Jesse in my fantasies always pulled away afterward, always regretted it, always made me feel like I'd stolen something I wasn't supposed to have.

Guilt and shame and desperate promises that it would never happen again, that he wasn't like me, that I had better not tell anyone or else.

But this Jesse stays pressed against me like he belongs there, nose tracing the line of my jaw, pressing soft kisses to my collarbone like he has every right to be tender with me. Like this means something more than just getting off.

The affection is more devastating than the passion was. I can handle his desire. That's physical, animalistic, something I can categorize and file away and pretend doesn't matter.

But this? This threatens every wall I've built around the part of my heart that still belongs to him completely.

I need him gone before I do something catastrophically stupid.

"I need some space," I say, and my voice comes out rough, scraped raw from moaning his name.

He goes still against me, but he doesn't pull away immediately. I can feel him processing the words, feel the moment he decides not to fight me on it.

"Okay," he says quietly, and there's no hurt in his voice. No confusion or wounded pride. Just acceptance that cuts deeper than protest would have.

He understands this was a moment out of time, not a beginning. He gets it in a way that makes me want to take the words back and hold him until the world ends.

But I can't. I won't survive it again.

Jesse steps back slowly, the loss of his warmth immediate and brutal. He gives me one last lingering look, and there's something unreadable in those green ocean eyes.

I watch him dress in silence, telling myself I feel relieved. That this scratched an itch I'd been carrying for too long. That now I can move on and forget about him once and for all.

That I can pack up my equipment and finish out my remaining shoots and leave this city behind again, this time for good.

But even as I think it, I know it's complete bullshit.

Jesse pauses at the door, fully dressed now, looking like he wants to say something.

His mouth opens, closes, opens again. In the end, he just nods and lets himself out, leaving me alone with the lingering scent of his skin and the echo of my name on his lips and the taste of him still coating my tongue.

I tell myself I'm glad he's gone.

I tell myself this was exactly what I needed to get him out of my system.

I tell myself a lot of things, but my body still hums with want and my heart still pounds with possibilities I can't afford to entertain.