Page 9 of A Man To Remember (Skin on Skin #3)

AUSTIN

THERE'S AN OCEAN in these eyes and I'm drowning.

Jesse's words hang between us like smoke, curling around my ribs and settling in my lungs until breathing becomes this conscious effort I have to think about.

You could kiss me now.

Five words. Five simple words that detonate in my chest like grenades, sending shrapnel through every carefully constructed wall I've built around the part of me that still bleeds his name.

I know I could kiss him. Christ, I've known it for the past hour.

Known it in the way his pupils dilate when I step into his orbit, swallowing green until there's nothing left but darkness.

Known it in the way his chest rises and falls like he's been running wind sprints instead of standing perfectly still in a room that suddenly feels smaller than a coffin.

Known it in the tremor that runs through his body every time my hands find his skin, like electricity jumping between live wires.

But knowing and doing are two different beasts, and right now they're locked in mortal combat somewhere behind my sternum.

My teenage self is screaming in the back of my skull, a desperate howl of finally, finally, finally that makes my hands shake where they hang at my sides like useless appendages.

This is everything that pathetic kid used to dream about in the suffocating dark of his bedroom, stroking himself raw to fantasies of Jesse looking at him exactly like this.

With want carved into every line of his face.

With need bleeding from his pores. With those fucking ocean eyes gone dark and hungry like he might actually devour me whole if I let him.

And fuck, do I want to let him.

The adult in me, the one who spent years learning how to breathe underwater, how to exist in the crushing depths Jesse left me in, whispers warnings like liturgy.

He destroyed you once.

Scattered your pieces to the wind and didn't look back to see where they landed.

Why hand him the ammunition to finish the job?

But my body has already staged a coup. My brain is no longer in charge of this operation.

I'm leaning forward before conscious thought catches up, drawn by gravity I've been fighting since the moment I saw him behind that bar, all golden hair and easy smiles like he hadn't ripped my world apart and left me to die in the wreckage.

Jesse is both the tide that will drag me under and the shore I've been swimming toward for a decade, and I'm so fucking tired of treading water. So tired of keeping my head above the surface when all I want to do is sink.

The first brush of our lips is electric shock therapy.

Lightning that starts at my mouth and shoots straight to my cock, making me gasp against his lips like I've forgotten how oxygen works.

Jesse's response is immediate, eager in a way that stops my heart and restarts it with a completely different rhythm.

His lips part under mine like they were designed for this moment, welcoming me home to a place I was never supposed to belong.

This isn't how I expected him to kiss. Not hesitant or experimental or apologetic the way straight guys kiss when they're curious about crossing lines.

Jesse kisses like he's been starving for it, like he's been thinking about this as much as I have, lying awake at night wondering what my mouth would taste like, what sounds I'd make if he did that thing with his tongue.

His hands find my back, fingers digging into my shirt, pulling me closer until there's no space left between us.

Not even room for air. I can feel the heat of his nearly naked body through my clothes, can feel his heart hammering against my chest like it's trying to break free from his ribcage and merge with mine in some twisted anatomical miracle.

And that's when the anger hits like a sledgehammer to the solar plexus.

Where the fuck was this ten years ago? Where was this desperate clinging, this eager surrender, when I needed it most?

When I was eighteen and broken and convinced I'd never be worth wanting by anyone, let alone him?

When I spent months walking through school hallways like a ghost, watching him laugh with his friends, watching him date girls who looked nothing like me, watching him pretend I didn't exist while I bled out in plain sight?

The rage tastes like copper on my tongue, mixing with the sweetness of his mouth until I can't tell where one ends and the other begins.

I kiss him harder, meaner, pouring ten years of resentment into the slide of tongue against tongue.

My hands find his waist, fingers digging into bare skin, leaving my signature written in fingerprint bruises, and Jesse just moans like I've given him the greatest gift imaginable and presses closer.

Do you know what you did to me? I want to ask between kisses, want to bite the words into his throat until they scar over and he carries them forever.

Do you have any fucking idea how many nights I spent wanting this and hating myself for it?

How many mornings I woke up hard and aching with your name on my lips like a prayer to a god who never answered?

But Jesse's melting under my touch like he was forged in fire and I'm the only thing that can cool him down.

Pliant and responsive and so fucking beautiful I could weep actual tears if I weren't too angry to cry.

His skin is warm silk under my palms, muscle and bone and all the fantasies I used to torture myself with made flesh and blood and real enough to touch.

The dragon tattoo ripples with each breath he takes, scales shifting in the studio lights, and I trace its outline with my thumb like I'm claiming territory I never thought I'd get to explore.

Every ridge of muscle, every dip and hollow, every place where shadow meets light—it's all mine now, at least for this moment, and I'm greedy enough to take everything he's offering.

The contrast between us is stark and makes my cock throb against my zipper.

Jesse in nothing but those thin boxer briefs that leave absolutely nothing to the imagination and the tie hanging loose around his neck like a collar waiting for someone to pull.

Meanwhile, I'm fully clothed, every thread and seam a barrier between his skin and mine, a reminder of who holds the power in this equation.

The dynamic is intoxicating, a complete reversal of every fantasy I used to have where I was the one vulnerable, the one exposed, the one wanting something I could never have.

Now he is the one wanting, and I'm the one who gets to decide how this plays out.

I use that control like a weapon.

My hands map every inch of exposed skin while Jesse can only clutch at my clothes, trying to find purchase on fabric instead of flesh.

Trying to level the playing field and failing beautifully.

I set the pace of our kisses, deep and demanding and absolutely unforgiving, swallowing the little sounds he makes like I'm collecting them for later, storing them away to sustain me when this inevitably falls apart.

When he tries to slow it down, make it softer, more tender—more like the romantic bullshit I used to dream about—I grip his hair and pull his head back, exposing the long line of his throat.

"Austin," he breathes, and hearing my name fall from his lips like that, desperate and needy and wrecked, sends heat to my cock like a direct neural pathway.

I don't answer with words—words are for people who trust each other, and I don't trust Jesse Walsh as far as I can throw him.

Instead, I press my thigh between his legs, feeling his hard-on through the thin fabric. The heat of him burns through my jeans, proof that this isn't just pity or curiosity or some misguided attempt at making amends.

Jesse's gasp is sharp enough to cut diamonds, his hips bucking forward instinctively, seeking friction like his body knows what it wants even if his brain hasn't caught up yet. The movement grinds his cock against my thigh, and I can feel him through the layers—thick and hard and leaking already.

The sound he makes when I grind back goes straight to my balls like a direct hit.

It's raw and unfiltered, nothing like the careful noises people make when they're trying to sound sexy for the camera. This is Jesse losing control, Jesse forgetting to be anything other than desperate for what I'm giving him, and it's more erotic than any staged performance I've ever captured.

We find a rhythm that's both foreign and familiar, like muscle memory from a life I never lived.

Jesse rolling his hips against my thigh while I grind against him.

It's high school desperation with adult intensity, clumsy and perfect and nothing like I imagined it would be during all those nights I spent jerking off to thoughts of him.

Because in my fantasies, I was always gentle with him.

Always reverent. Always grateful for whatever scrap of attention he might throw my way, like a dog begging for table scraps.

I would worship him with my mouth and hands and tell him how beautiful he was, how lucky I felt to be chosen, how I'd do anything to make him happy.

This is nothing like that.

Every thrust is a question carved into his skin.

How does it feel to want something you can't fully have?

Every kiss is an accusation written in teeth marks.

This is what you did to me, made me crave what was always just out of reach.

Every time I pull away just when he's getting close to losing it completely, it's payback for every time he walked past me without a glance.

Welcome to my fucking adolescence.

But Jesse doesn't seem to mind the punishment.

If anything, he craves it, following my lead with an eagerness that makes my chest tight and my throat close up with unwelcome emotions.

When I grab the tie around his neck and use it to pull him into a bruising kiss, he moans into my mouth like I've given him everything he's ever wanted wrapped up in a bow.