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SEVEN

ELIO

My head kept spinning for hours after I had left Jaxon’s room. I had woken up with my arm around him, realizing that all he wore was a pair of briefs, and my entire body wanted to inch closer. I’d resisted it, but it had been a hard fight between denying myself that indulgence and grabbing it by the throat.

Speaking of the throat , I thought miserably as I crossed the campus toward the rink. He had been so goddamn hard when I’d slammed him against the door, and it hadn’t surprised me at all.

That terrible, irresistible feeling still roared through me. The pulsing sensation deep inside my skull and the tingling rising from my toes, creeping higher and higher until it made my heart jolt, lingered long after I had left him.

Go back , it kept nagging me. He’ll open his door. He’ll fall on his knees. He’s been waiting for you all these years . And though I knew the truth was a little more complicated than that, it seemed as simple as giving him a nod.

It was like he was designed to lure me in. The number of obstacles between me and the thing my entire being screamed to own was nonexistent. He had undressed and slipped next to me in the bed. How much easier could it have been?

All I had to do was admit I wanted it. All I had to do was confirm to every mean-spirited, omniscient voice of my childhood that they were right when they called me all those slurs just because I wore my hair a little longer. Their faces floated before my eyes. Just a few years older than me, they had already started growing little chin hairs and mustaches, their faces pocked with acne that plagued us all sooner or later, and their eyes shiny with delight when they humiliated me.

What was stopping me? That was. That was precisely how I managed to resist it.

I wasn’t gay. Something was in a tangle somewhere deep within me, and I had a weakness for Jaxon in particular, but I wasn’t into guys. Not in the way those bullies had said.

The locker room was more empty than full by the time I arrived. Patrick, who had left much earlier, wasn’t there yet. He had probably squeezed in a date with whoever his current girl was or a cup of coffee with the countless people trying to be friends with him. Lennox lifted his head when I entered, curly, honey-brown locks bouncing wildly from the movement. “Captain, oh Captain,” he said, lifting his eyebrows in greeting.

I clicked my fingers and shook my head. “Not yet, buddy.”

“I don’t think it’s a competition anymore,” Lennox said.

I still have time to fall from grace , I thought. The team couldn’t be led by a guy who used every chance he had to kiss other guys. And right now, I fit that description as well as Easton.

Bobby was on the far side of the locker room, putting on his gear. He glanced at Lennox when the words reached him, a scowl on his face. He was Kyle’s closest ally on the team.

I didn’t need to wonder. It was isolating to have your ally and friend be revealed as a liar and a fraud before the entire team. Kyle’s suspension had been effective immediately, and we all still held our collective breaths, waiting for the results of his drug test. My friend’s deception was all too public, and ultimately, he had admitted it.

Patrick entered the locker room like a storm, tossing his backpack on the bench and mumbling a greeting to everyone. He didn’t have any extra words for me, but I had stopped expecting them.

The locker room filled up little by little. Connor and Damon arrived in tandem, followed soon by a sight I hadn’t been expecting. Bruised, injured in several spots, but holding his chin regally high, Easton entered the locker room, and silence fell. For better or worse, he was technically still the captain. He looked around the locker room, his intense green gaze scanning each of us while we all stood in stunned silence. He’d missed yesterday’s drills, and the unspoken assumption was that Easton was unlikely to show up.

“Am I making you nervous?” Easton asked in a voice pitched to fill the room.

We collectively looked down in shame. Yeah. He made me nervous. He made me afraid that the ghosts of my bullies occupied new bodies and filled this locker room. He made me scared that I would never be free of the labels that were unjustly attached to my back.

Easton waited, then nodded, tossing his duffel on the bench. “If you think I’m going to offer an explanation, that’s never gonna happen,” he said. “What we do outside the rink is nobody’s business.”

A few people nodded. Rhett murmured a “hear, hear” under his breath, echoed by Patrick a moment later.

“I wouldn’t expect any one of you to give excuses for what you do when you’re off the ice, given it doesn’t affect the team,” Easton said, his voice so steady and authoritative that it never crossed my mind to argue. What Easton and I had between us was our business. We would settle it one way or another, but it wouldn’t be in front of the Saints. “Although, I will offer you one assurance. If you’re scared a gay guy is around when you’re showering or changing, if you’re scared a gay guy hugs you when you score a point, if you’re scared a gay guy can see you in your underwear, remember this. I’m not the first gay guy you’ve met. You don’t know us because we live in fear and in secret. We lie to you every day you see us. We pretend we’re like you so you’d be our friend. Well, I’m done with that bullshit. You’re welcome to keep your opinion to yourself. And if you still have a problem with a gay teammate because he might hit on you, don’t flatter yourself too much. This one’s taken.”

Lennox picked up his hockey stick and began clacking the butt against the floor, the sound filling the room with a steady, upbeat rhythm. Patrick followed a heartbeat later, then Rhett, Connor, Damon, and the whole bunch of them. I glanced around, finding Bobby focused on his phone as if nothing was going on and a couple more wary looks being exchanged. And me? I had no goddamn idea what to do. He had practically called me out without giving me a single glance.

After the thunderous clash of wood against the tiled floor, the team settled down, and Easton gave a firm nod. “I figured you’d be cool if I had the balls to speak up.” He hesitated, then shook his head. “Should have done this years ago.”

Many of our teammates tapped his shoulder or patted his back, giving him a few passing words of encouragement while I withdrew deeper into the dead husk of my soul.

I looked away. The air grew too stuffy and hot for me, and I wondered if Easton had just turned things around for himself.

Whatever this feeling eating me from the inside was, it couldn’t have been jealousy.

The drills were once again a regular affair. With the recent events, there was still a fair share of confusion. The teams were split into smaller groups for an entire hour, each practicing individually with one of the assistant coaches. Then, in the second half, we simulated a few common skirmish strategies.

When it was over, I was the first one out of the door, and nobody stopped me from leaving. There were no announcements, and nobody voiced the many questions they had.

As I lifted my duffel, I passed by Patrick and Easton, not slowing down. “What the hell happened to your face?” Patrick asked.

Easton shook his head. “It’s a long story.”

Patrick shrugged and threw his arm over Easton’s shoulders. “Then it’s lucky we’re going for a beer or two. Right, Captain?”

Before I left the locker room, I looked over my shoulder and found Easton fighting against a rising smile.

* * *

My fist was heavy when it landed. The contact sent a thin bolt of pain through my hand. The wooden surface of his door muffled the sounds coming from the inside, but there was a clear scrambling around the room.

“Who is it?” the voice came.

“Let me in, Jax,” I called.

The night had already deepened, and I hadn’t expected to find him awake, but a restlessness had settled in me throughout the evening, and this place was the song of the sirens deep inside my mind.

“A minute,” he said, his voice bitchy the way only I could cause. This seemed to be the pattern with people around me.

I pressed my brow against the door as Jaxon paced around the room. Doors opened and shut in there, and several minutes passed before his footsteps neared the door. He hesitated, then opened it and looked at me with a mixture of expectation and apprehension.

His eyebrows lay flat over his brown eyes, and he stared at me as if words weren’t so necessary between us. Perhaps they indeed weren’t.

What do you want?

You know what I want.

Do I?

Don’t make me say it.

His chest rose and fell with deep breaths, his gaze locked onto mine. He didn’t move away from the middle of the door, but he didn’t move to shut it in my face, either. It was a moment that stretched into an eternity, and I knew that coming here had been the right thing to do. The perfect storm of guilt and shame had wrapped itself around me, and few people were able to see through all that, let alone still find a sliver of affection for me.

Jaxon cocked his head, demanding an answer for this late-night visit, but I only pressed my lips tighter.

Between us, the air crackled with tension.

I could see the battle play across his face just as clearly as he could see my pleas. I was here for a reason, after all, and Jaxon had to make the call.

Finally, as he held his breath, his eyebrows lifted a little, and he stepped aside, letting me into his room.

My first step was heavy, but the second one followed with growing ease. The door shut behind me, and I turned around, reaching for him, taking him by the waist, and pushing him against the door. Without a word, Jaxon huffed and lifted his head, his eyes closing.

Kissing him sober sparked flutters of anxiety deep inside my stomach, but I did it anyway. I pressed my lips against him, no longer reluctant, and gave myself a free pass. Right or wrong, I couldn’t tell for myself. I only knew that it was inevitable and irresistible.

This has to be what Eve felt when she picked up the apple , I thought, then quickly pushed away all the memories of Sunday mass and my parents’ insistence on learning the verses from the Bible. None of it mattered now. The door was shut, the lights were dim, and the only person witnessing my loss of control was the person who wanted it the most.

Why should I hold back? The whole world had gone mad. Would my resistance matter at all? And how wrong was this after all?

My lips pressed against Jaxon’s harder, forcing a moan from him as I leaned all my weight against his trapped body. His hands went to my shoulders, neither pulling nor pushing, and he parted his lips slightly to let the tip of my tongue explore his mouth.

How wrong could this be when it felt so damned right?

The tip of my tongue moved slowly between his lips, searching and finding his tongue. The contact sent chills down my arms, but I held Jaxon firmer, drinking him in.

His fingernails sank into my shoulders, and he let out a whimper before pushing me away. “El, wait,” he said.

I allowed just enough space between us so I could look into his eyes.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked.

My head shook once before I could stop it. “I’m here, Jax.”

Jaxon’s hands moved to my chest, wrapping around the crease of my hoodie. He hesitated, reluctant to ask me the one question he needed answered. I prayed to God he would move away from it and just let us exist in the moment. But he couldn’t do that. His neck was stiff and his breaths shallow. “Am I just an experiment, El?”

I winced. What was the answer to that?

“Are you just gonna pretend this didn’t happen when you wake up?” he pressed on.

A long time ago, Jaxon had been my best friend. The only friend, really. I’d been friendly with everyone, but Jaxon had always been the only person who truly knew me. I never would have lied to him, not on purpose.

And I couldn’t tell him what he needed to hear.

I looked around the room. The drawer of his nightstand was half-open, a clean towel was thrown over the back of the chair, paper tissues sat on the nightstand, and his laptop was closed next to them. My chest tightened as my imagination supplied the idea of whatever I had interrupted tonight. So I peeled my gaze off his bed and looked him in the eyes. “I don’t know, Jaxon.”

He didn’t seem disappointed by my words. If anything, a steely kind of resolve emerged in his eyes. “Fair enough,” he said, stepping away from the door.

I blew it, but it was what it was. I couldn’t pretend like something had changed—like I would be a devoted lover—when I couldn’t tell my ass from my head.

Jaxon stepped away, his hand shooting back and grabbing my wrist. He held me and looked at me over his shoulder, eyes focused and sharp. “You’ve always been my fantasy, El,” he said in a fateful tone of one who didn’t care what happened tomorrow.

Night was good. It was our friend. What we did here, when gods were asleep, couldn’t haunt us in the light of a new day.

Jaxon led me to his bed, his back turned to me. He faced the bed and the wall as I stepped up behind him, his hand still around my wrist, and I waited. I didn’t want to experiment with Jaxon, but it would have been dishonest to tell him there wasn’t a sliver of truth in his assumptions.

Even so, as he stood still by the bed, I took another step toward him. From that moment on, I didn’t need to think. I didn’t need to worry and wonder. All I had to do was stop.

My chest pressed gently against Jaxon’s upper back, and he let go of my wrist, freeing my hand to move wherever it liked. It went to his stomach, the tips of my fingers feeling the soft, thin layer of fabric between me and his flesh. Tingles spread through my hand as I lifted my other arm around his upper chest and held him close to my body.

Leaning my head, I pressed my lips against his neck.

My chest tightened with fright, anxiety running wild. All this time, I had been looking away from it, ignoring it when it screamed into my face. I had lied, pretended, and resisted. And for what? Where was my reward? I’d done the thing. I’d been good in all the ways I was told, and nothing came from it.

My hand pressed against his abs, his muscles tense and hard, and a deep, shuddering breath left my lips. The feelings that had swirled through me until a moment ago were just a faint memory, ghosts deep in a fog, and the novelty of touching Jaxon replaced every sliver of sadness and guilt with something far brighter. I was flaming with these new feelings. I was filled with them to the point of breaking, shattering, and all I could do was tremble as I dragged my hand down his torso to the very edge of his T-shirt. The fabric was soft and thin, yet it felt like an entire life and universe between my fingers and his body.

My fist closed as Jaxon’s body relaxed, his torso leaning back against my chest and stomach. I dragged my hand up, clutching his T-shirt. I had seen him just this morning with nothing but a pair of briefs, and the image had lingered in the back of my mind ever since. I had been too hungover, too confused, too ashamed of having kissed him to even consider what was offered to me.

“El,” Jaxon whispered. This time, it didn’t sound like a plea to stop but a sigh of pleasure.

“Hush,” I whispered, my heated breath washing over the nape of his neck, the hairs rising. I kissed him, letting my lips trail along his neck, moving to the side of it and feeling, without a shred of doubt, the devastating pace of his heartbeat, his pulse almost audible.

My hand relaxed when the edge of his T-shirt was at the level of his heart. Opening my palm, I let myself do it intentionally. This wasn’t an accidental brush of flesh against flesh in my drunken stupor but a determined touch. My hand pressed hard against his abs, coveting them with every bit of my being. I felt him, explored him, and memorized him for the rest of my life.

This was Jaxon, after all.

Who would it be if not Jaxon?

Dragging it lower, I reached the waistband of Jaxon’s sweatpants, and I kept going.

Jaxon leaned his head back, resting it on my left shoulder, his full, well-defined lips parting to let out a soft breath of air with only a ghost of a moan. His abs tensed under my hand, and my other arm tightened around his chest.

Just then, I realized something blindingly obvious. I could do just this and still be happy . The way our bodies melted together, breaths entering and leaving our lungs in an erratic rhythm, skin on skin and soul to soul, we were like a single monolith standing in the center of a devastated world. It didn’t matter. The ruin and loss around us were nothing. The only thing that mattered—the final things left to us—were the years we had shared, the memories, the joys and sorrows we’d given to one another.

“I want you,” I whispered, holding him tighter and sliding my hand lower, crossing the obstacle of his waistband until my fingers found the hard bulge rising from his soft, gray sweatpants.

At first touch, Jaxon let out a whimper, hands shooting up to hold my forearm, which went across his chest. He didn’t touch my other hand; he did nothing to slow me down or discourage me. “Do you really…want me?” Jaxon sighed.

I pressed my lips against his ear, rubbing my body against his, exhaling shortly over his earlobe before hissing a single “Yes.” If I had the strength or courage, I would have told him more. I was wrong , I would have said. Wrong about you. Wrong about Easton. Wrong about myself. Wrong about everything . But I was a coward on top of being wrong, so I took those thoughts and pushed them down—all the way down.

“You sure, El?” he pleaded, leaning back a little more until my body was all that was stopping him from toppling.

I was sure. All else aside, I was sure I wanted him.

So I grunted my assent, and Jaxon let his right hand drop to the back of mine, pressing it hard against his throbbing cock and dragging it back to his stomach. The next thrust of his hand led my fingers under the waistband and inside his briefs.

He tested just how sure I was. He doubted me. Then again, as my hand moved over the short, trimmed hair and found his thick cock in the tight space of his underwear and sweatpants, I doubted myself, too. I doubted the wisdom of coming here, but more than anything, I doubted all I had told myself over the years.

Give in or give up , I told myself, inhaling deeply until the scent of pine needles of Jaxon’s cologne filled my lungs.

I had already given him up once. I’d done it quickly and violently, terrified by the things his lips on mine had sparked within me. And I wasn’t making that mistake again.

My hand closed around his dick with ease. It was a surprisingly familiar gesture with an unfamiliar twist to it. Moving my hand slightly, I knew exactly what it felt like to Jaxon. And when he shuddered in my arms, I knew I had been right. I increased the tension a little more, angling his cock down and into the tightness of his briefs, and Jaxon’s fingernails dug into my forearm.

He throbbed fast and grabbed my busy arm, pulling my hand out of his pants before releasing a long exhale. “Fuck, El,” he whispered, turning around. “Is this real?” His long eyelashes batted, his hazelnut eyes focusing on me, and he waited.

My mouth was dry, and my tongue twisted and tied, so I didn’t bother speaking. Instead, I leaned in and pressed my mouth against his, kissing him like I had kissed a dozen girls—with conviction and confidence. That was how I had always done it, sure that I couldn’t be wanting anything other than what I had reached for. It was just that now, after all that time, I let myself understand how misguided I had been.

What tricks would my mind play tomorrow when the daylight sobered me up? I didn’t want to imagine it. Instead, I wanted to lose myself in him, and kissing him seemed like the only way to do that.

As we kissed, the gentleness slowly faded away. All the times before this, all the close encounters had been so full of burning animosity, weighed down by guilt and amplified by our shared violence, and I let it all out again.

I grabbed Jaxon’s T-shirt and yanked it up, making him edge away from me just enough to take a good view of my determined face. His eyes widened at whatever he saw there, and his pupils dilated. The T-shirt went over his head as he lifted his arms, and I stepped back, holding the twisted fabric in my hand as I dropped my gaze shamelessly and freely to his torso. He was really something. Like Michelangelo’s David , he was chiseled and defined. I didn’t know much about the golden ratio and the right proportions, but I knew that looking at him did something to my heartbeat.

I tossed the T-shirt on the floor and stepped toward him, putting my right hand on the outer side of his chest, following the curve of his pec all the way to his ribs, then dragging my hand down.

Jaxon was timid now, his breaths quiet and shallow, his moves contained. He looked at me with expectation and something bordering too close to adoration. He reached over, taking the edge of my hoodie and tugging it as if to ask me why it was still on.

I took it off and heard a distinct sound of Jaxon choking.

When I looked at him again, his lower lip was between his teeth, hesitation painted all over his face and body.

I took his hand when I couldn’t find the words to assure him that this was no trick. He observed it, his hand rising under my guidance. I placed his palm against my chest, then wrapped my other arm around his waist and brought him closer, pressing his abs against mine.

To my surprise, Jaxon’s face was pink with heat as he looked up, his lips full and juicy and ready for kisses.

I obliged, holding us together, and pressed my mouth against his, letting the kiss ravage us both. It was unlike the earlier kisses. It was raw and hungry, uncaring of the old embarrassments, guilts, and shame. It was wet and loud, our lips moving quicker and my tongue exploring his mouth deeper. His moans and my sighs weren’t something either of us was ashamed of, but music to set the mood. It turned me on far more than I would have imagined. There was no gentleness I had reserved for girls, only now thinking that maybe none of them cared for gentleness in the first place but pure passion. Pure sex. Pure lust.

Jaxon tore back from me, blinking as if in disbelief and dragging his hand between us until he felt every inch of the way between my chest and my crotch. When he reached it, part of me wanted to leap back. No. You can’t. You shouldn’t. But I could. And I should. So I let him do whatever he wanted to do.

Jaxon’s hand found my hard cock and wrapped around it, holding it together with my pants and my boxer briefs. He was far less gentle and, I suspected, more practiced at what he could and couldn’t do to a guy. He’d said as much, and the words bothered me somewhere deep in a way I hadn’t realized right away. I fucked dozens of you, El , he had said.

But you should be mine , I thought. You shouldn’t have anyone else .

My hand reached up while Jaxon stroked me over my pants, and I held him by the throat, tipping his head up so I could plan another sinful kiss on his sexy lips.

Jaxon undid the top button on my pants and pulled the zipper down, making my pants slide down with a few little tugs. His hands didn’t go to my dick now but back to cup my ass and hold it in a firm grip. Fear fueled my heartbeat. I hadn’t thought of this. I hadn’t thought so far ahead. What if he…?

But Jaxon dragged himself down against my body, descending to his knees until he was so low I could no longer hold his throat. I let go, and he dropped before me, pulling my pants to my ankles and looking up into my eyes.

I knew what this was. It didn’t matter if he was a girl or a guy; I knew what he was doing. His hands rested on my big thighs, rising along the bare flesh until his fingers were near the edges of my underwear. Then, he leaned in, never taking his gaze off my face. He came deeper and closer until his face was pressed against my crotch, my balls touching his mouth, the rising bulge of my cock pressing against his nose. He lifted his head and lowered it again, his movements minimal, and I held a breath when a shudder passed through my chest.

The sensation was ravaging, devastating. It rocked me completely, and only the surprise that triggered my fight-or-flight instinct kept me standing still. I let myself be at his mercy.

My hair fell over the sides of my face and brow as I looked down, so I ran a hand through it, pulling the wild curls back. Jaxon gazed up, his mouth opening and closing, lips dragging over the curve that my balls formed in the confines of my cotton boxer briefs. He lifted his chin higher, putting his lips on the base of my cock, and kissed his way to the tip, where he bared his teeth threateningly and extended his tongue, pressing it hard against the spot where my cock stretched the underwear the thinnest. A small, wet spot remained when he pulled his head back and reached up with his fingers.

Jaxon pulled the waistband of my underwear over my cock, his face turning a darker shade of pink, and his chest moved up and down faster with deepening breaths.

My dick sprang freely as Jaxon dragged my boxers all the way to my ankles. When he looked up, the stiffness returned to me. I watched as my cock steadied, standing at full mast a mere inch above Jaxon’s face.

His eyelashes batted once before he rose higher and opened his mouth. Without a word or any sound, he wrapped his lips around the tip of my nine inches, wrapping it in his warmth and wetness, and impaled his head down my length. He took me in half the way before the tightness in my chest warned me I would implode unless I breathed.

I inhaled deeply, watching as if this was happening to someone else. It was happening to my body, yes, but I couldn’t tell you where my body and my soul met and parted. I couldn’t tell you where my body ended and I began.

The next moment showed me just how much the two were intertwined. Jaxon bobbed his head back and forth, taking me deeper into his mouth, and his eyes focused on mine. There was no longer any difference between me and my flesh. It was all one. And I was really doing this.

Shoving the fear down, I put my hands on the back of Jaxon’s head, fingers threaded, and pulled my hips back before swinging them forward and shoving myself deeper into his body.

Jaxon’s eyes widened, and his throat relaxed, lips sealed around my cock, and air sucked right out of his mouth. All that was left to us was pleasure. Pure, damning pleasure. But I couldn’t find it in me to regret this.

The small sounds that came from Jaxon were a mixture of moans escaping through his nose between the thrusts and little slurps whenever his lips parted slightly to let the air into his mouth. He was good. He was incredible.

And I envied it.

That I had allowed him to go away and do this to other guys just because I didn’t know what I was missing out on filled me with rage at my stupid self. How could I be so clueless?

I rammed myself harder into his mouth, lodging my cock in his throat until the tension around it told me he couldn’t keep it in any longer. I eased myself back and let him suck me however he liked, his head moving back and forth and his fist closing around the base of my dick. He did this for an endless while, yet I didn’t want him to stop. I didn’t want either of us to let this end.

And when he pulled his head back and opened his mouth, saliva dragging from the tip of my slick cock and his exhausted mouth, I didn’t want him to continue. I wanted to look at him instead.

I wanted to remember how red his cheeks were afterward. I wanted to memorize the depth of his breaths as he finally filled his lungs with fresh air. I wanted the scent of my cock on his lips to linger there forever and remind him that he was mine.

This urge was stronger than anything I had ever felt before. In all the dates and hookups of my youth, I hadn’t wanted to own someone quite like this. I didn’t want to keep them.

But Jaxon was never like all the other people. Jaxon was special.

I leaned down and took him by the sides of his torso, nudging him to stand up. And when he did, he winced, his cock bulging in his sweatpants so much that it must have hurt. Even so, I put my hand on it just as I pressed my lips against his.

That was my scent he wore now.

After kissing him slowly, almost like it was a reward, I looked into his eyes. “Take off your clothes, Jax.”

For a moment, I was catapulted to a hot and stuffy evening at Still Water Cove. We had returned from the lakeside very late, and some joke or passing tease got us grappling, wrestling in the living room of our little cabin. Wearing only our swimming shorts, we battled until we were close to falling down on the floor, and a moment of stillness settled between us. Jaxon had looked into my eyes, and I into his. We’d stopped breathing. If we had ever been closer to a kiss, I couldn’t remember it, yet I hadn’t realized that the rising temperature of my body was this .

This excitement and this need to be present for what came next tore through me as Jaxon slipped his thumbs inside his sweatpants and pulled them down. He took them off, one leg after another, and stood straight before me in his tight briefs with a big bulge and a wet spot spreading over the tip of his cock. It darkened the white surface into a pale gray and made my heart race like mad.

“Um,” Jaxon said. “This is kind of embarrassing.”

I stepped toward him, taking him by the hips and pressing our bodies together again. He was even hotter now, completely burning up.

“When you knocked, I was just about to…” He glanced at the bed. The drawer of the nightstand was still half open, and inside were the contents I wasn’t surprised to find. A bottle of lube and a thick rubber toy.

My heart leaped as I thought of all the possibilities.

“It’s been a while,” Jaxon said. “I…needed it. I still need it.”

My ears perked with excitement that came over me so fully that I didn’t recognize myself. I swallowed, only now realizing that my throat had been tied with a knot of tension. “Okay,” I said, my voice foreign to my ears, somehow husky and soft.

His gaze flicked from my left eye to my right and back. He gave a small, jerky nod. “Sure?”

My fingers sank into his waist with the desperate desire to never stop holding him. It seemed like too big a promise to speak aloud when I didn’t know who I was and whose body I had been living in for the last twenty years. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m sure about this, Jax.”

His lips trembled, and it fractured my heart right through the middle. He took my hands into his and moved them gently around his waist until I held his ass. It was firm and shaped differently than what I was used to, but the novelty alone excited me enough to pull him closer.

We were already well across the bridge. It burned somewhere on the horizon behind our backs. I didn’t look over my shoulder. Whatever was there, it belonged to someone I didn’t want to be anymore.

I kissed Jaxon, savoring it for once, truly feeling all that he was giving up for me. He was giving himself, his body and soul, to someone who had never been worth the trouble.

My fingers lifted the lower edges of his briefs along his smooth, firm cheeks, sliding the folds of fabric between them, and I held him against my body while my tongue ventured into his mouth and toyed with his tongue.

I could feel the yearning in his muscles. It knotted them, tensed them so much that he was still and stiff like a statue of pure marble. The years of waiting, hoping, and pining for something he couldn’t be given were soaked into his cells, into his very core, and I couldn’t resist dismantling the misconceptions. After all, I was the guy who’d created them.

I closed my fist tightly around the twisted fabric of his briefs and dragged up, increasing the tension between his cheeks and lifting Jaxon to the tips of his toes. The moan that escaped his lips reluctantly filled my mouth in the middle of a heated kiss, and Jaxon threw his arms around my neck, holding himself harder against me.

His cock rubbed against my leg as he rose to his toes. It was eager and hard, pressing against my flesh with excited expectation, and I couldn’t wait any longer to see it. I was giving myself a free pass tonight, not worrying about what would come next, and I wanted to use it for all it was worth.

I yanked his briefs down, sliding them under Jaxon’s ass and dragging his dick low until he whimpered into my mouth. My other hand went to his butt, feeling it, massaging it, groping it with a force that seemed to make Jaxon’s breathing more shallow.

As I lowered his briefs down his legs, his cock dragged with the folds of fabric, and Jaxon hissed until the moment the waistband slipped over the tip of his dick and let it spring up between my legs. I felt him before I saw him, his dick throbbing once as he inhaled sharply, rising between my thighs until I felt it just under my balls. The sensation spreading through me was impossible to translate into words. A sizzling, electrifying kind of spill of emotions that made themselves known only in the very deepest parts of my body.

I stepped back, desperate to see all of him, and Jaxon let his briefs fall the rest of the way. He stepped out of them carefully, his arms hanging by his sides, his chin lifted up, his chest broad and bulky, his abs cut, his feet spread apart, his legs muscled like a runner’s, and his balls heavy between his thighs. His cock, almost as big as mine, was like a lifted spear, unmoving with stiffness. Jaxon swung his hand forward, wrapping his fingers around his cock.

My gaze flicked to the bulging muscles of his arm. I would be a liar if I said I had never let my gaze slide over his body in the past. In school after PE, in summers by the pool, and in Still Water Cover on our getaway trip, I had always looked at him, although not with the lust that filled me now.

You are a gorgeous person , I thought as I stepped toward him. He was attractive, beautiful, and willing. These things locked me in his room, tied me to his body, and held me close without letting me go. And as I wrapped my arm around his waist, feeling his entire naked body against mine, the rest of my fears fell away.

The embrace was slow to start, but the proximity of our souls was like the pull of magnets. We drew one another closer until our hands moved over each other’s bodies shamelessly, and our lips pressed against one another with growing force. The urgency followed, although it was nothing I could explain. He was mine now, but I felt the need to hurry up and claim him.

We moved toward the bed, our steps small and uneven. Jaxon had his hands on my biceps, and I held him by his rib cage, pushing him back to the bed until he stumbled and dropped onto the mattress.

I let go of him and watched him sit, then lean back invitingly until his body was spread out for me. “Do you like me, El?”

I licked my lips and nodded. “Very much.”

A spark of mischief flared in his eyes. “Prove it.”

In an instant, I joined him on the bed, my body towering over his, and I leaned down to press my lips against his collarbone. His hands went to my head, fingers threading through my messy curls. He closed his fists with locks of hair trapped in them and pushed me gently down the length of his torso.

I kissed his pecs and solar plexus, the tip of my tongue sliding out as I turned my face to his left nipple, licking it before giving it a playful, almost threatening bite. Jaxon hissed with a mix of discomfort and pleasure, that strange, perfect combination. He tightened his grip on my hair and pushed my head lower.

My fingers moved over the bedsheet restlessly, searching for something to hold on to so that the fear wouldn’t lift me up and carry me away. This sudden anxiety filled me to the brim, but I moved lower, licking his abs and kissing his belly button along the way.

His scent rose and crept into my nostrils, a mix of artificial scents of his shower gel and his natural musk. A glance showed me that he was still hard, probably even harder than before, and the tip of his cock glistened with precum. A silvery string of precum dragged from the tip of Jaxon’s dick to the smooth surface of his stomach, and I held my breath while my heart pounded in my chest. A moment later, I ignored the fear that was stopping me, and I opened my mouth just as my head moved down.

Strange as it felt, I didn’t freak out. Jaxon’s cock filled my mouth, and I couldn’t see any way to move my head up and down the way he had done. I didn’t have any room left in me to take more of him. But it was delicious.

My heart sped up as the flavor of his precum soaked into my tongue. Inhaling through my nose, I recognized his scent again, stronger, and I pressed my tongue against his cock, hoping and trying to make him feel something, anything. But Jaxon’s head dropped against the mattress, and his lower back arched. His fingers twined with my hair, and he held me down, not letting me lift my head.

“Do you like that, El?” he huffed, thrusting his hips a little off the bed and ramming himself against my closed throat. “Fuck, I know you do. I know you like my cock.”

I closed my fists around the bedsheet, holding my breath and opening my mouth as wide as I could. A choked and embarrassing sound broke out of me as Jaxon thrust his cock against my throat. The rutting, grinding motions of Jaxon’s hips never slowed down so long as I kept my mouth wide open and his fingers stayed threaded through my curls.

“Take it, El,” he grunted. “Take my dick. Be a good boy, El.”

This wasn’t at all what I had imagined. To be fair, I had spent little time imagining what would happen after I knocked on his door. Had I allowed myself to think about it like always, I wouldn’t have knocked. So, to hear him belittle me and put me in my place made my heart skip a beat. Even then, I didn’t struggle against it. If he wanted me to be a wet hole for his cock, I would. I’d deal with the consequences tomorrow.

My hands moved to his thighs. I let the fingers of my right hand slide all the way to the slick base of his cock and stroke him gently, picking up my saliva off his skin.

Jaxon tightened his fists, adding a little burn to my scalp, where he tugged the fistfuls of my wild brown locks. I bobbed my head down, pressing my throat hard against his cock without managing to take him any deeper like he had done. Instead, my wet hand moved down his balls, savoring the sensation of their smooth skin and their softness on my way to his hole.

“Are you gonna let me fuck you, El?” he grunted.

By instinct, my body tensed. Even a mention of the possibility made me clench hard against any intrusion, but I slipped my hand a little lower and found the warmth of his hole under my index finger.

I pulled my head up, looking with tearful eyes at Jaxon. His cock flapped against his belly as I drew a deep breath. “Fuck me? No. You’re not fucking me.” My finger pressed harder against his hole, sinking into his flesh.

Jaxon was about to give a clever reply, but the sensation of my finger probing his body, breaking the barrier between us, ripped a moan free of his throat.

When I let off the pressure, I realized I had barely touched him. My finger, drying in the air, couldn’t slide in so easily. Unlike all the times before, Jax needed a little more help.

I drew saliva into my mouth while reaching up with my left hand to hold his pulsing cock in a tight grip. My spit landed on my fingers, and I rubbed his hole firmly until he was truly slick. Only then, when Jaxon didn’t protest, did I apply pressure again. Excitement buzzed all through my body as I felt the warmth cover the length of my finger. He was soft and slick inside, relaxed and loose enough to take my finger until the second knuckle. Then, a sudden tightness stopped me from moving, and my heart beat in my throat. He whimpered, his cock throbbing in my hand and his hole clenching and relaxing at a rapid, erratic pace.

As swiftly as it had come, it passed. His body relaxed and accepted me, and I ventured deeper as fear gathered deep in the pit of my stomach. Was I really doing this? And why did I feel like I could never go back? It felt…right.

I let go of Jaxon’s cock as my right hand lost some of its tension and sped up, probing him and stretching him with rhythmic thrusts.

“Just like that, El,” he breathed, his abs tensing, body moving with pleasure, contorting, rising and falling. He pulled his knees up, planting his feet on my bare shoulders and giving me the clearest view yet, his pink hole sealed around my finger, saliva glistening in the subdued light. “Don’t stop.”

I wasn’t going to. The fuzzy, fluttery joy that spread through me overpowered every shred of fear that held on to my insides. It crawled through my body, heating up my blood and making my cock harder than ever, throbs aching me, tingles running down to my curled toes.

I’d never felt so good in my life. I’d never felt so alive and present and aware of my own body while giving pleasure to another. Suddenly, it all flowed like a wide, slow river on the endless green planes. It was all so sensual and appealing down to its very atoms.

I leaned in, pressing my lips against his cock, unafraid of disliking something about Jaxon and our moment of sin. I admitted it to myself: I liked everything about this. How could I not? I had spent years pretending otherwise, believing otherwise, because I had always known that letting myself like it once would sentence me to be its slave forever.

And I would let it enslave me gladly if Jaxon was the one holding the leash.

Parting my lips, I followed the length of his cock and pressed my middle finger against his hole just to see how he would react. The tension pressed his dick harder against my lips, and I took it into my mouth, moaning through my nose. Devastating yearning filled me as I thrust two fingers into him and made him whimper and cry out with pleasure. “Fuck, El, keep…going…”

And I did. Harder and faster, I increased the pace and pressure just as my heartbeat sped up and my breathing grew shallower.

When the movement of Jaxon’s body—that curling, coiling loop of his muscles clenching and relaxing—reached its climax, he pushed my head away and breathed quickly, almost like he was panicking, and whispered the words that set my heart on fire. “I need you to fuck me, El,” he breathed. “Please. Just this once.”

I didn’t tell him that I couldn’t settle for just one time. Not anymore. Now that I had tasted just how sweet the forbidden fruit was, I could never go back.

But I slipped my fingers out of him, rubbing his tightening hole with a gentleness I hadn’t known I was capable of. Fondness , I realized. That was the word. It applied to everything about this night. Even the roughness we touched on was driven by fondness rather than a need to be gentle to one another.

I lifted my torso, my dick standing upright and hard, and Jaxon reached with one hand between his legs until he took me in. “El, I’m on PrEP,” he said. “If you want to…”

I swallowed. “Yeah, I…I’ve never done it that way.”

His chest shuddered a little as he stroked me. “I want to feel you. All of you.” And as he stroked me with one hand, he reached to the drawer of his nightstand and pulled out a bottle of lube.

Instead of letting me do it, he held my dick firmly and poured lube down its length before stroking it some more.

Chills ran down my legs as he carefully moved his fist along my cock, his breathing even, forcefully so. His lower lip was stuck between his teeth. He poured more lube over his fingers after letting go of me and brought his hand between his legs, rubbing his hole for a few quiet moments where only our breathing made a sound.

He tossed the bottle on the floor and lifted his legs, wrapping them around my waist as he reached up with both arms.

I didn’t need to be invited twice. My torso leaned down, toppling onto Jaxon, my chest pressing his, my stomach slamming against his abs, and my face buried into his neck. He purred, actually purred deep in his throat, as I kissed the length of his neck, feeling his speeding pulse under my lips.

I slipped one hand between us, holding myself as the tip of my cock searched for the soft warmth of his body. And when I found it, something snapped in me. Some invisible anchor that had been holding me down let go, its chain breaking, disintegrating, and I felt like a bull released into a fighting arena. Everything fell away, and I opened my mouth wide to press my tongue against Jaxon’s beating pulse. My cock rammed into Jaxon, making his arms wrap tightly around my body as he held down a moan. I could feel the tension in him, and I slowed down, pulling back slightly before giving it another try.

Jaxon was ready for me, letting out a strangled sigh as I entered him, his hole loosening around me yet remaining tighter than I had expected. Not that I had dwelled on it until now. It was only that the sensation was so starkly different that I immediately became aware of the difference.

“Slowly,” Jaxon whispered. “Keep going, El. Don’t stop.”

And I did. Inch by grueling inch, I filled him carefully and relentlessly until it felt as though I couldn’t move deeper even if I forced it. Jerking my hips back, I felt Jaxon’s chest rise as he inhaled, and I sank into him again and again. Stretching him mercilessly, I filled his body with mine, feeling him along every inch of my cock. Our bodies melted into one another like wet clay, about to be shaped into something divine. We connected not only physically but on some distant, impossible level of our souls. You are mine now , I thought. I’ll never give you up to some other guy .

I pulled my head back to look into his eyes as my hips did the hard work, and I knew that Jaxon understood my unspoken words.

His nails sank into the muscled flesh of my upper back, and his legs coiled around me tighter, pulling me closer, deeper into his body, and I followed.

He slipped his hands around, feeling my bulging pecs and taking shallow breaths intercut with moans and whimpers. He panted faster as I picked up the pace, impaling him all the way until I felt my balls press hard against his body.

I glanced down. He was hard, precum dripping like crazy, and I swiped at his cock with my hand, lifting a string of silvery precum with my fingers and bringing it to his lips. “Eat it,” I grunted, and Jaxon sucked my fingers into his mouth, sending shivers along my arm.

I wished I could do this forever. I wished I didn’t have to stop. But the feelings of two souls joined in something so sinful and wonderful fanned the last maddeningly, and I let loose, dragging my fingers out of his mouth and closing them around his throat. He didn’t stop me. If anything, he only pressed his nails harder against my chest, dragging them down and leaving a raw trail not too unlike a scratch.

“Harder,” he choked. “Harder, El.”

I didn’t know what he meant, so I held his throat in a slightly tighter grip and let my hips move freely forward, my dick sliding deep into his body and my flesh slamming against his. Beads of sweat rolled down his pretty face, and I leaned down, planting my lips on his, inhaling every moan, every cry.

The nearing, inching climax tightened every part of my body, holding me in an unbreakable grip, and I murmured the words of warning against Jaxon’s lips.

“Do it,” he huffed. “Inside me, El. Want you inside.”

And those words alone pushed me over the edge before I knew I had reached it quite so fully. My body released the tension, my dick pulsing and my feet contorting, toes curled on the edge of a cramp, and I rammed into him harder two or three times before burying myself balls-deep and letting my cum fill him.

Jaxon slipped a hand between us, holding his cock while I tightened my hand around his throat. Panicky, hurried moans left his nose as we kissed, and the moment of his orgasm was so clear and unmistakable when his hole tightened almost painfully around the base of my cock.

“Argh!” Jaxon’s voice was lost in my mouth as his hot cum sprayed my chest and abs, making my dick pulse a few more times inside of him. I peeled my lips off his mouth, and we both heaved deep breaths into our lungs, fighting for air and a moment of respite. But I didn’t want to part from him. I didn’t want this to stop even if it was over.

I collapsed on top of him, feeling myself slip out slowly as his cum mixed with sweat and smeared between our bodies.

My hand left his throat, and I kissed him again softly, wondering what the daylight would bring. Fearing it, if I were being honest.

“Don’t leave, El,” he whispered.

I lifted my head to look into his eyes. The plea was even louder on his face. So I shook my head, shifting my weight off his body to the bed. “I won’t leave, Jax.”

He rolled over and continued to face me, holding me close against himself. “Good. I want you here tonight.”

The night was quiet, save for the rhythmic hum of the city beyond the window. The room smelled like sweat and skin, like something raw and irreversible. Jaxon lay on his back, one arm bent behind his head, his chest rising and falling in slow, steady breaths. His skin was warm beneath the faint glow of the streetlights filtering through the blinds, all golden angles and sharp shadows. He looked beautiful like this. Relaxed. Unburdened. Mine.

The thought startled me. I swallowed it down, shifting slightly, the sheets rustling against my bare skin. My muscles ached, the kind of ache that felt earned like I had left something of myself in him, and he had taken it without hesitation.

Jaxon’s fingers skimmed the side of my thigh, barely there but enough to tether me to this moment. His touch had a way of doing that—pulling me back from the places my mind tried to flee. I should have left already. I should have rolled out of bed, dressed in the dark, and disappeared before morning could strip this night of its secrecy. But I stayed.

Because I wanted to.

Because I had needed this more than I could admit.

He exhaled softly, turning his head toward me. His eyes, heavy-lidded and unreadable, traced the curve of my mouth and my jaw before settling on mine. Neither of us spoke. We didn’t have to.

For once, I let myself have this.

Even if I feared I wouldn’t let myself keep it.