Page 17 of Shrapnel

This time he could see his face—eyes fluttering closed, back arching, and mouth slack as he coated his stomach for a second time. His entire body vibrated, contracting around him.

It was too much. He took those swollen lips in his and came in Jamie. He saw stars behind his eyes as it was ripped from him, hips shaking and fingers tightening on Jamie’s thighs hard enough to leave bruises. Thick, viscous semen dribbled out of Jamie’s abused hole and covered his thighs.

Jamie’s head lolled back, and his eyes closed, legs falling limp off Jackson’s shoulders. He was blissed out. Ugly bruises peppered his body—fingerprints on his neck, hickies on his chest and neck, and blood dribbling from where Jackson had bitten his lower lip. Thick cum coated his stomach, already drying in the air.

Jackson slid out of him with a squelch, falling to his side beside the kid and staring at a tear trapped between his eyelashes. It danged precariously on the fringes of the dusky lashes, trembling for a moment before dropping.

The room was dark when he woke up. His back was sore, and he grunted as he rolled over. Before opening his eyes, memories of what he had done came flooding back to him. Snapping awake, he glanced down to find that he was naked but clean. Someone had even pulled the blankets over him.

A pleasant, satiated sensation hummed under his skin—a far cry from the usual tornado of anger that he normally wrestled with.

Glancing around the room he found Jamie standing in a pool of moonlight. He was leaning against the wall and looking out the open window. Neon lights from the bar on the street splashed his face in a kaleidoscope of muted colors. From where he was laying, he could see his hair was damp.

Jamie had put his shirt back on but hadn’t bothered to button it up. It flared open so that a strip of skin flashed in the darkness. Jackson could see the dark bruises he had left on his skin. Small marks of possession that gave him a strange sense of pleasure he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“You cleaned me up.” It wasn’t a question.

Jamie turned from the window to look at him. “I’m not an asshole.”

“Yes, you are.”

His lips twitched in a smile.

There was a strange contemplative look on his face. Maybe Jackson would be able to read it if he knew him better. But he was finding there were sides to Jamie that he couldn’t even begin to contemplate.

Leaning against the wall with his shirt open and pants hanging low, he was one cigarette propped between two fingers away from being a noir character. Jackson could just picture the smoke curling up from around his lips, wafting up into the air.

“Why didn’t you and Grant work out?”

Jackson shouldn’t have been surprised. The list of things Jamie knew, but absolutely shouldn’t, was getting longer by the second.

They didn’t work out for a lot of reasons. Mostly because every time they made out it turned into a competition to see who could get the other to submit. Two men with too much power and pride to acquiesce, anytime they got physical it turned into a fight for dominance rather than anything pleasurable.

The only thing they managed was to break a lot of furniture.

But more than anything, it was what they wanted. Grant liked taking care of people. He needed to be needed. There was a soft, fixer heart underneath his cool exterior. And Jackson didn’t want to be fixed.

He wasn’t about to say that to Jamie. It didn’t seem like he had to. Jamie wasn’t really asking. The little shit probably already knew.

“Can I be honest with you?” he asked from the darkness.

“I wish you wouldn’t speak to me at all.”

Jamie pretended like he didn’t hear him. He was good at that.

“You’re good at sex and you’re hot as fuck. But that…wasn’t as good as I thought it would be.”

Jackson wasn’t sure who was more offended: his pride or his dick.

“Seemed like you enjoyed it plenty.”

He snorted from across the room. “Yeah, in that way I did.”

He didn’t make any sense. Jackson almost asked what he was talking about, but there was a wistful look on his face, and he got the impression he wasn’t really talking to him anymore. Like he was figuring something out on his own and he didn’t like the conclusion.

Surprisingly, he found himself almost asking what that conclusion was. The words were already on his tongue when he bit them back.

He reminded himself that he didn’t care.