“I’ll ask one more time,” Kyle finally got out. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Jamie smiled tightly. “I thought that would be obvious.”
Kyle’s mouth twisted, anger warring with hurt in his voice when he said, “Fuck you. You said no, Jamie. Remember? You said—”
“I know what I said,” Jamie interrupted. “And I wasn’t wrong. But letting you walk away wasn’t the right answer either.”
“So what? You want one more night and then you’ll push me away again in the morning? No thanks. Not interested.”
“I’m not pushing you away. You’re staying on the team. I just want you to stay with me as well.”
Some of the fight drained out of Kyle. His shoulders slumped a little as he bit his lip, and Jamie couldn’t help but watch the way his full bottom lip went a little white from the pressure.
“I can’t,” Kyle said, almost too soft for Jamie to hear. “I can’t do that to you. I shouldn’t have even asked in the first place.”
Jamie shook his head, letting go of Kyle’s wrists to haul him close, feeling the hard length of Kyle’s toned body align with his. He was just short enough that Jamie could almost rest his chin on the top of Kyle’s head. Settling his hands on Kyle’s waist, he pressed a gentle kiss to Kyle’s temple.
“I was trying to protect both of us, but Katie pointed out the MDF probably won’t discharge me for sleeping with my subordinate,” Jamie said.
“You can’t know that.”
“I know they need us. And I know I need you. When I thought you were dead—” Jamie cut himself off, swallowing against a grief that no longer had a place in his life. “Losing you isn’t something I’m prepared to do.”
“Because I’m on your team?” Kyle asked, cutting right to one of Jamie’s greatest nightmares.
“Yes, but that’s a fear I’ve had for years when it comes to the people under my command. I’ll carry that with me until the day I die. But you…God, Kyle. I couldn’t stop thinking about you after Monday night and I should have told you. But I’m telling you now and hoping it’s not too late. Please, Kyle. Let me take you home.” Jamie pulled back, framing Kyle’s face with one hand. “Let me give you what you need.”
Even in the dim lighting of the lounge, Jamie could see the way Kyle’s eyes dilated, pupils expanding to erase the green of his irises. Jamie could feel the shiver that ran through Kyle’s body and felt a sense of rightness settle in his own.
Jamie watched Kyle lick his lips, something akin to wonder softening the hard expression on his face. “Okay.”
Jamie didn’t think anything could taste sweeter at that moment than Kyle’s mouth, and he’d fight anyone who said otherwise.
Wrapping an arm around Kyle’s waist, Jamie guided him through the crowd and to the exit, feeling like he’d dodged another bullet, only this time, Kyle wasn’t taking the hit for him.
Neither of them were.
10
No Way Left But Through
Kyle had barely taken his eyes off Jamie since the other man had found him in the lounge. That felt like a lifetime ago between then and now as Jamie drove them away from a clusterfuck they had managed to somehow miraculously steer clear of.
Kyle glanced briefly at the glittering skyline around them, trying to track their location and failing miserably. The skyline disappeared when they dipped into the valleys carved out by highways cutting through D.C. and which ran up against the seawalls holding back an ocean of ancestral mistakes. He didn’t know where they were going, just that the buildings were getting more and more expensive-looking by the minute.
“You can still say no,” Kyle said, finally breaking the silence that had settled over them when they left the Hawthorn.
“I’ll pretend you didn’t just say that,” Jamie calmly replied, looking far more at ease than he had over the last few days.
“You’re still my CO.”
“Yeah.” Jamie’s gaze slid his way, the heat in his eyes going straight to Kyle’s dick. “And I’ll catch grief for that someday, but it won’t be tonight.”
Kyle nodded slowly, not quite believing how tonight was turning out. Because Jamie was here with him, risking too much in doing so, and Kyle would feel guilty about that, but he’d wait until later. Right now, he had Jamie, and Kyle wasn’t going to let him go.
Refocusing on the street, he tried to figure out where they were. The high-rises filled with luxury condos surrounding them weren’t a surprise to Kyle. He’d seen the cut of the suit Jamie had worn during their first meeting up close and personal, the way the rich fabric felt beneath his fingers. It wasn’t a suit bought on a government paycheck, because bespoke started at five figures easy and Kyle knew how much MDF metahumans got paid. He’d signed that paperwork yesterday morning.
Ten minutes later Jamie pulled into a numbered parking spot in a subterranean parking garage, code-locking the car after they exited it. Kyle automatically cased the area for threats that weren’t there, but habit was hard to break, especially after the mission they were both coming off of. Jamie seemed to know what Kyle was doing but didn’t comment on it. He merely led Kyle to an elevator where he pressed his palm to the scanner for his print to be logged. The elevator started moving. Kyle eyed the destination floor with a single arched brow.
“Penthouse? Really?” he said.
Jamie shrugged. “It was a gift from my parents. They thought it would change my mind about staying in the Marines at the time.”
Kyle stared at the floor numbers flashing over the screen. “Did it?”
“No.”
“They gave you a multimillion dollar home in exchange for you giving up your commission and let you keep it when you told them to fuck off?”
“Yes.”
Kyle turned his head, eyes sharp as he studied Jamie’s profile. As a sniper, he had beyond excellent eyesight, and that didn’t just include how far he could see. Kyle’s situational awareness was through the roof and he’d seen Jamie in action on and off the field. He knew how seriously Jamie took his job. There wasn’t enough money in the world a person could pay Jamie to leave it, but apparently Kyle himself was enough.
He wasn’t quite sure how he should feel about that.
“Is your family blind or just that egotistical?” Kyle finally asked.
Jamie sighed as the elevator slowed to a smooth stop and the doors opened on a sleek foyer with only two doors to choose from, and one of those was the emergency exit.
“A little of both,” Jamie admitted as they stepped out. “But I don’t want to talk about my family right now.”
Kyle let the conversation drop in favor of following Jamie into a space he probably couldn’t afford even if he won the lottery.
The large, open-plan layout was designed with sleek modern lines and comfortably filled with rich leather couches and chairs, display shelves and art on the wall, and a dining table that Kyle thought might be made out of actual wood. The kitchen was professionally decked out with a marble-topped island in the middle, bar stools tucked neatly under one side.
Kyle was sure there was more to the place, but he didn’t need a tour. He could feel Jamie’s eyes on him and turned to face the other man, unsurprised to see that Jamie’s gaze was locked on the right side of his neck where a bullet had torn through fragile veins and muscle and skin that had burst open like rotten fruit.
“I’m alive,” Kyle told him quietly, thinking about what Jamie had said in the lounge.
“I know,” Jamie said.
Kyle didn’t want to think about how he’d almost died and been buried alive. Didn’t want to think about the fiery burst of pain he remembered feeling right before the light-headedness filled his body even as his blood drained out at a rapid pace. It had hurt—it always did—but pain like that was something he could ignore now after so many years of feeling it.
Alexei had never gotten used to what Kyle could live through, even as a child, but Alexei wasn’t the only person who had tried to keep him from bleeding out
on foreign soil this time. Jamie had gotten there first, after all. If Kyle hadn’t saved Jamie, then he and Alexei could have kept their secret hidden, could have remained with Strike Force. Except Jamie would be dead and that was something Kyle knew he couldn’t live with.
Kyle shook his head to clear his thoughts of everything except the man in front of him. He couldn’t believe he would get another chance with Jamie. All Kyle could really think about was the way Jamie had fucked him so good it hurt, a different kind of pain Kyle wouldn’t mind feeling again. So he closed the distance between them, crowding Jamie up against the door he’d just closed and securely locked. They were both coming off a bad mission and an arguably terrible aftermath, but Jamie’s hands on his hips anchored him in place, reminding Kyle he was still alive, still breathing, still here, when he should be dead, only he’d cheated death once again.
“What do you want?” Jamie asked, voice rough with the promise to see through whatever Kyle asked of him like the good Marine and MDF soldier he was.
“I want you to make the bruises last,” Kyle said honestly.
Because nothing did anymore, not for long. Not the scars of beatings or cigarette burns and belt lashes from a rough childhood; not varying degrees of battlefield wounds; not his own marks made with his Strike Force issued Ka-Bar and the need to see something, anything, stay on his skin after the Splice attack which erased all the scars on his body, if not the ones in his head. Their absence made him want to scream some days.
Jamie flexed his hands, grip tightening just shy of painful, before he hauled Kyle up into his arms with effortless ease. Kyle shivered and automatically wrapped his legs around Jamie’s waist, fisting one hand in short blond hair at the back of Jamie’s skull as he licked his way into that warm mouth, feeling his cock twitch against a rock-hard stomach.
Jamie carried him through the condo to his master bedroom, which could have rivaled any number of luxury hotels the world over for how spacious it was once Kyle broke their furious kissing to breathe and actually take stock of where they were. Corner location with two walls of windows framed by blackout curtains and solid interior walls broken up by doors leading to a walk-in closet and the master bathroom. Jamie moved his head and bit at the right side of Kyle’s neck, teeth scraping over perfectly healed skin, derailing Kyle’s perusal of the room for something better. He seemed to have a thing for that area of Kyle’s body right now, which didn’t surprise Kyle in the least.
“I’m all right,” Kyle muttered in the face of Jamie’s silent search for confirmation of his status. He let his feet find the floor again after a moment, sliding down Jamie’s body with a hiss as their erections rubbed against each other.
Jamie pulled Kyle up on his toes by way of his belt, pressing his teeth harder into the curve of Kyle’s throat until he was just shy of breaking skin. Kyle made a strangled sound in the back of his throat before he hit Jamie on the shoulder with a fist.
“Clothes off,” he growled.
“Pity I changed out of my uniform. You could’ve blown me,” Jamie said, lips tickling his throat.
Just the thought of getting his mouth back on Jamie’s dick was enough to make Kyle salivate. “I can still blow you.”
“Or I could fuck you.”
Kyle groaned, grinding up against Jamie’s firm thigh, chasing a pleasure derived from friction and want. “What are you, a goddamn nugget? Do you need me to decide for you? Because I will, and I’m gonna go with both.”
Jamie laughed, teeth glinting in the low light of the room as he stepped back and shrugged out of his suit jacket. Kyle couldn’t help but catch Jamie’s mouth in a hard kiss, hands already undoing Jamie’s buttons. They peeled out of their clothes in between heavy, heady kisses until they were both naked, clothes scattered in messy piles on the floor. Jamie backed Kyle up against the king-sized bed, the fingers of one hand tracing down Kyle’s spine and dipping into the cleft of his ass. Kyle arched his back at the touch, pressing into those seeking fingers without any shame even as Jamie dragged the thumb of his other hand over Kyle’s full bottom lip, pulling it down and away from his teeth.
“You’re a mouthy little brat, Kyle.”
“You know you like me like this.”
“Yeah, I do,” Jamie said, voice gone rough with want, the blue of his eyes a thin ring around black. “Though I’m beginning to think the only way to shut you up is to occupy your mouth.”
Kyle wrapped a hand around Jamie’s hardening cock and stroked him with dry fingers, leering at him without shame. “That a promise?”
Jamie rolled his hips once, twice, in Kyle’s grip before grabbing him by the waist and tossing him onto the bed. Kyle swore as he bounced with the landing, glaring as Jamie headed for the walk-in closet instead of the bed.
“Wrong fucking direction!” he called after him.
“You did choose both,” Jamie reminded him from the depths of the closet.
Kyle rolled a little to reach the nightstand by the bed, taking a moment to run his hands over the grain of the real wood and marvel for a moment at what it felt like. Then he opened the drawer and rummaged around until he found a mostly full bottle of lube. He set it on top of the nightstand before turning his attention to kicking the duvet off the bed and onto the floor.
Jamie shook his head at the mess Kyle had made when he came back into the room, carrying something in his hands that made Kyle do a double take. “A dildo? Really?”
Jamie shrugged unselfconsciously as he crawled onto the bed and into Kyle’s space, leaning down to kiss him until Kyle had to blink black spots from his vision. Both of them gasped a little for air when they broke apart, panting into each other’s mouths. Kyle lifted his head a bit to suck on Jamie’s bottom lip.
“I don’t take strangers home, but that doesn’t mean my bed has stayed empty over the years,” Jamie said before he shifted to sit beside Kyle. “Slide down and over.”
Kyle followed the push and pull of Jamie’s hands until he was lying perpendicular to Jamie on the wide bed, his head resting on Jamie’s thigh, breath ghosting over warm, musky skin. Jamie ran his fingers through Kyle’s hair, eyes half-lidded as he studied him from where he reclined against the pillows like some Greek god. He pressed his thumb under the hinge of Kyle’s jaw, pushing his head back with a slow but steady motion, waiting for resistance. Kyle didn’t fight him, merely held Jamie’s gaze as he took control.
“You won’t hurt me,” Kyle said, his words an echo of their time spent together in the hotel Monday night.
“You want me to,” Jamie countered.
Kyle slid his hand up Jamie’s chest, fingers skimming over hard defined muscle gained from years of training and fighting even if the enhanced strength leashed in his limbs was relatively new. He ghosted his hand over Jamie’s face, thumb resting against the corner of his mouth, staring into half-lidded blue eyes gone dark with a possessive desire Kyle rarely saw directed at him.
“I trust you.”
Kyle was surprised to find he meant the words. He’d chased this need ever since his body betrayed him when it changed, but never with someone who understood. Kyle had fucked and been fucked by countless strangers picked up from bars and clubs to help him find a way to remember something his body could no longer hold onto. But Kyle knew, lying here with Jamie’s hand on his throat over the memory of a wound long since healed, that Jamie could make it good for him in all the ways that mattered.
Jamie moved his hand, slipping two fingers into Kyle’s mouth and stroking them over his tongue. Kyle lazily suckled the digits, feeling Jamie push them deeper into his mouth before removing them. He pulled Kyle’s hand off his face and placed it on his own thigh, catching Kyle’s gaze.
“This hand doesn’t move. You give me two hits if it becomes too much and I’ll stop,” Jamie ordered, never blinking, his voice the deep register of command.
“Two hits,” Kyle repeated obediently.
Jamie’s fingers tangled in his hair and got a good grip, the hold pulling
at his scalp. Kyle went where he was guided, leaning over Jamie’s lap, the head of Jamie’s cock sliding against his cheek before it caught on the corner of his lips. Kyle eagerly opened his mouth to tongue at the slit, licking at the precum pearled there. He’d always loved doing this, loved the taste of another man on his tongue. Jamie’s cock twitched at the touch and Kyle didn’t wait to ask or be told. He propped himself up on his elbows to get into a better position, feeling heat pool in his gut from sheer anticipation. Kyle wrapped his free hand loosely around the base of Jamie’s cock even as he sucked just the tip into his mouth, swirling his tongue around the sensitive glans, loving the feel of it in his mouth.
Jamie let out a groan, the hand in Kyle’s hair stroking down his neck and back, down to his ass before leaving his body altogether. Kyle closed his eyes as he heard Jamie open the bottle of lube, then moaned when slick fingers slid into the cleft of his ass, brushing against his hole. Jamie didn’t say anything, just let his hands do the talking as he fingered Kyle open with careless motions and kept his other on the back of Kyle’s head, keeping him held down where he was, mouth full of cock.
“Fuck, you really like this, don’t you?” Jamie said, his voice coming out deep and guttural.
Kyle tongued the underside of Jamie’s length as he bobbed his head, taking more of it in and humming happily as he did so. Jamie didn’t let him go down very far, keeping a firm grip on his hair when he tried. Jamie kept him there with easy strength, Kyle’s elbows digging into the mattress, one hand stroking the base of Jamie’s cock while the other stayed pressed against Jamie’s thigh. Kyle was half aware of the fingers moving in his hole, the way they didn’t press anywhere close to his prostate, no matter how many times he moved his hips against them. Most of his attention was reserved for the slowly hardening cock in his mouth and how he was beginning to feel that familiar ache in his jaw from staying open for too long. But he wanted more, wanted that breathless sensation that came with taking a cock deep in his throat and choking on it.
In the Wreckage: (M/M Sci-Fi Military Romance) (Metahuman Files Book 1) Page 15