by Anna Martin
“Please,” Adam murmured. “I want you to.”
“I’ll take care of you,” Jared said, his voice soft as he kissed down Adam’s neck. “I’ll make it good for you, I promise.”
While his fingers explored, he licked at Adam’s nipple, teased it with his teeth until Adam arched up underneath him, heels dug into the bed for leverage. Then Jared pressed his fingers back, finding the tight, puckered opening, and gently, softly, carefully caressed it.
“Okay?” he murmured.
“Yeah. God, yeah. More.”
There was no more without lube. Jared reached for the nightstand and fumbled in the drawer for a minute until he landed on the familiar bottle. The whole thing was gut-achingly awkward. Jared still wasn’t sure what this was, what he was doing back in Adam’s bed when he’d sworn he would never come back.
Then Adam licked his bottom lip and gave Jared a look of such open vulnerability Jared couldn’t help but be sucked in.
Jared, using two slick fingers, teased and stretched Adam’s hole in a desperate attempt to make sure their first time together like this would be good. Despite everything, he wanted it to be good.
After a few minutes, Jared pushed the bottle of lube to one side and grabbed a condom, tearing it open with his teeth and rolling the thin latex down his over-excited cock. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to one of Adam’s sharp hipbones, the sticky head of his cock, the delicate dip of his navel.
“Tell me if you need me to stop. Or slow down,” he said, shifting into position between Adam’s knees. Adam nodded.
With aching slowness and care, Jared pressed the head of his cock to Adam’s slick opening and… waited. He could almost hear his heart thundering away in his chest, the blood rushing in his ears, and Adam’s quiet, breathless gasps. It took a moment or two, but Adam eventually figured it out and pushed down on Jared’s cock. The head popped inside. Jared fell forward onto his hands and saw stars behind his eyelids.
“Let me know when you want more,” Jared murmured. Adam made a noise in the back of his throat, then hummed.
“I’m okay.”
“I know,” Jared said with a smile Adam couldn’t see, but maybe could feel. “You’re incredible. Let me know when I should go deeper.”
“Go deeper.”
“Okay,” he said, chuckling.
Adam’s arms, wrapped around his neck and shoulders, squeezed harder as Jared rocked in a little farther. While Adam made the most incredible soft, keening noises, Jared kissed up and down his neck, licking and murmuring soft, comforting things.
It was sweet bliss, both knowing he was Adam’s first and how deliciously, almost painfully tight it was as he slid inside. By the time he bottomed out, Adam’s hands were in his hair and they were looking at each other, not hiding anymore.
Shifting to a more comfortable position made Adam hiss, and Jared froze, waiting for it to be okay again. Adam twisted, arching his back, then drew both knees up so he could hook them around Jared’s waist, resting his ankles in the dip of Jared’s lower back.
“This is better,” he said and Jared nodded. He licked his dry lips, watching as Adam’s eyes flickered to his mouth, then back to meet his gaze. If that wasn’t an invitation he didn’t know what was, and he smiled, then bent down to capture sweet, swollen, plump lips between his own.
Adam really did moan then, invading Jared’s mouth with his tongue and rocking his body up onto Jared’s cock, using strong thighs to get his partner deeper.
“This is so fucking good,” Adam said with a breathless laugh, turning his head to the side. “I didn’t think it would be.”
Jared immediately kissed up the long column of his throat. “Let me….”
“Do what you want. I’m okay, I promise.”
With careful precision, Jared removed one of the arms around his neck and linked their fingers together, then pressed Adam’s hand above his head on the bed. It was comfort and dominance both, and maybe an echo of their old power struggle.
As he eased his hips back, then sank back into the tight heat of Adam’s body, Jared let his mind and everything that had come before this moment drift away. There was nothing other than the two of them in the world.
They stopped and pulled apart a few times to shift about or kiss for a while, or to use more lube since this stuff seemed to dry out quickly. The inevitable rush toward orgasm that Jared was used to being a fundamental part of getting off was just… not there. It lasted a lot longer than Jared’s first time had—there wasn’t the same desperation for it all to be over and done with.
Adam couldn’t take it for long periods of time; it seemed that this new experience was too much, either physically or emotionally, and after a few minutes of fucking, he gently pushed Jared away. That was… strangely okay. For the first time, Jared got what people had told him before: sex wasn’t about dick and ass, it was about being with someone. No, not dick and ass, but bodies and lips and touching and kissing and laughing. The feel of Adam’s thumbs fluttering over his hipbone. The gentle exhale on his shoulder. That twisting aching in his stomach when Adam gripped his biceps hard and begged for more.
Sex was all of that, and what had come before suddenly seemed ridiculously inadequate.
When Jared reached for the third condom of the evening, Adam was smiling lazily and stroking his dick with a loose hand.
“I’m going to make you come so fucking hard,” Jared growled, slicking more lube on his cock and slapping Adam’s hand away.
“Yeah? Come on, then,” Adam said. His face was full cocky challenge, and Jared loved it.
He loved it.
This time pushing inside was easier, and the expression on Adam’s face was pure bliss. Jared had learned how to angle his thrusts to hit Adam’s prostate every time, and he wasn’t afraid any more of pushing hard, making Adam take it.
“Oh, fuck,” Adam groaned as he was filled. “Jesus.”
Jared decided to hell with style, and fucked Adam hard. Adam kept up a stream of filthy encouragement and wrapped his arms around Jared’s back once again, keeping his face buried in the crook of Jared’s neck.
“Please,” he groaned. “I’m so fucking close.”
He was pretty sure his thrusts were already angled against Adam’s prostate, so the only thing left was for Jared to reach down between their bodies and stroke Adam’s thick, achingly hard dick until it spurted over his hand.
Jared rode out the waves of intense pleasure, filling Adam over and over as his stomach kissed his spine and everything around them disappeared. With his world narrowed to the smell and taste and feel of Adam beneath him, Jared lost control and came hard.
He was brought back to the world with blunt fingers stroking the back of his head and warm, damp breaths on his shoulder. With a heaving shudder, Jared rose again and got a good look at the mess of a man lying beneath him. Adam looked… well fucked. Jared decided it was a good look on him.
“Give me a minute?” he said softly.
Adam nodded, and Jared groaned as he got to his feet, gathering up the condoms and wrappers and the mess they’d made to dump in the trash can in the bathroom. He washed up quickly and dried his hands well, then padded back to the bed.
It was dark, not depressingly so, but Jared couldn’t see too well. Adam sat up suddenly and looked over at where Jared was standing.
“Please don’t leave,” he said in a rush, his voice childishly small. “Please don’t go.”
“I’m not going,” Jared said and crossed the rest of the way to the bed.
“You promise?”
Jared pulled back the comforter and slid into “his” side of the bed. With one arm he encouraged Adam’s head onto his chest and snuggled them both down into the warm safety of the bed.
“Are you feeling okay?” Jared asked softly.
“Yeah.”
“I’m staying,” Jared said, feeling the need to repeat himself. “All night.”
“Okay.”
Adam moved over onto
his side and reached for Jared’s wrist behind him, dragging Jared over until he was tucked around Adam’s body from behind.
Like this, they could sleep.
On the first morning of the New Year, Jared woke up freezing. That was because Adam had stolen all the covers. He grumbled and reached over in the lake-sized bed, tugging some of the heavy comforter away from Adam’s death grip, then snuggled it around himself.
A few moments later, Adam heaved himself up, then flopped back down again, sloppily spooning Jared from behind.
“You’re all cold,” he murmured, lips pressed to Jared’s shoulder.
“That’s because you’re a covers-stealer.”
“Am not.”
Jared sighed, but smiled to himself when Adam wriggled closer to warm Jared’s cold body with his hot one. They settled for a moment, the fog of sleep lifting from them both, then Jared brought Adam’s hand to his lips and brushed a kiss over the soft knuckles.
“You stayed.”
“Yes. I told you I would.”
“Is this still okay?” Adam asked from behind him.
“Yeah.” Jared nodded.
“Good.”
The trepidation in Adam’s voice was almost endearing, except it came from a place Jared didn’t completely understand yet. All he knew was no one else saw this part of Adam, the sexual, vulnerable, totally open person who was asking for something he never expected to get.
Jared rolled over and nudged a recalcitrant Adam until his head was cushioned on his chest. From there, Jared could smooth his hand over the bird’s nest of Adam’s hair and feel the reassuring weight of Adam’s arm anchored around his body. He breathed deeply, relaxing while waiting patiently for Adam to say something. Adam always had something to say.
“This is probably weird,” Adam mumbled after a while. “But I wanted to tell you thank you for last night.”
Jared hid his smile by pressing a kiss to the sharp angle of Adam’s jaw.
“You’re welcome,” he said. “It was good. How are you feeling this morning?”
Adam stretched, as if wanting to test his body before he answered. “Sore,” he said. “In a good way though. And not just in my ass, weirdly. All my muscles hurt.”
“Orgasms can do that to you,” Jared teased, and Adam tickled him hard. “Hey!”
“Don’t be mean.”
“Okay. Sorry.” He kissed the top of Adam’s head and hoped it was enough of an apology. “Did I hurt you at all?”
“No,” Adam mumbled, stretching until he was comfortable, then sighing into Jared’s chest. “Well, a bit. It was okay though.”
“Okay?”
Adam sighed pointedly. “Pain-wise. The sex was great.”
“Just great?” Jared teased.
“Mind-blowing,” Adam said on a wide yawn. “Incredible. Earth-shattering.”
“It wasn’t that good.”
“Fuck you, Rawell.”
“Later,” Jared murmured.
They settled again, but this time it was Jared who wanted to ask something.
“What is this?” he asked, gesturing to their entwined bodies with their linked hands.
“What, your morning wood?”
Jared huffed. “No. This. Us.”
“It’s… whatever the fuck we want it to be,” Adam said with a familiar defiance. “It’s us. Do you want to put a label on it?”
“No. Yes.” He sighed heavily. “I don’t know. If someone stops me and asks me what the fuck’s going on between me and Hemlock, I want to have an answer ready. One that fits us both.”
Adam shrugged awkwardly. “Call me your boyfriend. I don’t give a fuck.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Does that work for you?”
“I guess so.” Because he could, Jared ran his hand down his boyfriend’s back, then up again. “People are going to talk, Adam.”
“Psh. People always talk about me. I’m used to it.”
“I want to know we’re solid, you know? I don’t want to be sitting at the fucking lunch table and have some kid come over and tell me you fucked him on the weekend.”
Adam shifted so he was sprawled over Jared, chin propped on his knuckles over Jared’s chest.
“I’m not going to fuck anyone else,” he said easily. “I’ve wanted this for too long to screw it up now.”
“You haven’t waited that long.”
“I’m used to instant gratification,” Adam said haughtily. “This has been a lifetime to me.”
Lightly touching Adam’s jaw, Jared smiled. Like this, Adam looked both childish and very grown up; no longer a bratty preteen, but not yet ready to take on the responsibilities that would fall on all their shoulders in the next few years.
Also, Adam’s bare butt was stuck up in the air, creamy white, and Jared wanted to sink his teeth into it.
“If you’ve wanted it for so long, why didn’t you try to win the bet earlier?” Jared asked, caressing Adam’s face. There was no malice in his words, just curiosity.
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe I didn’t want you to be a bet?”
“Not really.”
Adam sighed and scrunched his nose. “We were so close, all the time, to actually throwing it all away and fucking each other like bunnies. But I knew if I did that then you’d find out about the bet and all the shit with Clare, and it would be over. I liked that you stayed here all the time, I liked making out with you and waking up with you here. You’re the first guy who’s ever slept over, you know?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Oh,” Adam said with another sigh. “Well, you are. Were. Whatever.”
“You could have just called off the bet with Clare,” Jared said. “Did you really want that car so fucking badly you couldn’t have done that?”
“The car isn’t anything,” Adam said, sounding frustrated now. “I don’t give a fuck about the car. I know it makes me an asshole to say this, Jared, but you don’t know things around here. I couldn’t just walk up to Clare and tell her, hey, I’ve decided the new guy is pretty awesome and I want to date him, so the bet’s off.”
“Why? What would she do?”
“I don’t know. That’s the point. No one backs down around here. You don’t show weakness. It’s like the number one rule. The moment they see a crack in your armor, it’ll be exploited until you’re a mess of sobbing, snotty Jell-O.”
“You can’t live your life like that, though,” Jared said softly. He was starting to understand, sort of. He would never be “one of them,” one of the Harbor Academy in-crowd, so this would never make complete sense to him. What Adam had told him though was starting to fill the gaps in his understanding.
Adam had risen to the top because of his I don’t give a fuck attitude and had managed to stay at the top despite coming out as gay. Jared might not have known much about New Harbor and the way the social elite worked around here, but having an incredibly beautiful, talented, intelligent mother and a father who was a military hero had set Adam up with certain expectations. He wasn’t going to be another face blending into the background; he was more than that.
“I don’t know if I can turn it off,” Adam admitted. “I’ve been like this since I was a kid, Jared. I really am an asshole. I don’t know how to be anything else.”
Jared smiled and kissed the corner of Adam’s mouth. “I’ll teach you.”
“Ha. Thanks.”
“Okay, how about this. Outside this room, you can be the New Harbor Academy top dog and all round miserable asshole you’ve always been. But in here, when it’s just the two of us, you have to be whatever’s underneath all that.”
“Just you and me?”
“Yeah. If they think we’re boyfriends, fuck buddies, whatever. That’s fine. But I can’t do it like you do, playing people and stupid pissing games and bets. It’s just not who I am.”
“That’s… yeah. That’s good.”
Adam had been rocking his hips in what Jared had assumed was an unconscious
motion, slowly sliding their cocks together. Normally, morning wood was dealt with quickly and efficiently before Jared leaped out of bed and ran to school half-dressed from snoozing so long. This was a different method, one he thoroughly approved of.
Jared reached up and gently pushed his fingers through Adam’s hair, then did it again when Adam arched like a cat and purred at the sensation. It was endearing and annoying, how Adam liked to be petted and pampered and generally taken care of. There was no doubt at all in Jared’s mind that his boyfriend—his boyfriend, and wasn’t that just weird—liked to go to the spa and get his nails done.
“You were inside me last night,” Adam murmured, still arching and writhing on top of Jared’s naked body. He leaned in and licked up the side of Jared’s neck. “Inside me, Jared.”
“Yeah.”
He’d gone dumb and stupid. Not surprising, really. His hard cock was lined up against Adam’s, and they were rocking together with purpose now, creating something together again. With the watery morning sunlight making its way through a gap in the curtains, lighting their faces in a soft glow, it seemed more intimate than what they’d done last night. There was no hiding this.
“It was so good, Jared. I didn’t expect it to feel that way. I didn’t think I’d like it that much.”
“You were incredible,” Jared murmured and grabbed hold of Adam’s ass cheeks, cupping them in his hands and using the fleshy globes as leverage to mash their erections together. “I’ve never seen anyone look that beautiful.”
Adam vibrated at the compliment. “You think I’m beautiful?”
“I think you’re vain as hell,” Jared laughed, still working their bodies together. “But yes. When my dick is shoved deep in you, I think you’re pretty fucking beautiful.”
“I wanna look that way again,” Adam said in a low voice. He was nipping over Jared’s collarbones, down to his nipples to bite harder than necessary, just how Jared liked it.
“You want me to fuck you again?”
What Adam was doing to his nipples was making Jared stupid.
“Oh, hell yeah. Again and again and again.”
“Oh. Oh!”