by J. M. Colail
“Smartass.”
“You are still wearing clothes,” Julian pointed out, in a tone of voice that brooked no speculation as to what a nuisance he thought that was. “When you’re naked we’ll talk.”
Jack made a face at him, but pulled back long enough to strip nonetheless. When Julian yanked him down to the mattress by the arm and commenced molesting him, he murmured, “Thought you said we were going to talk?”
“Body language,” Julian said succinctly, and suited action to words by twisting both of his hands in Jack’s hair and pulling their heads together for another wet kiss.
Jack hummed his agreement, working nimble fingers down Julian’s body, circling around his nipples until they hardened at the sensation. Nipping Jack’s lower lip in encouragement, Julian let his right leg fall further to the side, inviting one of Jack’s to settle between his own.
“What’s that mean?” Jack wondered, sliding his lips from Julian’s and trailing them across his cheek, up his jawbone to his ear. Sparks jumped along Julian’s nervous system, gathering in a pool of lust low in his belly.
“You want a translation?” Julian hissed appreciatively as Jack’s teeth worried a patch of skin at his neck and dragged his nails down Jack’s back in return. “Human-to-Jack just happens to be my specialty.”
“And it means?”
“Loosely translated,” he told him as Jack’s leg rubbed gently at his swelling erection, “it means ‘take advantage of me now, please.’”
“Which part was the please?” Jack asked, faux-curious. He bit down hard on Julian’s nipple.
Julian arched his back and rubbed his hard cock firmly against Jack’s hip, leaving a sticky trail of pre-come. “That part.”
“Oh, well, as long as we’re being polite.” Jack reached down one-handed and gripped Julian’s shaft lightly, teasing. “God. Do you have any idea the things I want to do to that tattoo?”
“I think I can probably imagine—” Julian started, then stopped, swallowed, and looked down. Jack was rubbing the head of his dick along the darkened skin, slick, warm fluid pooling there as it had on Jack’s hip. “Or maybe I have no idea,” he amended roughly.
“Can you translate that?” Jack asked, voice low.
Julian shook his head wordlessly.
“‘You’re shit hot,’” Jack growled, reaching left-handed for the drawer in the night stand, “‘and I can’t wait to be buried inside you.’”
“For someone who can’t wait,” Julian complained, “you sure are taking your oh, God.” It looked like Jack was going to make him eat his words, possibly literally. He scissored two fingers in Julian’s ass, stretching him open.
“You were saying?”
Julian spread his legs, planted his feet on the bed, and reached for his own prick, joining his hand with Jack’s. “You don’t need me to translate this, do you?”
“Nah.” Jack bit and sucked until there was a purple mark on Julian’s chest, throbbing in time with the pulse in his groin. “That one’s universal.” He shifted just slightly, removed his fingers with a soft, sucking sound, and replaced them with the head of his cock, pressing inexorably forward.
Julian groaned as Jack breached him, lifting one leg to wrap around Jack’s hip, needing to feel him as deep as humanly possible. Jack locked his hands around Julian’s hips, stilling his body, and rolled his own a few times, cock brushing against Julian’s prostate until he thought he’d burst. Panting, Julian reached out an arm and tugged Jack down for a sloppy kiss, licking across his cheek to his ear. “Jack. This is makeup sex. Fuck me now; you can make love to me later.”
“Slut,” Jack said fondly, snapping his hips.
Oh, yeah. Sparks shot all the way up Julian’s central nervous system and his brain started to short-circuit. He moaned, pulling Jack forward with his legs. “Again.”
Jack complied readily, thrusting steadily now, nailing Julian’s prostate with every stroke. Julian bit his lip hard enough to draw blood, body thrumming with pleasure. He knew it couldn’t last when it was like this between them, all grunts and shudders and startled exclamations. Already he could feel himself tipping toward oblivion.
“God, Jack—”
Jack planted a hand flat on his belly, thrusts coming faster and deeper.
“Let go,” Jack demanded quietly, leaning his rough, stubbled cheek against Julian’s. “I want to feel it.” He licked from his neck up to his ear, latching his teeth onto the soft, tender lobe.
“Yessss,” Julian hissed. His body tightened impossibly and convulsed, hot, white semen shooting over his stomach, splattering the caduceus tattoo and the back of Jack’s hand.
Jack shuddered, then ran his fingers through the spilled seed. Julian held his gaze until he felt the rush of hot seed inside of him, then let his eyes fall closed as Jack kissed him, oddly sweet in contrast to the rough pleasure of a few moments before.
“I love you,” Jack murmured softly, sliding their bodies apart.
Smiling into the curve of his neck, Julian pressed a small kiss there. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope,” Jack said cheerily, wrapping Julian in a sticky embrace. “True story. Scout’s honor.”
“Good.” Too tired to protest that they both really needed a shower, Julian laid his head on Jack’s shoulder. He felt so happy that he was tempted to get up and turn the lights out just to see if he glowed. “I love you, too. Do me a favor and don’t forget this time.”
Jack snuffled laughter into the pillow, and conversation stopped as they both lapsed into post-coital semi-consciousness.
Sometime later, Julian was awoken by a muffled sound. “Something’s ringing,” he murmured into the pillow.
Across his back, Jack’s arm barely twitched. “Nah,” he said. “You’re just experiencing hallucinations due to lack of blood flow to the brain.”
“Am I hallucinating the vibrating, too?” he asked lethargically, rolling onto his side. A quick search with the hand he wasn’t currently laying on revealed the cordless from the kitchen. “Here.”
“Oh. The phone.” Jack reached out and took it from him without looking. It was a clumsy affair.
“Who’s experiencing lack of blood flow now?” Julian grumbled. He let the haze of pseudo-sleep wash over him again.
“Hello.”
Then Jack sat up. The blanket pulled away from Julian’s skin, and he shivered.
“I’m Jack.”
Julian’s brain registered a note of panic creeping into his lover’s voice and he swiped a hand over his eyes, wiping away the last traces of fatigue. He sat up, too, goose bumps rising on his arms and chest.
“When?”
Jack’s eyes had gone hollow, and his hand was trembling slightly around the phone. The bottom dropped out of Julian’s stomach.
“Yes. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Fuck, Julian thought. Out of the frying pan.
“Thank you.”
Jack hung up. The phone dropped to the mattress.
Julian curled his fingers around Jack’s.
“It’s Mom,” Jack said, but Julian already knew. “She’s dead.”
Epilogue
JACK WAS sitting on the chair in the corner when Julian came in with takeout, closing the door quietly behind him. “Hey.”
Jack nodded in response, picking at the quilt on his lap. It had grayed with age, but it still bore traces of the vibrant reds and blues his mother had loved when she’d had it on her bed twenty years ago. After his father had died, she couldn’t bear the memories, and she had put it away at her brother’s house in Inverness.
“You hungry?”
The scent of warm cardboard filled the air. Jack’s stomach turned, rather than rumbling. He wanted—needed—to be alone, but didn’t know how to ask for it. Julian had taken him all this way, held his hand through the worst week of his life, two memorial services, choosing an urn before her cremation, and the scattering of his mother’s ashes in the Atlantic.
“Jack?”
He blinked. “Sorry. I’m not very hungry.”
Julian put down the cardboard container he’d been holding and sighed, running his fingers through his hair. A stab of longing hit Jack low in the belly and he winced, barely resisting the urge to draw his knees up under the blanket. Then Julian turned around, reaching back into the bag of Chinese food, addressing the wall. “Jack, you haven’t eaten anything all day. You’ve got to eat something.”
“Stop treating me like a patient.”
A pair of chopsticks clattered to the hotel table. Julian faced him again, expression empty, bleak. “Stop acting like I’m your doctor!” Julian fired back.
The words stung Jack across the heart, cutting deeply. Jack broke eye contact before the tears could start to burn behind his eyes.
“Sorry.” The apology was almost too immediate to be genuine, but Jack didn’t dare look at his lover again yet. “Sorry, Jack. I’m just—try to understand; I’m not trying to be your doctor; I’m trying to do what I can for you as someone who cares for you. Of course I want you to eat, to sleep, to be healthy. I’m not your physician.”
Jack blinked furiously, swallowed hard, and tried to let go of the hurt. “I know.” He did know. Most of the time. But sometimes, on his bad days, in his less charitable moments, he wondered whether Julian was only drawn to him because he saw in Jack a chance to fix his own troubled past. Still, he hadn’t meant to play the part so well. “I lean on you too much. I’m sorry.”
“That’s not it at all.” Julian slumped down into the chair opposite him with what was obviously a frustrated sigh. “It’s just the opposite. Jack, you have to let me help you; you have to let me be there for you—but you have to stop looking at me like I have the answers just because I’ve seen so much death. Yes, I have seen it, Jack. I’ve held its hand and closed its eyes and called the time, but I can’t tell you anything but the hard facts as I know them, and they are no comfort. There aren’t any answers. Not about this.”
“I miss her.” The words sounded hollow and simple and inelegant after Julian’s blunt chastisement.
Still, Julian managed a wan smile. “You will. You will miss her every day for the rest of your life. That’s how you know she’s still with you.”
“Sometimes I think you only stuck around because you don’t think I can stand on my own,” Jack said absently before he could stop himself. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wished he could take them back. God, how needy did that sound?
A month ago, two months ago, it wouldn’t even have occurred to him. But with what he had thought of at the time as Julian’s betrayal, and then his mother’s death hard on its heels, his sense of self, of normalcy, of reality even, was shaken and skewed. It was a terrible kind of weightlessness; he barely knew which way was up.
Jack didn’t know if he could stand on his own, either.
With a deep breath, Jack raised his head. Julian’s posture was quiet and still, but his face gave everything away. His mouth was set and his eyes were sad, so sad, but not with guilt or pity. Inhaling sharply, Jack knew what he saw there was pain—real, intense pain, that Jack had put there himself.
Wordlessly, Julian rose from the straight-backed chair. For a terrifying moment Jack was convinced he was going to walk out, for good this time. But he didn’t. Instead, he just moved slowly over until he stood by Jack’s chair. He reached out and wrapped his hands around Jack’s head and pulled it firmly but gently to his chest, so that his ear was pressed flat against the soft cotton of Julian’s shirt. “Do you hear that?”
Jack’s throat closed. The steady, solid thum-thump of Julian’s heartbeat echoed through his whole body. Unable to speak, he simply nodded.
Julian pulled his head away, but didn’t remove his hands, instead forcing Jack to meet his eyes. “Do you understand? I love you, Jack, and I know you love me, but this relationship won’t survive on love alone. You need to trust me.”
“It’s not you I don’t trust,” Jack sighed. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand and tried to resist the urge to bang his head repeatedly off the table. “It’s me.”
“Jack, we’re guys. We are inherently bad at relationships. And with two guys in a relationship, fucking up is a given.”
He blinked, then looked over at Julian again. That shouldn’t have made him feel better, but it did. “You know, you may have a point there. Not that it makes me feel any better, but a point nonetheless.”
“Luckily,” Julian put in with a smirk, “we are both very stubborn. Also, I hasten to point out there are advantages to this whole gay love thing.”
Jack didn’t bother resisting the urge to grin back. Julian had just segued seamlessly from an important and very serious relationship talk straight into sexual innuendo. Jack knew there was a reason he loved him. “Oh, really?” he laughed.
“What?” his partner said innocently. “You need a demonstration?”
Need? No. Want? Definitely. “Maybe I do.”
Julian’s eyes took on a wicked gleam, and he stepped back, away from Jack, leaving him lots of space. “That trust thing,” he said casually, hands in his pockets, the hint of a smile on his lips. “You feel up to proving it?”
Jesus. The idea alone had Jack hard already, cock swelling in his jeans. “What did you have in mind?”
As if he’d refuse anything Julian asked of him right now. Or, well, ever.
“That’s where the trust part comes in,” Julian answered with a leer.
Jack swallowed hard, then stood up, taking a step toward him, but Julian just gave him a coy look and took another step back, pulling the hem of his shirt over his head. Jack got the message and stopped, waiting for Julian to come to him.
He didn’t.
“Take off your clothes.”
Shit. How had it never occurred to him how hot it would be to let Julian make all the calls for once? Jack doffed his sweatshirt quickly, wanting to make it to his jeans before his raging erection split them open.
Julian amended, “Slowly.”
God, this was pushing hot buttons Jack hadn’t known he’d even had. He took a deep, calming breath and slowly tugged off his T-shirt, the combination of the cold air and Julian’s appreciative gaze causing his nipples to harden. He bent to pull off his socks, then popped the button on his jeans.
Julian was watching him carefully, velvet eyes dark with desire. His right hand was rubbing in slow circles over the bulge in his own pants. The sight set Jack’s pulse racing, lust zinging through his veins. Without breaking eye contact, Jack drew down the zipper, exposing himself to his lover’s hungry gaze.
“No boxers?” Julian asked, not quite managing to hide the rasp in his teasing tone. “And you call me a slut.”
“Are you complaining?” Jack stepped out of the jeans, wrapping his right hand around his cock. If Julian wanted a show, a show he would get. He played with the moisture pooling at the head, drawing it down his length, torn between squeezing his eyes shut in pleasure and watching Julian watch him.
“Complaining is the wrong word,” Julian agreed. He motioned toward the hotel bed. “Lay on your stomach.”
A thrill went down Jack’s spine as he complied. He could feel Julian’s gaze hot on his skin; the younger man hadn’t even blinked. The comforter was rough against his sensitive flesh, providing just the right friction, just a little abrasive. He felt Julian settle astride his knees.
“Don’t fall asleep.”
Jack snorted, but it turned into a moan as Julian’s warm hands dug into the flesh of his back, kneading and soothing. “As if.”
Heat spread everywhere, radiating from Julian’s jeans-clad thighs up Jack’s legs, down from his strong, nimble fingers. The hairs on the back of Jack’s neck stood up and took notice; sensation pooled in his balls and he squirmed a little against the bed, seeking relief for his aching prick.
Julian leaned down and bit his shoulder. Jack’s cock twitched in reaction where it was pressed up against his belly. Julian’
s bare chest was flat against his back, and the thin trail of dark hair that led down from his navel tickled. His legs settled parallel to Jack’s so that Jack could feel the entire warm weight of him, solid and not to mention hard, from his knees to his shoulders.
In the past couple of months, Julian had been pushing the unstated boundaries of their relationship—specifically, that Jack was a top, period. It was never obvious, and it had never bothered Jack; in fact, it was pretty hot that Julian reacted to him that way. Still, Julian had always backed off or been interrupted before they could talk about it.
Jack wasn’t about to interrupt him now. Since he was getting into the habit of being honest with himself, he had to admit that he’d come to crave the feel of Julian’s thick cock spreading him open, sliding deep inside of him. It looked like tonight he might finally get it.
It had been ages since Jack had been comfortable enough with another man—or himself—to allow anyone to get that close to him, never mind to actively solicit it. He planned to make the most of it. He wiggled his ass in what he hoped was an enticing fashion.
Julian muffled a snort of laughter in his neck. That tickled, too, in the way that sent an electric current straight to Jack’s groin. “I guess that answers that question.”
“Get on with it,” Jack said helpfully. He wiggled again and was rewarded when Julian thrust his cock against him instinctively.
“You’re such a romantic,” Julian murmured, mouthing Jack’s earlobe. The rush of wet heat that suffused Jack’s brain left him completely paralyzed with lust even as Julian eased off of him, kneeling up between Jack’s thighs as he drew sloppy moist kisses down the skin of his back. His hands traced soothing patterns on Jack’s sides, then moved lower to rest on the globes of his ass.
Jack tried and failed to hold back a groan. “What can I say,” he panted, as Julian’s tongue painted pleasure down his tailbone, “you bring out the best in me.”
Julian didn’t even attempt a rebuttal. At least, not the verbal kind. He kept up his steady southward track, gently prying apart the cheeks of Jack’s ass and fluttering wet licks down the middle.