If the Stars Fall

by Diane Adams

  "Jared, as far as commitment goes we said 'I do' sixteen years ago. Why do you think I'm insisting on having the wedding on Pi Day? That day was our beginning, the wedding is just another part of the journey and if…" Alex struggled to find the words, to not let his emotion sway Jared. "If you think it's not the right thing for us, we won't do it, which doesn't mean the end of us. We are more than a ceremony under a tree, more than a proposal in a video. I don't care how many hits it has."

  Jared turned off the bedside lamp, throwing the room into shadows lit only by the light spilling from the half-open doorway into the bathroom. He didn't let go of Alex. His naked thigh pressed against Alex's and he held onto his hand so hard the bones protested. He squeezed back, barely daring to move or breathe. Jared took a deep shuddering breath.

  "I'm scared."

  Silence filled the room between them as Alex tried to imagine what the confession cost him.

  "Why? It's just me."

  Jared's attempt at a laugh failed and Alex pressed closer against his side.

  "Alex, there's no such thing as 'just you'. May as well say 'just everything'. My heart. My soul. The air. Just my world."

  Alex's heart clenched. Rarely did Jared bare his feelings so completely. "What scares you?"

  "Losing this. Losing you."

  "Jared." He struggled to understand, to know what to say. "We made it through this last year. I think we can handle anything."

  Jared cupped Alex's cheek with his free hand. "This year was easy."

  "Easy?" Alex frowned.

  Jared must have felt it in the motion of Alex's face against his palm. His thumb brushed along Alex's bottom lip. "Easy isn't the right word. It was simple. I knew we could get through it, all I had to do was stay and hold on."

  "Thank God you did," he breathed.

  "What happened changed you, but it didn't…" Jared fell silent and Alex could feel his irritation with his inability to express what he felt in the tension of his muscles. He sat quietly and waited. "You're still you. Refined, stronger, more mature, but at the center still you."

  "I still don't understand."

  "Marriage changes things, it changes people sometimes. I don't understand why or how but I know you've seen it too. Maxine and Mike were together close to twenty years. They didn't last two years after they got married. John and Clint, their marriage ceremony wasn't even legal and it still tore them apart." Jared sighed. "Of course, on the flip side we have my mom and dad with their perfectly beautiful marriage. Stevie and Clark are like the poster couple for being married. Your mom and dad have made it despite everything. If I knew why, what changed when the couples who didn't make it took those vows and said I do, knew what destroyed them, it wouldn't be so bad. I'm scared because I don't know what to watch for and if that happens to us… If we get married and it changes something so fundamental between us it can't be fixed…" Jared didn't finish.

  He didn't have to. They knew it would destroy him. Destroy them both.

  Alex didn't say anything for a long time. He'd seen it happen with his own eyes. People who were perfectly happy as a couple fall apart after the wedding. Not the next day or the next month, but something shifted. Some dynamic in the relationship changed and made the end inevitable. "Do you think that might happen to us?"

  "I don't think so. I feel stupid for worrying about it. I don't see us turning petty, jealous, or possessive. I try to let go of it, but it nags at me. What if I'm wrong and infinity ends here?"

  "Oh, well, you've solved your own problem." Alex turned and nuzzled his shoulder. "After all, you're never wrong."

  Jared gave a little laugh and let go of Alex's hand to wrap an arm around his shoulders. He took advantage of the situation to climb onto Jared's lap. He faced him, his knees on each side of Jared's thighs. Somehow the ridiculous towel stayed on and became an annoying barrier between them.

  "I don't know about anyone else, but we've already pledged our lives and our love to each other. Besides, by its very nature infinity can never end so you don't have to worry about that." Alex bracketed his throat, his thumbs caressed the freshly shaved line of his jaw. The scent of his body mixed with the clean, crisp smell of his soap blended with Alex's own. "And there's something else you don't have to worry about."

  "What's that?" Jared sat still and waiting under his touch.

  "It really is just me, Jared, and I love you with every fiber of my being. There's nothing to fear because that is never going to change."

  Hands tightening on his hips, Jared leaned forward. I love you. Alex didn't actually hear the words but he felt their shape in the brush of Jared's lips on his. He wrapped his arms around him and pressed closer, seeking his mouth, anticipating the touch of Jared's hand on the small of his back. But Jared pulled away.

  "Wait, Alex, I want…"

  Breathless, Alex paused, heat flushing his body in response to Jared's tone. "What do you want?"

  "Your hands. I want you to touch me."

  Alex struggled for control. "Where?"

  "Everywhere."

  The towel discarded and the bathroom light turned off, Alex straddled Jared's bare thighs. Jared turned the lamp back on, its soft, golden glow bathed them in a small pool of light. Darkness lapped at the sides of the bed. Alex loved the intimacy of the little light and the way it shadowed Jared's face with mystery, as if in the midst of years of shared familiarity, the unknown lingered, waiting to be unlocked.

  He gripped Jared's hips, thumbs pressed into the hollows, and let his gaze rove. He took note of the narrow cut of his waist, the width of his chest, and the strength in his arms—a strength clearly denoted by the bunching of the muscles caused by Jared's grip on the headboard. His fingers curled over the top, his thumbs braced hard against it. The thought crossed his mind that Jared needed to build them a new bed. He'd built the first one when his inclination to grab hold whenever Alex tortured him had proved nothing purchased from a store would survive for long. Alex wished he'd thought to ask for a new bed as a wedding gift. On the heels of that thought he remembered the whirlwind of the past month, and how Jared often hadn't returned home until bedtime in his attempt to keep up with both work and wedding preparations.

  They had a new house and would be married in a couple days. Afterwards the rebuilding could begin in earnest. Alex forced away his guilt over his part in their needing that new start. He'd blamed and berated himself many times over the past year and the fall into such well-worn lines of thought came too easily. Nothing useful lay in thinking in such a way. He refused to return to the trap of self-torment lying in wait in his head. Some days the struggle became a battle, but the effort seemed to ease with time and he held fast to the hope that one day he'd be free from the relentless plague of self-doubt.

  "Are you going to sit there all night?" Jared's teasing broke into his thoughts and he blinked eyelids he'd closed tightly. Alex relaxed the grip on Jared's hips where his fingers and thumbs clutched hard enough to bruise. He focused on his face, and read nothing but understanding and patience.

  Frustrated to know he still needed such consideration, Alex frowned, shifting his weight from one knee to the other. He soothed Jared's bruised skin with the soft brush of his thumbs. "I was thinking about headboards."

  Nodding like that explained everything, and Alex supposed as well as Jared knew him perhaps it did. Jared tilted his head back to look at the headboard he still had in his grasp. When his eyes met Alex's again they glinted with a challenge he knew all too well.

  "Yeah, well, this one's a goner," Jared smirked. "Unless you've lost your touch."

  Alex's eyes narrowed. He slid his hands up Jared's sides to rest under his ribs accepting his silent dare.

  Chest rising and falling with his deep breaths, Jared studied him from under his lashes. " Same terms?"

  Swallowing, his mouth gone suddenly dry, Alex nodded and unbidden memory flared, triggered by his words.

  Jared naked and lying flat on their bed.

  His body lea
ner with youth, muscular in the way of a working man, which was less cut than a gym rat but indescribably beautiful to Alex.

  He wrapped his hands around the rungs of the headboard.

  Alex looked up from where he knelt between Jared's thighs and their gazes locked. Deliberately he slid his mouth off his engorged sex with an obscene pop. Jared glared his frustration, his forearms rippled as his grip tightened on the headboard.

  "Touch me," Alex breathed, ignoring the creak of tortured wood under Jared’s hold. He lapped the head of his cock, tongue teasing the slit. He saw the way Jared's stomach muscles clenched and felt a glimmer of satisfaction.

  Despite his death grip on the rungs and the tension Alex could feel building in Jared's body, his eyes glinted. "Make me." The low growl of his voice sent shivers through him.

  He licked his lips, tasting Jared on them, and trembled. He fixed his hungry stare on Jared's hands still locked on the rungs. He wanted those hands on his skin. He shifted his gaze to meet Jared’s.

  "You don't think I can?" He laid his hand on Jared's flat belly, thumb caressing a circle around his navel. He smirked when Jared sucked in his breath, the way he'd known he would.

  "We'll see." Jared tried for a cocky challenge but the tightness in his voice betrayed him.

  Alex smirked and leaned down to mouth his dick. He'd have Jared's hands on him in less than sixty seconds.

  "Wait." Jared sounded a bit strangled but he stopped, looking up with a groan of frustration.

  "Rules." Jared prompted but Alex had no idea what he wanted.

  "What?"

  "Rules."

  "Um, okay?" He eyed Jared, trying to determine what he was up to.

  "It's a challenge so there has to be rules," Jared explained, his eyes darkened as he spoke and set Alex's nerves jangling with anticipation.

  "What rules?" Poised above Jared, he waited to hear what restrictions he planned to impose.

  "Just your hands."

  "My hands." Alex glanced down to where his fingers curled around Jared's hips.

  "You want me to touch you. You have to make me, but you can only use your hands." The excitement of the challenge had risen in Alex's blood in equal measure to the lust already raging there. Gaze locked again with Jared's, he nodded once. Alex slid his hands up his sides, testing the water.

  Jared let his head fall back onto his pillow, his breath coming in short gasps, his grip on the headboard so tight tendons stood out in his forearms. That reaction taught Alex something, and he'd tucked away the bit of knowledge like a treasure.

  Anticipation was an unexpected weapon.

  "What do I get?" He rested on his haunches, eyes roving the naked expanse of his lover's body, laying a plan of attack.

  "My ass."

  "Jared." Alex hardly dared take a breath, much less jump to the conclusion hinted at by his words.

  "That's right, make me touch you and you get to fuck me." Jared's voice had been cocky, suggesting what he offered didn't matter at all. Alex knew better and had easily read the unvoiced need lurking in Jared’s eyes that revealed how much he wanted what he promised.

  That had been the first headboard lost to the strength of Jared's hands and Alex's intimate knowledge of his body.

  With a hitch in his breathing, Alex relived the moment the wood had come apart, splintering in Jared's grip, and how seconds later those hands on his skin, burning hot, made him quake with lust.

  The memories came faster, blurred with the mindless depth of his passion.

  Jared on his knees trembling and submissive.

  The first cautious push into the tight heat of his body.

  The awe of that intimate moment.

  Alex lost himself in the wonder of that memory until the shift of Jared's body under his brought him back to the present. He looked up to see Jared watching with knowing eyes. He knew exactly where Alex had gone in his mind.

  "Are you sure?" he breathed, his eyes locked with Jared's. Even after that first time, Jared submitting remained a rare occurrence between them.

  "Make me sure."

  Alex's cock jerked and leaked at the thought. It didn't matter who won the game. By the end, the sex would be raw and frantic. As much as he enjoyed claiming Jared, the thought of Jared's hands hot and hard on his hips, cock plunging deep in his ass, caused him to doubt his personal dedication to the win.

  Scooting towards the foot of the bed, Alex started at Jared's feet. He wrapped his fingers loosely around each one, thumbs digging in and tracking a firm line from the heel, across the arch to his toes. Jared didn't twitch or try to get away. The opposite was true as he pushed his feet into his touch. Alex's lips turned up in a knowing smile. Jared didn't have ticklish feet and he loved a good foot massage.

  Maybe later.

  His current goal had nothing to do with helping Jared relax.

  Alex slid his hands up to his ankles, thumbs caressing the jut of bone, fingers searching higher, seeking the texture of the hair curled over his legs. Alex followed Jared's calves, cupping them from behind as he rubbed the fine hair the wrong way. He glanced up to see Jared resting quietly on his pillow, hands still locked on the headboard. His grip seemed more relaxed, but a muscle in his calf gave a tell-tale twitch and Alex's cock jerked. Jared's body was as familiar to him as his own, and reading the hints underlying involuntary muscle reactions had become second nature to him.

  Jared gave a choked laugh and tried to pull away when Alex's fingers brushed the backs of his knees. He chuckled. While the bottoms of Jared's feet were not a weak spot, the back of his knees were hypersensitive. Tickling Jared could be fun since he so seldom lost control, but the best thing about that particular tender stretch of skin was how a lick of hot, wet tongue caused a completely different reaction.

  He paused, remembering the last time he used his tongue on the back of Jared's knees and the intensity of his response—more than a year ago. The room felt hotter and sweat beaded his forehead. Without warning, the black pit of despair yawned open in his mind as he wondered how he'd denied Jared's most basic needs for so long. He loved Jared, but the only thing he'd thought of since his eyes opened in the hospital after the fire, had been himself. He shuddered, in danger of falling back into the abyss.

  "Alex."

  Jared's voice grounded him.

  Alex focused on his face, meeting his gaze.

  Blue eyes, dark as the midnight sea.

  Shadowed by neither blame nor regret.

  Loving him.

  The pit closed, the danger of falling retreated, and he became conscious of Jared under his hands, the hair on his legs crisp against his palms, warm to his touch. Gazes still locked, he made a mental promise to give the backs of Jared's knees the attention they deserved at a later time, and stroked his splayed fingers up the inside of Jared's thighs. Heat seared him from head to toe at the sound of Jared's moan. His head fell back onto the pillow and his knuckles turned white where he gripped the headboard.

  A sense of power washed over Alex, followed closely by an immeasurable tenderness. He knew personal details about Jared, knew his heart and soul in a way his own mother never had, claimed a familiarity with Jared's sexuality in a way that no past lover had so much as brushed the surface. Alex didn't understand the need for 'new' that dominated society. New equaled fumbling nerves and worry. He found knowing much more rewarding. He brushed his thumbs across Jared's balls, and he gasped, spreading his legs, inviting a touch that in the beginning of their relationship had not been welcome. The contact required a level of closeness that had taken time to build, one requiring not the shock and thrill of the unknown, but the security and trust of an established relationship.

  Fingers curling over Jared's hipbones, Alex remembered the box of toys under the bed in their house, lost to the fire, but he doubted they'd be replaced. Lust between them burned brightest when fanned by naked skin, eager hands, and hot kisses. Vibrating plastic didn't come close. He tightened his grip on Jared's hips and abandoned the game. H
e nosed the root of Jared's cock, breathing deeply, seeking the scent of him under the smell of his soap and shampoo.

  Jared jerked in surprise. "No cheating." His ragged gasp contained no real protest and Alex let his grin curl, wicked and knowing, against his skin before he mouthed his way lower. Taking the time to lick and suck Jared's balls, which were beginning to draw up against his body, and lower still. Nibbling and teasing until he abandoned the headboard with a guttural cry, hands finding Alex's hair. Jared pulled up his knees and spread his legs wide, opening his body to Alex's probing tongue in an offering they had once believed would never happen.

  Heart pounding, Alex moved back up and covered Jared's body with his own. Their mouths locked in a searing kiss and Alex rocked his hips forward, breaching Jared’s body, taking part in something precious, something that had been impossible between them in the beginning. Jared's fingers dug into Alex's shoulders as he hunched over him, dripping sweat, every muscle in his body stretched taut as he struggled for control. In the low light of their bedside lamp, their eyes met and their gaze held as Alex began to move.

  "Oh, fuck," Jared gasped his breath hot against his neck.

  Alex couldn't last, but neither would Jared. The last year had scoured their emotions, left them raw and vulnerable. Rebuilding meant more than finding a new house or deciding about settlements. It needed moments like this as they struggled to reestablish connections put on hold for too long. It meant forgiving, trusting, and reaching out when it seemed safer to close up and hide. The way their bodies moved together tangled the familiar and unfamiliar.

  Alex rarely claimed Jared and the tight grip of his body undid him quickly. His hips stuttered and jerked. He closed his hand around Jared's sex, pulling a harsh cry from him. Jared grabbed his hips and tried to pull him closer, when Alex was already as deep as he could get. Jared's ruined voice begged for harder and faster. Alex held tight to the tattered edges of his control and gave him what he wanted, pounding hard and deep into his willing body as sweat slicked them both, and they were unable to keep up even a pretense of kissing. Mouths sought and found neck and shoulder, sucking, biting, marking, as they rocked together. And then the world came apart. Alex climaxed so hard he saw stars, spasms rocked his body, arching his back. His hand clenched roughly around Jared's dick and pulled him over the edge. Thick ropes of cum coated their bodies. Dazed, Alex licked a splatter off Jared's chin.