by Anna Martin
“How did you learn to be so good, anyway?” Jared grumbled as Adam pointed out a spelling mistake.
“My mom is part-French,” Adam said lightly. “French French, not French Canadian. When I was little, she would speak to me in both languages, so I grew up fluent.”
“And she’s in France now?”
“Yeah,” Adam said. He was much less of an asshole when Jared got him on his own. Almost like any other guy. Almost. “She went to Paris a few months ago for a job. It really upset her to leave, but she got an amazing contract there to work on some new buildings in the city, and I knew she was desperate to do it. We talked about me transferring to a school there but I don’t have dual citizenship, which makes it harder. In the end she went on her own.”
There was something on the tip of Jared’s tongue about them both being lost boys, abandoned to their own devices at just eighteen years old. The difference was, it seemed Adam’s mom actually gave a damn about her son compared to his own parents, who blatantly didn’t. Not that he was bitter or anything—being independent was awesome.
“When will you see her again?” Jared asked, playing with the edge of one of his textbooks, wearing at the corners of the pages.
“Thanksgiving, I expect. She promised to come back.”
Jared nodded. “That’ll be nice.”
“Yeah.”
Adam smiled, and it was sweet and handsome and made Jared’s stomach do an awkward cartwheel.
“Do you want to take a break?” Adam asked, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “Because, you know, oral is a vital component of the final exam. You should practice. I want to make sure you get the best possible grade.”
Jared laughed. “You’re unbelievable.”
“I know.”
Adam hauled himself up onto the couch, then pulled Jared up too. They moved closer, and Adam shifted until he was straddling Jared’s thighs. His eyes were hypnotizing; even though Jared knew he could move at any time, he was fixed in place, watching as Adam inched closer.
They had kissed before, so Jared knew what to expect when Adam’s eyelids flickered, then closed as he leaned in close. Jared met him halfway and let their lips touch softly, curiously, an innocent kiss that made him smile.
When their lips parted slowly, so, so slowly, Jared brought his hand up to rest lightly on Adam’s jaw. He flicked his tongue out, tasting peach and apple and something uniquely Adam.
They shifted on the couch, Jared wrapping both his legs around Adam’s waist and leaning back into the corner, bringing Adam with him into a perfectly comfortable position to make out in.
And they did. Make out. For far longer than Jared thought he was able to without taking their activities to the next level. He wanted to push, to see what might make Adam yield. It wasn’t the right time though, not the right night for stealing virginity.
Kissing like this was good. Jared couldn’t remember when he’d last dedicated any time to making out with someone, just kissing with no promise of anything else. It was an art, a skill, to lick and nibble and tease someone until they were both hard—from kissing!—just kissing.
“I should feed you,” Adam murmured, breaking away from Jared’s lips and kissing down his neck. It was territory he’d covered a few times already.
“I should… fuck, that feels good. I should be conjugating French verbs.”
Adam laughed. It wasn’t one of his sarcastic snickers or dull, dry laughs, but something that came from his belly. Something real.
“Fuck French verbs, Jared.”
“Merde.”
“Le souper.”
“Okay, fine,” Jared said, dramatically pulling back from Adam’s arms and adjusting his cock. It had spent the better part of an hour straining at his jeans. “What are you in the mood for?”
“Coq au vin?”
“You think you’re funny?” Jared growled, pushing Adam’s arm when Adam started to laugh, eventually pinning him to the buttery soft leather. “I’ll give you fucking coq au vin.”
Adam let a tiny sound escape from his throat, not so much a sigh as a murmur of arousal. He rocked his hips up to meet Jared’s, the loose pants giving him all the room he needed to writhe and squirm.
This was a position Jared liked—his partner stretched out beneath him, hands pinned, wanton and wanting and needing. He licked Adam’s neck, then grazed his throat with careful teeth, wondering if they’d walk into school tomorrow morning and be hideously obvious.
“You’re good at this, aren’t you,” Adam murmured.
“Hm?”
“This.”
“Yeah. I like giving,” Jared said, aware of how low and husky he sounded. “I like knowing that the guy I’m with is feeling more. I want it to feel better when he’s with me than it ever has with anyone else.”
Adam grinned, then neatly flipped their positions.
“Hey—” Jared started, but Adam broke him off with a kiss.
“It’s my turn to tell you what I like,” Adam said pointedly.
“Okay. What do you like?” Jared asked, willing to play the game.
“I like the noise he makes,” Adam said, his lips hovering over Jared’s. “I like… the way he smells. The way he tastes. I want to know all of those things, how soft his skin is, the texture of his hair. Most of all I want to know what it feels like when his tongue wraps around the head of my dick.”
It was Jared’s turn to laugh. “It always comes down to that, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” Adam said, leaning his weight on one forearm while teasing under the collar of Jared’s shirt. “Sometimes it’s nice to just get head from someone who really knows what they’re doing.”
“How many guys have you fucked?” Jared asked frankly.
“I don’t know,” Adam replied with equal openness. “Probably less than twenty. Is that a problem?”
“No. I’m just curious.”
Adam rolled to the side, as if sensing that the fun part of the evening was over. His fingers still roamed over Jared’s chest, though, mapping and exploring, ever so gently. Jared stretched, letting his spine contract and pop, wondering if they would ever take this easy sexuality to the next level.
Then his stomach growled.
“Come on, pretty boy,” Adam said, hauling himself off the sofa. “Let me call in a pizza or something.”
“Don’t do that. I don’t mind cooking.”
“Oh, honey. I don’t cook.”
“Are you serious?” Jared asked, pulling himself up and off the sofa and following Adam down to the kitchen. “You made it to eighteen years old without being able to cook?”
“I can order from one of several dozen restaurants that’ll deliver within an hour. I don’t need to know how to cook.”
Jared grinned. “You do. Come on.”
The kitchen was fairly well stocked. Adam sat on a counter, watching Jared rifle through the cupboards.
“What are you in the mood for?”
“I’ll eat anything,” Adam said.
“Pasta and pesto? I can make it with mozzarella and garlic bread.”
“Yeah,” Adam said with enthusiasm. “Sounds good.”
“Okay. Fill a pot with water, please.”
Adam gave him a pointed look. “Are you serious?”
“Jesus. Just fill a pan with some damn water.”
Adam sighed heavily, like he’d been tasked with something truly herculean. Still, he hopped down from the counter and found a pot from a drawer, and filled it with water.
“You need to turn the burner on underneath it,” Jared said, amused. “Otherwise it won’t heat up.”
“I know that,” Adam said sarcastically, then spent three minutes fiddling with the dials on the stove until he got the burner to light.
Jared gently guided Adam through the process of measuring out pasta and setting the timer to beep when it was done, then had him tearing pieces of mozzarella into a bowl and rubbing garlic onto slices of ciabatta ready to grill.<
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“You do know this is the first time I’ve ever cooked for myself?” Adam asked when the pasta had cooked and Jared had drained it.
“I got that impression, yeah. Put a couple of teaspoons of that pesto in a bowl.”
“Please.”
“Please.”
Jared was amused. He’d play Adam’s game, happily so when he was sure there was nothing to lose. It was clear to anyone who spent more than a couple of seconds in his presence that Adam was a spoiled brat, but a curious spoiled brat. Really, it was Jared who was playing Adam right back.
“Okay, so now you need to tip the pasta into the bowl, put the cheese in there too, then stir it all up.”
“I think I can do that.”
“I’m just going to put the bread in the oven to toast a little.”
Adam stirred the pasta painfully slowly, like he was coating each individual piece of penne with the pesto. Jared didn’t push or tell him to hurry up. This was Adam’s thing—his learning experience.
“Add some pepper to it as well.”
“Like….”
Jared handed him the pepper mill. “You know how to use this?”
“Fuck off,” Adam grumbled.
When it was all done, Jared split the food into two bowls while Adam found forks, then led him through to a dining room.
“I think I should eat the first meal I made myself in here,” he said, gesturing to the positively cavernous dining room. It was warm and light, a long, narrow room with a dark wood table and elegant chairs, space to seat eighteen.
“I totally agree.”
Adam was about to set his bowl down in the head-of-the-table spot when Jared shot out his arm and stopped him.
“You’ll leave marks on the table if you don’t put a placemat down.”
“Oh. I don’t know where we keep those.”
Jared rolled his eyes. “Hold this,” he said, handing Adam his bowl. He jogged back to the kitchen and grabbed two dishtowels, folding them to protect the polished dark wood from the bowls.
“How do you know shit like this?” Adam said once they were finally seated, digging into the food.
“How to cook?”
“Yeah. And the stuff about the placemats.”
“Because my mom was super into keeping us grounded when we were kids,” Jared said easily. “She never had a paid job, so she spends a lot of time volunteering with the victims of domestic violence.”
“This is really good, by the way,” Adam interrupted. “I’m very impressed with myself.”
Jared grinned. “I completely agree.”
“So your mom made you cook and clean and stuff?”
“Yeah. My dad is kind of conservative. He was brought up in a very strict religious family. My mom is a bit more laid back, but she never stands up to him. I know she didn’t want me to go to the MPS but my dad insisted.”
“MPS?”
“Marine Preparatory School.”
“Ah. Where you were last year.”
“Yeah.”
Adam speared another piece of penne, considered it, then ate it. “I’ve never met an army brat before.”
“I’m not,” Jared said, laughing. “My dad works in a bank. He couldn’t get into the army because he had bronchitis as a kid, which means he’s got breathing problems. They wouldn’t take him. It’s his biggest regret in life.”
“How sad.”
“Yeah. The school was… I mean, I spent enough time in a fairly liberal school before I turned seventeen, so I knew a lot more about life than the other kids at MPS. They were so fucking sheltered. Their parents wanted to keep everything from them. But they could quote scripture at you like it was written on the back of their eyelids.”
“The perfect place for a flaming homo like yourself, then.”
“Excuse you. I do not flame.”
Adam grinned. “I know. It’s a big jump, you know, conservative Christian Texas to ultra-liberal Washington.”
“Yeah, well, I know what I prefer.” Jared leaned back in his chair and let his fork clatter into the empty bowl. “Thanks for dinner.”
“You’re welcome. If you want to come over and cook for me again you can, anytime.”
Jared checked his watch, surprised at the time. Between studying, making out, and teaching Adam how to cook, the time had flown past.
“Shit. I should head back soon.”
“What’s time is it?”
Adam never wore a watch. It was something Jared had noticed right from the start. Adam relied on other people to tell him where to be and when.
“Almost nine forty.”
“Oh.”
“Hadley has her friends staying, and they’re….”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Just drunk people in their early thirties who don’t seem to give a fuck that I need to get up at six in the morning to be ready for school. They party until four some nights.”
Adam winced. “That’s rough. You know… you’re welcome to stay here.” His wince softened, stretched, widened into the half-sexy, sloppy grin Jared now recognized turned his stomach over with more than simple lust.
“If I stay here, you’re going to spend all night feeling me up.”
“Sure am. That’s the payoff. You get my bed, I get you.”
Jared straightened his spine. “I’m not messing, Adam. You’re not fucking me.”
“Jeez. Okay. I still get at least second base privileges then. It’s my fucking bed.”
“Second base?” Jared echoed, amused.
“Yeah.”
“Come on, you spoiled child,” Jared said, pushing away from the table and grabbing his bowl. “I’ll show you how to wash dishes.”
Washing up—by hand, at Jared’s insistence—took longer than it should have, mostly because Adam kept flicking soapsuds and laughing at Jared’s “serious teacher” voice. That, and they stopped to make out every few minutes, so by the time they were done the water was going cold and the dishes on the rack were almost dry.
“Come on,” Adam said, slipping his hand into Jared’s. “I just need to lock up.”
“I dread to think how long that takes in this place,” Jared said, teasing, following Adam out of the kitchen.
“Uh, about two minutes.”
In a small room off the side of the grand entrance hall, there was a computer with several monitors and a panel that must control security for the whole house.
“It’s easy, really,” Adam said. “You just press this here, and it tells you where any windows are open or unlocked. Same for the doors. Then if anything beeps—like, there.” He pointed to an output on one of the monitors. “That’s the door from the kitchen to the back balcony. But we can lock it from here.”
He clicked a few buttons, and the red light turned green.
“The others are all in my room,” Adam said, referring to the suite he kept on the far side of the building. “I don’t mind leaving that unlocked from here. I can always do it myself when I get upstairs if I want to.”
“That’s a pretty cool system,” Jared said.
“Yeah. My mom helped design it. That’s part of what she’s into—not just the physical architecture, but how we can use technology to improve our lives.”
“So, can anyone get in here now?” Jared asked as Adam input a code and the computer dinged pleasantly.
“Only people who have the code. That’s me, my mom—who’s in Paris—the housekeeper, and the police.”
“I feel very secure.”
Adam smiled and pushed his hair back from his face, showing off his tight biceps. Jared swallowed hard.
It was too early to go to bed, so Jared sent Hadley a text to let her know he was staying over at a friend’s and changed into another set of Adam’s pajamas. These were softer than the first, red flannel that felt comfortably worn.
They played two-player video games until Jared was yawning, then took it in turns to use the bathroom. Jared found his toothbrush from the last time in t
he glass next to the sink. Adam had kept it. It was strange to think why, so Jared didn’t. Didn’t think.
In bed, there were no pretenses. As soon as Adam flicked the lamp on his nightstand off, Jared was tugging at his T-shirt, and Adam pressed his knee between Jared’s thighs. It was a continuation of their kissing earlier, only now Adam claimed second base privileges and stripped Jared of his T-shirt.
“God, you look good,” Adam sighed as his flat palms roamed over Jared’s body, thumbs gently caressing puckered nipples.
Jared’s stomach clenched, and he wondered what the fuck was happening to him. He’d been here before, with other guys and one girl, so he knew how it worked. He knew how lust and desire functioned in his body, how those signals were delivered to his cock from his brain, and sometimes the other way round.
Adam seemed to rewrite all the rules. In a rational way, Jared knew Adam wasn’t the singular most handsome man on the planet. That was David Beckham; everyone knew that. Adam was slim and toned, and he had a line of hairs on his belly Jared thought was possibly the most gorgeous thing he’d ever seen. His hair was very, very soft just after he’d washed it. He had a long neck and the most delicate, lickable collarbone Jared had ever tasted.
“You sure you’re not going to let me steal third?” Adam murmured. His fingers were already everywhere, or so it felt, skimming over Jared’s nipples and belly and down, teasing the waistband of Jared’s pants.
“What are we doing here?” Jared said, pulling back and propping himself on an elbow. His heart was pounding hard in his chest and his skin felt flushed, buzzing. He could ride this feeling for hours, days, but there was something nagging at the back of his mind. Something that made him want to question it all.
Adam leaned back too and regarded Jared with an easy smile. “Do you always question stuff like this?”
“Do you always answer questions with more questions?”
Adam laughed. “Sometimes. We’re having fun, Jared. At least, I hope we are.”
“Yeah. I know, but….”
“Hm?”
“I don’t know.”
He couldn’t find the words to accuse Adam, not when he didn’t know what to accuse him of. The weird, nagging feeling wasn’t enough.