Chapter 15 Jack #2
And I don’t want him to. I want this and only this, and I don’t know when it changed. When that shift inside me every time he’s close became my entire personality, pressing at my ribs, desperate to get out.
I pull back just enough to look at him, his cock so hot and hard in my hand. Mine in his. I don’t know how this works. The literal mechanics.
But I know I want to figure it out.
I know I want—
“I want you in my mouth.”
The unfiltered truth spills out of me. Sol’s jaw unhinges, but a sharp knock on the bedroom door obliterates the moment.
Skylar.
I know his knock. I also know he’ll only barge in if he thinks I’m alone—if he hasn’t figured out that Sol’s with me.
He knocks again. “Jack?”
Fuck. Sol squirms beneath me. We disentangle and I roll off him and out of bed, tucking my dick away with more grace than I probably deserve.
Skylar grows fed up of waiting. The front door opens and closes a moment later, but it doesn’t sound like him leaving.
Sol staggers out of bed, joining me in the middle of the room, shoving a hand through his mussed hair. “You should go after him. Mally might need you.”
Mal’s out with Fiadh. I saw him on the beach when I took my meds. With Folk Whitlock’s family and Ariel, Fiadh’s pup. But that was a while ago—I think.
I glance at the window, trying to gauge the time.
“It’s two o’clock,” Sol supplies.
“In the afternoon?”
“Yeah, Jackie. Did you think it was nighttime?”
I don’t know what I’ve been thinking as it slowly dawns on me that I haven’t opened the pub. Haven’t cleaned the lines, stacked the barrels, or checked the cleaner who comes through every morning has done everything I need her to…
Fuck.
A thousand other things pile on top of me. I swing back to the door, but my brain is too busy to make my feet move.
Sol loops an arm around my waist, standing close, pressed to me from his unbruised shoulder to his hip. Quieting the racket by existing. “Oscar opened up for us.”
“Oscar?”
“Yeah, he’s done it before, remember? The old geezers love him.”
Everyone loves Oscar. I love Oscar, even if I sometimes wonder how he can spend so much time with Sol and not feel how I’m feeling right now.
You did it. For years you spent every waking moment together without mauling him in your bed. What changed, Jack?
I don’t know who’s asking me that question. If it’s the version of Sol who lives rent free in my head, or my own subconscious. And I don’t know the answer either. Just that I’m tired of thinking and I’ve only been awake…fuck. I don’t know that either. “Don’t pay Oscar with boat money.”
Sol takes a breath.
I steal a kiss that does nothing to help me leave this room with any dignity.
Short. Hard. Electric.
“Don’t.” I grip his jaw. “And this isn’t over.”
Sol licks his kiss-red lips. “Okay.”
I don’t know whether he’s agreeing to not pay Oscar from his own pocket or that what I said in the heat of the moment means something. But more activity in the hallway pulls me away from him, and I exit my room too fast for him to follow me.
Voices greet me as I shut the door.
Skylar and someone else who sounds too much like Sol for me to ignore.
Dav.
This motherfucker. Anger surges through me and I clench my fists, but Sol’s desperate plea last night is etched on my soul, and somehow I swallow my temper. Tap into a decade of Regiment training and school my features. Only then do I venture to the front door and flank my housemate.
Skylar’s annoyed. He might not know about Dav’s latest escapades, but he’s been around Sol long enough to figure his father knocking on our door doesn’t mean anything good.
How did he get up here?
Then I remember he’s allowed to come to the front door. Because he’s Sol’s dad—he’s family—and fury returns to my veins. “What do you want, Dav?”
“Oh you know, Jack.” Daveth Bosanko weaves around, trying to see past me. “Just looking for the boy.”
“Sol’s not here,” I lie with zero hesitation. “I’ll get him to find you later.”
Dav frowns, about to remind me the Sirona is in the cove and Sol’s car is in the car park. To ask me where his son is so he can go find him. To test me, because this wily old git knows I’m lying.
But Skylar intervenes, reaching out to give Dav a shove that sends the man listing backwards. “You heard him. Now fuck off.”
He slams the door and reaches for his phone, tapping out a message. “I’m telling Oscar to keep him out. Sol’s still here, right?”
“Um. Yeah.”
“Keep him busy.” Skylar pockets his phone and I realise he’s dressed for work. “Hopefully Dav will get bored before Mal comes back.”
“Mal’s still on the beach?”
“No, he went with Saint to get Sol’s car.”
I’m lost, and it happens so fast I physically flinch, my weaker arm jerking out to smack against a nearby dresser.
Skylar doesn’t miss a beat.
He catches my wrist, lowering my arm for me as he fills in the gaps. “It conked out last night. I picked him up, but I thought you might need him with you today, so Mal went to get it.”
Sol hasn’t mentioned his car. I’m sure of it. But maybe he did and I was too caught up in stealing his clothes from his body to listen. Not that telling me would’ve done him much good. I can’t drive anymore. I can’t do a lot of things—
Can you fuck him, though?
Shitting hell. I scrub a hand down my face, aware of Skylar observing me, trying to decide if he can leave or if he needs to call Sol to my side first.
Get it together.
I scramble for mental purchase. Find it in the sole instruction Skylar’s given me. Obeying orders like a good soldier.
Keep him busy.
I can do that.