Chapter 19 Jack
I wake in the night wrapped up in Sol.
Instinctive.
Intentional.
He’s behind me, his body heat searing my bare skin, his chest at my back, his arm heavy around my ribs like it belongs there.
It’s darker than dark. My eyes blink open, but I’m aware of him before I’m aware of anything else. Before my surroundings. Before my staggered breath. Before the inevitable lurch in my brain as I fight for my bearings.
Not a dream.
That much I know, because my body knows it first. Knows I’m hot under the skin already, and so awake and alive it’s hard to believe I was ever asleep.
Sol’s not asleep either.
I shift just enough to be sure and get my answer in the drag of his lips down my exposed neck, slow and careful, as he says my name in a rough whisper.
“Jack?”
“I’m here.”
“You sure?”
I know what he’s asking. And what he needs to see before he believes me. I shift until we’re face-to-face. Frame his jaw with my hands and wait for him to search my gaze for foggy confusion, knowing he’ll find none even before some of the tension binding him tight melts away.
“I want this,” I whisper. “I want you.”
“Okay,” he breathes. “Okay.” Not permission so much as acceptance of something so obvious and yet undefined. Something he needs in this moment more than a conversation with no end.
I move without thought, and we come together with scorching promise. A clash Sol can’t win as something feral surges in me.
Control.
Domination.
I don’t know what it is. What it’s called out there in a world I’m not part of. And as I roll Sol onto his back and pin him down, I don’t care. He needs me and by some unholy twist of fate and instinct, tonight I know what to do.
“I’ve got you,” I murmur.
Sol shivers, yielding to my weight settling over him.
To my mouth, and I claim him as the night starts to bleed grey, the lingering dark stripping everything back to sensation.
To breath and heat and pressure as I bear down on him.
As I hold him in place long enough to quiet whatever’s happened to him while he’s been gone.
“Jack—”
“I know.”
We have lube in my bedside table. Rattling around with medication and all the magical things he keeps in my room to bring me back when I’m gone.
I retrieve it and ease Sol’s bent leg to his chest. “Teach me.”
To fuck him with my fingers. Because I know when I finally fuck him with my dick I won’t be as present as he needs right now.
Sol exhales softly, his curly hair damp and messy, his eyes already heavy with pleasure, lips swollen from the mauling I’ve given them.
Fucking Christ. He’s so beautiful, I could stare at him till sunrise.
But alongside the waves of deep emotion, anticipation thrums in my veins too.
I’ve thought about this a lot, maybe even more than us actually fucking.
Because it’s softer than fucking, less blinding and selfish.
It’s touching Sol in ways that tell him I’m here, so he believes this shift between us isn’t temporary.
I want this forever.
A loud thought that almost derails me, but I’m hyper-focused on Sol. I draw him closer, until his leg is warm against my ribs. I follow his subtle cues and I fucking drown in how he easily he lets me in. How liquid his whole body becomes as I learn him inside out.
The weight of it knocks the breath from me. But I keep working my lungs, keep working Sol, tracking every gasp and groan he makes, committing it all to my fragile memory and praying to god it stays there.
Don’t take this from me.
I ease back a little, slowing a rhythm that’s already gentle.
Already precise. Another shiver runs through Sol, but it’s the good kind this time—the kind that lets his body answer any wordless curiosities I have.
The kind that has my dick so hard it fucking hurts.
Though, as I graze a spot inside Sol with my slick fingers, it’s an easy pain to ignore.
His hand flies to my wrist. “Fuck, yeah, like that.”
The words seep into me, gritted out and laced with a faint fear that I’ll stop.
I won’t.
I don’t.
I let him steer me for a moment, learning the way. Then I’m on him again and I’m relentless. Focused. And I keep going until the sweet-sharp tension breaks him.
Sol’s leg tightens around me. His breath stutters, breaking into a rough groan he tries to smother and can’t.
I keep my eyes on him. On his mouth. On the flutter of his lashes. On the arch of his spine as he trembles, pleasure building so high it’s so obvious to me how it might become something else. Something that might scare him, even though I’m the one who’s never done this before.
Doesn’t matter. He’s never done this with me. And I’m here—I’m right fucking here. “Look at me, Sol.”
He’s still shaking.
Still gone.
But his eyes open and his lips part. “Jack—”
“I know.”
Where I am. Who I’m with.
And who I’ll be in the morning.
At first light, Sol tells me about the house. And I don't know if it's because of what we did, or because he's so worn down, but he seems so detached from it he could be talking about strangers. He could be a stranger, if not for the gentle fingers sifting through my hair.
I need to take care of him. Stay with him whether he needs to find dry land or keep swimming. But Sev calls before I can find the reset I need to do any of that, and Sol takes his phone down to the Sirona.
My bed is cold without him.
I rise alone, shower, and get dressed. Take my meds, adding the extras I need for my spinning head today.
We're out of coffee. The shit kind, and Sol doesn't like tea. And I don't like being so dependent on him I can't fix this tiny fucking thing while he takes a goddamn shower.
It's early. Sol's barely slept. Skylar is still sleeping. So I take Fiadh, the phone I find beneath the shoe rack, and leave without waking him. Walk along the beach until I run out of sand while I navigate the phone.
Mal's phone. His passcode is our mam's birthday, his contact list short enough that I find who I'm looking for without spending too long swiping the screen.
I fire off a message I hope is coherent, taking a chance on a memory that feels like someone else's. Then I find the coffee wagon by the crab shack run by fishermen Sol doesn't get on with, and settle in to wait.
Folk rolls up fifteen minutes later, skin flushed with cold, hair damp with sea water.
"Did you jump off a cliff?"
I don't know why I say it. Just that it makes sense to me. And that Folk’s wry smile isn’t much of a denial.
He folds his Mal-shaped frame onto the bench in front of me, stretching his legs. “I thought your message meant Mal was home.”
I shake my head. “Not yet.”
“How’s life?”
“Messy.”
Folk grins a little, but he looks closer at me, and it doesn’t feel intrusive. “Is this about Dav Bosanko?”
Wariness creeps through me—at myself, not him.
I wake up every morning remembering the promise I made Sol.
And yet, I can’t entirely recall why I wanted to talk to Folk.
So I stay quiet, hoping he’ll figure it out for the both of us, and the silence allows my mind to wander.
To shunt abruptly back in time to last night—this morning—or whenever it was I woke up to find Sol in my bed without me begging him to stay.
He needed me.
I love and loathe how that feels, so I don’t dwell on it.
I skip to the good part—to Sol so open and beautiful for me.
Taking him in my mouth is an addiction I want forever, but seeing his face while he came so hard…
Christ, there’s no way I’ll ever forget that.
No injury in the world that can take it from me.
I didn’t even come myself—it didn’t seem important.
I kissed away Sol’s offer of relief and stared at him for hours instead.
At least, I think it was hours. Could’ve been minutes and I fucking hate how time escapes me. How I have no goddamn clue how much has passed when I retune to the world and Folk is beside me instead of opposite.
Absence seizure.
Maybe. Sometimes, I’m not sure if I’m just thinking too hard for the people around me to tell the difference.
“Sorry,” I tell Folk, pressing the heel of my hand to my eye, holding it still as it tries to shake the fuck out of itself in my skull. “What were we talking about?”
Folk shrugs. “Nothing in particular. How’s Skylar doing? Can’t be nice to have your person disappear on you like that.”
His gaze flickers as he says it, and I wonder if it’s happened to him. Or if he’s done it to someone else. To his husband, who I’ve met more than once but can’t seem to picture whenever I try.
He looks like you, Jackie. Old Whitlock must have a type.
Right. Because Folk chatted me up once upon a time and I never noticed—because I’ve never noticed any man but Sol. Because this thing inside me, this unfettered burn of want and love and more fucking want is his and his alone.
Skylar. Folk asked you about Skylar.
But I can’t think of a sensible answer, so I say nothing, and keep thinking about Sol instead, all while trying to remember why I wanted to speak to Folk in the first place.
But it’s no good. Searching among the searing images of Sol’s head thrown back, his skin damp with sweat, his eyes screwed shut as he clenched around me, I come up blank.
Folk doesn’t seem to mind. Gets me thinking if he’s really so chill, or SBS life made him this way. If underneath it all, he’s as reactive as Mal can be when he doesn’t check himself. But it’s so hard to think about Folk when all I want to do is think about Sol.
He needs me.
Like he needed me last night, but sex doesn’t fix things. It makes good shit better and bad shit more complicated—but how do I know that? Who taught me?
Fuck, I hate being like this. Enough that a frustrated growl rumbles free and I surge to my feet, flexing my hands.
Coffee. I need coffee.
It’s why I came out.