Chapter Twenty-One
EVIDENTLY, THAT DAMN “satisfactory” rating had left Jacob doubting everything about himself, and I’d need to pick my words carefully so he didn’t develop a complex.
I hooked a finger into Jacob’s tie, notching it loose with a couple of easy tugs.
“Listen,” I said softly, close enough he would feel my breath on his cheek.
“I don’t care how hard someone can flex.
It’s what’s inside that matters. And there’s no reason to ogle some mailman when I’ve got the whole package right here. ”
Corny? Absolutely. But it did tease a smile out of him…one that I angled in and traced with a brush of my lips. Jacob let out a careful breath. He was holding himself stiffly. But he didn’t pull away.
I lingered there, my lips grazing his, until I felt the tension slacken in his shoulders.
“You’re the one who turns me on,” I murmured.
“Nobody else.” I slid a hand along his chest, feeling his body heat radiate through the starched cotton shirt.
He let out another breath, softer this time, and tilted his head just enough to coax another kiss out of me as his hand slid around my waist.
The tension in him gave way slowly—but it did relax. I slid my palm down his abs. Were they as chiseled as the six-pack Sledge no doubt cultivated? Probably not. And did I give a rat’s ass?
Not in the least.
I eased back, close enough to keep the heat between us, and met his gaze.
“You won’t find me checking out any other guy,” I said, voice rougher than I meant it to be.
“When you walk into a room, you make everyone else disappear.” His dark eyes flickered, uncertain, but his grip on my waist tightened.
I backed up toward the loft, pulling him along with me.
It was slow and awkward, but I didn’t want to drop his gaze.
Not when I needed him to know that I wasn’t just blowing smoke.
The day would come when he was no longer the hottest guy in the room.
Sure, he’d look good “for his age,” but eventually, he’d encounter someone younger and sleeker, someone without laugh lines or glints of gray in his beard.
The funny thing is, I don’t usually notice what Jacob looks like anymore. Frankly, it tends to catch me off guard, like when we meet someone new and it jogs my memory, and I think about what it was like to take him all in for the first time.
Though, even then, I was mostly baffled by the way he’d checked me for Auracel….
Somehow, we made it up the stairs in one piece. His tongue was probing my mouth now as we shoved through the bedroom door—some things never change. He backed me into the bed and we fell in a tangle of eager hands and half-loosened ties and kisses.
“You’re the only one I want,” I breathed against his temple.
He let out a low sound that sent heat straight through me, then shoved me deeper into the mattress, like he was finally convinced I wasn’t humoring him.
His mouth found mine again, insistent now.
My dick strained against my slacks, trapped at a bad angle in my briefs, and Jacob’s thigh had fallen into position to rub it to painful stiffness.
His teeth raked my lower lip as we kissed needy and rough, and I wanted him so hard I could barely catch my breath.
I shoved at him and squirmed out of my pants, and he barely broke stride to push his down to his knees.
When he did finally let up—just long enough to grab the lube—I took the opportunity to reach over and switch on my bedside lamp.
Weak afternoon light eked in through the glass block window, and normally I’d rather play it all by feel.
But not now. I didn’t just want to see Jacob. I wanted him to know I was looking.
He was still focused on the act: spreading my legs, petting my balls, swirling the pad of his thumb over my hole to make my dick twitch and leak.
But I was busy fumbling at buttons. Not mine, his.
I finally got his shirt open just before he lined himself up, and suddenly I was too busy to worry about whatever clothes were left.
So hard. So good. And after so many years and countless thrusts, he knew exactly how to pace it.
Slow at first, so I felt every girthy inch sink in.
A pause as our bodies settled together and found that old familiar fit. And then the pounding.
So damn perfect.
It was tempting to let my eyes roll back and ride the wave, but I forced my gaze to Jacob again.
His arms were hidden by his sleeves, but I could feel the cut of his triceps bulging through his shirt as I ran my hands up and over them.
Rock hard. Not because he was flexing for show, but because he was bracing himself for another satisfying thrust. I slid my hands into the shirt opening, palm to chest, skin to skin.
Was Jacob as taut as someone a decade and change younger?
As chiseled and defined? Probably not—and he wasn’t gonna get any younger.
But what a relief, because neither was I.
And anyhow, I didn’t want him for his body.
Except the part that was…holy fuck, right there. Right. There. Yes.
Yes.
I clutched at Jacob’s pecs, really digging in, and he grunted and nailed me until I saw stars.
I would’ve made a grab for myself to finish things off, but Jacob was too quick for me.
He toppled sideways, dragging me along for the ride, until he’d flipped onto his back and I was straddling him.
The change in position had ratcheted the heat down a few steps, but he stood himself up and I impaled myself, and we both let out a shuddering breath.
And then it was me setting the pace. After the first few strokes, I was just as relentless as he’d been.
I braced myself against his shoulders two-handed, and my dick leaked pre-cum as it slapped his lower belly when we fucked.
It was good. And then he shifted the angle of his hips and it was really good.
And soon we were spiraling up toward that crest all over again.
He reached for me at just the right time—exactly like I’d known he would.
I hissed. And clenched. And spilled all over his belly.
And fuck that guy and his six pack and glutes and whatever else Jacob thought I was into.
This was what mattered. Jacob and me and everything we’d built together through the years.
No one got me like Jacob did. No one else ever had.
And someday, God willing, we’d be old and gray and saggy together…
and even then, he’d be perfect in my eyes.
I finally shucked off my shirt, but didn’t relinquish my spot, even as he softened and our connection was gone, if only for now. Though in every way that mattered, it held. At least, I hoped it did. “We’re good?” I ventured.
Jacob smoothed a hand along my hip and sighed. “I knew you didn’t have a thing for Sledge—I mean, intellectually, I knew it. It was just the look I saw in your eyes. This little flicker. It was almost predatory.”
I tried to laugh it off, this idea of me zeroing in on my prey like some kind of badass. But Jacob was being serious. “Maybe it’s easier for the empaths of the world,” I said. “They’d feel the difference between I-wanna-get-down-and-dirty versus I-wanna-take-him-down.”
“Maybe.”
Then again, they’d also feel every last random spark of “I wouldn’t kick that guy out of bed,” so it was probably for the best that neither of us was empathically inclined.
By the next morning, I’d shuffled that notion to the back of my brain while I perused the latest report from Records.
They’d tracked down a few workmen who’d had access to the apartment between tenants—no mean feat, since they were subcontracted day laborers paid in cash.
But no current address yet on Sunglass Sarah. Huh.
I was shoveling down some Frosted Flakes at the counter when a blast from my ridiculous industrial doorbell nearly knocked me off the kitchen stool.
There was a moment of disorientation—had the elusive Sarah somehow managed to locate me?
—before I realized the day for our monthly smudging had rolled around again.
Crash stood on the doorstep looking just as ridiculously decked out as he always did.
His clothes were tattered and held together with safety pins, but his platinum dye job was fresh, glowing so pale in the early morning sun that his hair lit up like a halo on a ragged saint.
Even from a couple paces away, I caught the faint smell of incense wafting off him as he regarded me with a single raised eyebrow.
“You can’t text first?” I said, since he seemed to require a challenge.
“And have you claim there’s no time right now because you’re too busy gearing up to save the world? No can do.”
I considered remarking that he was up awfully early, but spared myself the eyeroll that would convey he hadn’t yet been to bed.
He breezed past me and unshouldered a tapestry bag of esoteric supplies. It hit the hall floor with a thunk. “Red and I are running a tarot workshop later, so your smudging needs to happen now. Just go about your normal morning routine. You’ll hardly know I’m here.”
“Isn’t tarot mainly for precogs?”
“If your goal is to ‘see the future’,” he said, with exaggerated air quotes, “then yeah. But cards are a useful springboard for self-understanding and lateral thinking. Anyone could benefit. Even someone as institutionally brainwashed as you.”
Once upon a time, I would have gone into a spiral of defensive shame.
After all, I was the one in a necktie. Yeah, I’d drunk the Kool-Aid, and no, I was no longer “edgy” or “cool.” Not in any way my younger self would have respected.
But nowadays, I knew Crash well enough to get that he was only yanking my chain for form’s sake, and I didn’t give his remark a second thought.
Maybe that’s what empathy was like. You could skip years of trial and error and get right down to the bone of whether something was a friendly tease or a malicious dig. Then again, if everyone was empathic, it would render the “just kidding” defense useless.
Crash shoved aside some magazines on the coffee table, plunked down his bag and started unpacking.
Some of his tools were standard—the reeking sage smudge stick, in particular—but his other tools varied.
He was less like a studio musician trying to play a part as it was written, and more like a busker improvising riffs on the spot, and his kit consisted of whatever caught his interest that day.
Empathy would take away a lot of my need to second-guess. But while I dug the notion of having the edge of any given interaction, I bristled at the thought that the channels flow both ways, and someone would also have the advantage over me.
“You live with a telepath,” I blurted out. Crash paused as he drew a pendulum out of his bag. Momentum sent it turning in a lazy clockwise circle. “Isn’t it exhausting to constantly filter your own thoughts?”
Crash might like to needle me, but he can turn serious on a dime. “That’s not how Red’s talent works. To listen in, he needs a physical connection.”
“Yeah. But there’s more than ample opportunity to touch.”
“True. Remember, though, Red isn’t just a telepath. He’s also the most ethical man I’ve ever known. Painfully so. I’ve always prided myself on keeping to my own standards, but he takes scruples to an entirely new level. He wouldn’t read me without asking.”
Wouldn’t he, though? If the situation truly called for it? Sometimes it’s necessary to fill in your partner’s blind spots, like when I told Evelyn not to let Jacob test out those SPECS. I wasn’t proud of myself for going behind his back, but it had to be done.
“Why do you ask?” Crash wondered. “Is there an interesting new telepath in your life?”
“Empath, actually. Someone from work.”
“Oh, well, empathy is its own precious ball of wax. I’m glad I’m not in the gifted and talented category.” Sure he was. “The constant reminder that pretty much everybody’s a wad of emotions under a thin veneer of civility would get old, fast.”
“Not to mention the fact that some people aren’t even aware of what they’re hiding from themselves.”
My observation sailed straight over Crash’s spiky blond head. “And then all the Jacobs of the world would take over. Because they’d be the ones holding all the cards—with everyone else at the table as good as blindfolded.”
We turned as Jacob trudged down the stairs, muzzy with sleep. “What’s going on?”
Had he heard us talking about him? “House smudging,” I said quickly, just as Crash singsonged, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Jacob paused, narrowed his eyes further still, then shuffled off toward the coffee with a noncommittal grunt.
“Maybe I do have the advantage when it comes to Red,” Crash said. “I can tell when something’s bugging him even if he’s practicing ‘right speech’ when he’d rather cuss me out. Jacob’s internal poker face is a good reminder of exactly how much I rely on those quiet emotional nudges.”
Thankfully, I didn’t have to hear him rehashing his relationship in any detail, as I was saved by a ding from Records. It was barely seven and someone was already on the case? Or maybe, like Crash, the department had been going all night.
“I gotta take this,” I said—but Crash had already forgotten about me as he strode to the cannery’s nearest cardinal point, pendulum swaying.