Chapter 11 #3
“I—Is that a compliment?” Jordan asked, amused but also not sure if he was being made fun of.
“Mm,” Cree said. “You’re adorable.”
Cree continued to study him. Not hungrily. Not impatiently. Just…attentively, like he was determined to memorize every line and curve of his face. He lifted his hand from Jordan’s stomach, using a finger to trace a slow path down the bridge of his nose to his lips.
The touch was feather-light. Reverent.
Jordan forgot how to breathe.
“I like these,” he said.
Jordan’s brows went up. “My lips?” he asked stupidly.
Cree smiled, calloused finger tracing the gold rings on either side of his lower lip. “Your piercings. Snakebites, right?”
“Oh. Right. Yeah,” Jordan said, cheeks flaming once more. “You like them?”
“Mm,” Cree said. “They’re sexy.”
The word hit Jordan like a dropped plate, sharp, loud, impossible to ignore.
Jordan caught his bottom lip between his teeth, but Cree tugged it free with his thumb, slow and deliberate. Jordan’s lids fluttered as Cree continued to trace the planes and angles of his face with featherlight touches, as if he were mapping him by memory alone.
“You have freckles,” Cree murmured. “And beauty marks everywhere.”
“Stop,” Jordan whispered, though he didn’t pull away.
He couldn’t. His body felt heavy, pinned in place by nothing more than Cree’s undivided attention.
“Why?” Cree asked softly. “I like looking at you. This one on your cheek is shaped like a heart.”
He touched the mark in question, just the pad of his finger, barely there. The contact sent a ripple through Jordan’s chest that had nothing to do with logic.
He’d always hated his moles, had spent hours learning how to cover them with makeup.
He’d even thought of having them removed.
Had asked for it on his sixteenth birthday, but his mother had said he didn’t need cosmetic procedures as a child.
He hadn’t been allowed to get his moles removed, but his sister was allowed to get a nose job at fifteen.
Another double standard, but definitely not the first. His parents would forever be hypocrites.
“Where’d you go?” Cree asked, pinching his chin softly, turning his head so Jordan had no choice but to look at him.
Jordan blinked, refocusing. Cree was so close he could count the individual lashes framing his eyes. “Nowhere. Sorry. Just thinking.”
“Thinking what?” Cree asked, his fingertips skimming over Jordan’s cheekbones again, slower this time, like he was in no hurry at all.
“That you’re the pretty one.”
Cree’s mouth curved. “Oh yeah?”
Jordan nodded, suddenly earnest, words spilling before he could second-guess them. “Your eyes are so dark, and your cheekbones are like… vampire sharp, and your lips are really pouty, and your nose is perfect. And you have a mole here.”
He dropped a finger to Cree’s throat.
Then trailed it lower. He felt Cree swallow as his finger traced over his Adam’s apple.
“And two here.”
Jordan’s breath stuttered as he realized what he was doing—touching Cree like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like he had a right to him. Like his body had decided before his brain caught up.
Cree’s hand closed around his gently, stopping him without force. Jordan’s fingers curled around his without thought, clinging, grounding himself. Cree lifted Jordan’s hand, pressing a kiss to the back of it, then another to the bone of his wrist.
It was devastatingly tender.
Jordan’s heart galloped so fast he was certain Cree could feel it, hear it, sense it vibrating between them. His chest felt tight, lungs struggling to keep up. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before, no hands, no attention, no one looking at him like he was something to savor.
“What are you doing?” Jordan whispered, voice barely there.
Cree didn’t look away. His grip stayed warm and steady, anchoring. “Trying really hard to control myself.”
Jordan swallowed hard. The words shouldn’t have felt like this. Like heat. Like reassurance. Like a promise and a boundary all at once.
He nodded once, not trusting himself to speak, body buzzing with a thousand questions he wasn’t ready to ask.
When his head dipped, Jordan’s heart seized in his chest, a jolt shocking through him. He expected to feel his lips on his, but instead they skimmed his forehead, his cheeks, his nose…before ghosting over his mouth, there and gone before he could even enjoy it.
“You’re—I don’t know…” Jordan started, having no idea what to say or how to articulate all the feelings firing through him.
“Want to restart the movie? Or watch something else?” Cree asked. He smiled down at him. “Gremlins maybe?”
“You remembered that?” Jordan asked.
Cree nodded. “Of course.” He flopped onto his back and swiped to open his phone. “What’ll it be?”
“I don’t know,” Jordan said, suddenly worried that the wrong decision would ruin everything.”
Cree smiled, then gathered Jordan against him. “Why don’t we let fate decide.”
“Meaning?”
Cree crushed Jordan against him, in order to use both the hand holding the phone and the one around Jordan, making a show of crushing him as close as possible until Jordan giggled.
He navigated to some movie website where he chose Christmas movies as the category.
A wheel appeared with a spin button in the center. “Push it.”
Jordan grinned, hitting the button, watching the red white and green wheel spin, the little ticker hitting each piece of the pie again and again until it came to a stop. There was an explosion of snowflakes and holly and then a movie name appeared.
Love Actually.
“Have you seen this before?” Cree asked.
Jordan nodded, tipping his chin to look up at him. “Yeah, have you?”
“Only about a hundred times. Does this work for you?” Cree asked.
“Depends,” Jordan asked.
Cree smiled. “On?”
“Whether you mind me ranting about what a douchenozzle Alan Rickman’s character is for what he does to Emma Thompson.”
“I would expect nothing less. Douchenozzle is actually a much nicer word than I’d use,” Cree said.
Jordan’s chest felt light, like his heart was sort of floating in his chest cavity untethered. He burrowed closer to Cree, his hand landing on his stomach over his clothes but under the blanket. “Is this okay?”
“Mm,” Cree said, hitting play.
Jordan kept a running commentary throughout the movie, Cree occasionally joining in.
Jordan would look up every now and again to make sure he wasn’t annoying Cree, and Cree would just look down and smile.
By the end of the two hour film, Jordan’s hand had found its way up under Cree’s shirt, his hand pressed flat to his warm skin.
Cree didn’t seem to mind, his fingers petting through Jordan’s hair the whole time, making him feel sleepy and sated.
“Do you want to go join the others?” Cree asked when the movie ended, making no move to get up.
Jordan didn’t hesitate. “No.”
Cree smiled down at him, his knuckles brushing Jordan’s cheek. “Do you want to watch another movie?”
Jordan shook his head. “No.”
“What do you want to do then?”
Jordan’s hand contracted against Cree’s ribs, hiking his leg a little higher over his. “This is good.”
Cree sounded surprised when he said, “You want to just lay here and do nothing?”
Jordan shrugged. “You could read to me.”
“I think you should read to me,” Cree said, rubbing Jordan’s ear between his thumb and forefinger in a way that felt weirdly comforting and wildly sexy at the same time.
“Fine,” Jordan said, rolling over and tugging two books from the shelf at random before returning to his previous spot.
He glanced at the two books, laughing.
“Oh, tough choice,” he said, laughing. “We have Soil Science: Foundations of Sustainable Growth or Pride and Prejudice?”
Cree smiled. “While I do have a secret soil fetish, I think I’ll choose Pride and Prejudice.”
“Not a soil fetish,” Jordan gasped. “Though it does dovetail nicely with my earth worm obsession.”
“Look at us,” Cree teased lightly. “Perfect for each other.”
Jordan laughed but his stomach dipped. He forced himself to concentrate, opening up the book and reading aloud, “‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.’”
As Jordan read, Cree’s hands never slowed, petting his hair, rubbing his earlobe, teasing under the hem of his hoodie before returning somewhere safe. It was maddening, it was exciting. It was everything.
When he grew tired of reading, they just talked, mostly about nothing.
The topic didn’t matter.
What mattered was Cree stayed.
That he’d wanted to stay.
No matter how many minutes passed, Cree just…stayed.
And Jordan didn’t want morning to come.