Chapter 22 Dex - Past
twenty-two
Dex - Past
HIS FIRST, HIS ONLY.
HELL BENT. The letters inked across my knuckles.
I was never the type to worry about my tattoos having meaning.
If I liked the look of something, I’d get it put on my skin.
Or with some of them, I’d just let Bull do whatever he wanted.
When he’d told me to fuck off, I’d bought myself a tattoo gun and started doing my own ink, like the skull and wings on my neck.
It didn’t have any meaning apart from looking cool.
However, the letters on my knuckles were accurate in describing the way I dealt with most things in life—stubbornly and recklessly determined.
I’d been hell-bent on getting Jonah to be mine.
Now that he’d agreed, I couldn’t quite believe I’d done it.
I’d meant it when I told him I was fine with him hating me. Of course, I’d prefer it if he loved me, but if he couldn’t, then hatred was the next best option. Love would give me his heart, but hate gave me his mind, and I would take whatever I could from him.
Lately, however, whenever Jonah told me he hated me, it felt different. It felt like maybe he meant something else instead.
While we’d evolved from sporadically meeting up at parties to meeting at the Meadow Park field on a semi-regular basis, I had yet to show Jonah where I lived.
Showing him my mother’s house felt like exposing a rotting wound, but it was a wound that had formed who I was.
And with him accepting me, and finally being mine, it felt like it was time to expose that part of myself.
The house was deceptively ordinary from the outside.
Two stories that had once been painted white, now faded and peeling like most in this area.
The front deck was sagged, its rotten wood scenting the air, and it was concealed from the road by the piles of junk in the front yard that my mother kept around for purposes I could never understand.
Jonah was many things, but subtle wasn’t one of them. I saw the judgment on his stunning features as I led him from the footpath to the front door, and I didn’t fault him for it.
My mother hadn’t been home for months. Maybe this time she wouldn’t come back at all.
She’d probably found some new piece of shit to feed her drugs and decided to live with him instead, like a parasite.
Or maybe she’d died. Maybe I wouldn’t ever know, but enough time had passed that I was confident bringing my rabbit to this place wouldn’t put him in any danger.
The inside of the house was aged, damaged, from angry fists and the things she’d thrown at the walls over the years. But it was clean. All the evidence of the terrible things that had happened here were scrubbed away.
My honey-eyed inferno took it all in, his thoughts loud enough to hear even though his mouth was silent.
“So… where are your parents?” Jonah asked eventually as I led him up the stairs.
“My mom hasn’t been home for a couple of months. She’s probably living with a new boyfriend or something,” I told him, heading past the closed door of her room, then the bathroom, to get to mine.
“Oh… and your dad?” Jonah’s voice was uncertain, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to ask, or maybe he just wasn’t used to expressing an interest in other people.
“He’s dead.”
He didn’t seem surprised by that, honey eyes casting down as he no doubt struggled with what to say in response.
It didn’t hurt me to talk about my dad; I’d tell Jonah all about him eventually. I only wished they could have met each other. My dad wasn’t like my mom. I’d told him about the crushes I had on boys in school, and he’d always smiled and told me I should invite them over sometime.
This had been a different house when he was here. He’d made it a home. Then he died, and whatever home was here died with him. The comfort he’d filled it with was replaced by my mother’s drinking, her shouting, her constant stream of boyfriends.
My bedroom was childish. I’d upgraded the bedding to a solid navy blue, but the walls still had the old cartoonish dinosaur stickers I’d put up with my dad.
I couldn’t bring myself to remove them in case it also removed the memories.
There were so many bad memories in this room of things that had happened since then.
If the evidence of the good ones was removed, maybe the bad ones would consume me.
Those exaggerated smiling dinosaurs were my anchor, what I’d focused on when I didn’t want to focus on my body, on what was being done to me.
This was a house full of ghosts, but not all of them were evil. It’s why I still lived here, even after everything.
Jonah took it all in as I sat on the end of my bed.
Much like that first time at the party, he stayed in place by the door, like he was leaving himself with the best chance of escape while he pondered if he wanted to take it.
Unlike then, however, this time he slowly crept further in on his own.
Closer to me. Guarded, like this room could hurt him, but I’d never let that happen.
I remained where I was, letting him come to me at his own pace, until finally the bed dipped beside me and he looked at me, so unsure about what he was supposed to do now.
“Can I kiss you again?” I asked him, afraid if I moved too fast, I’d trigger my rabbit’s survival instincts and he’d run again, like I could tell he was fighting not to do.
Jonah nodded, and I leaned into him, my nose brushing against his as I waited for him, despite the permission, to close the distance. He did.
This kiss was soft. Uncertain. Fragile.
I let him take his time. He was learning how to touch me softly, and I was learning how to be touched softly.
We were both damaged so differently by the people who were supposed to protect us.
In my father’s absence I’d only been touched with hands that had burned and voices that had made the walls tremble and the ground disappear beneath my feet.
I’d learned to fear touch. Jonah feared it as well, but only because he craved it so much, had been starved of it, left in the dark and the cold.
I was burned and he was frozen and neither of us knew how to love at the correct temperature because we’d never known it.
It would take time for us to learn how to touch each other in a way that didn’t feel like violence.
Slowly, the kiss deepened. My hand found his arm, gently caressing from his wrist to his shoulder over the fabric as I slowly guided him back to lie beside me. I followed his lips, my body over his just enough to chase them, to keep them.
“I don’t—” he started, pulling his lips away from me, his breath hitched up in a panic I could see in his eyes. “I haven’t—”
“It’s okay,” I told him, understanding. “We won’t do anything new. Just what you already know. You know what to say if you want me to stop at any point, don’t you, Rabbit?”
He nodded, and the panic receded. When I was silent, watching him expectantly, he gave me the word I was waiting for. “Boots.”
“Boots,” I repeated in confirmation. “You say that, and everything stops.”
Jonah nodded, and I claimed his lips again.
This kiss was soft. Certain. Strong.
It was a promise as much as a kiss. A promise that I’d take care of him. I would guard what he’d given me. He could trust me with it, with himself.
Slowly, I felt the stiffness in his body melt away. When he was relaxed, I licked over the seam of his lips and Jonah opened them for me. My tongue dipped inside to seek his, tasting him slower and deeper than I ever had before.
As I continued to kiss him, my fingertips brushed under the hem of his hoodie.
This one was black. The purple one he’d given me in exchange for my jacket was in the top drawer of my dresser, and although I missed my leather jacket, I wasn’t quite ready to trade it back to him.
I liked having something of his, but maybe now that I’d let him into this place, I could convince him to come back.
Maybe eventually he’d just stay, and I wouldn’t need to treasure and hoard the small parts of him like a starving dog protecting its scraps.
When he remained soft and pliant, I let my hand explore further, over the heated, firm skin at his abdomen. I’d seen Jonah’s pretty cock plenty of times now, but I had yet to see the rest of him. I was certain all of him was beautiful.
When I was done with him, there wouldn’t be an inch of his skin I hadn’t tasted and adored.
Jonah hummed his approval, and my hand continued its exploration, my tongue continued showing its devotion to his, until my fingertips brushed against his nipple and his lips flinched away from mine in a gasp.
Jonah looked stunned, and I couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Never played with your nipples before, Rabbit?”
I flicked the hard bud, and again he gasped. His blush deepened, and I saw him debating whether he should lie to me or not before he landed on honesty. “No.”
“Never had anyone suck them?”
Once more he warred with himself over opening up before surprising me. “I’ve… only been touched by you before.”
The deep groan that rumbled up through my chest and poured out from my lips was entirely involuntary.
I’d suspected Jonah wasn’t very sexually experienced, but I’d thought maybe he just wasn’t experienced with men.
Knowing that no one had ever touched my rabbit before me stirred something in me I hadn’t anticipated.
Only I had touched him like this, seen him like this.
I’d never been a jealous person before Jonah, but the thought of anyone else getting to see him, touch him, taste him, had made my blood boil with something absolutely murderous. I’d never have to worry about that now, though, because I was his first. And I would be his only.
“Then let me give you another first,” I told him, both hands sliding beneath the fabric now as I robbed him of the hoodie’s warmth, intent on replacing it with my own.
I discarded it behind me, taking a long moment to feast upon the stunning sight of his upper body before my lips found his again, the kiss a brief thank you before my lips continued, to his jaw, his neck, over his collarbones and then down to his chest, until finally I kissed his nipple.
Jonah was already a gasping, squirming, blushing mess beneath me, hands twitching and unsure where to go. I answered the question he wasn’t voicing. “You don’t have to do anything, Rabbit, just lie there and feel.”
He relaxed further. My tongue flicked over the sensitive bud on the left, and he gasped and shuddered. Then I closed my lips on him and sucked. His whimper was all the reward I’d ever need.
I played with him, sucking gently then firmer, rubbing the warm solid bar through my tongue over his flesh until his nipple was pink and plump and my lips left him only to give the other one the same treatment.
It turned out Jonah had extremely sensitive nipples, and I already knew this was something I’d be doing for him a lot.
His hips twitched up, his neglected cock seeking friction. I continued to mouth and suck at his chest as my fingers worked open the button of his jeans.
“D-don’t take them off… my pants. Leave them—mnn on—please,” he said through moans.
I wasn’t sure why he wanted to hide his legs from me but not his cock, but I figured it had something to do with what happened to him.
His accident. Whatever scars he possessed, physical or emotional, I trusted Jonah would show them to me when he was ready.
When he did, I would show them every bit of affection I planned to show the rest of him, because there could never be any part of him I didn’t want.
“I’ll leave them on,” I promised him as I pulled down the zipper, my hand dipping under skin-warmed fabric to find his cock like I was seeking home. It was already hard and leaking for me, and his spine arched up from the mattress as I stroked him.
My lips continued their descent, over pale skin flushed the perfect shade of pink, until I tasted his precum and Jonah cursed, his fingers tangling in my hair.
We’d done this before, many times. He knew my mouth and how to use it.
Jonah’s confidence was a beautiful thing.
I relaxed my throat for him, and his grip tightened as he pulled me down onto his length.
While I couldn’t give Jonah my firsts of anything, I could use the experience and skills I’d collected solely for him from now on. He wasn’t my first, but I could make him my last.
I knew I was good at this, had been told it many times, most recently by Archer. But not anymore. Now there was only Jonah. My rabbit. He was the only one I would ever give pleasure to again.
Jonah fucked my mouth, my throat, with a desperation that bordered on violence. We were lucky I didn’t have a gag reflex with the force of his thrusts, but I would have managed regardless, because I already knew I’d never deny him anything.
With a beautiful cry, he came, his warmth coating my throat until I sucked up his pulsing cock to collect it in my mouth instead.
When he was finished, he collapsed back onto my bed in a panting mess, and I repositioned, hooking my leg over his as I straddled him and freed my own hard dick, spitting his cum into my palm and using it to slick myself up.
Jonah watched me closely, brows rising in surprise, which quickly morphed into aroused approval.
It didn’t take long. Having him use me for his pleasure was almost as good as feeling it myself, and when I came, my cum splashed over him in ropes, marking him as mine in a way I wished was far more permanent.