26. Salem
SALEM
“ M y brother and I have matching tats,” I tell him, lifting my T-shirt and showing him the black spider.
“‘Fate bends to courage.’” He reads the inscription. “Are those droplets of blood?”
“Yeah.”
He smiles. “Is your brother’s in the same spot?”
“Mmhmm. When he got back from his first tour, we had plans to visit his favorite restaurants, catch games, and take a road trip.” I lower my shirt.
“Looking back, I think we were trying to fit both the years he’d lost and the years still to be lost into the span of a few weeks.
And the whole time, I could feel he wasn’t into it, you know?
It’s like our life didn’t fit him anymore, and he seemed as lost by that as I did. ”
“Mmh.” He hums low, chewing on the inside of his lip. “What was he like?”
“Quiet and serious. He’s like that even now, which is weird ’cause I’d always been the serious one. It flipped, where even stories he’d tell me about his squad mates that were supposed to be funny were delivered with a kind of dead tone.”
“He was depressed?” He curls a leg in and turns toward me.
“Maybe. I mean, yes. Though maybe the beginning of it back then? There were so many changes, it’s hard to isolate.”
“Like what?”
I blow out a breath. “Names of people I’d never heard of and would probably never meet, his vocabulary, the way he wore his clothes, and walked.
He ran on way less sleep, couldn’t even sit with his back to a door, and he scanned every joint we were in.
” I shake my head. “That’s why we got this.
” I pat my tattoo. “I needed something to stay the same between us.”
“I get that. Every tat I get makes my skin feel more like mine.”
“Yeah, exactly. I thought maybe our skin could keep some part of us the same since everything inside us had changed.”
“ Us or him ?”
“Hm?”
“It sounds like he was the one doing the changing.”
I nod. “It kinda changed me, too, though. My parents too—day after day, year after year, praying for his survival.”
He rubs my forearm. “Is he still in the service?”
“No.”
At least not physically.
“He lives with me when he’s not, uh, traveling.”
Another call this morning, another voicemail.
I’ve crossed over from annoyed into full unease. My parents too.
Where the hell is he?
I wake on my side with a pillow in front of my chest and check my watch for the time.
If I don’t get in a car soon, I won’t hear the end of it from my GM and coach. I lift the pillow slightly and inhale with my nose buried in Blue’s curls.
I lean back. As soon as I start to move, gently untangling the arm stretched above his head, he flinches awake.
“It’s just me,” I whisper.
Pillow lifted, he blows out a breath and then buries his face against my chest.
I grin and kiss his hair. “I gotta go.”
“Un-unh,” he grunts, returning the pillow over his head. “Finish what you started.”
“Huh?”
“You took your shirt off in the night because you were hot.”
“So?”
He grabs my palm and wraps it around his erection. “Finish what you started.”
I grin and reach for a condom and lube. “You gonna show your face?”
“Sun.”
Vampire.
“You’re not too sore?”
Turning, he tugs on the waistband of his briefs, pulls it down, and kicks the material away. “Get to work, Jones.”
He shivers as the backs of my fingers sweep the hollow of his spine down to the swell of his ass, to his sculpted thigh dusted with hair.
Yeah, I’m gonna be late.
Lifting his thigh, I drizzle some lube on my fingers and then massage his rim.
He sucks in a breath as my finger slowly presses in.
I’m leaking by the time he’s open, and I’m sheathing myself with a condom.
“You ready?” I ask, lining up against his rim.
“Yeah,” he murmurs.
I grunt as I push inch by inch through his tight ring of muscle, watching my dick disappear inside him and listening to his muffled moan under the pillow.
I throw the comforter over us, so we’re cocooned in darkness, and lift his pillow slightly to reach his ear. My voice still scratchy from sleep, I whisper, “I wish this ass were mine.”
He shivers as I pull out to the tip and glide back in.
“Wish I could sink into it every morning…” My hand threads through his death grip on the sheet. “Wake you up with my tongue…” I nip the back of his neck as he pants into the mattress. “It’s so good, Blue.” I snap my hips. “Fuck, I wanna go slow, but I gotta go to work?—”
“No,” he begs, hooking his arm behind me, clutching my ass and grinding on my dick.
“I know, baby.” I kiss his cheek. “I wanna stay inside you all day.”
I angle to reach deeper and soak up his deep grunts on every drive.
I nip his ear. “Mmm. I can’t wait to come inside you for the first time.”
“Ungh, fuck, ’m close,” he rasps, even though neither of us has touched his dick.
“Fuck. You want to be bred? You want to wake up on my dick every morning?”
“Salem,” he whimpers.
“Moaning in our bed while I fuck you until you pass back out?”
His body tenses.
“And I empty all of my cum into this tight”—I spit on my fingers and then massage his nipples—“hole that’s all mine? You want that, don’t you?”
“Fuuck.” His teeth sink into the side of my palm, and he clenches down so hard on my dick my balls draw up and I erupt as he shudders through his release. My hand flies to his dick to finish him off as I rock inside him with shallow thrusts, chasing his full-body shivers and his quiet moans.
He groans when I eventually pull out and fall to my back to catch my breath, peeling back the comforter to breathe.
I grin when, after a few minutes of us both panting, he mumbles, “Well done,” under the pillow.
He trembles when I part his cheeks and lean in to inspect his rim for any tears.
“I’ll be back.”
I disappear into the bathroom, lose the condom, and return with a warm cloth.
He flinches as I gently pass the washcloth over his rim. “What are you doing?” He lifts the pillow, cracking one eye open.
“What do you mean?”
He looks pointedly at the cloth.
It takes me a second to realize what he’s asking. I did this for Lucien all the time. “Have your partners never done this for you?”
“No.”
My head snaps back. “Who have you been fucking?”
His eyes narrow. “You actually want me to answer that?”
“No,” I rush out. “Lie back down.”
He looks at me, and then at the cloth again, to see if I’m serious.
“Blue, if I’m inside you, I’m taking care of you after. Lie down.”
Despite the deep forehead crease, he draws in a breath and sinks back down to the mattress.
I resume gently passing the cloth over his rim. When he tenses, I rub his lower back until he relaxes and then inspect him one more time.
He yelps as I place a parting bite on that perfect ass.
“I need to shower really quick, then head out. Do you need anything first?”
He returns the pillow and comforter over his head. “Call out.”
I laugh as I push back to my feet. “I’ll miss you too.”