Chapter 15
15
JOE
Maybe Meera was right about manifesting. Finding Isaac at my door is one wish granted. So is him getting busy the moment I let him in. He shrugs out of his jacket, then makes a start on unbuttoning his shirt, no way to mistake what he’s here for.
He pauses regardless. “Yes?”
“Fuck, yes.”
It doesn’t matter that the light outside has faded. The overhead light means I can still see plenty, like the determination I first witnessed in front of social workers when he fought for Lenny. He’s got his mind set on keeping someone else now.
Me.
As soon as I close the door behind him, I get equally busy helping him to undress, starting with Isaac’s belt. With his fly. With trying to shove off his shirt and shove down the same spray-paint jeans I last saw him peel out of in a lay-by.
The difference this time is that he doesn’t hiss or snarl or tell me to leave him alone.
Isaac laughs.
“Wow. He really did get you good.” He traces the full extent of the stain my jacket covered earlier, fingers pulling at where cotton has dried to my skin, then trailing down to trace where my dick is firming, and I abandon fighting with his jeans to kiss him, only he backs off, and it’s my turn to follow.
Doing that once got me into trouble. Into a whole world of pain. Tonight, following Isaac only leads to pleasure in a bathroom where he gets the shower running.
I press up behind him, one hand exploring the light fuzz of hair at the centre of his chest. His breath hitches when I brush a nipple, then pinch. It hitches again as soon as my other hand drops to where he’s hard already, and I finish what I started in the bedroom.
His dick is hot. So is the way he shudders with nothing like revulsion.
He’s hot because of me.
For me.
I’m about to suggest we wait to shower after, only he turns in my arms and I forget how to form words. I also forget him ever being icy around me. That past doesn’t seem possible when our mouths meet and a match flares like it did back at the station earlier this evening. Or maybe it’s a reminder of getting him off in the back of his van, of heat that should have made every book on those shelves combust—or at least start to smoulder.
His eyes do that, right before I kiss him again. His mouth is as soft and slick as I spent a whole lot of time replaying, all alone in my city bedroom. Now I get to do exactly what else I manifested, only Isaac is one step ahead. He gets a hand between us to squeeze a raw sound from me, then he makes fast work of finding access.
My suit trousers puddle at my ankles, phone and belt buckle striking floor tile, and I couldn’t give a fuck about either when his hand wraps my bare dick. I don’t even try to hold in the repeat of a noise he twists from my soul, as soon as his other hand cups and rolls my balls.
I kiss him again then, and it’s easily as hot as the shower water he backs me under once the last of our clothes are gone. I’d usually at least keep a shirt on during sex, if unbuttoned. Tonight, it doesn’t occur to me to hide anything from him.
Isaac doesn’t hold back either, and fuck me, being wanted this much could get addictive.
That’s a reminder of days I’ve put behind me. Of trying to be as big a man at fifteen by accepting bumps of white powder from a dealer’s door key, and of trying to chase acceptance that was as hard to hold on to as the steam filling this shower stall.
Because it wasn’t real.
This is.
Isaac’s hold on my cock is a different kind of high that only elevates when he finds soap. I don’t mean because he uses it for a slippery and quick wank under pounding water. He goes slow, soaping up my chest first, rinsing away the last traces of fear left by a teen who made the same chasing-acceptance mistakes as me.
Dried-on hot chocolate disappears under soapy fingers that take more care than a little stickiness strictly calls for. Isaac gives care a whole new meaning by mapping that area with searching fingers, and I can’t decode data like my brother but I can compute this intent amber focus.
He’s checking that drink didn’t scald me.
Isaac washes away soap to kiss the meat of my pec, stubble prickling a nipple. Nerve endings spark in a good way, and I have to grip his shoulders to stay upright. His aren’t as heavily built as mine. They’ve easily carried as much weight.
I feel it—feel him tremble too as my hands lower, skimming from the sharp blades of his shoulders to the twin curves of his arse. I can’t think about anything else then but how each cheek fills my hand, how hard and hot his dick is between us, and I have to break off kissing.
I inhale steam and soak up a fucking vision. He’s always been golden to me. In this shower, he’s almost silvered like when I turned around in the sea to find him telling me that someone would miss me. Falling water does that silvering today, the head of his dick a deep pink contrast that matches well-kissed lips, and that’s what I want next.
My mouth on him.
The shower isn’t built for two. I can only touch where I want my mouth and tell him, then hurry to make a blow job happen. I’m pretty sure I shut off the water. Isaac must find towels.They weren’t on the floor when we entered.
Now a pile rests on tile for me to kneel on, so I get busy again, opening up for the dick he feeds me, and I love that he doesn’t hold back, love his hold on my throat even more, like he needs to feel where he reaches. That touch becomes my anchor, holding me in place as he rocks, slow and shallow at first, then deepening.
I look up, blinking away a blur I can’t blame on steam or shower water, and this is what I’ll remember if Luke Lawson says no to my proposal, this version of Isaac where he’s flushed and focused on me.
I’m his focal point as he gets close. I taste it, precome sharp on my tongue, a surprise spurt that leads to me choking. Only for a moment, then Isaac’s on my level, but hasn’t that always been the case when it comes to him and me? He’s on his knees, one hand on my aching dick, one hand on his own, getting both of us closer, but the only level that really matters is that we’ve both dropped our guards. Right now, he’s the sole person I’ve got bare for without hesitation.
Have I even thought about how I look to him?
Not even once since this got started.
He fists my dick and I return that favour, both of us panting into each other’s mouths, and fuck, he’s so, so good at kissing. Good, too, at forward thinking.
“You got condoms?”
I do, even if I skid on our scattered clothes on my way out of the bathroom to dig through my bag for what we need. He reaches past me for lube, and I couldn’t have sworn on a Bible that there was an armchair in this bedroom until he throws a towel over it before resting a foot on its seat cushion.
He reaches behind himself with slick and shining fingers, and if I’ve ever been so desperate to get inside someone, I don’t remember.
Isaac parts his own cheeks, hands slipping on skin still wet from the shower, and my world slips from its axis the second I see where he’ll open for me.
He looks over his shoulder, and for one disorientating moment, this could be a repeat of the very first time I saw him. Back then, he was shocked. He’s shocked again when I crouch behind him, my mouth close to where he was about to push in those slick fingers, and he nods in answer to me sounding even rougher than I have already.
“Yes?”
For another intense second, we aren’t in a bedroom. We’re back where I first found him curled around a book with no clue his world was about to shatter and I asked him if he was prepared to be a stand-in parent. Now, nothing about him sounds broken. “Yes. Yeah. Fucking do it.”
He’s physical instead of passive, almost aggressive about pushing back against my tongue, and tonight’s iteration of Isaac is worlds away from the version that couldn’t lift police tape without me to do it for him.
I shielded him then. Now I don’t need to. Not from this.
I lick him, and he shudders like my mouth does something seismic, but he doesn’t crumple. He pushes back again, and I point my tongue to breach him. I never fit another person like I do him. Didn’t know how it would feel to be the cause of him shaking and clutching, for these repeats of my name, and Isaac isn’t as shy about stating what he needs from me.
“Don’t fucking stop.”
I won’t, and I don’t until he’s sloppy and his knees buckle.
He grabs me then, dragging me up for a kiss and if that wasn’t surprising, his arms locking around me so tightly is. I roll with it, then roll on a condom I lube up, and we’re right beside a bed but I’ve got Isaac-related tunnel vision, so this chair is where I fuck him.
He kneels on the seat cushion, and I notch my cock to where I’ve made him wet, then push.
Isaac hisses. So do I at his tight heat and at the sight of his hold on the back of the armchair tightening like he tightens around my dick. He hisses again, only it comes with an order.
“All at once.”
I’ve had a long week to think about giving Isaac whatever he wants. Now I pause. Not because I don’t believe he knows what he can handle.
I can’t help doubting myself.
This might just kill me.
Waves crash outside against the harbour like I crash against him.
He takes me, his fists clenched so tight his knuckles whiten, and the chair shifts.It shifts again and again as soon as I find a pounding rhythm, and thank fuck the bar downstairs is full of chatty people. If it wasn’t, all the barman would hear is the thump of chair legs each time I fuck straight into heaven.
Isaac stops holding the back of the chair. He grips whatever part of me he can grab, and he gets vocal.
I love each grunt, each yeah, and every single Joe that comes with him pushing back against me. He takes and takes and takes some more, and I could do this forever.
He can’t.
Isaac pushes back extra hard, making space to get a hand on himself, then levers himself upright in more proof of strength I bet he didn’t know he possessed the first time I met him. “Fuck me,” he orders through gritted teeth, like I haven’t been already, and I’m so up for this challenge. “Faster. Harder.”
The sun set a while ago. Now that overhead light I’d usually turn off shows him slick with sweat and as wrecked as I am. I see proof when he looks over a shoulder that rises and falls in a jerky signal that he’s getting himself off, and I have to kiss him one last time.
It’s messy, our mouths barely connected, and Isaac clenches one last time.
Around me.
He also grinds back, and I fall over the same cliff with him, not caring if there are rocks waiting at its bottom.
He’s my soft landing.
I’m plastered over his back, my hands finding his, our fingers threading as we come down, and I’ve never enjoyed the peeling-apart stage of sex, especially with strangers who might only then notice what my clothes keep hidden.
I’m as bare as the day I was born when Isaac follows me back into the bathroom, and there’s no way he doesn’t get an eyeful of what made my brother close off and my dad clam up. Isaac just reaches around me to turn on the shower again, and his kiss to my shoulder relaxes something tightly wound inside me.
Who the fuck knows why I can breathe as if there’s more room under my ribs.
All I know is that I don’t have anything to hide from Isaac.
It’s a good thing the shower is already running and that every da Silva I shamed can’t see me blink away a sudden blurring.Yeah, Josh can extract hidden data and Dad can mend broken motors, but Isaac kissing me under falling water for a second time in less than an hour fixes something more fundamental.
My own motor rumbles back to life, purring as he kisses my shoulder and asks, “You had a chance to read your folder?”
Not really. “I’ll give it to the Luxtons tomorrow.”
“Then you really do have to head straight home?”
“I need to have another go at showing Kwasi around an empty courtroom.” I could curse at a promise I made before I knew Isaac and I could have the potential for...
More.
That’s what I want. Apparently, so does he. His stubble brushes my shoulder, nowhere near any messed up nerve endings. It still feels electric. “Then I better convince Luke to invite you back.”
I watch Isaac leave for a second time only minutes later, waving him off from the car park again and not giving a shit if anyone sees me stare long after his hiccupping van climbs the hill out of the village.
If anyone looks, I don’t notice. I’m in too much of a hurry to get back to my room to fire up my laptop.
The moon hangs over the sea outside my window, and maybe I should soak up that sight.
I don’t.
I’m too busy expanding a proposal to keep me here for a whole lot longer.