Chapter Twenty-Two
They went back to the pool the next day.
Jack had suggested it over coffee in his apartment, sitting at the counter and Harold had said yes before Jack finished the sentence.
The drive south was quiet. Jack watched the city thin out through the truck window and thought about the water and Harold's body in it and the sounds Harold had made against his neck and the way his hand had felt wrapped around both of them and how none of it, not one second of it, had required Jack to go blank.
He'd stayed present. Through all of it. That was the thing he kept turning over.
His body hadn't shut down. His eyes hadn't gone flat.
He'd been in the pool with Harold's hand on him and he'd felt every second of it, the pleasure, the pressure, the heat, the cold water, Harold's voice in his ear, and his brain had stayed in the room the whole time.
Pool B was empty. The manager waved them through without looking up from his paperback. They walked to the back, stripped at the edge, and got in.
Harold was in his boxers again. Jack was naked.
They treaded water facing each other and the morning light came through the windows and caught the surface and Harold looked at Jack with those brown eyes and Jack thought about how many times he'd been in this pool alone, sinking to the bottom, pretending the silence was rest. The pool wasn't silent now.
It was full of the sound of their breathing and the lap of water against the walls and Harold's slightly ridiculous kicking.
"Come here," Jack said.
Harold came. Jack pulled him close and kissed him and the kiss was different from the previous day.
Less tentative, less exploratory. Jack knew what Harold's mouth tasted like.
Knew the sounds Harold made when Jack's tongue found his.
Knew the way Harold's hands went to his face first, always his face, thumbs on his cheekbones, holding him close.
They kissed until Jack's legs were tired from treading and then he pulled Harold to the shallow end where the water was waist-deep.
Harold stood with his back against the pool wall and Jack pressed against him and felt the length of Harold's body, warm skin and muscle and the hard line of his cock through the wet boxers.
"Those need to come off," Jack said.
"Bossy."
Jack smiled against his mouth. "Observant. They're in my way."
Harold stripped the boxers and kicked them toward the pool edge.
Jack looked down through the water at Harold's cock, thick and flushed.
His own body responded with a directness that still surprised him.
Want. Not obligation, not debt, not the mechanical response of a body trained to perform after a fight.
Want, clear and direct, aimed at the man in front of him.
Jack wrapped his hand around Harold's cock and Harold's head fell back against the pool wall and the sound he made echoed off the corrugated ceiling. Jack thought, I did that. I made him make that sound. Not because he lost a fight. Because I wanted to touch him and he wanted me to.
He stroked Harold slowly, the way Harold had stroked him previously, learning the weight and heat of him through the water.
Harold gripped the pool edge behind him with one hand, knuckles white, his hips pushing into Jack's fist. His other hand skimmed down Jack's chest, finding his waist, eventually taking a handful of his ass and keeping him close.
Jack watched his face. The brown eyes half-closed, the mouth open, the flush spreading down his neck.
Harold was beautiful like this. Vulnerable and loud and completely present and Jack wanted more of it. Wanted all of it.
"Jack." Harold's voice was strained. "If you keep doing that I'm going to cum in about thirty seconds and I had plans."
Jack smiled. "What plans?"
"Plans that involve being inside you." Harold opened his eyes. The brown was dark, heavy, and the look in them was pure Dom, the authority that Harold wore so easily it barely showed until moments like this when it surfaced and filled the room. "If you want that."
Jack's stomach dropped. Not with fear. With hunger. The word inside landed in his body and his cock pulsed and his throat tightened and the want was so strong it scared him and the fear made it stronger. "Yes."
Harold turned him around. Gentle, deliberate, his hands on Jack's hips guiding him until Jack was facing the pool wall with Harold behind him.
The water was at their waists. Harold's chest pressed against Jack's back, warm and solid, and his mouth found the curve of Jack's neck and kissed there, slow, open-mouthed.
"We need..." Jack's voice was rough. "I don't have anything."
"Left pocket of my jeans."
Jack looked at the pile of clothes at the pool edge. "You planned this."
"I hoped for this. There's a difference.
If you say no, everything stops. No matter what we're doing, even if I'm inside of you.
Even if I'm seconds from cumming, you tell me to stop and it stops completely.
I need you to understand that." Harold's teeth grazed his neck and Jack shivered. "I'll get it. Don't move."
Harold pulled himself out of the pool, crossed to his jeans, came back with a small bottle. He slid back into the water behind Jack and his hands returned to Jack's hips and his mouth returned to his neck and Jack braced his arms against the pool wall and breathed.
Harold's fingers were slow. Careful. Slick and patient, working him open with the same attention Harold brought to everything, precise, thorough, and completely focused on Jack's responses.
When Jack tensed, Harold stopped. When Jack's breath steadied, he continued.
No rush. No force. No implication that Jack's pace was wrong or slow or inconvenient.
"More," Jack said.
Harold gave him more. Two fingers, and the stretch burned, and then didn't. It felt good in a way that Jack had never associated with the act because every time it had happened before he had been somewhere else.
Gone to the blank space. Let his body do the enduring while his mind went to the pool, the ceiling, or the nothing place.
He wasn't in the nothing place. He was in Pool B with Harold's fingers inside him and Harold's mouth on his shoulder, and the water lapping at his waist. He could feel all of it.
Every nerve. Every point of contact. Harold's chest against his back.
Harold's breath on his neck. The stretch and pressure and the slow building heat that was pleasure, actual pleasure, his body responding to someone touching it because it wanted to be touched.
Harold's fingers curled inside him and Jack felt a jolt of pleasure that went straight through him. He gasped and pushed back against Harold's hand, his body begging for more.
"Fuck," Jack whimpered.
Harold chuckled. "You liked that huh?"
He could only nod as Harold did it again, curling his fingers repeatedly over his prostate until he was trembling against him.
"Please," he begged, his voice barely more than a whisper.
Harold entered him slowly. Jack gripped the pool edge and felt himself open. The fullness of it was overwhelming. His body did something it had never done during sex. It pushed back. Actively, deliberately, his hips pressing against Harold's, taking him deeper, wanting more.
Harold groaned against his shoulder. His hands tightened on Jack's hips and his hips moved, slow deep thrusts that Jack felt in his whole body. Jack pushed back to meet each one. The rhythm they found was imperfect. Graceless. Harold's foot slipped on the pool bottom. He grabbed the wall.
Jack laughed.
He laughed. During sex. The sound came out of him without permission, surprised and rough, and Harold laughed too, a breathless huff against Jack's wet skin.
"Pools are a terrible idea for this," Harold said.
He was probably right. "Don't stop though. Whatever you do. Please."
"I'm not stopping. I'm just acknowledging the logistics."
Harold adjusted his stance. The next thrust hit differently, deeper, angled.
The laugh died in Jack's throat and was replaced by a rough moan that shook them both.
Harold did it again. Jack's arms shook. The water sloshed around them and Harold's hands anchored his hips and Harold's mouth was on his neck again, not kissing, biting.
The teeth pressed into the muscle where Jack's neck met his shoulder.
The sharpness of it sent a current down Jack's spine that he felt in his cock.
"More," Jack begged. It was becoming the only word he had.
Harold gave him more. Harder, faster, the careful patience burning down to something rawer.
His teeth stayed on Jack's neck, nipping at the skin.
Jack could feel the bruise forming and he wanted it.
Wanted the mark. Wanted to look in the mirror and see evidence that someone had been here, had touched him, had bitten him because they wanted him and not because they'd won a fight.
And he wanted to remember wanting Harold too.
Needing the moment with another person where he was in his hold because he wanted to be and not because he owed him.
Jack's hand dropped to his own cock and he stroked himself in time with Harold's thrusts and the combination of both was too much and not enough and his body was climbing toward something that felt different from every orgasm he'd ever had.
Not the mechanical release of the shiver, that was the body finishing because the stimulation demanded it regardless of desire.
This was desire. This was Jack's body chasing pleasure because it wanted the pleasure, reaching for it, leaning into it.
"Fuck. I'm close," Jack gasped.
"I know." Harold's voice was wrecked. "I can feel it. You're so fucking tight. Let go. I've got you. Cum for me."
The orgasm hit him and his body locked and his hand clamped on the pool edge and he cried Harold's name, loud, the sound bouncing off the walls and the water and the corrugated ceiling.
Harold followed him three thrusts later, his teeth sinking into Jack's shoulder hard enough to break skin, and the pain and the pleasure blurred together into a single bright point that whited out everything else.
They stayed there for a long time. Harold's forehead against Jack's shoulder, both of them breathing hard, the water settling around them.
Jack's whole body was shaking and it wasn't the blankness tremor, the post-fight vibration of a body that had gone away and come back.
It was the tremor of a body that had been present for every second and was feeling the aftershocks of all of it at once.
Harold pulled out gently. He turned Jack around and pulled him close and they stood in the waist-deep water holding each other, skin to skin, Harold's arms around Jack's back and Jack's face in Harold's neck. The bite mark on Jack's shoulder throbbed.
"You're shaking," Harold said.
"Yeah."
"Are you okay?"
"I don't know." Jack pressed his face harder into Harold's neck. He could smell the earth and rain and underneath it his own ocean scent, the two of them mixed together. "I've never done that before."
"Had sex in a pool?"
"Stayed." Jack held on tighter, burying himself into Harold until there was no space between them.
"The whole time. I was here the whole time.
I didn't go away. My body didn't shut down.
I felt all of it." His voice cracked on the last word and he closed his eyes and Harold's hand came up to the back of his head and held him there.
"Good," Harold said. "That's good, Jack. I've got you. Just breathe. I'm right here."
They stayed in the water until the shaking stopped. Then they got out and dried off with the towels provided by the pool and Jack touched the bite mark on his shoulder, pressing his fingers against the bruise, feeling the tender sting of it.
"Sorry about that," Harold said, pulling on his jeans. "Got carried away."
"Don't apologize." Jack looked at his reflection in the pool room window, the dark mark visible against his skin. "I want it there."
They drove home with the windows down and Harold's hand on Jack's thigh and the desert air warm on their damp hair. Jack leaned his head back and watched the city approach and pressed his fingers against the bite mark and felt it pulse with his heartbeat.
He'd stayed. The whole time. He'd been in the room.
That was the only thing that mattered.