Chapter 19 #2
He stepped under the spray first. Held the curtain open. I followed.
The water hit between us, hot enough to sting.
He hissed and adjusted. The shower was a tight space, not built for two grown men, and our hips bumped, our knees bumped, and we laughed for the first time in three days.
The tile was wet, and the soap dish smelled like the basil bar he bought from Brooklyn Heights.
The water ran over the geometric sleeve and turned the ink a deeper black, ran over my chest and my skin glistened, ran down between our stomachs where our cocks bumped each other on every breath.
He reached past me for the basil bar. Cupped water in his hands first, slow, methodical, ran them over my shoulders to wet the skin.
Then the bar in his palms, lathering. He worked the suds into my chest the way I’d done for him at his place the first time we’d ever ended a night like this.
His thumbs traced my nipples once each, idle, more affection than intent, then moved down.
The lather caught on my cock when he passed it.
He paused there. Got the bar slick again and ran soapy fingers around the head of me, careful around the metal, the warm wet of it pulling a slow breath out of me that the water carried away.
“I don’t deserve you.” My voice came out rough.
“It’s just soap, Jett.”
“It’s soap from you. After what I did.”
He pressed his forehead to mine. The shampoo bubbled at his hairline. The water carried it down between us and pooled at our feet, mixed with the slick of the soap on his hand, mixed with the wet I’d been leaking against his stomach since the second the water hit us.
“We’re past what you did.” His voice quiet. “We’re here now.”
I tipped my head back into the spray. He rinsed me.
Then he handed me the shampoo and turned around.
I worked his scalp the way he’d worked mine.
The geometric line of his sleeve ran wet under my palm.
The barbells caught the water and the light.
I rinsed him. Slow. The suds ran down between his shoulder blades, down the long pale line of his back, over the swell of his ass.
He turned back to me. Slick. Wet. The pulse jumping under his throat. His cock had gone fully hard while I rinsed him, the curve up pressed against his stomach, the head shining wet through more than just the water.
“Come here,” he said.
I came.
He kissed me with water running between us.
Slow. The kind of kiss that wasn’t a question.
His hand cupped the back of my neck. The water carried sound differently in the small space, every breath bouncing off the tile, every wet sound louder than it should have been.
His cock pressed against mine between us, the curve of his head dragging against my shaft.
“Turn around.” My voice against his ear.
He turned. Braced his forearms against the tile. The water hit between his shoulder blades. The soap dish was at eye level, and I reached past him, picked up the basil bar. His ass was wet and pale, and the water ran down the cleft of it slow.
My hands started at his shoulders. Worked down his back. Slow. Pressure where I knew he held tension. His forehead rested against the tile.
I worked my palms down his spine, over his ass, slow and patient, my soap-slick hands tracing the long lines of him I’d never let myself memorize this way before. I spread him with my thumbs and the water ran down between, and he made a small sound that wasn’t a word.
Then I knelt.
Behind him. On the wet tiles. The water hitting my back.
“Jett.”
“Let me.” My hands held his hips steady, then slid in, then spread him open with my thumbs. The pink of him against the pale. The slick of water running down. “Tell me if it’s too much.”
“It won’t be.”
My mouth pressed to the small of his back first. Soft. Then lower. The cleft of his ass. The water muffled the sounds he made. I parted him with my hands and pressed my tongue to him, and he made a sound I’d never heard him make. High. Cracked. Lost.
I worked him open with my tongue. Slow. The shower water ran down between us, running into my mouth, mixing with the wet of him on my tongue.
I tongued the tight ring of him until it gave for me, pressed in past it, fucked him with my tongue the way I’d been wanting to for weeks.
The salt of him under the soap. The way his thighs shook on either side of my head.
The slow drag of his cock against the tile as his hips moved, the head of him leaking pre-cum onto the wet wall in a smear the water kept washing away.
“Ellis. I’ve got you.”
“I know.”
“Stay there.”
“Not going anywhere.”
I worked him until his breath came in pieces and his hand had reached back to find my hair. Until he was shaking against my mouth and I had to ease back so he wouldn’t go over.
I stood. He turned and pulled me chest to chest under the spray. My mouth found his. My hand wrapped around the front of him, slick with shower water and tile soap, the curve of him fitting my palm. The head of him bumped my wrist on the upstroke. He kicked into my fist.
“I’m sorry I left,” he murmured against my mouth.
“I’m sorry I gave you a reason.”
“That’s done.”
“Done.”
He pressed me back against the tile. The water hit his shoulders and ran down between us.
He took us both in one hand, slick already, our two cocks pressed flush together.
The slide of him against me with shower water and the lather still clinging to our skin was almost too much.
The metal at my tip dragged against the underside of him on every stroke.
He hissed every time it caught his slit. So did I.
We worked each other like that, his hand on both of us, my hand over his to keep the rhythm steady, our mouths catching each other’s mouths between gasps.
The water was still hot. The basil and bergamot still strong in the steam.
The geometric line of his sleeve catching the light every time he breathed.
The slick between us under the warm water slid down our wrists, dripped onto the tile.
“I love you.” He said in between ragged breaths.
“I love you.”
I came with his forehead on mine and the water running between us and his free hand spread over my heart, the way he always put it there now, like a habit he’d built the first night and never let go of.
My cock pulsed thick in his fist. The cum came hot and white between our stomachs, the water carrying it down between us into the drain.
He came a breath behind me, his name on my mouth, his hips stuttering against mine.
The cum pulsed warm over both our hands.
The shower carried it all into a soft echo.
He didn’t move for a long time. Held me there. Water at our shoulders. The basil bar had gone soft on its dish.
“We’re going to get cold.”
“We are.”
He shut the water off.
He led me out of the bathroom. Steam followed us into the hall. The bedroom was cool after the shower. He pulled back the duvet, laid me out, and slid in behind me and wrapped his arm around my chest, his hand finding the place over my heart it always found now.
“Stay,” he said, though I wasn’t going anywhere.
“I’m staying.”
“On Jack’s life?”
“Don’t bring Jack into this.”
“Too late. He’s a witness.”
I laughed into the dark. His heart steady against my back. The basil and bergamot still on his skin and on mine.
For a long moment, neither of us moved. Couldn’t. His arm stayed locked across my chest. My hand pressed over his.
“Don’t,” I whispered when his arm started to loosen. “Not yet. One second.”
He stayed. His breath on the back of my neck. His heartbeat steady against my spine. The wet still in my hair. His tears on my shoulder, or maybe mine on the pillow. Hard to say. Didn’t matter.
When he finally shifted, rolled me toward him so we faced each other in the dark, I pressed my forehead to his. Both of us breathing slow. Both of us shaking a little, from the cold, from the sheer force of what had passed between us.
“Stay,” he said again.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know. I wanted to say it.”
I pressed my mouth against his hair. “I’m not going to ghost you, Ellis. Not now. Not ever. You’re stuck with me.”
“Promise?”
“On Jack’s life.”
He laughed into my chest, the quiet, private sound that only happened in the dark, and I held him. The shaking slowed. My heart stopped hammering so hard it threatened to crack my ribs.
The wall I’d spent years building was rubble.
I was standing in the wreckage of it with no armor, no exit plan, and I’d never been more terrified in my life.
But Ellis was here. His arm across my chest. His breath evening out toward sleep.
The radiator hissing somewhere down the hall like the world wasn’t ending, like this was the most natural thing, waking up next to someone who’d seen the worst version of you and decided to stay, anyway.
Freedom.
Not what I’d thought I wanted, the version built on isolation and walls.
Something better.