Chapter 3 Jackal
JACKAL
“Well, that was fucking weird,” I say as Garrett stares at the door Isla just slammed in our faces. “Did you piss her off when we were at the clubhouse?”
“Barely talked to her,” he replies. “Couple late-night chats at the bar when I couldn’t sleep and she was shook-up from whatever she’d been doing.”
I know this to be true. My Bear has never slept with a woman.
He’s bi, like me, but has just never acted on it, and now that we’re together, he doesn’t want to.
Before I met him, I was in polyamorous relationships with three other people.
Love is love is love and all that. Garrett, on the other hand, feels like love and loyalty go hand in hand, but only between two people.
At first, I wasn’t sure I could do monogamous, but it was one of his conditions. And I felt he was worth restricting myself to one man for.
“What do you make of all that, then?”
I think of what she just said.
The club. Who I was and what I did there. I guess…I’m trying to leave all of it behind and forgive myself for it…
“Think it’s as she said. Family rift. Someone died. She got the house. Uncle doesn’t like it.”
I roll my eyes. “Not the house shit, although, we should put some cameras on our place and make sure at least one points to hers to give her a bit of insurance in case she needs it. I meant why she seemed almost scared of us.”
We walk back to our home. “Think she’s regretting her involvement in the club?” Garrett asks.
“Seems like it.” I glance back over at the windows of her house. “You think someone messed with her? Is that why she left?”
“Define ‘messed with’?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I’m drawing a blank. I mean, I don’t love that she moved in less than twenty-four hours after we did, since we’re gonna have to make sure she doesn’t see us together.”
“We’re together right now.”
“You know what I mean.”
Garrett lets me go first up the steps. He likes my ass in denim, and I don’t mind him looking. “I do,” he says. “But we can’t change what it is. Plus, that house is both a money pit and a wreck.”
I look at the state of our hallway with its scratched flooring, a hole in the drywall at fist height, and no light fixture. Just a bulb dangling from an electrical wire. “I mean, so’s ours.”
“Yeah. But we bought this as a project to do together. Isla will probably sell it and flit off to live somewhere else within a month.”
“Maybe.” But the words still sit heavy as I kick the door shut with my boot.
Garrett cups my cheek. “Trust me, she’ll move out, and maybe some lumberjack with good genes will move in across the street.”
I drag him to the armchair we moved from our rental this morning and shove him down into it. It’s situated in the center of the family room off the kitchen because we were just in the middle of discussing its placement when we heard the first shot.
I drop to my knees and place my elbows on his thighs. “Why? You looking to replace me?”
“I mean, if he has better shoulders than yours, yes.” But his thumb drifts reverently over my bottom lip as he says it.
I pull my hoodie and T-shirt over my head, my nipples puckering in the cool air given we left the door wide open when we rushed to aid our neighbor. “My shoulders are perfect. And you and I both know we aren’t going anywhere.”
Garrett chuckles, placing his warm hands over my shoulders. “You don’t know that. I could wake up tomorrow and feel like a change.”
There’s a sharp tug on my heart. I know he stands by monogamy, but there would be a way to scratch that itch for change if he would open himself to the idea of polyamory. We could be ethically non-monogamous.
Sometimes, my dreams take me to a place where we find a third. Someone we could love, who would love us both, and close off a triad with.
And there are some days that I feel my love for Garrett isn’t enough to save him from himself. If there were more than just me to love and care about, his foundation would feel more stable somehow.
And he’d benefit from being loved more.
He’s been so deprived of it in his life, it’s as though he’s a constantly leaking well I can’t top up, no matter how hard I try.
But I won’t raise it with him because I would hate him to feel pressured or think I’d cheat because he isn’t enough. He’ll always be my choice.
He runs his finger down my arm, tracing the snake tattoos that crisscross my forearm and bicep, one for every important moment in my life when I feel like I’ve shed skin.
“Well, if that lumberjack ever does move in across the street, I’ll be sure to invite him over. You can take a tape to our biceps…or cocks. Whatever.”
“You always talk too much before you kiss me,” he murmurs.
And I seize the opportunity to steal a kiss from the man who stole my heart from the moment I first met him. The man who felt so woefully unworthy of love that it took him nineteen months to admit he loved me, when I declared my love four days after we met.
He drags me closer, his mouth rough against mine. The tension between us, the leftover adrenaline from facing off against two armed men, burns off in the heat of his kiss.
“And for the record,” he says, “I’m getting too fucking old to be dating someone else. Even a cute lumberjack. You’re stuck with me, Wild.”
Wild. The nickname he gave me after the very first time I came on to him.
I see the hair at his temples that just started to get the first hint of gray. “You’ll never be too old for me.”
“Good,” he says, before pulling his lips to mine again.
His kiss has always reminded me of a storm breaking. It’s a turbulent and beautiful force of nature. I slide my hands around the back of his neck. His body has always met me with strength, something solid and grounded. There’s a safety in giving up control to him.
To his quiet stillness.
Letting him lead without ego between us.
Mom thinks it’s Garrett’s strength that draws out a gentleness in me. I think of it more like a good cowboy knowing how to rein in the feistiest horse.
I reach for the buttons of his plaid shirt and unbutton them slowly. There are a couple of silver hairs in the thatch on his chest, and I smooth my hands over them as I make my way down to his jeans.
“I love you,” I say, reassuring him that no matter what happens in our lives, he will always be my love.
“I know.”
He watches as I unbuckle the belt of his jeans and find his cock already straining against his boxer briefs for me. “Lift your hips,” I encourage.
His hands flex on the arms of the chair, scarred knuckles pale, as he takes his weight.
The denim rustles as I shimmy it down his thighs a little. Enough so that I can reach him. He’s big. Sometimes, painfully so. Had to ramp up my butt plug sizes when we started having sex, just to help get better prepared.
But sucking on him is one of my favorite things.
Because this man, who is reluctant to give his feelings away, can’t help but share them when I’m sucking on his cock. Like he can’t contain how he really feels about me.
I grip him firmly at the base. He doesn’t like gentle, and I’ve learned that playing with him will likely lead to my own demise. I smile as I lower my mouth over his head.
Everything settles inside me. The scent of him. The sight of this big man being brought to his knees.
The grunt he makes, and the way his hips jerk in response.
But the best part is the feel of his hand stroking my hair, like I’m cherished. He never grabs it in his fist. Never hurts me that way.
I dip my head lower, taking more of him into my mouth, slack jawed as I lower, hard suction as I lift. He loves firm strokes of my tongue over his frenulum, and his thighs clench as I do that.
“Yeah, Wild. Just like that.”
Out of habit and caution, we refer to each other using our road names out in the world to give the impression of some distance between us. I can’t remember the last time he called me Kai, or I called him Garrett, or Wild and Bear, when we aren’t alone.
Saving those names for when it’s just the two of us makes them feel even more intimate.
My cock aches. Just because I want the act to be selfless, purely for the man I hope to marry one day, it doesn’t mean there’s no physical response. My balls will ache all through dinner.
And no doubt, Garrett will tease me throughout to make it worse.
By the time we get to bed tonight, I won’t be able to wait for him to put his hands all over me, edging me until I come.
I press down on my cock, just to make it sit a little more comfortably in my jeans, then look up to his eyes. There’s a knowing in them; that I’m depriving myself to enjoy him.
This is the part of him that no one ever sees, beyond the leather and the dirt of the road. This quiet devotion to us is the man beneath. And it feels both exceptionally special and yet, also criminal that I’m the only one who gets to see him this way.
I take his cock to the back of my throat, and Garrett exhales loudly as he arches out of the chair and threads his fingers through my hair.
“Just like that,” he murmurs.
I move a little faster, squeeze a little harder, and take him even deeper.
“Wild,” he grunts as he comes, his cock throbbing in my mouth as it pulses.
I swallow everything he gives me and then suck on him gently as he smooths his hands along my hair.
Eventually, I let him fall out of my mouth and rest my head on his thigh, smelling the earthy musk of him. We sit like that for a long moment, just enjoying the closeness after the pretense of the clubhouse and outside world.
He bends to press a kiss to my temple, then leans back in the chair. “You give incredible head.”
“I know,” I mutter, then laugh against his bunched-up jeans. I lift my head and straighten them, helping them back over his hips.
“Modesty is a virtue, so I’m told.”
I lean forward and kiss him, loving the way his arms wrap around me and hold me close. “No one ever said I was virtuous.”
“Good,” he says. “Because I love you and your mouth just the way you are.”