Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Seth
IT’S JUST US.
My mind flashes back to the ice cream place, the amount of people who tried to get close to him. The jealousy that sparked inside me when he turned his attention away from me and toward them.
I tried to shake it off the entire drive back to his place, but when Jacob touches my arm and leans close, lowering his voice, it riles up the envy lurking inside me. The truth is, I don’t want those people anywhere near him, and not simply because that’s my job. I don’t want them stripping him away from me, taking him apart piece by piece until there’s nothing left over for me.
Still, I’m not supposed to be here. I should never have let Jacob drag me out to that ice cream place. How did I not see this coming? I knew when he called me asking for help that something wasn’t right, but yet again I let myself ignore my gut and go along with him. No matter how many times it gets me in trouble, I can’t seem to say no to him.
Jacob undoes his seatbelt, then mine. His hands brush against my body as he does.
“Come on, Seth,” he says. “Come inside with me.”
It’s not a question anymore. It isn’t a suggestion. When he exits the car, so do I, helpless to refuse his command. I could turn around, and even as I lock the car I think that I probably should, but Jacob casts one glance over his shoulder and there’s no hope left for me.
When we get into the elevator, Jacob strips away any last, pathetic pretense I might try to hold up between us. He backs me into a corner, smirking as he braces against my chest and rises on his tip toes to kiss me. The elevator rattles, and I set a hand against his waist, steadying him. The moment I taste his mouth against mine, however, I’m the one wavering.
His smirk glints in his eyes by the time the elevator stops and lets us off. Jacob takes my hand and tugs me toward his apartment, throwing his keys on the floor when we get inside. He walks backward, pulling me with him, chewing on his lip as he takes me past the huge windows in the living room and the kitchen where I cooked him breakfast and straight to the bedroom.
“You don’t need to be scared of this,” he says.
But oh, he has no idea.
I need to be terrified of it, terrified of him . Everything crumbles when I’m around him, all my resolve and good sense disintegrating like wet sand. It doesn’t matter if Jacob is some slender, pretty boy rockstar. My bulk means nothing when he kisses me while leading me to his bed.
Even as I fall, I know I’m making a mistake. Even as my body presses his into the mattress, I think I should stop this. I have to stop this. I can’t do this again. I’m in too deep, and touching him again, hearing him again — it will only make everything worse. But Jacob slings a leg around my waist and tugs me down against his body, and when I move my hips he moans with such desire dripping off the sound that it fills my brain with static.
He’s gasping for breath when he pushes me away from his mouth. The hazel in Jacob’s eyes is like flecks of amber, even in the dark, and all I want to do is stare, touch, taste. As much as I’ll regret it, as much as I’ll hate myself, when he looks up at me with brazen want, my defenses shatter.
“Seth,” he says, a hand petting down my broad chest. “God, I want you so bad.”
Music reviewers invariably praise Baptism Emperor for their charismatic and booming lead singer. They’ve written pages and pages about how big his voice is, how it sweeps up the whole crowd, how it can fill entire stadiums.
None of them are even close to understanding the power of that voice.
When Jacob pleads for me, voice ragged and breathy with longing, there’s no force on this planet that can keep me from him. It doesn’t matter how wrong it is. It doesn’t matter that I know better than anyone else how wrong it is. If there’s a person alive who could say no right now, they’re stronger than I’ll ever be.
I scramble like he set me on fire. Maybe he did. My blood is burning as I sit up to strip off my shirt, then do the same to him. Jacob catches the fever and starts undoing his pants, both of us rushing to get naked. Shoes thump to the floor. My jeans hit something that rattles in protest, but it doesn’t slow me down at all. I toss my glasses with a clatter. Ambient light caresses Jacob’s warm skin, and I throw him onto his back so I can kiss along the shell of his shoulder, down his chest, over the ridges of his toned abs. His breathing deepens, silk dragged over a cheese grater, and he lets out a yelp of delight when I find the sensitive divot beside his hip and suck hard.
He pulls at me, yanking me back up to his mouth. Then he turns us on our sides so he can tangle his legs up with mine. One goes over my hips, allowing him to grind himself against me.
Our mouths pop apart in the heady rush of us grabbing at each other. His head tips back, and I seal my lips against the long column of his throat, tasting every moan that wavers from his mouth before it ever passes his lips. He clings to me, nails digging into my back, chest against my chest, cock sliding against mine as we rock and grab and clutch at each other in a messy explosion of need.
“Damn it,” Jacob hisses.
He interrupts our flailing around, rolling away to grope on the nightstand. He knocks something off it, perhaps a book, but doesn’t heed the crash before he rolls back toward me with a bottle of lube in hand. He squirts out a glob and smears it on us, and even though it’s entirely practical, I can’t help groaning as he strokes hard and fast to get me slick. When he’s satisfied, he goes right back to slinging his leg around my hips and kissing me, as though we never stopped in the first place.
It’s even better like this. There’s no more bite of friction. I don’t have to be careful. I bundle him up in my arms, squeezing him hard and rocking my hips against him. Our cocks slide, slick, hard, trapped between our writhing bodies as we crowd out every bit of space between us.
I don’t know how I ever believed I could resist this. I was insane to think I could say no and walk away. I’m holding the most beautiful man in the world in my arms, and all he wants is to get even closer to me. I’ll deal with feeling bad about it when it stops feeling so God damn good.
Jacob groans with mingled frustration and desire. He squirms one hand between us, and I gasp into his mouth when he grabs us. He’s fearless and blunt, just like he is with everything else he does. It’s what draws me to him, what I find so irresistible and inescapable. He’s never hidden himself to fit in in the military. He’s never stopped himself from going for whatever he wants, even if that something is, inexplicably, me.
I don’t have space to feel unworthy as he starts stroking us hard and fast. His hand is unrelenting, squeezing our cocks together, so firm the lube almost doesn’t matter. I let the burn crackle within me. It only sweetens the delicate balance of torture and lust that’s building up like a fire just beginning to catch.
Jacob pulls his lips away again, throwing his head back. His whole body curls into the pleasure, his posture as uninhibited as his hand as he strokes us. He grows sloppy, his rhythm faltering. I set my hand over his, taking over, moving him for both of us.
“Fuck,” he gasps.
I seal my lips against his throat, tasting the echo of that rasped word, then all the moans and whimpers and whining that follows. The faster I move my hand, the bigger the reward, so I pump with abandon until Jacob’s voice is trembling and buzzing against my lips. Every note echoes around my mouth, like he’s writing out the music on my tongue. As it crescendos, I add a few notes of my own, a bassline thrumming under the sweet, high, melodic song of Jacob’s pleasure.
The music crashes toward a peak. I crash with it, stroking, groaning, writhing to the rhythm of a song that vibrates through my whole body. I have no hope of resisting Jacob, not with his music in my ears and his body in my arms, not tonight, probably not ever.
The fear of that hits me, but it drowns inside the sound of us groaning in unison as we fall over the precipice of desire.
I can’t tell what’s him and what’s me. The whole world goes dark as I squeeze my eyes shut and shatter. Something warm spills over my hand and hits my chest, but it could be either of us. All I know is that it keeps coming and coming, a torrent that’s lain in wait since the second Jacob left my house the other day. It refuses to stop until there’s absolutely nothing left, and I sag on the bed like all my muscle has melted out of my body.
“God,” Jacob breathes before resting his head on my shoulder.
I don’t have the strength to move him. I don’t have the strength for anything. As the waves of contentment wash over me, all I can think is that I never want to move. I never want to leave this bed. I never want to leave him.
It’s the last bit that finally gets me out of bed. I go to the bathroom and find a cloth to dampen so I can clean myself up, then I bring it to the bed for Jacob to use as well. He struggles to sit up, his hair a beautiful disaster. I try not to watch too closely as he wipes the cloth over his bare chest, turning instead to gather my clothes off the floor.
“What are you doing?”
The hurt in his voice almost stops me, but as my head clears, some semblance of sense returns. I get my jeans on before I dare to look at him again.
“I need to head home,” I say.
He hops out of bed, still naked when he rushes up to me. “You need to? Why?”
I must not be completely lucid yet because I answer him honestly. “Because it’s dangerous for me to stay here, Jacob. I shouldn’t have done this. Again. I need to go home.”
“What’s so dangerous about it?”
“Besides it being my job?”
“Besides that, yes.”
I sigh. Jacob is staring at me like he truly sees nothing wrong with this.
“My judgment is clouded,” I say. “You … you get me all confused, and this isn’t helping. If it’s going to happen, I can at least go home afterward, pretend I’m still a professional.”
I pull on my shirt. Jacob follows me out of the bedroom, unperturbed by his nudity.
“You are a professional,” he says. “I’m safer because of you.”
I turn to him at the door. The look in his eyes deflates every ounce of anger I might muster.
“I really hope so,” I say.
I allow myself a kiss, one brief, soft kiss. Then I get myself out of his apartment before he can drag me back inside.