Chapter 10 #3
The sound he made when Marcus pushed inside him was not a sound he'd made in three years.
It came from a place below language, below thought, below the carefully maintained architecture of a man who kept the world at arm's length.
Marcus slid into him slowly—agonizingly, beautifully slowly—and Jamie felt his body open and accept and reshape itself around the intrusion with a recognition that was cellular, structural, foundational.
His body knew this. His body had been waiting for this.
Three years of other men and none of them had fit, none of them had reached the place Marcus reached, because the place Marcus reached wasn't physical.
It was the part of Jamie that only existed when someone was paying close enough attention to find it.
"Look at me," Marcus said.
Jamie opened his eyes. Marcus was above him, braced on his forearms, his face inches away.
His brow was furrowed with the effort of control—holding still, holding back, waiting for Jamie to adjust, because Marcus always waited, had always waited, would wait as long as it took even when his own body was shaking with the need to move.
"Hi," Jamie whispered.
"Hi." Marcus's mouth twitched. Almost a smile. Then he rolled his hips—slow, deep—and Jamie's back arched and his bound hands strained toward the headboard and the sound that came out of both of them was the sound of two people who had been missing the same thing and had just found it.
Marcus moved. Slow at first—long, measured strokes that Jamie felt in his entire body, that lit up every nerve ending the edging had primed.
He established a rhythm that was quintessentially Marcus: controlled, deliberate, attentive.
He watched Jamie's face. Adjusted his angle.
Found the spot that made Jamie's vision blur and hit it again and again with the patient, devastating accuracy of a man who had memorized this body and refused to forget it.
Jamie wrapped his legs around Marcus's waist and pulled him deeper and said his name.
Not Sir. Not a title or a role or a protocol.
His name. Marcus. And Marcus's control flickered—his hips stuttered, his arms shook, his face did something open and wounded and beautiful—and the rhythm broke and rebuilt itself faster, harder, Marcus driving into him with an urgency that had been building for three years and could not be contained anymore.
"Jamie." Marcus pressed their foreheads together. His breath was ragged. His body was moving with a force that pushed Jamie into the mattress with every thrust, and Jamie took it, wanted it, arched into it. "Say my name again."
"Marcus."
"Again."
"Marcus—god—Marcus, I'm—"
He was close. Impossibly, devastatingly close, and Marcus wasn't touching his cock—hadn't touched it since the last edging—and it shouldn't have been possible, except that Marcus was hitting the right angle at the right depth with the right rhythm and talking in his ear with the voice that had governed Jamie's body for a year, saying his name, saying I see you, saying I've got you, and the combination was a key turning in a lock Jamie hadn't known existed.
"Come for me," Marcus said. "Let me see you. No hiding. Let go."
Jamie let go.
The orgasm started deep—deeper than physical, deeper than the contact points where their bodies were joined.
It started in the place Marcus had opened with his words and his hands and his relentless, terrifying honesty, and it rolled through Jamie's body like a wave through a structure—not destructive, transformative.
He came untouched, cock pulsing between their stomachs, and the sound he made was Marcus's name, broken into syllables, repeated like a prayer or a curse or the answer to a question he'd been asked three years ago and had finally, finally found the courage to give.
Marcus followed. Two strokes, three, his face buried in Jamie's neck, his hips grinding deep, and he came with a groan that vibrated through Jamie's chest and a full-body shudder that Jamie felt in his teeth.
His arms gave out. His weight settled onto Jamie—solid, heavy, real—and Jamie held him with his bound hands pressed against the back of Marcus's head and his legs still wrapped around Marcus's waist and his heart hammering so hard he could feel it in his wrists, against the silk tie, against Marcus's skull.
They breathed. Together. In the amber light. For a long time.
· · ·
Marcus untied him. Slowly, carefully—the aftercare instinct so deeply wired that it activated without conscious thought.
He unwrapped the silk and checked Jamie's wrists for marks, turning them gently, pressing his lips to the faint pink lines.
He brought water from the kitchen. Pulled the duvet up.
Lay beside Jamie and gathered him against his chest, and Jamie went—boneless, wrung out, utterly surrendered—and pressed his ear to Marcus's heart and listened to it slow.
Twenty minutes.
For twenty minutes, they lay in Marcus Hale's bed in Marcus Hale's condo in Stamford, Connecticut, and pretended this was their life.
That the world outside the windows was a city they shared.
That the kitchen down the hall was a kitchen where they'd cook together and argue about seasoning and leave each other's coffee mugs in the sink.
That the reading lamp on the nightstand was a lamp that Jamie turned off last and Marcus turned on first, because Jamie stayed up late and Marcus woke early, and the overlap of their rhythms was the kind of thing you learned about someone when you shared a bed and a life and a future.
Marcus's fingers traced Jamie's tattoo. The geometric blackwork, the angular patterns that climbed from wrist to shoulder. He followed the lines with his fingertip, slow, attentive, the way he'd trace a blueprint.
"What does it mean?" he asked.
Jamie turned his arm so Marcus could see the full design.
"I got it the year I moved to New York. The geometric stuff is—I don't know.
Order from chaos. Making something structured out of something random.
" He paused. "I guess I've always liked the idea that you could take a mess and turn it into a pattern. "
Marcus kissed the ink. Pressed his mouth to the inside of Jamie's wrist, where the design began and the pulse beat close to the surface. "I should have asked you that three years ago."
"I should have let you."
Silence. The good kind—full, not empty. Marcus's hand moved through Jamie's hair, and Jamie's eyes closed, and for twenty minutes, the world was this bed and this light and this man and nothing else.
Marcus's phone buzzed on the nightstand.
The sound was small. Ordinary. The kind of sound a phone makes a hundred times a day, signifying nothing. Marcus reached for it with the casual reflex of a man checking a notification, and Jamie watched his face change.
The warmth drained out of it. The openness—the unguarded, post-sex, post-honest, post-everything expression that Jamie had been looking at for twenty minutes and memorizing with the desperation of a man who knew it was temporary—closed like a door.
"Tom," Marcus said.
He showed Jamie the screen. One text, friendly and bright.
Hope the plumbing is OK! Picking up steaks for dinner—your favorite. See you soon ??
The heart emoji was the worst part. The casual, affectionate, trusting little heart of a man who was at a grocery store right now buying steaks for the fiancé who was lying naked in a condo with the fiancé's come still drying on his own son's stomach.
Jamie sat up. The amber light was still warm.
The bed was still soft. The condo was still beautiful.
But the pretend was over, and the real world—Tom's world, the world of steaks and heart emojis and a wedding in four weeks—had pushed its way back in with the gentle, devastating force of a text message.
They dressed in silence. Jamie in the bathroom, Marcus in the bedroom—a separation that felt necessary and awful.
Jamie splashed water on his face, checked his neck in the mirror (no marks above the collar; Marcus had kept that rule, at least), and pressed his wrists together to feel the faint ghost of the tie.
The drive home was thirty-two minutes. They did not speak.
The silence was different from the drive out—not anticipatory but weighted.
Loaded with the specific gravity of what they'd done and what they were driving back to and the four weeks that stretched ahead like a corridor with a locked door at the end.
Marcus pulled into the driveway. Killed the engine. Sat for a moment, hands on the wheel.
"The rules hold," he said. Not looking at Jamie. Looking at the house—the white colonial, the hydrangeas, the porch with the Adirondack chairs. Tom's house. Their house. The beautiful, terrible structure they were undermining from the inside.
"The rules hold," Jamie repeated.
They got out. Walked up the front path. Marcus opened the door.
Tom was in the kitchen, unpacking groceries, humming something Jamie didn't recognize. He turned when they came in, and his face lit up with the uncomplicated delight of a man whose favorite people had just walked through the door.
"How was the plumbing?" Tom asked, crossing the kitchen to wrap his arms around Marcus.
"Fine. Just a loose fitting. Easy fix."
"And the printer, Jamie? Did the paper samples look good?"
Jamie's mouth opened. His throat was dry. His body was still humming at a frequency that Marcus had set two hours ago and that hadn't fully dissipated, and his father was standing four feet away, hugging the man whose taste Jamie could still feel in his mouth.
"Yeah," Jamie said. "They looked great. Exactly what we needed."
Tom beamed. He kissed Marcus, and Jamie watched over Tom's shoulder, and Marcus's eyes found Jamie's above the embrace—held there for one second, two—and in that look was everything they couldn't say: the guilt and the want and the knowledge that the rules would hold right up until the moment they didn't, and that moment was coming, and they both knew it, and neither of them was going to stop it.
Jamie smiled at his father.
"I'm going to go work on the proofs," he said. "The steaks smell amazing."
He went upstairs. Closed the guest room door. Sat on the bed.
He could still feel Marcus's hands on his wrists. The weight of his body. The sound of his name in Marcus's mouth. The twenty minutes of pretending that had been more real than anything in Jamie's actual life.
He pressed his wrists together. Felt the ghost of the tie. Closed his eyes.
Four weeks. Four weeks until the wedding, and the end of the arrangement, and the door that Marcus had already measured and framed and scheduled for closure.
Jamie was supposed to walk through it. Back to Brooklyn. Back to his studio and his clients and his empty, well-structured life.
He already knew he couldn't.