14. Freshly Debauched #2
Harris could have denied it, but the lie would have been obvious, and he already had one sitting between them.
“Yup.”
“Did you have a specific reason?”
“Was workin’ on one.”
“Any luck?”
“Nope.”
A quiet laugh escaped Jay, and then he caught Harris lightly by the front of his shirt and kissed him.
The kiss was brief and entirely certain, just enough warmth and pressure to make every excuse Harris had considered irrelevant. His hand went to Jay’s side before he could think better of it.
Jay pulled back but remained close. “Can I come over later?”
That simple—apparently it had been that fucking simple.
“Yup.”
“I need to finish with Priya. Maybe an hour.”
“Whenever.”
Something eased in Jay’s face. He glanced toward the lodge windows. “Go back without me. I’ll come when I’m done.”
Harris nodded. Neither moved for another second before Harris turned toward the cabin, irritated that he could have saved himself thirty minutes by going directly after what he wanted.
* * *
Jay gave it a little more than an hour. He reviewed the audio, checked the next day’s schedule, answered two emails that could have waited, and finally admitted none of it was about work.
The cabin light was on when he crossed the yard. He waited until the path was empty before knocking.
“Come in.”
Harris sat at one end of the couch in a soft gray shirt and dark sweatpants, glasses low on his nose, a book open in one hand.
Jay stopped inside the door. He had seen Harris shirtless, exhausted, irritated, and coming apart beneath his hand; apparently none of that had prepared him for reading glasses.
Harris looked over the top of them. “What?”
“You’re reading…” Jay squinted at the paperback. “Middlemarch?”
“Yup.”
“In glasses.”
Harris removed them immediately. “Need ’em when the print’s small.”
“Put them back.”
“Nope.”
“Harris.”
“Navarro.”
Jay crossed the room and took the book from him. Harris allowed it, which was almost more surprising than the glasses.
“You’re more than halfway through.”
“Been reading it awhile.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
“Some.”
“That’s quite the thorough review.”
“Didn’t know I was being interviewed.”
“You’re not. I’m trying to understand why this entire situation is doing something to me.”
Something quiet shifted between them. Jay placed the book on the side table and folded Harris’s glasses on top of it, and when he straightened, Harris was still watching him.
“C’mere,” Harris said.
Jay went.
The first kiss was slower than the one outside.
Harris’s hand settled behind his neck while Jay stood between his knees, leaning down into the kiss, close enough to feel his warmth through both layers of clothing.
Harris took his time with it, as though four days apart had left him with something to prove.
Jay caught his jaw and tilted his face higher. Harris made a low sound against his mouth, one hand tightening at Jay’s waist.
The cabin offered something the lookout and line cabin had not: time—no horses waiting to be saddled, no route that needed finishing, no work beginning close enough to count. The lack of urgency made the wanting worse.
Jay moved one knee onto the couch beside Harris’s thigh. Harris’s hands slid beneath his shirt, palms hot against bare skin. They shifted until Jay was half over him, Harris’s body taking up most of the couch beneath him.
Harris caught the hem of Jay’s shirt, and Jay lifted his arms and let him pull it away.
Harris had seen him shirtless at the line cabin, but in bad light and with considerably more urgency. This time his gaze lingered, moving openly over Jay’s chest and stomach before returning to his face.
“Accurate information at last,” Jay said.
“Thought you weren’t gonna bring that up.”
“I said no such thing.”
Jay caught the bottom of Harris’s shirt. “Your turn.”
For a moment, Harris did not move. Jay waited until he raised his arms.
Jay had gotten his own look at Harris at the line cabin, but there was a difference between seeing and having the leisure to look.
Harris was larger through the chest and shoulders, his body shaped by decades of working the ranch.
Sun darkened his arms and throat while the skin beneath his shirt remained lighter.
A pale scar crossed his ribs; another disappeared beneath the waistband of his sweatpants.
Jay set both hands against Harris’s chest and felt him inhale. He ran his palms slowly outward, over dense muscle and the rougher hair across the center of his chest.
Harris watched with the uneasy concentration of a man who had not decided whether being examined was a privilege or a threat.
“You plannin’ to inspect me all night?” Harris asked.
“I’ve been operating with incomplete data.”
“Seemed to manage just fine.”
“I’m very committed to professional rigor. I think I need to see all the angles.”
That eased something in his face.
Jay kissed him again. They wrestled lazily for control until Harris used his greater weight to turn them, pinning Jay beneath him for several seconds. Jay laughed into his mouth, hooked a leg around Harris’s hip, and rolled hard enough to reverse them—nearly onto the floor.
They ended with Jay straddling one of Harris’s thighs, both breathing harder than the struggle justified.
Jay looked down. Harris’s mouth was red from kissing, his eyes dark around the pupils, a faint flush spreading beneath the hair across his chest.
“What?” Harris asked.
“You’re fucking gorgeous.”
“Jesus, Navarro.”
Jay smiled and slid from the couch onto his knees.
Harris went still when Jay touched the drawstring at his waist. The pause was brief, but Jay was starting to learn his tells.
“You okay?”
Harris held his gaze. “Yup.”
Jay loosened the drawstring. He took his time, partly because he had imagined this since the line cabin and partly because Harris seemed unused to being observed with nowhere to hide.
He drew the sweatpants down far enough to free him. Harris was already hard, thick against his stomach. The sight sent a sharp pulse through Jay.
He closed one hand around him and looked up.
The first stroke pulled a rough breath from Harris. Jay leaned forward, touched his tongue to the head, then did it again more slowly. Harris’s fingers flexed against the cushion.
Jay kept his eyes on Harris as he took him into his mouth.
“Fuck.”
Harris inhaled sharply, his stomach tightening beneath Jay’s hand. Jay drew back almost completely before sinking down again, learning the weight and taste of him without hurrying.
Stronger suction tightened Harris’s stomach. A slow pass of Jay’s tongue beneath the head brought his hips forward. Taking him deep enough to press against Jay’s throat made his fingers open helplessly against the couch.
Jay explored all of it. He had imagined this for four days—longer, if he was being honest. Harris’s heat and weight in his mouth, the low sounds he could not quite suppress, the stunned attention of a man who still seemed surprised to be wanted this way.
Jay loved the immediate honesty of a body responding to pleasure, but Harris was something else. Maybe because Jay had wanted him for so long without believing he stood a chance. Maybe because every reaction still seemed to catch Harris slightly off guard.
One of Harris’s hands settled on Jay’s shoulder. Without lifting his mouth, Jay caught his wrist and guided it into his hair.
Harris’s fingers threaded carefully through the waves at the back of his head.
Jay pressed into the grip. Harris understood; his fingers tightened, and the sound that escaped Jay vibrated around him.
“Christ, Jay.”