21. An Excellent Use of County Resources #3
Harris could use more of himself here. Not carelessly—not without listening. But without holding back merely from habit.
He bent over Jay and spread one hand broadly between his shoulder blades, guiding him down toward the mattress.
Jay went willingly, chest meeting the sheets while his hips remained raised beneath Harris.
“Like that?” Harris asked.
“Fuck. Yeah.”
Harris moved again. The changed angle pulled another ragged sound out of Jay.
He tightened one hand around Jay’s hip and repeated the movement, drawing Jay backward to meet him.
“Exactly like that.”
The instruction stripped away another layer of Harris’s caution.
He found a rhythm—deeper, firmer, enough force that the mattress shifted beneath their knees and the headboard began knocking against the wall.
Jay laughed breathlessly. “Excellent quality furniture.”
Harris drove into him again. The laugh broke apart.
Better.
Jay had no interest in the version of Harris that measured every ounce of his strength and offered only what seemed safest. He asked for more each time Harris gave it.
So Harris gave him more.
Sweat ran along his spine. His thighs began to burn. He held Jay where he wanted him, one palm heavy between his shoulders and the other locked around his hip while Jay pushed back, strong and demanding.
“Harris.”
Hearing his name in that wrecked voice nearly destroyed what remained of his concentration.
Harris leaned over him and caught his jaw, drawing him partly upright until their mouths met.
The kiss was badly angled from the start. Wet, hard, neither of them caring when their teeth struck. Jay reached behind Harris’s neck and held him close while Harris kept moving.
For one brief second, Harris caught the green-gold around Jay’s pupils before his eyes closed.
Jay moved back against him.
“Still think you’re running this whole thing?” he asked, his voice nearly gone.
Harris tightened his hold along Jay’s jaw and kissed him again.
“Never thought I was.”
He guided Jay back down, then reached beneath him. Jay was rock hard and sticky from his precum.
“Fucking hell, Jay.”
Harris tried to coordinate his hand with the rhythm of his hips.
Which failed immediately.
Jay caught his wrist and adjusted the angle. “Like this.”
Harris corrected his grip, and Jay’s entire body reacted.
“Yeah. Don’t stop.”
Harris kept the rhythm. His attention narrowed to the man beneath him: Jay tightening around him, the movement of his hand, every rough sound Jay made into the mattress.
He could feel him getting closer. Jay’s hips began losing their steady answer. His breath came apart completely, and his fingers closed hard around the bedding.
Harris bent low, his mouth near Jay’s ear. “Come for me.”
So Jay did.
His body locked around Harris, Harris’s name breaking out of him.
That was enough. Release tore through Harris with the next movement, sudden and overwhelming. His entire body shook with it. He buried his face against Jay’s shoulder and let out a sound he barely recognized as his own.
For several seconds, neither of them moved. Harris remained bent over Jay’s back while they dragged air into their lungs. His heart struck heavily against his ribs, and every useful muscle in his body felt spent.
Eventually Jay shifted beneath him with a strained noise.
“Okay, cowboy. Off.”
Harris lifted his head immediately. “You all right?”
“Need oxygen.”
A laugh escaped Harris. He moved away carefully, dealt with the condom, and collapsed onto the mattress beside him. Jay dropped flat onto his stomach with his face half buried in the pillow while Harris lay on his back and stared at the ceiling.
The room went quiet except for their breathing and the determined rattle of the air conditioning unit.
Sweat cooled slowly over Harris’s skin. His pulse settled.
He waited for something else to arrive with it.
He had expected his first real sex with a man to leave some complication behind. Shame once the wanting had been satisfied, perhaps. Questions. An unmistakable sensation that crossing the line had converted him into somebody different.
Nothing came.
Harris lay there exhausted, wrung out, and entirely himself.
Still forty-three. Still divorced. Still responsible for a length of north fence that needed replacing when he got home.
Still bisexual, whether or not he was ready to say the word where anybody could hear it.
And more completely satisfied than he could remember being in a long fucking time.
Beside him, Jay finally turned his head on the pillow.
His hair was damp and wrecked across his forehead, his skin still flushed high over his cheekbones. His eyes were heavy-lidded when they found Harris.
“That,” Jay said hoarsely, “was an excellent use of county resources.”
Harris laughed, weak and helpless enough that the sound surprised him. “Glad you approve.”
“I’m a taxpayer. I take fiscal responsibility very seriously.”
“Pretty sure you pay taxes in New York.”
Jay closed his eyes. “Don’t ruin this for me.”
Harris looked over at him and tried not to smile, but his mouth betrayed him anyway.
For a while, neither of them said anything else.