13. Easton #2
Jace smirked and shook his head a little. “Really, it would be easier just to show you.”
A snort-chuckle escaped me, followed quickly by an eye roll.
Taking a beat, Jace moved his hand to the back of my head. His fingers ran through my short hair, and he bared his teeth in a vicious grin. “I would make you fly, Easton.”
He would take every burden off my shoulders until I was as light as a feather. He would let me drift freely and endlessly into the vast open sky. Yes, he would make me fly. He could make me lose myself in him so that nobody could ever find me again.
I wanted this wave to sweep me far out, to wash me away from the shore, and to help me float.
“Kiss me, then,” I said, no longer thinking about the next heartbeat, the next problem, the next devastating consequence.
The very fabric of my life was flaking away.
My beliefs about my parents, my career in hockey, my scholarship, my friendships.
It was all crumbling into dust, but I could have fire if I wanted it.
I could have the flames that had defined the way Jace and I had orbited one another.
Jace held the back of my head and brought his lips so teasingly close to mine. His teeth were incredibly white and perfectly sized, not a single imperfection on them. “You have to know,” he said, the heat of his body so near me that I could almost touch it. “You might not like the things I like.”
My throat was tight, tension screaming through every inch of my body. “Make me like them.”
I surprised him, I knew. He cracked a little smile as he reached up and closed his hand around my face, cupping my chin and letting his fingers sink gently into my cheeks. A small scoff of laughter escaped him as he nodded.
The ridiculous amount of pride I felt at doing something unpredictable terrified me.
Being unlike myself excited me more than anything I could recall.
For years, I’d wanted to be more like Jace or more like the boys in my school or the hockey players I faced off against. So long as I wasn’t myself, I was just fine.
“And if you don’t?” Jace asked, recalling me back to this moment.
I blinked. “I’m not scared of you, Jace,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything he could do to me that I wouldn’t want to be subjected to. So long as he was the one doing it.
Something must have told him how serious I was. He believed me. He saw it in my eyes. I’m yours, just like you asked. Take me. Rid me of these feelings. Make me forget.
Jace stepped closer, sliding his hand from my face to my throat.
He didn’t squeeze his hand, but the grip was decisive and firm, letting me know he wasn’t messing around.
What followed was infinitely more brilliant and destructive than a wildfire roaring through a forest. Burn what’s dead; burn what’s weak.
Leave nothing behind but the soil for another life.
Jace slammed his lips against mine as if some cosmic force had been holding him back until this very moment.
His fingers sank lightly into the softer sides of my neck as I tipped my head upward and let his lips feel mine.
My body reacted instantly. After a summer of sad and empty hookups, I was sure I was done with this.
I was sure it was out of my system. The last couple of guys I’d brought over hadn’t gotten me hard at all despite their best efforts.
I’d been so far gone in the chase of the meaningless thrill that I missed it when it was happening. But not now.
Jace’s tongue ventured into my mouth, searching the tip of mine, and my cock swelled in my boxer briefs.
It throbbed painfully as I opened my mouth to let Jace explore it with his tongue.
I held my breath, not trusting myself that I would shudder and fold before him if I tried to exhale.
Tense as a violin string, my muscles locked, my fists gripping Jace’s loose, oversized T-shirt.
This kiss alone was enough to make me tremble. What we’d done on the beach was only a crack, a breach of something immense, a hint of something larger and far more dangerous. And it was here.
The warmth of Jace’s tongue inside my mouth was the first thing I consciously noticed.
The moment stretched out as Jace’s control over me increased.
His hand moved from my neck to the back of my head, and he seemed to rise taller and stronger than before, kissing me from above and exploring every inch of my mouth.
I let him in. My body and my soul opened up to him, handing over the control he so desperately wanted.
Whatever he was into, I wasn’t afraid of it.
I was into one particular thing that made me his perfect fit.
My life was defined by its tug and its pull.
My entire existence was painted by my attempts to be rid of it.
I wanted him to be someone’s. To be his.
I wanted him to have me in every way. If it meant his hands would wrap around my neck and hold me until my face was red and tears streamed from my eyes, then that was what it would be.
If it meant he laid me down on the floor and pinned my face against it with his bare foot, then I welcomed it.
If it meant he would kiss me for an hour, lift me in his arms, and care for me as he had on that first night, then I would be his to care for.
Jace kissed me harder, the blazing passion only intensifying between us. It was like he gave me a lifesaving medicine at the very last moment, and I was so eager to stay alive. So I kissed him back, thrusting my tongue into his mouth and feeling the sharpness of his pearly teeth as I did it.
I could feel the amused smile stretching his lips a moment before he pulled his head back. “You’re a feisty one, aren’t you?”
Somehow, those words rendered me powerless. He’d spoken to me with such simplicity that I felt like he was bigger and better and wiser than I could ever be. “Shut up,” I huffed.
“No,” Jace said. “I’m not gonna do anything you tell me, Easton. You better get used to it.”
A shiver ran down my arms, making my fingertips tingle. I held on to the oversized T-shirt as if letting go meant falling off Earth’s edge.
Jace pinched my chin, making me feel smaller than I was. It was his soul that was so large. It was his aura that filled this entire room to bursting. “This is how it’s gonna be, baby boy,” Jace said.
My eyebrows ticked upward in surprise. I hadn’t expected to hear those words from his mouth in a million years. They didn’t belong there, not in my fantasies, at least. Yet, as they rolled off his lips, they defined me and grounded me. I was his baby boy; he was my…I didn’t know yet.
My everything.
“You’re gonna do exactly what I tell you,” he said.
I found myself nodding.
“And you’re going to do only what I tell you until the moment I let you come,” he said in a teasingly soft whisper.
Tingles no longer remained just in my fingertips. My entire body was filled to the brim with them. Until he lets me? He assumed total control over me, and it felt like stepping into heaven. A twisted, delightful kind of heaven.
I nodded.
“Good boy,” Jace said, his hand falling onto my cheek, laying a gentle slap that did little more than warm up my flesh.
As his hand landed there, he leaned in, holding my face in this spot as his lips pressed against mine once again.
He kissed me with surprising care and incredible skill.
I hated imagining Jace practicing kissing with someone else or, more likely, with many others.
He was pure sex appeal, and he knew it. He was like the embodiment of desire, stripped free of worry, appearances, and expectations.
He didn’t care how I saw him because he saw himself this way and shared it.
The brilliant glow around him was not really there. I wasn’t so far gone to believe that it was. But I saw it. As if he’d drawn in the moonlight, he glowed like a rare gem catching the light.
As he kissed me, our bodies melted against one another. The wetness of his tongue inside my mouth left me thirsty for more. The increasing pressure with which he held my face grounded me. Without it, I would have drifted impossibly far, but Jace kept me here.
What do you want me to do? The kiss came and went and came back.
It was like the slow beating of a tired heart, in and out.
I might have said the words aloud, or I might have only imagined them, but Jace lifted his head a little, his tongue dragging over my parted lips and touching the tip of my nose.
“Take off your clothes,” Jace whispered. He didn’t need to command it. I was so completely his that there was no question about me obeying or not.
He stepped back and kept his sharp gaze on me. As he looked down, I knew that my shorts did a poor job of keeping the bulge discreet. He could see it, and it sparked a glint in his eyes.
Jace crossed his arms on his chest. “Take them off,” he said, his voice low.
I took the edges of my T-shirt in my hands, then pulled it over my head, tossing the folded fabric on the floor.
Jace cocked his head, his eyes measuring me the same way they had measured me every time I walked around shirtless. “You’ve been teasing me a lot these days,” Jace said.
“I have,” I admitted, straightening my back and pulling my shoulders a little. I was so desperate to look good for him.
Jace cracked a smile. “I like it.”
In the silence that followed, I swallowed a lump in my throat. Every time I inhaled, my chest rose, and Jace watched intently. “The shorts,” he said. “But do it slowly.”
I pulled the string and untied the shorts, then stuck my fingers inside the waistband. What did it mean to undress slowly?
The heat in the room was unbearable, sweat breaking under my arms, but he seemed fresh and relaxed as he gazed at my shorts.