Page 13 of Doors & Windows
It was an insult to draw a parallel between Dominic and Liam, but Jonah couldn’t help where his mind took him when his body trembled under a gentle touch. He clung to the stark differences like a man on a ledge, willing them to keep him anchored on the surface: the expanse of freckles like a starry sky, copper hair catching the lamplight, the promise of safety in soft whispers ofPlease? Can I? Is this okay?
Jonah wanted him. The physical attraction was undeniable, but it was secondary to this other, less familiar pull. This otherworldly possession of body and mind made him cravemore.
He’d known what he wanted the moment he invited Liam back to the house, and the simmering anticipation had followed him all the way home. He’d known what he wanted when he kissed Liam and pushed him toward the bed. By then, there wasn’t enough of him left unclouded by desire to allow him to think twice, letting his body move on instincttoward the one person he wanted more than anything in the world.
And it waseverything. Being with Liam like this set a fire loose in his veins. It was every bit as untethering as it was the first—theonly—time they did this. That night last December had been one of the best nights of his life.
Just before it turned into the worst morning,the reminder whispered from the darkness.
The first time Jonah felt himself begin to slip, it was at the realization of Liam’s trembling under his weight.
When he pulled back to catch Liam’s eyes, he saw something too much like fear in them. And for a disorienting moment, Jonah saw a teenaged version of himself staring back at him, lying on his back, shaking apart with anxious energy before his first time.
“God, baby. You’re so gorgeous.”
“Relax, Jonah.”
“Take this. It will help you loosen up.”
Just a flash of a moment, but the afterimage was burned into his retina. Dominic was a poltergeist in the room with them, a silent hand on Jonah’s shoulder, resurrecting the memory of what it was to be the inexperienced one, the one latching desperately onto the guidance of a person he thought he loved. Something cold and uncomfortable shivered through him at the idea that he was filling Dominic’s role now with Liam.
It isn’t the same. We arenotthe same.
“It’s a yes,”Liam had assured him, and Jonah let himself believe it.It was easier to do under the influence of Liam’s enthusiasm. His pale skin flushedmaroon in patches over his cheeks, his throat, his chest. His head was thrown back as Jonah tasted the crook of his neck, and it was such a headrush to see Liam in this context. The loss of control, the momentary slackening in the taut string of his anxious nature, was an illicit image that Jonah felt honored to be allowed to see. Toprovoke.
Jonah was aware that he was shaking, too, but it was hard to parse out the anxiety from the arousal. The two had been inextricably linked for too long to shrug off, no matter how much he trusted the person in his bed.
It wasn’t just Dominic in the room with them. There was no shortage of usurpers come to steal this moment away. Most of them were faceless in memory. A few of them were less so, their features sharper in his mind’s eye: the wealthy businessman with the gold wristwatch and tortoiseshell glasses on the nightstand, Shepard’s friend with the snake tattoo, Nathan.Shepard.
In remembering each of them, it was too easy to remember the version of himself he’d been in their presence: a frightened teenager trying and failing to hide his fear and reluctance from someone who didn’t care regardless. Here and now, Liam was willing and eager, andstillJonah felt the need to stop and ask if he was okay. To comfort him. He couldn’t wrap his mind around how no one had ever wanted to do the same for him.
Jonah was able to keep his head above water until Liam asked to switch things up. The second time he slipped under, it wasn’t so easy to recover.
He had given Liam his consent, and he had meant it. Jonah had spent a long time dwelling on the ways his history might get in the way of a relationship with Liam, and he had stubbornly come to the decision that he wouldn’t allow it to. Now, face to face with the reality of what that meant in practice, he realized it was the kind of naivety someone like Jonah should have been immune to. When Liam’s hand skirted below his waist, the jolt of pleasure was cut with a nameless dread. One that quickly teetered into panic.
Jonah was more sexually experienced than anyone his age should have been, but he didn’t know how to dothis. He didn’t know how to have sex with his own enjoyment at the forefront. How to be on the receiving end of something sweet and caring and gentle.
For a while, he managed to keep his reactions locked down. He wasn’t ready to cave to his body’s warning signs, determined that he could talk himself down before he had to ruin this moment for both of them. It was Liam’s first time, after all. Jonah wanted it to be special. He wanted it to be good.
So he kept himself pliant, ignoring the way the separation in his mind was starting to feel a little too similar to his old coping mechanisms—the first appearance in a long time of an old friend he used to call Leo. His whole body was television static. He couldn’t feel his hands, but he held tight to his last thread of composure.
Liam was the one to snap it by suddenly stilling his hand. He pulled back from where his face had been buried in Jonah’s neck, his expression pinched.
Atthat moment, Jonah knew he had failed.
“Jonah?” he asked. “Do you not…?”
He had been so deep in his own head that he didn’t realize, at first, what happened. Not until Liam’s hand pulled away entirely, slipping out from his elastic waistband; Jonah’s body had betrayed his efforts of staying in the moment, going limp and unfeeling under Liam’s touch.
It had been rarer, in Jonah’s experience, that a client’s primary interest was in getting him off. Some of his clients liked to do it, though. Henry Becker liked to do it. He would spend endless, agonizing minutes forcing a reaction from Jonah’s body, and even longer dragging him over the edge. Calls like that had been among his least favorite. Despite everything that had been taken from him already, there was something that much more demoralizing about his own pleasure being turned into a weapon.
They still weren’t done taking from him, he supposed. Even now.
“Are you okay?” Liam asked. “Are you not into this?”
The question, or maybe the tenderness with which he asked it, broke him. Jonah shuddered, eyes squeezing shut against the sudden, urgent burn of tears—the inevitable reaction to the surge of rage and despair that twisted his insides. He turned his head away, mortified and ashamed and so, so desperate not to let Liam see him cry.
Even more horrifying was the realization that he couldn’t seem to speak. Words were a blur locked behind his tongue and teeth, suffocating him with their urgency to escape.
