Page 63 of Diamond Ring
Jake expects a resumption of the hallway, for Alex to fuck his mouth and be done with it, no matter all his talk about waiting. Except Alex climbs on and lies so that they’re chest to chest. A kiss, this one shorter, fleeting, accompanied by the slight tickling sensation of Alex running his fingers on Jake’s shoulders and across the bumps of his collarbone.
He taps his forefinger in the dip of Jake’s throat like a pendant. “You left your necklace at the park.”
“Figure it’s safer there than here.”
“I want to see you in it.”
The thought makes Jake shiver: Alex seeing him like this, stripped to his shorts, laying his necklace carefully against his skin, like Jake belongs to him. Maybe it’s simpler than that. An echo ofMike’scomment that he likes seeing people in things he bought. That Alex has succeeded where Jake failed and has the bank account to prove it.
A thought as tangled up as a chain. Because his necklace is locked in the mini-safe at his stall, and Alex is here, and this can’t happen again.
“Where’d you get that Phiten necklace?” Jake asks. “The one in your profile picture?”
Alex smiles. “You don’t recognize it?” Another kiss, the tasting press of Alex’s mouth to his own. “You should. It’s yours.”
Jake’s necklace. The one that went missing after Alex’s visit that Jake assumed he lost like another set of headphones. “You took it?”
“I was angry.” Said with a shrug. “I wanted you to feel as unlucky as I did.”
“Well, it worked.” Because what else could explain ten fucking years grinding away for another chance?
“Hey”—Alex shifts until there’s no space left between them—“you’re here, aren’t you?”
“For now.”
“I can give it back if you want.”
The idea of that stings even more. “No, you keep it. One of us needs the luck.”
Something in the way he says that makes Alex kiss him again, a deep kiss accompanied by the welcome intrusion of Alex’s thigh. Alex is hard, his cock a wet smear on Jake’s belly and against Jake’s own still-soft one, a brush through the fabric of his shorts.
“What feels good for you?” Alex asks.
Jake pulls back slightly. “This is fine.”
“I didn’t ask that.” Said patiently, like they have ten years to figure it out.
“Can you touch me—kind of all over?” A request that makes Jake’s face heat, even if Alex is naked and he’s nearly there.
One answered by a slow nod, then the drag of Alex’s hands: at his shoulders, down his ribs, across his belly. The careful backs of his fingers, the brush of his palms. Places that aren’t sensitive but Jake feels now, amplified, matched by the continual flick of Alex’s eyes to his. He skips the fabric of Jake’s shorts, moving to his thighs, to places Jake’s been touched by trainers and clinicians but never with this kind of careful attention.
“I’m going to kiss you,” Alex says, and does, mouth on the inside of his thigh where he gripped in the car, stubble a pleasant abrasion across Jake’s skin, and Jake feels it, all over, like a current, a signal that intensifies when Alex does it again, when he works his way upward to the hem of Jake’s shorts.
Alex pauses there. “Do you want to take these off?”
“Uh, you can.”
Alex bites him gently, teeth at his knee. “Again, not what I asked.”
Jake lets out an exhausted breath. “I know it’s just the meds, and not my fault, but sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. Whatever you want is fine.” He braces himself for a rote answer, perhaps the gentle stroke of Alex’s hand.
Instead, a glare like rising anger, one that gets Jake’s own pulse up, softened only by the rub of Alex’s knuckle against his waistband. “Jake, stop trying to make me happy andtell me what you want.”
Jake’s jaw clenches, his back stiffens, his heart kicks up like he’s about to go prove fifty thousand jeering people wrong. “Alex, sincerely—fuck off.”
Alex laughs and tugs at Jake’s shorts when he lets him, until they’re naked, slotting together, kissing with a teeth-clacking ferocity. Sensations: the rake of Alex’s nails, the roughness of his late-in-the-day beard, the bite of his mouth at Jake’s neck. It’s rough, unkind,good, better when Alex pulls back and says, “Suck me,” and Jake’s about to finish what they started in the hallway when he gets two fingertips pushed against his mouth.
Jake sucks them, fast, hollowing his cheeks a little unnecessarily.
