Page 51 of Edge of Ruin
“Brian was a sick, evil fuckhead. Don’t compare me to him. Of course I want to see you in those boots. I’m a normal guy, okay?”
“You’re not a normal guy, Jack.”
He kissed me fiercely into silence, and lifted his head some time later, when I was dazed with lust. “Besides. You’re a fine one to talk about normal. Barbed wire and broken beer bottles, for God’s sake.”
“Oh, shut up,” I murmured, and kissed him back hungrily.
A moment later, I reached up to touch his cheek. “Jack?” I asked, tentatively. “Would you do something for me?”
He froze, eyes guarded. “If I can,” he hedged.
“I want to try something,” I said hesitantly. “I want for you to, ah ... hold my hands down.”
He jerked up onto his elbows, rocking me back. “Why, for fuck’s sake? After what he did? Why would you do that to yourself? Or me?”
“Shhh,” I soothed. “Nothing sick about it. I really think that it would be okay, with you. Hot, even. But I can’t know until I try.”
“But I’m the one who feels like dogshit if it doesn’t work out!”
“Please, don’t get mad,” I pleaded. “You don’t have to, if it makes you upset. I just thought, well, I don’t want all these dead zones and ‘danger, keep out’ signs in my head. I want to feel free. And if anyone in the world could do that for me, it would be you. Believe me. I would never ask such a thing of you if I didn’t trust you.”
Even though you don’t trust me back. I held the thought at bay with great difficulty.
He stared into my face for a long time, as if trying to read my mind. “You’re sure about this,” he said carefully.
I nodded, swallowing hard.
“And you won’t blame me if?—”
“Not in the least. I swear it.”
In one swift surge, he rolled us both over, pinning me beneath his weight. He folded my legs up high, hooking them over his shoulders, and grabbed my hands, pinning them beside my head.
He waited, staring fiercely into my face. Gauging my reaction.
I gave him a tremulous smile. “I’m okay,” I whispered, stretching luxuriously against the ballast of his hands. Undulating beneath him. “Feels good.”
He leaned down and kissed me, deeply, possessively. His tongue thrusting and twining boldly with mine. “Look into my eyes,” he said. “The entire goddamn time. Or else I stop. Got it?”
I nodded. My throat was quivering, and my heart felt full as I stared into his face, but I wasn’t panicking. No stabs of fear, no numbing black fog, no clench of tension. My heart was pounding from pure excitement, not from fear.
He was not gentle, nor did I want him to be. His body challenged mine, pounding deep and hard, and his face looked angry, eyes burning, mouth grim.
Except that I knew him now. I could feel his concern, his tension, his need. His intense awareness of me.
And I was aware of him, too, on levels I’d never known before. I sensed that the conquering, dominant pose excited him, and his excitement fed mine in a confused, muddled, delicious feedback loop of emotion, sensation. There was no play-acting. My surrender was as real as his conquest.
I gasped for breath, jerking up to meet his thrusts. Staring with wide, tear-blinded eyes into his face. Struggling voluptuously against the implacable strength of his beautiful body, his steely arms, his gripping hands.
I could go there with him. All the way. I could go anyplace I wanted with him, as far as I could dream of going, always knowing that he would carry me back, completely safe, all in one happy, sated piece.
Afterward, we lay tangled together, limp and damp. We roused ourselves at last to take a long, lazy shower, washing each other. Jack’s tireless cock rose to full salute, but I just laughed at him. “Dream on, big boy,” I said. “I’m all done for the night.”
He toweled me off, with his usual passionate attention to detail and herded me toward the stairs. “Food, then,” he said, resigned.
We made sandwiches in his kitchen. Devoured the rest of Margaret’s latest batch of cookies. When we could find nothing else that was quick and easy to eat, we went back up the stairs into Jack’s bed to twine our naked bodies as closely together as we could.
We talked, carefully. Long, tentative, groping conversations about our pasts, our histories. Circling delicately around forbidden topics.
