Page 57 of After the Siren
Stavs was looking at his mouth. That seemed like a good sign. Jake sat up a little, stretching. Maybe flexing a bit. Just becausehe was being responsible didn’t mean he wasn’t going to put his best foot forward.
Stavs was definitely not looking at his face anymore, so mission accomplished.
Stavs licked his lips. ‘Hooking up ... is a bad idea.’
There was a hint of a question. Just a hint, but Jake could roll with it. He wasn’t going to try to talk Stavsintoanything, but he wasn’t going to try to talk himoutof anything either.
‘Why?’
‘We’re ... teammates. We don’t want it to get weird.’
‘Then we don’t make it weird.’
‘If we ... it shouldn’t happen more than once,’ Stavs said, his gaze sliding down Jake’s torso.
Yeah, they were going to have sex. Stavs just needed to work out that he’d already decided, maybe that he’d decided last night on the couch, when they’d wrestled for that controller.
Jake realised he hadn’t said anything in response to Stavs’ comment, so he shrugged.
‘It shouldn’t,’ Stavs said, sitting up a little more. As though that was going to help Jake concentrate on Stavs’ words and not his dick. Or his shoulders. Or the trail of hair vanishing into the top of his briefs.
‘I wasn’t arguing,’ Jake said.
‘You didn’t agree.’
‘If you don’t want it to happen again, it won’t happen again.’ Jake shifted, and if it had the effect of pulling his boxers tighter over his crotch then, well, these things happen.
Stavs narrowed his eyes, like he thought Jake was tricking him. ‘You want it to happen again?’
‘Dunno, it hasn’t happened the first time yet.’
Thatmade Stavs stop thinking about a hypothetical next time. His eyes narrowed. Competitive motherfucker.
‘I didn’t hear any complaints last night,’ Stavs said.
‘I’m gonna start complaining now if you don’t make up your mind.’
‘Yeah?’ Stavs shifted towards him, but they still weren’t quite touching. The look in his eyes made Jake’s stomach flip. ‘What have you got to complain about?’
‘Well,’ Jake said, and finally,finallylet himself reach out to put a hand on Stavs’ hip. ‘There’s this hot guy in bed with me and all he’s doing istalking.’
‘Wow, that must be really hard for you.’
‘That’s not what’s hard.’ With someone else, Jake might have grabbed their hand and pressed it against his dick, let them feel how fucking hard he was from just sleeping next to them, but he wasn’t quite sure where Stavs was at with ... well, with dicks. He’d seemed pretty keen on Jake’s dick last night, but there was last night and then there was this morning.
Stavs’ eyes tracked down Jake’s body, slowly. Jake had never minded being looked at, had alwayslikedbeing looked at in bed, but something about Stavs’ focused attention made him feel hot and shivery at the same time. He remembered the way Stavs had pinned his wrists to the couch, the way he’d pressed his teeth just under Jake’s ear. The effort of not kissing Stavs, not touching him, not doingsomething, was going to kill Jake. But this wasn’t his call to make. He’d made it pretty clear what he wanted, and if Stavs was going to bail, better now than in ten minutes.
Stavs didn’t bail. Instead, he reached up to set one hand against Jake’s cheek. It was sweet in a way Jake hadn’t expected, and he turned his head to kiss Stavs’ palm, then his wrist.
‘I think I’m done talking,’ Stavs said.
‘Fuckingfinally,’ Jake said, and kissed him.
Theo was sure there were very good reasons he shouldn’t have sex with Jake Cunningham. He’d had a good grasp of them a few minutes ago. He’d really almost taken thebail and pretend this never happenedoption.
But now Jake was straddling him – his bare thighs on either side of Theo’s hips – and the grin that had annoyed Theo so much the first few times he’d seen it was having a very different effect. Or maybe the same effect, but he wasn’t lying to himself about it anymore. He wondered, for a second before their lips met, whether kissing Jake would be as good as he remembered from the night before. Whether some of it had just been the buzz from the game and the alcohol. But if anything it was even better this time, both of them sleep-warm and still a little lazy, Jake’s mouth opening under his, hot and eager. The way Jake had been laughing, just a little, the second before they’d kissed.
They kissed for ... Theo wasn’t sure how long, time buckling around them as he explored Jake’s body, the breadth of his shoulders, the way the muscles in his back flexed under Theo’s palms, the way his abs tensed under the pads of Theo’s fingers when Theo got a hand under his t-shirt, the way Theo could tell what he liked from the way he kissed back. They kissed until it wasn’t lazy at all, until Theo couldn’t remember a single reason they shouldn’t do this.
