Page 61 of After the Siren
Kissing Jake really was a very satisfactory way to shut him up.
Chapter Fourteen
Jake needed to get his shit together. He needed a shower and a coffee, and he definitely needed to stop kissing Stavs like they’d snuck away to make out after the school formal. There had been way too much kissing forwe can’t do this againor forbros just fucking around.
Why had there been so much kissing? Maybe casual hook-ups with girls were different. Maybe there was, as a rule, more kissing. But by Jake’s standards, there had been an unexpected amount of kissing.
Still, Stavs was a very good kisser, and if they kept kissing for much longer they were definitely heading for a second round. Jake felt good about that. He felt good about almost everything with Stavs’ mouth against his, though he probably should have mopped up a bit before they’d gotten pressed up together again. Stavs didn’t wax his chest, and Jake was a bit obsessed with the dark spread of hair across his pecs.
‘Hey, Jaze,’ Paddy said from the hall. Jake opened his mouth to say something, but the door bounced off the doorstop before he could get a word out.
It was Jake’s fault, really. He’d been too caught up in Stavs to flip the do-not-disturb sign on the door.
Stavs almost yeeted himself out of the bed in surprise, narrowly avoiding kneeing Jake in the balls. He managed to burrito himself in the sheet, which of course meant that Jake was very much not covered by the sheet.
There was no possible explanation for what was going on other thanWe just fucked. They were both naked, there was come drying tacky on Jake’s stomach, and Jake was pretty sure there was a growing bruise on the side of his neck where Stavs had really gotten his teeth in at one point.
Oh, and his dick was still at half-mast. That too. Paddy’s entrance had had a chilling effect, but not chilling enough.
‘Shit, sorry,’ Paddy said and retreated, pulling the door shut behind him. Jake heard him dissolve into laughter in the hall. ‘You want breakfast, Jaze? Stavs?’ he asked from the other side of the door. ‘Or did you already eat?’
‘Go fuck yourself,’ Jake called. ‘But yeah, give us twenty. Gotta shower.’
‘Keep it down in there, I don’t want to hear it.’
‘Like you wouldn’t love it.’
Paddy’s footsteps receded down the hall. He was still laughing. Jake grabbed the nearest item of clothing – hopefully it belonged to him – and took stock while he did a quick clean-up. Stavs looked like he’d taken a hard knock to the head, so round two was probably off the table. He was still wrapped in the sheet. He looked a bit like one of those confused rescue animals swaddled in a towel, eyes wide.
‘It’s fine,’ Jake said. ‘Paddy won’t say anything.’
Stavs blinked. ‘Okay.’
‘Are you good?’
‘I’m ... yeah.’ Stavs didn’t sound very convincing. Jake hoped it was because Paddy walking in on them had been a surprise, not because he was freaking out about boning a dude. Jake usually tried to be gone prior to any post-sex identity crises.
‘Seriously, Paddy won’t say anything. Well, probably to Xen, but not to anyone else. We might cop it a bit from those two.’
Paddy rarely passed over an opportunity to give people shit. He wouldn’t gossip, but Jake was confident they were both going to be roasted over breakfast like a couple of vine-ripe tomatoes. Assuming breakfast was still on the table.
‘I know.’ Stavs closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and shook his head. ‘We ... should we talk? About ...’ He made an expansive hand gesture.
They should probably talk. ‘Or we could get breakfast?’ Jake suggested.
‘Sure.’ Jake wasn’t sure whether Stavs looked relieved or not.Jakewas relieved. He needed to recover from it before they talked about it, or alternatively not talk about it ever.
He could be chill. Hewaschill. He’d hooked up with a teammate before. Until Taylor got traded, the two of them had a good thing going. Although, thinking about it, Jake wasn’t sure they’d everkissed. It hadn’t been a kissing kind of thing.
He and Stavs showered – one at a time, unfortunately – and Stavs got distracted from whatever was going on in his head when he realised that it washisshirt that Jake had mopped up with. Jake gave him a spare Falcons t-shirt and resisted the urge to kiss the irritation off his face.
There was not going to be any more kissing.
Xen arrived back from a run as they got into the kitchen. Paddy was sitting on one of the kitchen stools, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. Xen gave him a puzzled look, but Paddy kept his mouth shut. The four of them managed to get out of the house, snag a premium spot in the cafe courtyard and order food without disaster. Jake was almost relaxed by the time the food arrived. Stavs seemed relatively chill – as chill as Stavs ever seemed. It was a beautiful morning, and he’d gotten off. Nocomplaints from Jake, except that he’d been denied the chance to get off again.
He hadn’t expected Xen to be the one to bring it all unstuck.
‘So who ended up on top?’ Xen asked, slicing a neat corner off his toast.
