by E M Lindsey
Ronan gave him a flat look, then lifted Parker’s hand and kissed his wedding band. “Says this.”
Pulling his hand away, he brushed the tips of his fingers over Ronan’s full bottom lip, then slipped two inside when Ronan opened for him. His tongue was heavy, wet, hot. Ronan closed his lips and sucked, and Parker felt his cock twitch. He thrust again, feeling Ronan respond to him. Parker knew that like this, Ronan probably wouldn’t be able to get hard, get much pleasure out of sex, but those were the nights they touched other places—found those other sensitive bits that left them both gasping, and a little desperate, and a lot grateful to have each other.
Parker was thinking about Jonas again. About Jonas being there, touching Ronan, getting him off. He was thinking about how different it would be—and new and thrilling. And then some day it might be familiar and easy—like home. Like them. His entire body shivered.
“Talk to me,” Ronan said, pulling Parker’s fingers out of his mouth. He took his husband by the hips and shifted him down so Parker’s erection slid along the V of his hips.
“I think it might be something,” Parker confessed. “I don’t know for sure, but this isn’t me—this isn’t us.” Though it was, a little bit. They’d used flirting with strangers as foreplay, they’d enjoyed fantasy with porn. But it was all just that—fantasy.
Jonas was real. Painfully so.
“I’ve never wanted anyone besides you, until,” Ronan said, and broke off with a shuddering gasp as Parker dragged blunt nails down the side of his throat. “For a moment, the fantasy was so intense, it was like he was here.”
Parker nodded, feeling his balls go tight. He was minutes away—thrusts away—from coming in his pants like a man far younger than he was. “I could see it. I could see him on you, touching you, fucking you.” He shifted downward, planting his hand hard beside Ronan’s head, and then kissed him with long, slow strokes of his tongue.
“My love,” Ronan gasped. He was shaking. He wasn’t hard, but he was reaching that full-body orgasm Parker had discovered all those years ago when Ronan’s lower body was numbed and recovering.
“Before, the idea of anyone touching you—of anyone coming close to you—I’d want to tear them apart and protect what’s mine. But not when I think of him,” Parker said. These were dark thoughts, dangerous ones that could change everything, but he was so far beyond his ability to ignore them. “I want to watch you with him.”
Ronan sobbed a little, hands reaching up to twist in Parker’s hair. He turned his head and claimed his mouth, possessive and a little mean and raw. “Tell me,” Ronan begged against his lips.
“I want him to push himself inside you, fill you with his cock, with his come.” Parker used his chin to turn Ronan’s head to the side before diving in to bite at the sensitive spot under his ear, making Ronan’s entire body shudder and shake. “I want him to put his mouth everywhere. I want to watch him make you cry, and scream, and beg.”
Ronan gasped, then shuddered, and buried his face in Parker’s neck as he climaxed. “Parker, god…”
Parker lifted up, going to his knees before taking his cock out. He straddled Ronan’s chest, then traced his husband’s plush lips with the wet head of his dick before stroking it.
“Do you really want him to?” Ronan asked. “Because I saw the way he looked at us, and I think he wants it too.”
Parker realized every single one of his fantasies right then involved watching that beautiful man give himself to Ronan—and Ronan give himself back. But he wasn’t sure where he stood facing it as a reality. “I don’t know.”
“Okay,” Ronan whispered. He lifted his hand and closed it around Parker’s, increasing the rhythm until Parker couldn’t hold back. He fucked his hips into the warm circle of their fingers, then came in hot spurts along Ronan’s chin, neck, and chest.
His breath stuttered in his chest, then Ronan’s hands petted his thighs, and he felt himself start to come down. He was a mess, and they both needed a hot shower and a long sleep, but moving seemed impossible.
“I want you to want him,” Ronan said quietly into the still room. “I don’t think I can even think about him without knowing you feel the same way. You’re my other half. It…it won’t work without you.”
Parker looked at him, then cupped his cheek and brushed away some of the come from where it landed. “I’ll go and see him tomorrow.”
Ronan nodded, and though Parker knew were it anyone else, his husband would rage with jealousy. In this case, though, there was nothing but relief. He leaned in, then licked up some of his mess before pushing his tongue into Ronan’s mouth and feeding it to him.
Ronan took every drop, as greedy for him as he ever was, then used his hold on Parker to help himself sit. “Shower with me?” Ronan asked.
Parker smiled down at the absolute love of his life and nodded his head.
With another ranger called in from Estes Park to fill in for Ronan, Parker felt no qualms at all handing off his six patients that day to his occasional LPN, and he served his husband breakfast in bed. He whipped up French toast, bacon, and coffee while Ronan took care of his morning business, then waited to hear him roll back into the bedroom before carrying it all on a tray.
Ronan looked exhausted—dark circles in spite of sleeping for the last nine hours, and his fingers trembled as he tried to open up his pill bottles. He let out a frustrated grunt, and Parker felt his stomach twist, because he hated how often Ronan fought his bouts of weakness.
“Give it,” Parker demanded, then stuck the end of the bottle in his mouth, pushed, and twisted the cap. He tapped one of the round pain pills into Ronan’s waiting palm, then handed him water before pushing the tray between them and sliding in on the other side of it.
“Don’t you have to be at the office?” Ronan asked as he transferred to the bed. He had to use his hands to lift his legs, which told Parker how bad he was doing that morning.
“Sabrina’s back from vacation, and I told her you were having a bedrest day.” Parker dug into the bacon and smiled with his mouth full. “I thought it might be a good idea for me to also take a day.”
Ronan gave him a flat look which was still impressive in spite of his fatigue. “The last time you tried to stay in bed with me all day we almost got divorced.”
“That’s not my fault. You have shit taste in daytime TV,” Parker answered with a wide grin. “Besides, I’m just taking the morning with you.”
Ronan yawned, then lifted the coffee to his lips and took a long drink before sighing happily. “What’s on the agenda?”
“Grocery shopping,” Parker said, wrinkling his nose.
“Is that all?”
Parker knew what he was angling for, so he turned onto his side, pressing his stump into the headboard. The pressure on it grounded him as he felt a little out of his depth. “No, that’s not it. I thought I might go spend some time with Jonas.”
“Okay.” Ronan stared down at his fork, then grabbed the knife and cut the French toast into pieces.
“Is it?” Parker pressed when Ronan didn’t say anything else.
His husband sighed, then held his fork away when Parker tried to steal his bite. “It is. I mean, I don’t think we should jump into anything we’re unsure about, but I think it’s a good start.”
“I wish you could come with,” Parker admitted softly.
Ronan reached for him and dragged a thumb over his cheekbone. “I don’t. I can admit I want him—and that I want you. And it scares the shit out of me, because I don’t know what it means, and he might not want that at all…”
“Not possible,” Parker said, leaning into Ronan’s hand. “I saw the way he looked at you.”
“And you won’t believe me if I say the same thing?”
Parker rolled his eyes and pulled away from Ronan’s touch. “It’s not that. I like the idea of him and you. I like watching it, I like commanding it.”
Ronan let out a soft grunt. “Yes.”
“I just don’
t know if it’s right for me.”
“We barely know him,” Ronan conceded. “If he was anyone else besides Jonas Woods, I’d suggest dating him, but it’s not that simple.”
“No.” Parker let out a sigh and leaned back. He nibbled on the burnt edge of the bacon, leaving the more tender part for Ronan, who hated the taste of char. “Logic tells me to walk away. Hell, to run. This can only end in disaster.”
“But?” Ronan pressed.
Parker swallowed thickly. “I want him. Not the same way I want you…”
“But close,” Ronan said. “Similar. Like the other side of a coin.”
Parker shuddered, because Ronan had summed it up so simply, but so perfectly. “I’ve never felt like that before. Everyone else before you was just a way to keep busy until you came back.” He closed his eyes and tried not to feel that old echo of pain in those years Ronan wasn’t his. “This isn’t like that at all.”
“You don’t want me less, though,” Ronan pointed out.
Parker’s heart thudded with a sort of vague, abstract panic at even a hint of not having Ronan—or having him less. “Fuck. Ronan, no…”
“That wasn’t an accusation,” Ronan told him. He leaned forward and pushed the tray to the end of the bed before gathering Parker against him, holding him gently. “I knew I could never love anyone more than you, but I never thought there was room for someone else until I met him. And it’s still such a hard maybe.”
“Yeah,” Parker agreed. He pushed his nose into the side of Ronan’s neck and breathed in the scent of him—his soap, sweat, the things that made him uniquely him. “It’s worth exploring. We have some time.”
“If he wants it, we’ll go from there,” Ronan said. “For now, you need to make sure it’s something you can handle.”
Parker pulled back. “What if I can’t? What if I can’t handle sharing you?”
Ronan gave him the same, steady look he’d been using for years. It was the look of the man who fell for him, loved him, married him. The man who had never broken a single promise or told a single lie that mattered. He took Parker’s hand and kissed the tip of each finger, kissed the inside of his wrist, his palm, moved to his shoulder and kissed down his stump, running open lips along his faded scars.
“You are enough for me.” He pulled back and put his hand on Parker’s cheek again. “You have always been, and always will be, enough for me.”
“I don’t want you to resent me.”
“The only thing I’ll resent is you not giving yourself time to figure out what you want and what you need.” Ronan brushed a thumb over Parker’s lips. “Don’t jump in without looking just because I like him. Take your time. You are my husband—you are my life. It’s together or nothing, and I won’t resent you for either choice.”
Parker heard the honesty in his words, felt it. He knew then, without having to dig any deeper, that it was enough. He was enough for Ronan, and Ronan was enough for him. If Jonas fit into their lives somewhere, it was on his own—it was outside of this, right here. And that’s the one thing that comforted him as he moved forward and kissed Ronan goodbye.
Whether or not Jonas saw through Parker’s flimsy text asking what he was up to that day, he was polite enough not to do more than smile and offer to buy Parker a cup of coffee as they stood in line at the Cherry Creek Bookshop. Parker fidgeted, enjoying neither the closed space nor having to wait. He had his arm on to make the shopping he had to do easier, but the socket was already starting to irritate him, and his shoulder hurt.
Jonas surreptitiously watched for a moment, then nudged him. “You don’t wear it often, do you?”
Parker shrugged. “Not when I can help it. Work, mostly, and when I have to run errands.”
“Is it…have you been wearing it long?” Parker could hear the way Jonas hedged around asking, and normally it bothered him, but he knew the other man was just trying to be kind.
“Since I was a baby,” Parker said.
“Can I ask,” he said, then hesitated.
For half a second, he considered the shark attack story, but he was trying to carve a path of honesty with Jonas to see if there was something to build. “I was bitten by a dog when I was a couple of weeks old. Not a bad bite, but it got infected and there wasn’t anything the doctors could do about it.” Parker shrugged and used his muscles to wriggle his prosthetic fingers. “It’s more functional than what I used to wear, but it’s not always comfortable.”
“Sorry,” Jonas said quietly, then flushed. “I mean, not sorry that you have it. I’m just trying not to be a dick.”
At that, Parker couldn’t help his smile. Jonas was shy and painfully awkward, and Parker rarely noticed men like him, but Jonas was impossible to look away from. He was gorgeous—there was no denying it. He lacked the arrogance that usually accompanied that sort of olive-toned Adonis aesthetic, but it probably had everything to do with the fact that he carried himself a little hunched into himself and unsure. Jonas was definitely softer around the edges, like a man who didn’t pay a lot of attention to his body, but Parker liked that about him. Jonas bit his lip a lot, too, and he always had his hands busy. Parker let himself indulge in the fantasy of having access to those hands, of Jonas opening Ronan up while Parker watched, but only for a moment.
He licked his lips and met Jonas’ gaze. “Is it weird for you? My arm?”
Jonas blinked, then shook his head. “It’s not weird. It’s different. I’ve never met an amputee before.”
It was one of the most truthful answers Parker had ever heard. He’d called people out on their staring in the past, and they almost always overcompensated. An astounding amount of people were friends with someone whose brother’s neighbor’s uncle lost a limb in the war.
“Does it bother you?” Jonas asked.
Parker blinked in surprise, then laughed. “No one has ever asked me that before.”
“Not even Ronan?”
Rolling his eyes, Parker scoffed. “He’s punched a couple of kids for being dicks when we were younger, but I think he just assumed it bothered me.” He dragged a hand through his hair, then shifted one space up as the line began to shorten. “Sometimes it does. Sometimes the last thing I want to think about is this piece of me.”
“Sorry,” Jonas offered.
Parker shook his head. “I’d still rather people be honest, even if their answers make me want to yeet them into the fucking sun.”
Jonas choked on a laugh, then reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet as they became the next customers up. “What do you want?”
“I can…”
“We’re on my father’s credit card. Might as well fuck him over while you can, right?” Jonas’ doe-eyes were wide, sweet, and mischievous, and Parker knew right then that if he ever kissed him, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t regret it.
His stomach twisted with nerves at the revelation. This was all so new, so different. He never really tried to date Ronan. They had always just sort of been—secretly behind Fitz’s back as they explored touches and pleasure, and then openly when they came back to Cherry Creek married.
This was uncharted territory, especially because he’d always been able to read his husband, but Jonas had walls. Tall ones, fortified with his fear, and Parker wasn’t sure if they’d ever come down, no matter how much Jonas wanted them back.
“I’ll have a mango iced tea,” he said after a beat. “It’s hot as balls outside.”
Jonas chuckled again, and then ordered the same for himself. When Parker gave him a look, Jonas shrugged. “I trust you.”
The words hit him right in the sternum. “I…so…” He cleared his throat loudly. “What are you up to today?”
Shoving his card into his wallet, Jonas walked over to the delivery counter to wait with Parker at his heels. “I don’t really know. I was going to have Ronan drive me around the lake property again, but he’s sick, right?”
“Yeah,” Parker breathed out, feeling another stab of guilt that Ronan was
in bed alone even though he knew it was better to be out of the house when Ronan was flaring that hard. Parker would fuss, and Ronan would get annoyed, and neither of them wanted those fights. “Did he tell you about himself?”
Jonas shook his head, biting his lip for a second. “No. I didn’t want to ask. It’s none of my business.”
“It’s MS,” Parker said. “He would have told you if you asked. He’s had it for ten years now.”
Jonas’ eyes widened. “Oh. Shit.”
“It’s not fatal. Just…” Destructive, he thought, but he didn’t want Jonas to think Ronan was fragile or that his disease made him less worthy of being considered or loved. Then the thought that he’d worry about it made him angry. “It’s not an easy thing for him to live with, but living with him is the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”
Jonas chuckled quietly and glanced down at his feet, looking shy. “Yeah. I picked up on that right away.”
Parker felt himself grow warm. “I’ve loved him for most of my life. We were best friends growing up, and shit went really wrong in high school, but…it worked out.”
“I’m glad. Not that I’d understand.”
Parker scoffed. “Right. Like you don’t have a trail of broken hearts behind you.” He meant it as a half-joke, but he saw the way pain flared in Jonas’ eyes, and he regretted his flippant words.
“I don’t. It’s not exactly easy being, you know, this way,” he waved his hand at himself.
“Absurdly attractive?” Parker challenged.
Jonas’ face went bright pink. “Awkward? A social disaster?”
“You’ve been meeting the wrong people,” Parker declared, because there was no way Jonas shouldn’t have at least a dozen proposals turned down by now.
Jonas let out a breathy sigh, but before he could say anything else, their order was called, and he grabbed the drinks. “Want to take this outside? I could use a walk.”
Parker wasn’t about to argue. He liked the bookshop, but it was hard to focus on Jonas in there, so he led the way outside and took a breath of air. It was humid, but there were large, puffy clouds heading toward the sun, and he could feel a prickle on his skin which usually meant rain. “I think it’s going to storm. You have anywhere else you want to go?”
