by Parker Foye
“Do you hear yourself?”
“Mm-hmm.” He started rubbing Teddy’s arm again. “You want my credit card?”
“No.”
“Take it anyway. Go buy books or whatever. I don’t even know what I’m going to do with that space. I figured I’d have it ready for whenever I decided. Had many other decisions to make, so that one became low-priority.”
“Yep. You definitely need a keeper.”
“Are you volunteering?”
“How much does the job pay? So far, you’ve demonstrated that you’re unreliable when it comes to paying me.”
Jim stopped rubbing. He lay tense and still for a minute, maybe, and when he lifted his head, his brow was furrowed. “You think I’m a dick.”
“I think you acted like one. The jury is still out on whether or not you are one.”
“I try not to be. I’m sorry.”
Sorry.
Teddy wasn’t used to men apologizing for their bad behavior until it was too late—until Teddy had already left them. Jim’s early apology was disorienting, but seemed genuine enough.
He met Jim’s amber gaze and, smiling, nodded.
Jim’s shoulders relaxed, and he put his head down yet again. “It’s not a job so much as a commitment. You hang around here, keep me on track and organized. You do all that, and I’ll take care of you.”
“Take care of me in what way?”
“In whatever way you need.”
“I see.” But he really didn’t. In the past, he’d been made to repay men for their small acts of kindness two or three times over, and Jim was talking about something much more structured.
He wasn’t sure if he was ready to take that leap with him.
Teddy pressed down one of the few gray patches at the back of Jim’s head and took a breath. “We’ll see. Okay?”
“Okay, gorgeous.”
“That I could get used to.”
“What? Being told the truth?” Jim worked the scruff on his chin side to side against Teddy’s neck and, reflexively, Teddy closed his eyes and pulled Jim’s face closer.
He liked that tickle. He liked the way the gentle abrasions made his skin prickle and his heart beat faster. As he spread his legs to let Jim’s weight settle against his swelling cock, his belly tightened with eagerness.
Teddy shifted left and right in mere centimeters, hardly enough to stimulate, but creating the exact right amount of friction to massage his sensitive cock head against Jim’s ribs. He could make himself come that way, with minute motions—just from thinking about Jim seeing his need and watching him come undone.
“Hard,” Jim whispered.
Teddy sank his teeth into his lower lip and rocked his hips upward.
“You like the way I feel against you?”
“Yes.”
“You want me to touch you?”
“No.”
If Jim touched him, Teddy would go off. The moment he wrapped one of those big hands around him, Teddy would shoot, and Jim would probably grin in that smug way he did. Teddy wasn’t ready to come yet.
“I want to see,” Jim whispered.
“See what?”
“Show me how you touch yourself.”
Teddy’s lungs seized and heat suffused his cheeks. He needed three tries to pull in a deep enough breath to ask, “What?” He tried to sit up, but Jim was too heavy.
Jim pushed up onto one forearm and grabbed Teddy’s sweatpants at the waist. He yanked them down his thighs in one hard, fast pull. Teddy heard the slight ripping sound, but obviously Jim didn’t care. He was propped between Teddy’s legs and blowing onto his exposed parts.
Oh, shit.
Teddy’s toes curled in his sneakers and his ass cheeks clenched. “What are you doing to me?”
“Grab it,” Jim said quietly. “Put your fingers around it. You’ve got nice hands, you know that? Long, graceful fingers. I bet you take care of your hands, huh?”
Gulping, Teddy shrugged.
Perhaps Jim caught the motion in his periphery. He was still looking down at Teddy’s junk, but at least he wasn’t blowing again.
“Go ahead,” Jim said.
Tentatively, Teddy pressed a hand down his belly. Jim watched it move, his gaze tracking with Teddy’s fingers until they formed a circle around the base of his now rock-hard shaft.
Jim swirled a fingertip around the slit, spreading Teddy’s moisture onto the flanged corona and then sliding the digit between his lips.
Teddy couldn’t move. Couldn’t swallow down the knot of anticipation in his gut or even pull in a deep breath again. With his hole clenching and cock throbbing, he could only stare at Jim, uncertain.
“Go ahead,” Jim said around the finger.
“I’m not sure what you want me to do.”
“Do what feels good so I’ll know how to touch you. Can you show me?”
Oh.
He’d surprised Teddy again. No one else had ever asked.
He wanted to reward him for asking.
Teddy started to work his hand slowly up and down. He’d never been asked to perform for anyone before—at least not in that way. No one had ever watched him so closely and with such intensity. Jim’s focus was unnerving, and hot as hell. Teddy would probably dream of the way Jim’s amber gaze bored into him as he touched himself so intimately.
“I don’t imagine this is much different than what you do.” He passed his thumb over his overstimulated glans and suppressed a shudder. His hips reflexively arced upward, pushing his cock into his tightening fist. “I’m pretty easy to please.”
“Yeah?” Jim peeled Teddy’s hand away from his cock and licked the palm and all five fingers before putting the hand back.
Oh, God.
Teddy started squeezing again, up and down, desperately trying to stave off the imminent release—trying so hard to draw the pleasure out. He decided he enjoyed being watched by Jim. He liked feeling his gaze on his cock and his warm breath on his balls, which were so tight and high.
“Fuck,” he whispered. He closed his eyes and pistoned his hips, faster and faster. His fist was tight enough to hurt, but he wanted that. He liked being gripped hard at times, and he craved the harsh friction. It was almost like being owned, and would have been so much better with someone else’s hand. Jim’s.
But Jim’s hand was elsewhere. His wet fingertip was circling Teddy’s balls and his lips bussed over them, kissing that small space between the sac and the base of his dick, and if Teddy had a slightly less aloof constitution, he might have cried from the overwhelming surge of sensation.
He might have screamed at Jim pulling first one testicle and then the other into his hot mouth.
He might have melted, utterly and completely, into the sofa cushions at the press of Jim’s tongue against his anus.
Then there was a finger there, and another, and Teddy stopped squeezing and focused instead on breathing.
“Why’d you stop?” Jim asked.
“You...”
“What? This?” With his warm gaze locked on Teddy’s face, he slid his fingers deeper into him and grinned daringly. “You think you can take me in here?”
Teddy closed his eyes and laid his head to one side then the other. His neck was getting a kink from being held at such an uncomfortable position. Being so distracted by Jim’s attention, he hadn’t noticed the pain. “I can take you,” he said after swallowing.
“Now?”
Hell no.
Jim chuckled and worked his fingers farther in, past the inner sphincter, and then out.
Fuck.
Teddy thrust his hips, hissing at the tight sting of being stretched and the pleasure of his own hand around his dick.
Jim closed his mouth around Teddy’s hea
d and sucked hard enough to make him see stars behind his eyelids—hard enough to make him wonder if he’d ever really been alive at all, and then Teddy moved his hand to let Jim put his there instead. He was doing the better job. He had the rougher grip and could make Teddy feel owned.
“Yes,” he whispered, thrusting and clenching. His fingers twisted into the back of Jim’s shirt, and his thighs shook beneath him.
Jim took him deep into his mouth, and Teddy stopped his thrusts the way he usually did on the rare occasion anyone wanted to suck him, but Jim grabbed his hip and made him move again before rewrapping his calloused hand around Teddy’s shaft.
“Jim, I can’t...”
But he could. Even as his eyes watered and body trembled, he didn’t have a choice but to rock his hips and push himself repeatedly into Jim’s mouth against his teeth and tongue.
He had to come. Needed to come, even if it was messy and shameful and loud.
“Jim!” He grabbed the back of Jim’s hair and pulled out of his mouth.
Still working his fingers in and out of Teddy’s ass, Jim gripped Teddy’s cock hard around the head and caught his spend in his fist—every drop, although Teddy felt like he was coming for an impossibly long time. His body behaved as if he hadn’t jacked off with Jim earlier.
“God,” he whispered and threw his head back over the chair arm. “What are you doing to me?”
Jim slipped his fingers out of Teddy’s ass and sat back on his heels. “That should be perfectly obvious.”
Teddy groaned and covered his eyes with his forearm. “No, I mean what are you doing to me?”
“Tell me how you’re feeling. Maybe I can help you figure things out.”
“I don’t know how I’m feeling.”
“I don’t believe you. I think you don’t want to tell me. Be right back.” Jim heaved himself off the sofa, and Teddy dropped his arm to watch him walk out of the room.
In the nearby powder room, water drummed in the bottom of the sink. The floorboards squeaked as Jim made his way down the hall. The refrigerator door groaned open and then closed.
Teddy got his wits about himself and pulled up his pants. Jim returned with a couple of opened beers.
Teddy took the one he offered and warily stared at Jim as he sipped it.
“I think you were going to tell me some things,” Jim said.
Teddy had been hoping he’d forget. He sighed and set the beer bottle on a coaster on the coffee table. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m usually better at putting my guard up. I shouldn’t have come over here last night. I shouldn’t have gotten into your bed or into your bathtub.”
Before he’d moved across the country, he’d promised himself he’d be better at saying “no,” and for almost five years, he had been. He’d stopped falling into those college traps. He’d stopped going home with all the wrong men, but then there was Jim, who he wasn’t entirely convinced was wrong. He needed certainty.
“I shouldn’t have—”
“Your list of things you shouldn’t have done keeps getting longer and longer,” Jim said. “You gonna tell me next that you shouldn’t have let me put you on the sofa?”
“Yes. Obviously.” Teddy cleared his throat.
Jim slanted a brow and sipped his beer.
“I’m going to move,” Teddy said. “I’m going to put on my own clothes and go handle business, just like I said.” If he had some space, he could think.
“You might as well keep the clothes on,” Jim said dryly. “It’s a good outfit for running away in. In case you break a sweat, you know?”
“Stop it. I don’t have a problem with being here, and that’s the problem. Spending time with you somehow seems like it’s not that bad of an idea.”
“Hardly a rousing endorsement,” Jim said flatly, “but I’ll take it.”
“Great.” Teddy pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes and rubbed. He could feel the headache building. Headaches always brought up the rear of the frequent parades of self-doubt in his head. To be an actor, he still cared far too much about what people thought of him. His skin wasn’t nearly as thick as he let on. “I deserve the sarcasm. I can dish it and I can take it. I’m not explaining myself well.”
“What do you want to tell me?” Jim’s fingertips were at the back of Teddy’s neck, calloused but featherlight. Stroking and lifting his hair at the nape. Making more goose bumps dot his flesh with each pleasurable rasp.
“I can’t think when you’re touching me,” Teddy whispered, and he dropped his hands in time to see Jim grimace. He grabbed Jim’s wrist. “But I want you to touch me. I shouldn’t. I’d never call myself a traditionalist. I’m far from that, but I’m not a man who lets guys into his pants on the first date.”
Not anymore.
“Are we dating?” Jim asked.
“I don’t actually know what we’re doing. I don’t know what this...thing is.”
“Something good, in my opinion.”
“You don’t even know me.” Teddy’s laugh came out sounding a bit crazed and manic. If Jim knew him, he wouldn’t want a man as neurotic as Teddy.
“I didn’t ask you to marry me, Teddy. I’m trying to get you to agree to move things along. We’ve wasted enough time being curious about each other, don’t you think?”
Teddy had to admit that was true. He nodded.
“I’m not an especially complicated man. For the most part, what you see is what you get. Ask me what you want, and I’ll answer if I can.”
Teddy fidgeted with the ends of the sweatpants’ drawstrings and forced his gaze up to Jim’s. He was actually harder to look at when he wasn’t smirking. With the smirk, Teddy could tell himself that Jim was too cocky and not serious enough, but with it gone, he looked sad, and Teddy couldn’t help but believe that was because of him.
He stared down at his lap.
“Nothing?” Jim stroked the underside of Teddy’s chin so tenderly that Teddy almost forgot what his hang-up had been, but the whisper of You’re only good for one thing piped up as always.
Shut up.
Eyed closed, he nudged Jim’s hand away from his face, squeezing his fingertips before dropping it. “Why do you need a commitment? Can’t we just...”
“Just what?” Jim asked. “Fuck every now and then? Is that what you want?”
No. I want more.
But “more” was so risky. He didn’t want to lose himself to some other man’s whims ever again. He wanted autonomy and freedom to be Teddy.
Jim nudged his knee again. “Talk to me.” He set down his beer bottle and draped his forearms over his knees.
Teddy opened his mouth and, finding no words rattling around in his brain that he could give up, closed it. Shaking his head, he stood and tried to step away from the sofa, but Jim’s reflexes were too fast, and his body too strong.
Teddy was on his lap with Jim’s arms around him.
The other man tucked his chin over Teddy’s shoulder and made that unusual noise in his chest again.
Five years of conditioning made Teddy open his mouth to argue, but arguing didn’t make sense. Jim wasn’t hurting him. He was holding him because he wanted to touch, and Teddy liked being where he was. He felt guilty for liking it.
“This can’t be right,” Teddy said in an undertone. “This should be... This should be harder.”
“No,” Jim said, smoothing his hands gently up Teddy’s thighs. The touch wasn’t remotely sexual, and that made it sweeter. “This should be very, very easy. Can you let it be?”
Chapter Nine
If Teddy had been a coyote, or any other kind of shifter for that matter, he’d have understood what Jim was getting at. If a mate was the right one, a shifter knew the same way they knew that they were alive. Jim didn’t have to be holding Teddy on
his lap—didn’t need to be drawing in his increasingly familiar scent—to know he was his. Him being in the house was enough. Being in Jim’s space was enough.
“You think you should play hard to get?” Jim asked. “Okay. I understand that a little bit. Maybe I’d feel the same way if I were making myself at home in someone else’s house, but I’m asking you to trust me. I’m asking you to give me some time to prove there’s nothing wrong with this.”
“I don’t think space is a bad thing. Even computers need processing time.”
He had a point. Jim wanted Teddy to stay, but not to feel coerced. Lasting affection couldn’t survive with that sort of start.
He clutched Teddy’s waist a little tighter, thinking. If Teddy went home, Jim would have to go with him. He didn’t want him out and about without an escort—not until everyone knew who Teddy belonged to, and not until Jim was sure no one would fuck with him. He had to assume that Carter would run his mouth. His blathering wasn’t a matter of “if,” but “when.”
“I enjoy being here,” Teddy said with a chuckle. “If you let me get too comfortable, maybe you won’t be able to get rid of me. You’ll have to find someone to dismiss me away the way I did your maid.”
Not gonna happen.
“So, you’ll come back here when you’re done with everything?”
“I guess I could.”
That wasn’t a guarantee, but he’d take it without argument. “What do you want for dinner?”
Teddy glanced over his shoulder and raised one dark blond eyebrow. “If I go to the grocery store, I could make something. Steak. Maybe a nice filet.”
“Mind if I get myself one, too?”
“I’ll go alone. Faster that way.”
Jim shook his head.
“Don’t trust me?”
“It’s not that, I just—”
“You’re picky?” Teddy snorted. “Well, duh, you’re picky, Mr. I-don’t-like-eggs-from-a-carton.”
“I’m not as picky as you think. Maybe I all I want is to hang out with you.”
“Why?”
“Because you make me laugh.”
Teddy seemed to be considering that as he rubbed his lips together and knit his brow. For a moment, he worked his nails against the denim over Jim’s thighs. Then he heaved himself from Jim’s lap and held out his hand. “Give me my jeans, your truck keys and your credit card. I’ll go home and pick up a change of clothes and then stuff for dinner.”
