by Anna Martin
Jared rolled over and nudged a recalcitrant Adam until his head was cushioned on his chest. From there, Jared could smooth his hand over the bird’s nest of Adam’s hair and feel the reassuring weight of Adam’s arm anchored around his body. He breathed deeply, relaxing while waiting patiently for Adam to say something. Adam always had something to say.
“This is probably weird,” Adam mumbled after a while. “But I wanted to tell you thank you for last night.”
Jared hid his smile by pressing a kiss to the sharp angle of Adam’s jaw.
“You’re welcome,” he said. “It was good. How are you feeling this morning?”
Adam stretched, as if wanting to test his body before he answered. “Sore,” he said. “In a good way though. And not just in my ass, weirdly. All my muscles hurt.”
“Orgasms can do that to you,” Jared teased, and Adam tickled him hard. “Hey!”
“Don’t be mean.”
“Okay. Sorry.” He kissed the top of Adam’s head and hoped it was enough of an apology. “Did I hurt you at all?”
“No,” Adam mumbled, stretching until he was comfortable, then sighing into Jared’s chest. “Well, a bit. It was okay though.”
“Okay?”
Adam sighed pointedly. “Pain-wise. The sex was great.”
“Just great?” Jared teased.
“Mind-blowing,” Adam said on a wide yawn. “Incredible. Earth-shattering.”
“It wasn’t that good.”
“Fuck you, Rawell.”
“Later,” Jared murmured.
They settled again, but this time it was Jared who wanted to ask something.
“What is this?” he asked, gesturing to their entwined bodies with their linked hands.
“What, your morning wood?”
Jared huffed. “No. This. Us.”
“It’s… whatever the fuck we want it to be,” Adam said with a familiar defiance. “It’s us. Do you want to put a label on it?”
“No. Yes.” He sighed heavily. “I don’t know. If someone stops me and asks me what the fuck’s going on between me and Hemlock, I want to have an answer ready. One that fits us both.”
Adam shrugged awkwardly. “Call me your boyfriend. I don’t give a fuck.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Does that work for you?”
“I guess so.” Because he could, Jared ran his hand down his boyfriend’s back, then up again. “People are going to talk, Adam.”
“Psh. People always talk about me. I’m used to it.”
“I want to know we’re solid, you know? I don’t want to be sitting at the fucking lunch table and have some kid come over and tell me you fucked him on the weekend.”
Adam shifted so he was sprawled over Jared, chin propped on his knuckles over Jared’s chest.
“I’m not going to fuck anyone else,” he said easily. “I’ve wanted this for too long to screw it up now.”
“You haven’t waited that long.”
“I’m used to instant gratification,” Adam said haughtily. “This has been a lifetime to me.”
Lightly touching Adam’s jaw, Jared smiled. Like this, Adam looked both childish and very grown up; no longer a bratty preteen, but not yet ready to take on the responsibilities that would fall on all their shoulders in the next few years.
Also, Adam’s bare butt was stuck up in the air, creamy white, and Jared wanted to sink his teeth into it.
“If you’ve wanted it for so long, why didn’t you try to win the bet earlier?” Jared asked, caressing Adam’s face. There was no malice in his words, just curiosity.
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe I didn’t want you to be a bet?”
“Not really.”
Adam sighed and scrunched his nose. “We were so close, all the time, to actually throwing it all away and fucking each other like bunnies. But I knew if I did that then you’d find out about the bet and all the shit with Clare, and it would be over. I liked that you stayed here all the time, I liked making out with you and waking up with you here. You’re the first guy who’s ever slept over, you know?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Oh,” Adam said with another sigh. “Well, you are. Were. Whatever.”
“You could have just called off the bet with Clare,” Jared said. “Did you really want that car so fucking badly you couldn’t have done that?”
“The car isn’t anything,” Adam said, sounding frustrated now. “I don’t give a fuck about the car. I know it makes me an asshole to say this, Jared, but you don’t know things around here. I couldn’t just walk up to Clare and tell her, hey, I’ve decided the new guy is pretty awesome and I want to date him, so the bet’s off.”
“Why? What would she do?”
“I don’t know. That’s the point. No one backs down around here. You don’t show weakness. It’s like the number one rule. The moment they see a crack in your armor, it’ll be exploited until you’re a mess of sobbing, snotty Jell-O.”
“You can’t live your life like that, though,” Jared said softly. He was starting to understand, sort of. He would never be “one of them,” one of the Harbor Academy in-crowd, so this would never make complete sense to him. What Adam had told him though was starting to fill the gaps in his understanding.
Adam had risen to the top because of his I don’t give a fuck attitude and had managed to stay at the top despite coming out as gay. Jared might not have known much about New Harbor and the way the social elite worked around here, but having an incredibly beautiful, talented, intelligent mother and a father who was a military hero had set Adam up with certain expectations. He wasn’t going to be another face blending into the background; he was more than that.
“I don’t know if I can turn it off,” Adam admitted. “I’ve been like this since I was a kid, Jared. I really am an asshole. I don’t know how to be anything else.”
Jared smiled and kissed the corner of Adam’s mouth. “I’ll teach you.”
“Ha. Thanks.”
“Okay, how about this. Outside this room, you can be the New Harbor Academy top dog and all round miserable asshole you’ve always been. But in here, when it’s just the two of us, you have to be whatever’s underneath all that.”
“Just you and me?”
“Yeah. If they think we’re boyfriends, fuck buddies, whatever. That’s fine. But I can’t do it like you do, playing people and stupid pissing games and bets. It’s just not who I am.”
“That’s… yeah. That’s good.”
Adam had been rocking his hips in what Jared had assumed was an unconscious motion, slowly sliding their cocks together. Normally, morning wood was dealt with quickly and efficiently before Jared leaped out of bed and ran to school half-dressed from snoozing so long. This was a different method, one he thoroughly approved of.
Jared reached up and gently pushed his fingers through Adam’s hair, then did it again when Adam arched like a cat and purred at the sensation. It was endearing and annoying, how Adam liked to be petted and pampered and generally taken care of. There was no doubt at all in Jared’s mind that his boyfriend—his boyfriend, and wasn’t that just weird—liked to go to the spa and get his nails done.
“You were inside me last night,” Adam murmured, still arching and writhing on top of Jared’s naked body. He leaned in and licked up the side of Jared’s neck. “Inside me, Jared.”
“Yeah.”
He’d gone dumb and stupid. Not surprising, really. His hard cock was lined up against Adam’s, and they were rocking together with purpose now, creating something together again. With the watery morning sunlight making its way through a gap in the curtains, lighting their faces in a soft glow, it seemed more intimate than what they’d done last night. There was no hiding this.
“It was so good, Jared. I didn’t expect it to feel that way. I didn’t think I’d like it that much.”
“You were incredible,” Jared murmured and grabbed hold of Adam’s ass cheeks, cupping them in his hands and using the fleshy g
lobes as leverage to mash their erections together. “I’ve never seen anyone look that beautiful.”
Adam vibrated at the compliment. “You think I’m beautiful?”
“I think you’re vain as hell,” Jared laughed, still working their bodies together. “But yes. When my dick is shoved deep in you, I think you’re pretty fucking beautiful.”
“I wanna look that way again,” Adam said in a low voice. He was nipping over Jared’s collarbones, down to his nipples to bite harder than necessary, just how Jared liked it.
“You want me to fuck you again?”
What Adam was doing to his nipples was making Jared stupid.
“Oh, hell yeah. Again and again and again.”
“Oh. Oh!”
After that, Jared stopped thinking. He didn’t consciously turn off his brain, that seemed to happen on its own as Adam squirmed and writhed and rocked their bodies together, teasing and tormenting as they learned each other.
Jared buried his fingers in Adam’s short hair, anchoring them together and kissing him like the world was about to end. With a trembling burst of tension, Adam came, his lips pressed hard against Jared’s. As the warm heat spread across his belly, it was all Jared could do to hold on, to kiss back and to make it good for his partner, to share in this short, glorious moment of blessed release.
As Adam gave one last, heaving shudder and stilled, dropping his head to press wet lips to Jared’s neck, Jared let go. He kissed Adam’s shoulder and dug the fingers of one hand into Adam’s ass, squeezing tight as his cock used the slick come sliding between them as a warm lube, just enough slick to make it mind-shatteringly good.
Then he sighed, wrapped both arms around Adam’s waist, and clung for a while.
“I believe,” Adam murmured as Jared started to fall asleep under the dead weight of his partner, “we are currently becoming glued together.”
Jared snorted and buried his nose in the sweet skin between Adam’s neck and shoulder.
“I’m a bit scared to move, to be honest.”
“There’s a real danger of my pubes being ripped out,” Adam agreed.
Then they were giggling, then they were kissing, and Jared thought it might all be okay after all.
Chapter 18
There were two days left after New Year before they had to be back at school. With Hadley off somewhere, and Adam’s mom back in Paris, they holed up in Adam’s bedroom suite and hid from the world.
Messages pinged through to their phones fairly regularly, and Jared turned his off halfway through the first of January, not wanting to see or talk to anyone else.
The Hemlock house was a sanctuary, a place he’d always felt welcome and at home, despite everything that had happened there. Adam’s bed, the scene of pretty much all their highs and the lowest of lows, became somewhere sacred again. It was theirs, and that was all that mattered.
“I have homework to do,” Jared lamented as the afternoon sun started to sink behind the tops of the trees. It was only four in the afternoon. They’d been out of bed, down to the kitchen to make breakfast-for-lunch, then back up to sprawl on Adam’s bed. Wearing nothing but loose pajama pants, Adam’s head was on Jared’s stomach, the perfect angle for Jared to gently run his fingers through the getting-too-long hair.
“Me too. I didn’t want to waste time when my mom was home doing assignments.”
“All of my stuff is at my house. We’re going to have to go out.”
“No,” Adam whined, burying his face in Jared’s flat stomach. “You can’t make me.”
“All right, I have to go out,” Jared corrected. “You can stay here if you like. But you won’t get to go to that frozen yogurt place you love on the way back….”
Adam sniffed, pretending to be annoyed. “You could always bring an ice cream back for me.”
“You’re so spoiled,” Jared said, laughing as he bent to dig his fingers in Adam’s ribs.
Squealing in indignation, Adam squirmed away from the tickling fingers and tried—and failed—to kick Jared in the shins. With a firm slap to Adam’s ass, Jared heaved himself off the bed and started to hunt for his jeans. His clothes had been tossed all over the place, and it took a moment to locate them.
Not wanting to put on day-old underwear, Jared stole a pair from Adam’s drawer, where Calvin Klein boxer briefs in black, white, or gray were lined up neatly. No other underwear dared to creep in. Shaking his head a little in disbelief, Jared grabbed a gray pair and pulled them on, then swiped a pair of socks.
“Are you going to steal all my clothes?” Adam asked in a low voice, his breath a hot wash over Jared’s shoulder.
“Not all of them,” Jared said. He suppressed a shudder.
He ignored the hands that were dancing over his sides, whisper-light and teasing, begging him to go back to bed and play for a few more hours. Adam’s closet was ridiculous, but thankfully, someone had organized sweaters on the left-hand side as he walked in, and he snagged the first one he saw.
“Jared,” Adam whined. “Don’t leave me.”
“Get dressed and”—Jared pulled the sweater over his head and grinned when his head popped out—“you can come with me.”
Adam pouted.
Jared kissed the thrust bottom lip. “I won’t be long.”
“Okay, okay. I’m coming,” Adam grouched. He flounced into the closet, and Jared sat on the edge of his bed to pull socks on, silently amused at getting Adam to back down, maybe for the first time in his life.
They took Adam’s car for the short journey to collect the few pieces of homework and some clean clothes. While Jared shoveled things into a duffel bag, Adam sat in the middle of his bed and bounced up and down using the power in his ass and thighs. Jared wondered if it was uncomfortable for him to do that, but apparently not, because he seemed to be enjoying himself.
When everything he needed for the next couple of days was packed, Jared pounced onto the bed and pinned Adam neatly to it. Adam immediately went pliant, lifted his hips, and angled his face for a kiss.
They settled on the pillows nose-to-nose. It was unusual, being in this bed rather than the one they were used to. After a few moments, Jared flipped to the other side of the bed and settled down again.
“Wrong way round,” he said in muttered explanation.
Adam grinned. “It was weird for me too. I just didn’t want to be the first to crack.”
“You said crack.”
He got a shove on the arm for that.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Adam said, brushing his fingers over Jared’s cheek.
“I don’t trust you yet,” Jared said cautiously. “I know that’s probably a horrible thing to say, but you should probably know….”
“I don’t blame you. I haven’t exactly given you a hundred reasons to think I’m the most trustworthy man on the planet. I’m not.”
“You’re not mad?”
Adam sighed and wriggled on the bed. “My mom always told me it was smart not to trust people. We live in a society which sort of demands we fall in love with someone, and they automatically have this key to your heart and soul, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. But that’s bullshit, you know? If you love someone, it’s probably healthier to not trust them for a while. I fucked up, Jared. I fucked up and almost lost everything, so if I have to earn your trust, that’s okay. I’ll prove it to you. Give me time.”
The arrogance now was charming, and Jared squeezed Adam’s hand gently. “Time is good. I’ve got that.”
“Well, yeah. For now. Where did you apply to college again?”
The sudden change of topic made Jared falter for a moment, then he reeled off the list of his top choices. Adam nodded, then looked out the window over Jared’s shoulder in silent contemplation. Jared decided not to push. If Adam was thinking about college, which was still nine months away, then he was serious about the two of them together. And that in itself was unnerving. Too soon. It was too soon to think about that yet.
On Monday
morning Jared woke to the sound of his phone vibrating with a message. He’d fallen asleep with it still in his hand, and at some point during the night it had become lodged under his pillow.
Sleeping apart from Adam was still a little weird, and he couldn’t deny he missed the warm, lithe body wrapping around his to nudge him into wakefulness. Jared fumbled for the phone and unlocked it to discover his alarm was due to go off in only two minutes.
He rubbed his tired eyes and opened the message. It was from Adam.
Will pick you up. Be ready.
Then, as an afterthought, a second message buzzed through.
xoxo
Jared grinned and sent a quick “okay” back, then rolled over to sprawl on the bed, starfished in the middle. Today was going to be interesting, to say the least.
He considered snoozing for a while but the brightness of his phone had woken him, and he scratched his belly lazily for a few minutes, wondering what the reaction to their public coming out would be. In the past few days, he’d had a few text messages come through from Mia, Chris, and, to his discomfort, Dylan, but he hadn’t replied to any of them yet. Dylan, he’d have to reply to. They needed to set up his study schedule for the New Year.
No one outside the two of them and the girl on the counter at FroYo Express knew about their fledgling little relationship, and they weren’t going to hide it. That felt right, somehow. It wasn’t something shameful or scandalous; they were just two guys giving this thing a try.
With supreme effort, Jared dragged himself out of bed and across the hall to the bathroom. His morning routine was familiar, and he worked through it quickly, washing, shaving, and dressing without thinking too much about anything. Mornings had never been his thing.
By the time he made it downstairs with his messenger bag, he heard a car pulling up outside. Adam was early.
“I’m just going to make breakfast,” Jared said, answering his phone on the first ring. “Do you want anything?”
