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A reminder that having more-of didn’t make him more-than.
Privacy was the last thing we needed. Cole and I needed to be supervised at all times.
The truth was, if it wasn’t Daniel getting the scraps of me, it would’ve been someone else, because my heart wasn’t whole. I’d left the other half of it back in Seattle, and now it was here, right in front of me, staring into me as if nothing could keep us apart. Not even my vows.
I braved another glance at him after a minute of tense silence, noting, again, how otherworldly well-bred he appeared. But Cole was an animal with a suit as his cage, and no forged piece of jewelry on my hand or legal document binding me to Daniel would keep him from what he wanted, if what he wanted was me.
“No one’s called me that before,” I’d said. “It’s mine. If anyone calls you that, you tell them it belongs to me. That you belong to me.”
“That he can be great, if he only applied himself,” Daniel said,
I had no time for a boy who wanted to spend his days helping the staff prepare meals and clean the messes he’d made. A boy who thought handmade Christmas gifts meant more than something shiny from Tiffany’s. A boy who’d sneak food to my bedroom door when I was ordered to go there without dinner for being rude to him. A boy who got two thousand signatures on a petition to name a fountain in the park after my mother.
Jasper is relentless when he believes in something, and he believed in me. Without him I might have ended up like you, but because of him, I know what makes a great man. And he’s the greatest man in this room.”
“Even the way he touches you—” He cut himself off, sucking in a hiss of air through the seam of his lips. “Keep going,” I said, challenging him. “How does he touch me, Cole?” “Like you’re his,” he said boldly.
He was a slut, a virgin, the devil, and an angel rolled into one. A case study in contradictions, leaving my cock hard and my heart soft as putty.
If still wanting him, knowing the pain loving this version of him might bring me, made me an unapologetic sadist, then so be it. I’d do bad things with a clear head to have him. And then I’d do them all over again if it meant I got to have him in the next life, too.
Some of my agitation came from wanting to feel important enough to be hunted down.
My warm breaths were working to heat my cupped, bare hands when a set of leather gloves suddenly hung limp in front of my face, dangling from dexterous fingers I’d recognize anywhere.
You wanted to be hunted down lol
I didn’t want him more broken than he already was, because I loved him more than I wanted him.
“I hope it’s okay that I came,” I said. “I ran into Daniel at the office, and when it was clear he wouldn’t make it, I figured I’d show up for you instead.”
I felt a pride that went beyond brotherly, beyond what a friend felt for a friend, and beyond even the pride of lovers. I loved him as a person first and foremost. No matter how imperfect he believed himself to be, there was no denying just how perfect he was to me.
I inhaled his jealousy, swam and danced around in it, letting it stroke my loneliness. It wouldn’t cure it, though, and I needed more than a temporary fix. I needed him.
“I like my men submissive with only the occasional flare of temper in bed for those moments when I’d rather take than be given. Because sometimes, I like to fight for what’s mine.”
“We’re just brothers. Friends. It shouldn’t matter—” “Cut the bullshit, Jas. You know it matters. You know it does.” “You want me to turn down my husband’s advances?” “Yes,” I said without a moment’s pause. Fuck how insane it seemed, fuck the promises I’d made. I’d nearly been a witness to their indecency, and mad didn’t begin to cover how I felt about it.
“You’re mine. This was inevitable. And I never want his fucking hands on you again.”
“It’s your fault. No more making him jealous.” “Come again?” he said. “I caught him and Daniel kissing in his office, Leland! On their way to doing more. He thinks you and I are sleeping together.” “So he thinks you’re fucking me, and in turn he almost fucked his husband? You do realize how absurd and twisted you two are, right?”
“I believe two opposing things can be true at the same time. I believe you can be good even while doing something you know is wrong.
I love you, anyway. I am not too good to love you, anyway,” she said resolutely.
“You’ve never been touched the way you touch me. You’d never understand.” “And you’ve never been loved the way you loved me, not even by me. No one is capable of the kind of love you give. So you wouldn’t understand how impossible it would be for me to move on. Or to give anyone even a fraction of what I gave you,” he promised.
“Yes,” he repeated. Yes. That was our safeword, because we both loved it when he ignored my no’s.
“This won’t be easy, and I plan to take you all night.”
“It’s out of my hands, angel,” he’d say, as he fucked me into the bed, or the ground, or the wall. “This is what you do to me.”
“What?” he asked in disbelief. “The answer isn’t to invent business trips to ship him off to whenever you feel like losing your cool in bed, Cole. We need to be more discreet, or this won’t work.”
“You get to be excited about this, Jasper,” I said, tugging his lip free and watching a smile split his face. “You never have to hide or downplay your happiness with me. Never,” I said again with emphasis. “I’m not him.”
“You’re the first to know. You’ll always be the first to know, Cole,” he said, reading my need well.
He fingered the pearl-sized bead of precum from my stiff cock before letting it fall into his own coffee. He chanced a gulp of the steaming liquid, his eyes closing as he groaned in ecstasy. “Who knew a pinch of salt made everything better.”
“God,” I called out. “I’m here, angel,” he crooned, his fingers working me. “I’m here.”
“I’ll send him on horseback to fucking Siberia if I have to,” Cole whispered,
“One day, you’ll grow tired of being broken. You’ll rightfully give up on holding yourself accountable for the worst thing that ever happened to you. And I’ll be there to pick you up,” he promised, kissing my hair. “I’ll forgive every imaginable sin against me that your martyr’s heart will conjure up. I’m telling you this now because I know how your mind works, Jasper. And when our time comes, I don’t want a moment of it wasted on you beating yourself up. There isn’t anything I couldn’t forgive you for. There is nothing to forgive.”
“I can’t compete with your pain, angel. Your wounds are too deep for my love to reach. Too deep for my love to heal. You have to find a way past it. But something’s gotta give because I can’t do this, and I know, right now, that something won’t be you.”
Don’t ever quit your daydream. Love always, Cole. And on the other side it read: Jasper Des Moines Esq.
Children often expect parents to be ideal, forgetting we’re human, too. We’re flawed, too.
“There’s no one, at the moment. Metaphorically speaking, I lost my heart, and in many ways I’ve been dead without it. I don’t want that to be a literal reality for anyone, if I can help it.”
“Your ignorance will be your downfall, because there isn’t a hit to me I wouldn’t turn the other cheek for, no scandal I wouldn’t face, no loss I wouldn’t be willing to take for this man.”
