The Good Liar (Infidelity #1)

by C.P. Harris

“No more sofa. No more pretending we aren’t doing exactly what we’re doing. You’re sleeping in my bed tonight.”

With a rough hand I grabbed his bare ass, my fingers so close to disappearing between his cleft, and he didn’t stir. Jasper could sleep like the dead if I exhausted his body enough. I trailed my gaze down the hickeys on his back, to the matching deep purple bruises I’d sucked onto the curve of his ass in between rimming him as he prayed for mercy on the lid of my Steinway. I’d gotten carried away. I could’ve used the alcohol I’d barely drunk as an excuse, but the weak attempt at justification would’ve been transparent. Jasper’s body now reflected years of grief, of anger, resentment, betrayal, and love set free. I’d let it all go last night. I’d punished him for what the loss of him had done to me, and what not having him, even now as he slept peacefully in my bed, still did to me.

I kissed the backs of his thighs, moving closer to the place I hungered to feast from, spreading his plump mounds and inhaling him, leashing a hand around my base. He slept through it all, which only increased the level of my arousal. I drizzled lube over his hole, watching him for signs of waking, but he continued to snore softly. With one hand planted on the pillow next to his head, and the other drawing his ass cheek to one side, I entered him with restraint, knowing he had to be sore from last night. He grunted, his lower half twinged, and I paused, balls hanging in the air. Once his breathing evened out, I plunged in halfway. My thrusts were excruciatingly slow and fractional, withdrawing and re-entering, moaning softly and vibrating with the need to fill him absolutely. But the moment my pelvis tapped against his soft skin, this clandestine act of making love to him without his knowledge would end, and fucking him like this was almost as good as taking his ass while he shouted no. Jasper’s breathing quickened as his body became aware, but his eyes remained closed as if his brain hadn’t computed this wasn’t a dream. I buried my nose in his hair, barely scraping his scalp with my teeth as I savored these final few seconds. He whispered my name groggily into his pillow, and I changed my angle, adopting a sideways motion as I sank in all the way, clenching my ass and jamming up against him, shoving him higher up the bed. I wanted everything in him, and I pried his ass ap...

“No,” he groaned, taking me so good I could’ve cried. I placed my hands on top of his, leaving him responsible for keeping his hips in place as I bore into him. “Are you sore?” I asked, biting gently on his earlobe. “Not sore enough,” he answered, his voice sleep-heavy.

I ground against his ass, making sure every drop of my cum found its way home, found its way to the deepest parts of him. In the process, I gained a sick, superior satisfaction from knowing my seed was the only one being planted in his garden.

He spun around on his stool, his gaze falling between my legs and the tent pitched there. I crowded in between his thighs, directing his stare to mine with a hold on his chin. “Ignore it,” I said. “It can’t be helped.” I examined his neck, angling his head accordingly, then kissed the angry scars. “I’m sorry,” I said, nailing myself to the cross for him. He bowed his head, releasing the tension he’d been storing in his shoulders since leaving my bed. “I wanted it,” he admitted unnecessarily. “I still want it. Fuck, I want more. I want you to do whatever you want with my body and…my heart. But I won’t let myself have you, Cole.” He looked at me, then, a sorrowful expression mingled with his beauty. Pure innocence and vulnerability. The two things my fantasies of him were built on. “This is the best I can do. But I can’t rein you or myself in when we’re like that, Cole. You’ve always been the one in charge of the control.” I forcibly locked him into a smoldering kiss, agreeing without words, leaving us both short on air at its conclusion. “And don’t ever tell me to ignore this,” he said, slipping his thumbs into my waistband and skimming the soft cotton below my ass and balls. He stared at me from below lush brows, blinking lazily. “Do you remember what to do with it?” I asked. “I think so,” he said timidly, standing and then getting to his knees. My head sloped to the side as his mouth wrapped me up in its warmth. Of course he remembered.

“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.”

“Have you told anyone else?” “You’re the first to know. You’ll always be the first to know, Cole,” he said, reading my need well.

I ran his lower lip between my teeth. “What should we do with the rest of our night? How should we celebrate?” “I’m tired, to be honest,” he said, raising his head to graze his soft lips up and down my stubbled chin. “Someone kept me up all night?” “Well then, will you let me bathe you, take you to my bed and massage some fading cream into your bruises, and then hold you?” “Do you really need to ask?” he said, stealing a kiss.

“I need to taste you. I need my tongue and fingers deep inside you,” he whispered, licking his lips in preparation. “And I need it now.” I spread out on my back at his directive, spacing my heels far apart on the edge of the mattress. I bunched the sheets between my fists, undulating my hips as he got to his knees and fucking devoured me whole, leaving himself dripping and wanting.

“If only I could take my hands to you,” Cole murmured from down on his knees, nose against my plug-free pucker. “If only I could spank you hard.” He smacked my ass cheek lightly, his palm and the water sluicing down my skin creating a beautiful song, echoing through the marbled enclosure. I moaned, holding myself up with a hand to the glass wall. His palm landed heavier, faster, in the same place and then not, with just the right amount of hurt to make my cock perk up, but not enough to cause damage. Not enough to make my ears ring as I came. He’d need to be the one to stop. He held the control for a reason, and I was the victim to his dirty deeds for a reason. We were both helpless to the roles we played. “Cole,” I begged, rubbing my asshole against his nostrils, knowing he got off on it. I bruised easily; we had maybe one more level of intensity before the proof of what we were doing here would be written all over me. I’d let him, I couldn’t stop him, I didn’t want to— He stopped, standing and dragging his flattened tongue over my fluttering hole on his way up. “Careful,” he whispered into my ear, biting a line down my neck. “I promised to be careful.” He turned the water off and grabbed a thicker plug and lubricant from off the shower bench. “That’s it?” I asked, staring at our hard dicks. “Dinner’s getting cold,” he said, adding a generous helping of lube to the monstrosity in his hand. It was still much smaller than him. I could take it. “Bend over,” he whispered.

His confidence in what he could do with his body, with his cock, was the biggest turn-on. I was lucky enough to have been his blank canvas when we were younger. To be the body he’d improved his art upon. To see and feel the changes as we both grew into our sexuality. There was power that came with that. A possessiveness, too. His abilities belonged to me.

One forearm banded behind my knees, as the fingers on his other hand disappeared inside my lubed hole. I sank my teeth into his ass to stifle my moan. “I want to hear you,” he said, finger fucking me deeper. “God,” I called out. “I’m here, angel,” he crooned, his fingers working me. “I’m here.”

“Cole,” I croaked through a hoarse voice and chapped lips, unsure of what I wanted from him, but knowing I needed whatever it was now. I felt the cold head of the dildo at my entrance again, and then something warmer, something real bump up alongside it. I popped my head to the side, casting my eyes downward to see the largest dildo missing from the lineup. “Fucking impossible,” I breathed, shaking my head as the dual cockheads crossed through me and waited just inside. “It’s too much,” I whimpered. “I once got a fist and half a forearm in here, angel. Nothing’s impossible,” he said gently, coaxing my retreating erection. “That’s it,” he praised when I began to reharden against the graze of his palm, a slave to my need. To him. “We’ve been preparing for this all day. Loosen up for me. Let us in.” Cole took his time, complimenting my cock-taking skills as he made his way home in small increments, ebbing and flowing, all while fisting my cock leisurely, occasionally clutching me at the base when my lack of breathing gave away my approaching orgasm. “Look how well you take us,” he said, “and how wrecked you look while doing it.”

“Tell me the truth you’ve been holding back from me, angel,” he whispered. “Just this once. Just for tonight. And I promise to never use it against you.” His arms became steel bands around me. His heart thrummed fiercely against my skin. “Please.”

“I still love you, Cole. And I can’t make it stop,”

“Where did he touch you?” “Cole,” he cautioned, still not answering me. “Not here. We can’t have this conversation here.” My shoes bumped up against his bare toes, and I palmed his nape, rubbing my thumb over the soft hair there. His breathing turned jittery, and he brushed a finger over the bags under my eyes. “Did you sleep at all?” he asked. “No. Not really,” I said before dipping my head to his exposed shoulder and inhaling up to his ear. He smelled like coffee. Like someone had taken a sip before tugging his shirt to the side and laying their mouth on him. I bit him there, replacing the last memory of what had happened in that spot. Now when he thought of it, he’d think of me. Jasper stiffened, crying out, and I withdrew my teeth before breaking the skin. “Don’t worry, my mark will be gone long before dinner.” My words dripped with venom. A venom I’d never had toward him before. I cupped his cock and noted nothing else—besides the cotton joggers—stood between my hand and his semi-erect length. Was it swelling for me? Or was it left over from whatever Daniel had started but hopefully couldn’t finish?

I didn’t care that I could be blowing his marriage to smithereens if Daniel walked in on us now. Right then, I only cared about whether or not my hands, my mouth, and my cock, had been the last thing to touch him intimately.

“You’re not leaving. Stop seeing every move you make as an admission of guilt and tell him what any normal, loving husband would. Tell him it’s late, and you’re already half asleep on my couch. Tell him you’ll see him tomorrow.” “Cole—” I tried again. “Did it ever occur to you why he’d want to drive four hours in the middle of the night to get to you?” he asked, getting increasingly worked up. “How long did you think this ‘no sex’ thing would last? It’s a phase. They say all married couples go through it. He was overwhelmed with work, focused on making a good impression—” “Cole!” “You’re not leaving! I’m not sending you home with my cum running down your legs all so he can attempt to fuck you and make it like this night never happened. Like we never happened.” His admission brought with it a grave silence. This was about more than this moment. It was about every second of every minute I wasn’t his. It was about the promises I couldn’t make but wanted to. I shot off a text to Daniel. The one I’d intended on sending from the beginning. Cole set his shoulders back, preparing to keep me there by force if he had to. “I never said I was leaving, Cole.” I flattened my palm against his heaving chest, then pushed his shirt down his arms while angling my head to kiss the vein leaping angrily at his neck. “And your cum isn’t running down my legs,” I whispered. “But it will be,” he said gutturally, rectifying that problem immediately.

“It’s always the worst at night,” he said, getting straight to the excruciating part. “When I don’t have a busy day to distract me. When I don’t have your busy day, or Daniel’s, to bring me comfort, because then I know at least he doesn’t have you.” He exhaled. “But at night, I imagine him holding you. His arms around you in bed, testing the waters to see if you’re in the mood. I tell myself you’re not, because I’ve been more than taking care of your needs. But still he holds you, and I imagine you pretending it’s me, and while that soothes my ego, it does nothing for my fracturing heart, because whether you’re pretending to want him or not, whether it’s my face you’re seeing instead of his, he does in fact have you. And the sad part is, he doesn’t even appreciate it.”

“You said you could handle this,” I tried, finding his reflection in the glass. “I lied!” he roared, throwing his hands in the air. I flinched. He slapped his hands at his sides, and then echoed in a whisper, “I lied. But you knew that, didn’t you?” I did, but I’d hoped. God did I fucking hope. I dropped my chin, because even seeing a faint image of his heartbreak through a sheet of glass was too much. But then I turned to him, because I owed him. I owed him full absorption. I owed him more than this. “And then I think,” he said, facing the fire, hands drifting into his pockets, “I never should have come here. But chasing that thought is the realization that I’ve experienced more happiness here, even during moments of private misery, than I have in all the years I’ve spent without you.” He nodded thoughtfully, and I stood there willingly bleeding for him. “I don’t blame you. We’ve all gotta heal in our own way,” he said, as if reciting some piece of advice he’d heard before. I wanted to throw myself at his feet. Plead for his forgiveness and vow that from this point on I’d choose him. But then Franklin flashed into my mind, and the vision of my mother taking her last breath on my bedroom floor, and I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t say the words to make him okay, because I wasn’t okay. Not by a long shot. “You know what hurts the most?” He took a beat to formulate his words, and I braced for the next blow, wanting it, even. Wanting all his pain to be piled on top of the hi...

“I don’t regret any of this,” he whispered into my ear. “Yes, I want more than you can give me right now. Yes, it kills me that it isn’t my ring you’re wearing as I make love to you in our bed. But there isn’t anything I can’t love you through, Jasper.”

“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 raised my head, my stare connecting with his red-rimmed eyes, drinking in all of him, all of his unconditional love. “I’ll be here when you’re ready. Because one of these days you’re going to realize you deserve all the happiness I can give you.” “I’m sorry,” I said, again, lips quivering. I fluttered my hands over his face, down to the spot at his throat I’d miss, the place I loved to fall asleep. “I know,” he said, smiling sadly, kissing my lips softly. This was goodbye. We were over before we had even begun. “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.”

“How can he love you when he doesn’t even know you?” Cole had asked once. “He knows me,” I’d shot back at him. “No,” he’d said. “He knows who he wants you to be, but I know how beautiful you already are.”

Cole’s gifts are always meaningful, I thought as I played with the gold cross at my neck, his mother’s pendant. He’d given it to me at a time when he wasn’t yet strong enough to let me into the hole left behind from losing a mother he never got to know. The pendant was his way of saying: here’s something of her until I’m able to share the rest. At the closet, I dug in my coat pocket until my fingers banged against the box, withdrawing it and admiring the silver wrapping and red ribbon tied into a bow. I ripped the metallic paper away before I could talk myself out of it, and inside the velvet-padded box sat a sterling silver fountain pen. I turned the pricey pen over in my hands, marveling at the gold piping along the edges of the felt tip. There was an inscription along the barrel. I brought it closer and whispered the fancy script aloud. Don’t ever quit your daydream. Love always, Cole. And on the other side it read: Jasper Des Moines Esq.

“I think I’m ready to leave him, ’Fia.” She didn’t waste words on asking me who. “For Cole?” “No,” I said. “For me.”

His eyes were hard as ice, breathing accelerated, chest pumping brutally. I didn’t know what had him so riled up, or who he had expected me to be, but I wanted all of his menace let loose on me. All the barbarity and pain and the lust now boiling behind that stone cold stare… I wanted to be on the receiving and losing end of it all. My body clenched in agreement.

“I’m leaving him, Cole.” “You are?” he said with no emotion or inflection. “I am,” I confirmed, and he waited until he couldn’t anymore. “Jasper—?” “Will you still forgive me?” I asked. “Yes,” he said. “Will you secretly resent me for what I’ve done?” “No, Jasper.” He squeezed my hand. “I could never resent you for something you had a right to.” “Will you still have me?” Emotion clamped around my throat, making it hard to breathe, hard to wait in anticipation of his answer. “Do you still want me?” “Yes,” he said, as if it were the dumbest question in the world. “I’ll not only have you, I’ll swear to never let you go.”

“I need… Fuck me, Cole. Please,” I said, trying my hand at asking nicely as I pumped my hips. I alternated between trying to ram my steel length further down his throat, and getting my ass impossibly closer to his face. “Not until my stomach is pumped full of your cum, angel. It’s been too long,” he whispered to my cock, tilting it this way and that way, kissing it, caressing it lovingly, refamiliarizing himself with it.

“Cole,” I growled, and then he was in me all the way, no warning, no build-up. “More!” I barked after yelling my surprise. My knees complained against the marble as I gave as hard as I got. No shyness. No games of innocence and virginity. No sweet, blushing submissive today. “Fuck me like you miss me, Cole,” I whined at the back of my throat, needing him to do his worst. “Mark me, tear my flesh from my goddamn bones.”

“Take me, angel.” His words were garbled, eyes flinty, dick making a point. “I will,” I said, teeth accidentally cutting into my tongue from the sheer force of him. “Never leave me,” he warned. “Never,” I promised, so close to diving off the edge again, my ass weathering the rippling of him inside of me, a sign he was close to coming undone, too. “Who do you belong to?” he asked. “You.” “Louder!” he shouted, turning up the dial on his war against my body. This wasn’t lovemaking or fucking. This was mating, this was heat, this was a thirst being quenched after a long drought. It was anger, pining, pain. It was all those things, but also the washing away of it all, too. It was breaking ourselves down so we could build ourselves up into something new, something more. It was stakes being raised, claims being made, lines I’d drawn between us in the goddamn sand being erased. It was possession unleashed. “You! Always and–and only you, Cole.” “Good. Now take that fucking ring off.” Without breaking his rhythm, Cole brought me into a seated position on his thighs, holding me to his chest with a hand at my throat and the other on my hip. I twisted the band, getting it about halfway off when Cole impatiently said, “Keep fucking me. Keep up the pace.” And then reached around to pop the ring off all the way, essentially declaring it null and void, sending it tumbling across the floor. “I’m the only one who shackles you now,” he said, surprisingly gentle, the ongoing sex anything but. ...

“Fuck,” Jasper moaned, the sound a mixture of guilt and undeniable pleasure. Daniel stooped to pick up the discarded wedding band, then seemingly thought better of it as if disgusted by the idea. “Daniel, wait—” “Do you want me to stop, angel?” I cut in, chin tucked to my chest as I stared down Daniel below my lashes, raking my tongue over my top teeth. My orgasm neared completion, but Jasper’s hadn’t, and that stroked every part of me. My ego, the animal residing in me, my heart… It touched and made all of it purr. Jasper’s body bucked at my question, clamping around me tighter, the wet smacking sound of our bodies clapping together disgustingly loud in the shocked silence. “No!” The word was all razor blades and fire clambering up his throat, never ending until his voice gave out. Daniel had backed into the cabin of the elevator, so it could’ve been up for debate whether Jasper was asking me not to stop, or asking him not to leave. But then Jasper whimpered, “Sorry,” as he began to rock back into me, seemingly out of his control, even as his forehead and hand lowered to the floor in devastation. Even as Daniel saw it all. “That’s it, angel,” I cooed above the squelching sounds of my cock beating a path through his cummy hole. “Take every last drop of me.”

“Cole,” Jasper said, guiding a staying hand to my chest. “I’m yours, Cole. Nothing can make me go back on that. Nothing ever again,” he amended. “Prove it,” I snarled, before assailing him with a frenzied kiss. I slammed him to his back, catching his wrists and locking them down on the table at either side of his head until he yielded. Once I was sure he’d no longer fight me, I lifted his legs, sending them around me. “Cole, wait,” he protested, trying to back off the crown of my cock now seeking shelter inside him, his hole still wet and slack enough to take me again. “I can’t.” I pleaded for understanding, dragging him to me by his waist until his ass hung off the table and his hands shot out to grip the sides. Until I’d fully impaled him, buried balls deep and lunging rabidly in and out of his center, until he gave up and gave in, until my teeth were clamped viciously at his throat.

“I need to get cleaned up,” he said, and I stopped him with a hand to his bicep as he passed me for the bathroom. “No. You go with my scent on you,” I said, immovable, reaching down to catch what leaked from him, and slipping a drenched finger past his lips as his nostrils flared in renewed irritation toward me this time. “Swallow.” I removed my clean digit from the suction of his mouth in increments.

I pressed my mouth to his lips, not with the intention to kiss him, but so he could feel my next words. So he could remember what they had once meant to us, and what they meant to me now. Halfway through our teenage mantra, he joined in, words shaking with deep emotion. “I love you so much my heart hurts with it,” we whispered together, and then repeated it as many times as it took for him to believe it. I had a lot of making up to do, and it would be my most important job from that day forward because I knew what mattered now. My love for him. “I love you, Cole Kincaid,” I said fiercely. “And you don’t have to be afraid anymore. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Speaking of days…” he said, drifting off, snatching me up and spinning us around. We ended up on the floor tussling and laughing like fools as I fought to get away from him. “I want to know all about your day,” he said, helping me to my feet and forcing me against him. “I wanna know the size of your smile when you walked in here this morning. Which shrill ringer did you choose for the office phone line? What color pen did you use throughout the day? I wanna know your plans for the upcoming weeks. I wanna know where you’re going to hang the Casual Friday is Everyday sign. I wanna know how full your heart is with joy right now, right this second. Tell me everything, Jas.”

“That’s it,” he praised as I lowered onto him, sweat beading at my temples. “Take me like you always do, angel. Your hole was made for my cock.”

“Damn it, Jasper. I can’t get enough,” he said, breathing labored. “How can I make it enough?” He stared dreamily at his cock impaling me as I writhed, whimpered, and pleaded for a little relief on his assault on my body and senses.

“Faster, angel. Fuck my dick faster,” he breathed. “Shit, Jasper. Do you hear the sounds we’re making? Do you hear how wet you sound on top of me? I’ll never grow tired of fucking you. Never,” he growled.

He sat up, holding my waist to keep me moving on him. “I need to break your skin,” he whispered before sinking his teeth into the area around my nipple and stilling as his orgasm completed. I held his head to me, encouraging his habit as I caught my breath. Hay clung to every part of us. He eased back, staring drunkenly up at me, licking his lips. “Fuck, you, Mr. Kincaid,” I said weakly. “Yes, you did.” He laughed exhaustedly when I pushed his face away, not appreciating his snark.

“What can I do for you?” I asked, closing in on him. “Anything. It’s your day. Anything you want, anything you need, any way you want me,” I said, lowering my voice. “All you have to do is ask.” I’d spend the rest of my life giving him all of me, because I’d already spent too much of it not giving him enough. I’d love him fiercely. I’d fight every battle alongside him. And nothing or no one would ever come between us again. “What do you need? What else would make this day perfect for you?” “I need nothing else, angel. Because everything we love is right here,” he whispered, gazing at me through teary eyes. “Everything,” I echoed back. “Everything.”

“How is it possible to love something this much?” I asked, trying to comprehend why my heart wanted and needed his so damn much. I felt suffocated by my love for him. He gazed down at me, lost for words, eyes brimming with devotion. And that’s when I noticed the platinum band on my finger. The one I’d pointed out in a jewelry store window we’d passed by during my last semester at Harvard. “I bought it the very next day,” he said, a rare blush creeping over his neck. “I’d planned to give it to you, eventually, but things had worked out differently.” It was simple, like me. Nothing like the gaudy diamond band Daniel had gotten me. And it meant a lot that he could’ve afforded something fancier, but he’d gotten me what I wanted instead. “You’ve held on to this all this time?” “I’ve held onto you all this time, angel.” “Is this real?” I asked. “Not the ring, but life, us, this moment.” We’d dealt with so many obstacles in trying to love each other that sometimes it was hard to remember we’d gotten through it all. Hard to remember that we were allowed to be happy out loud now. And Cole never grew tired of reminding me. Of showing me. “Oh, it’s fucking real alright. And I plan on spending the rest of my life showing you exactly how real it can get. Remember what I told you yesterday? And the day before? And the day before that?” I bobbed my head, words failing me. “What did I say?” “‘This love is a forever kind of thing, angel,’” I quoted back to him. “‘And I love you so much my ...