For a few minutes Jared concentrated on deep, even breaths, trying to send himself off to sleep as quickly as possible.
“Hey, Jared?”
He screwed his eyes shut. “Yeah?”
It was funny how, really, Adam could have been asking anything, but Jared knew exactly what he wanted. With a gnawing feeling in his stomach, Jared rolled over to face Adam.
In the dark room he could just make out Adam’s fine features and how he’d pillowed both hands under his cheek. It was a startlingly intimate, almost childish gesture. After a week of constantly being on edge, wondering what the fuck Clare was up to and how Adam played into that, suddenly all the walls were down. They were just two men. Lying in bed together.
Adam reached out tentatively and touched Jared’s cheek. When Jared didn’t move, he crept his hand up and rubbed his thumb over the seam of Jared’s lips. It was so very, very gentle, completely at odds with what Jared expected.
Going on instinct and nothing else, Jared caught the pad of Adam’s thumb between his lips and kissed it. As if that was the signal Adam had been waiting for, he pulled the hand away and wrapped it around Jared’s neck, then leaned in to fit their mouths together.
The angle was awkward even though the kiss was nice, and Jared wanted more. He shifted forward, responding immediately when Adam nudged him onto his back. When Adam pressed his knee between both of Jared’s, he let it happen. Adam might have been leading, but Jared was complicit in every movement.
It felt good, goddamnit, good to be kissed like this, to be wanted. They might have been fully dressed, their bodies hidden beneath layers of fabric and a heavy down comforter, but simmering desire couldn’t be contained that easily.
“I want,” Adam murmured and kissed down the side of Jared’s neck. “I want.”
“Me too.”
Jared slid his hand down Adam’s back, then molded the gentle curve of Adam’s ass. It was perfect, full and round, easily squeezed and used as leverage to pull Adam’s hips down. Closer. Yes.
Adam trailed his hand down Jared’s side, hooking into the waistband of the pajama pants and tugging a little.
“Can I…?” he asked.
Jared licked, kissed, and nibbled up the side of Adam’s jaw. “Tonight? No.”
Adam laughed once, softly, and pressed his forehead to Jared’s shoulder. “You sure?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“Fuck.”
Before rolling away, Adam kissed Jared once again. They ended up on their backs, purposefully not touching. Adam’s forearm was thrown over his face. Two hard, frustrated cocks were contained in cotton prisons.
“I know….” Adam started, then sighed. “I know we don’t have to fuck. But damn, I want you. And if I start something, I want to be able to finish it.”
“Finish it yourself,” Jared said without venom.
“Exactly my point. If I’m hungry, I could eat a banana or a Big Mac. Both would make me not hungry, but let’s face it, I only really want the Big Mac.”
“Did you just compare a blow job to a banana?” Jared asked, rolling onto his back and throwing one arm over his head.
Adam laughed, a bright, genuine sound. “Yeah. I did.” He leaned in and pressed his lips to Jared’s, then shifted back to his side of the bed.
Feeling more than a little sympathetic, Jared copied the action, rolling onto his side, and tried not to think about how desperately horny one kiss had left him.
Chapter 6
In the morning Jared woke first, a little confused to find himself in bed with the one guy he’d vowed not to have sex with. Not that they’d had sex. But he was pretty sure people were going to think they had.
His bladder was protesting, forcing Jared out of the comfortable bed far sooner than he would have liked. He maneuvered himself out from under the blankets carefully, not wanting to wake Adam if he could help it, and crept to the bathroom.
It was hard to piss through morning wood, but he got there in the end. In the cabinet under the sink Jared found Tylenol and took two with a mouthful of ice-cold water to try and chase his lingering headache away.
Not wanting to deal with Adam yet, Jared moved silently through the wing of the house Adam presided over, to the games room and the secret staircase. The panel was still open, and Jared was curious enough to go down the steps, wondering where they’d lead.
Halfway down he caught the smell of something cooking and wondered who was awake already. At the bottom of the stairs, a door was slightly ajar, and Jared smiled to himself when he pushed through it into a pantry.
In the kitchen, Chris was at the stove dressed in last night’s clothes, dancing to music only he could hear.
“Morning,” Jared said.
Chris looked over his shoulder, blatantly clocked that Jared was wearing Adam’s nightwear, then grinned. “Pull up a seat,” he said. “Food will be ready in a minute. Girls are on their way down.”
“What happened down here?” Jared asked, looking around. He’d been expecting to walk into a war zone. There had to have been close to a hundred people in the house the night before, and there’d been a lot of mess when he’d gone upstairs with Adam. Now it was spotless, apart from the debris of Chris’s breakfast-making efforts.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s… clean.”
“Adam has an agreement with a cleaning company. Someone calls them—usually me—once the party winds down, and they let themselves in to clean up. By morning you wouldn’t even know anything had happened.”
“That’s efficient.”
“Yeah.” Chris laughed. “You didn’t think Adam was going to clean this place up himself? Oh, hell, no. Kid hasn’t ever had to wipe his own ass, let alone a surface.”
“There’s a mental image,” Clare said, strolling into the kitchen in designer loungewear, hair,
