He wasn’t ready to push fingers inside yet, not without lube, anyway, and this feeling was still so unfamiliar he wanted to explore it. Jared knew, from being on both sides now, that there were hundreds of nerve endings here, and his gently nudging knuckle was igniting them all, enough stimulation to make his cock drool clear fluid.
The boy on the screen provided intimate inspiration, his back shamelessly arched into the sensation of two pale fingers lodged deep in his own body, and Jared wondered if he would ever be that wantonly sexual. He thought maybe he’d learn.
With a loud groan, Jared pushed his finger harder against his hole, the tip breaching the ring of muscle as his cock stiffened, then spat hot come up Jared’s belly and onto his T-shirt. He was breathing hard, hot and cold all over, wondering what this new exploration of his body meant.
Without Jared’s permission, the ghost of Adam still moved inside him.
Chapter 14
The next morning dawned crisp and cool, the sun hanging low in the sky. A light frost had dusted the town like icing sugar, and Jared felt good. He’d made his peace with Chris, which sort of meant something, although he wasn’t sure exactly what.
The weak sunshine was bright enough to justify wearing his reflective aviators and when he turned on the stereo, there was only one CD he could possibly stick in the player.
Jared rolled the top of the car down and rolled up in front of the school with “Gimme the Loot” blasting from the stereo. Actually, it was louder than just blasting. Chris had installed an insanely good stereo system in the Caddy, and Jared’s ears hurt a little from the volume coming out of the speakers.
His nose and fingers were frozen. It was barely thirty-five degrees, but there was no point in turning up in the pink Cadillac unless people knew he was the one in it.
Feeling rebellious, Jared parked across two spaces in the lot closest to the office, in the handful of spaces that were reserved for teachers. He cut the engine, and the stereo dropped at the same time, and the sound that followed was sweet, crisp silence.
Still humming the tune, Jared got out of the car and tossed the keys to a freshman kid in the same way he’d seen Adam do. Insanely arrogant. Just as he wanted.
“Put the top up,” he said, leaving the shades on and not even looking at the kid as he strode purposefully to the main steps of the school. “Scratch it, and I’ll rip your balls off.”
He was hyper-aware he was being watched, being judged, by every kid at Harbor Academy. No one other than him and Chris knew about the car, although he was pretty sure there wasn’t a kid out there who didn’t know about the argument and the bet. The few who had been elsewhere on Saturday night, grounded or out of town or at a family thing, would be kicking themselves.
Jared was clawing back some of that control, some of the respect he’d surely lost over the weekend.
At the office, he leaned on the counter and tipped his sunglasses down his nose, giving a winning smile to Ms. Horncastle, guarding the school like the dragon she was.
“Ms. Horncastle,” Jared drawled.
“Mr. Rawell. You have been absent for several days.”
He reached into his back pocket and flicked a sealed envelope at her. He’d forged a doctor’s note—not difficult, what with access to the Internet—and had created a signed note from Hadley, and that was tucked into the envelope too.
“I was sick,” he said, in a tone of voice that begged for sympathy.
He got a hard-eyed stare instead. “Is that so.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah.” Jared faked a cough.
“To your class, Mr. Rawell. I’ll file these.”
“Thanks, Ms. Horncastle,” he said in a sunny voice and walked out of the office.
When he reached homeroom, the keys to the Caddy were lying in a patch of weak sunlight on the desk next to the window. He picked them up with a hum of appreciation and tucked them into his messenger bag. Out the window he could see the car—top up—still parked obnoxiously. It gave him great pleasure to look at it like that.
The room was buzzing softly with the murmured conversations of thirty or so students, each catching up on or trading gossip. Jared heard his own name mentioned more than once, his ears sharp to the familiar sound. He ignored them all and plugged his earbuds into his iPhone, turning music on to drown out the background noise.
Bowen hated it when they wore headphones in class, but it wasn’t rebellion, not today. Jared didn’t look up when Chris walked down the main aisle, or when Adam came in and flopped into his usual seat.
The burn in his chest hollowed out into a deep ache, and Jared forced himself to breathe slow and deep. He wasn’t going to look at Adam. It was a promise he’d made to himself.
To try and appease Ms. Bowen, Jared tugged one earbud out, hoping to avoid drawing attention to himself. When Adam responded to his name during roll call, Jared felt the hole in his chest widen, broadening with resonating pain and forcing thorny stomach acid up into his throat.
Don’t throw up, Jared instructed himself sharply. Don’t you fucking dare throw up.
He forced his attention to his phone and tapped away at nothing.
If he had been so inclined, this would have been the day he turned to narcotics. Drugs would whisper through his veins, numbing the pain and taking him to a floating cloud where nothing could penetrate the walls he’d built.
Jared
