“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 globes 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
