What Remains (28 page)

“Piss off.” Rupert hooked his hands under Jodi’s shoulders and pulled him up the bed in one smooth movement. “Leave my dick alone if it scares you so much. We don’t have to do anything—”

Jodi silenced him with another bruising kiss. Rupert took the hint and reached for Jodi’s jeans, undoing them and sliding them over Jodi’s slim hips. He left Jodi’s boxers in place, but Jodi had other ideas.

“Fuck that,” he said. “I want to be like you.”

Rupert snorted. “No, you don’t.”

“I do.”

“Why?”

Jodi wriggled out of his remaining clothes, then fixed Rupert with a shrewd stare. “Because you’re a good man.”

What that had to do with getting naked, Rupert had no idea, but coming from Jodi, a man Rupert had idolised as much as he’d loved . . . Jesus fecking Christ, could they do nothing without Rupert wanting to bawl his eyes out?

Apparently not, but Jodi straddled Rupert’s chest before Rupert could dwell on it.

“I wouldn’t do this to a woman,” Jodi said. “Unless she asked me to.”

Rupert eyed Jodi’s cock as it carved a gentle rut in his chest. “Perhaps she would. I can’t imagine anyone not wanting this.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. How does it feel? Do you like it?”

Jodi sucked in a breath. “Fuck yeah. It feels amazing. Can’t believe I forgot about something like this. How does that happen?”

Rupert could picture how it happened all too well, but it wasn’t the time for morbid imaginings. This was beyond what he’d dared hope for, and he wasn’t going to let the shadows chase it away. He closed his fist around Jodi’s cock, squeezing, lightly at first, but then harder as Jodi’s eyes widened and rolled into the back of his head.

“Oh God, yeah.” Jodi thrust his hips forward. “Don’t stop, don’t stop.”

Rupert gave into Jodi’s whispered plea, for a while, at least. He’d missed this side of Jodi—the uninhibited, sexual side of him—untamed, and a little wild. From the very first time he’d laid a hand on Jodi, he’d been enthralled by the way he moved his body, the sounds he made. Jodi was beautiful.

But eventually, as Jodi’s thighs trembled and his gasps caught in his chest, Rupert pushed his luck and pulled Jodi closer . . . close enough to flick his tongue over Jodi’s dick.

Jodi’s eyes flew open. “
Shit
.”

“Is that a good ‘shit’?”

“What the fuck do you think?”

Rupert grinned. “I think you want more.”

Jodi shuffled forward on his knees and pushed his cock into Rupert’s mouth. “Then give me more.”

As if Rupert could say no. As if he wanted to. He’d always got off on giving Jodi head. Perhaps it had been the power—the control it gave him over this beautiful man who Rupert felt so plain beside . . . but Rupert didn’t feel like that anymore. Hadn’t in years. Jodi had taught him to feel nothing but pleasure when they were laid bare to each other like this.

He took Jodi deep, scraping him against the roof of his mouth and down his throat. Jodi, perhaps expecting Rupert to ease him in gently, cried out, jerking violently. Rupert held him still, controlling the pace initially. Then he relented and let Jodi fuck his mouth, slowly at first, but then faster and harder, until Jodi yelled out a curse and shot down his throat.

For a long moment, Jodi gasped and clung to the headboard. His arms shook and his legs quivered. He stared at Rupert, his mouth opening and closing, but nothing intelligible came out. Alarmed, Rupert wriggled from beneath him and pried his hands from the bed frame, easing him onto his back.

“Jodi? Talk to me. You all right?”

For a long, anxious moment, Jodi didn’t answer, then he burst out laughing and yanked Rupert down to lie on top of him. “All right? I feel like I’ve just done a bloody skydive.”

“Landed on your feet, I hope.”

“I landed on the fucking moon.”

Jodi laughed some more, and his euphoric humour was infectious. Rupert wrapped his arms around him and held him tight, smiling so hard his cheeks ached. “Are you ready to come back to earth and go to sleep?”

“Sleep?” Jodi sunk his teeth into Rupert’s shoulder. “But what about you? I want you to feel like I do—if I can do it half as well as you can. I want—”

It was Rupert’s turn to kill the conversation. He kissed Jodi gently, warmly, with barely a tickle of the heat that had just exploded between them. “We’ve got all the time in the world to fuck about. Come and sleep with me? Please?”

Jodi tried to scowl, but a tired, sheepish smile won out. He crawled under the covers and held up the duvet. Rupert slipped in beside him and rolled onto his side to spoon him from behind, the way they’d always slept before the accident, even in the heat of summer. It took him a moment to realise what he’d done, and for the umpteenth time, the magnitude of how far they’d come in a matter of weeks threatened to overwhelm him.

Then Jodi wriggled backward, pressing his warm body against Rupert’s, and reached for Rupert’s arms, tugging them around him. He kissed Rupert’s palm and let out a sleepy sigh. “I’m not obsessed with sex, Rupe, I promise. I just really fucking love you.”

Jodi writhed beneath Rupert, revelling in the weight of the body pinning him down. Rupert kissed him roughly and pulled at his T-shirt. “Off.”

Breathless, Jodi raised his arms. Rupert yanked the offending shirt over Jodi’s head and tossed it away. “Up. Turn around. Hands on the headboard.”

Jodi obeyed with a healthy shot of nerves. In the last week, being intimate with Rupert had proved as natural as breathing, but with no memory of the sex life they’d shared before the accident, Jodi had often felt exposed and laid bare by his ignorance. Ignorance that was equal parts embarrassing and
hot
as hell as they learned—relearned—how to pleasure each other: the handjobs, the blowjobs. The grinding together until Jodi was sure he’d combust. Somehow, Jodi knew they’d barely scratched the surface.

Cool air hit his back. He shivered and dropped his head. Rupert soothed him with warm hands, rubbing circles into the base of his spine. “Relax.”

Jodi tried, then gave up. He didn’t want to relax, because then he might fall asleep. And he didn’t want to sleep. He wanted to absorb Rupert’s every touch and commit them to his sketchy memory in permanent ink. “What are you going to do to me?”

“Do you really want me to tell you?”

“No.” Jodi already had a pretty good idea what Rupert had in mind. He remembered rimming from his relationship with Sophie—her gentle tongue, and her soft skin against his. He’d loved it, and the thought of Rupert doing that to him— “
Fuck
!”

Rupert’s tongue was far from gentle, and the scruff of his stubble scratched Jodi’s thighs in just the right way, taking him to that dangerous precipice between pleasure and pain.

Jodi chose pain, and then pleasure, losing himself to the toe-curling sweep of Rupert’s tongue. Dear God, it was nothing like he remembered with Sophie. This wasn’t playful and naughty—a drunken fumble they wouldn’t talk about in the morning. This
was
the morning. Rupert meant this, and Jodi could hardly bear it.

Too soon, Rupert pulled away and kissed a path up Jodi’s back, stopping at his neck where he sunk his teeth in, biting down until Jodi wriggled free and threw himself at Rupert, sending them both tumbling to the mattress, pillows scattering onto the floor. “That was amazing.”

“Yeah?” Rupert grinned. “I like it too, both ways. Drives me up the feckin’ wall when you do it to me.”

Up the wall
. Yup, that made sense. “I couldn’t come from it, but that’s what makes it so hot. It’s like torture.”

“The best kind,” Rupert said. “It’s good for, um, prep too.”

“Prep?”

Rupert smirked.

“Oh.” Jodi pictured the lube still hidden away in the drawer. “You mean for fucking?”

“Aye. I’m no expert on how it feels to bottom, but you’ve told me before that a little, er, rimming action gets you to just the right point between relaxed and—”

“Gagging for it?”

Rupert snorted. “Something like that.”

Jodi bit his lip. The old him hadn’t been wrong, but alongside the thrill of anticipation, and a desperate yearning for Rupert he could hardly contain, he was still fucking terrified. Rupert’s tongue was
lush
, but his dick? Jesus. How was it even possible?

The rational side of him knew exactly how it was possible, but that didn’t stop his stomach flipping as he imagined how it would feel to have Rupert sliding inside him, stretching him, fucking him. How it was
going
to feel when it happened.

Which wasn’t today. Jodi wanted Rupert to fuck him as much as he wanted just about anything, but he didn’t quite have the balls yet. Besides, there was something else he had to do first. Something he’d been dreaming about since his attraction to Rupert had shown its hand. Something he knew was going to be the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, or at least, could remember seeing.

He sat up and leaned back, eyeing Rupert’s cock. He’d yet to put his hands or mouth on it, because somehow Rupert had managed to make their every sexual encounter about Jodi: about teaching him to enjoy Rupert’s touch again, slowly, carefully, when Jodi let him and didn’t come like a train in five seconds flat, which had happened more times in the last week than Jodi cared to admit.

Rupert squeezed Jodi’s thighs. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking about how I can make you come.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know. I want to. Do you want me to?”

“Now there’s a question.” With the early-morning sun filtering through the gap in the curtains, Rupert’s soft smile was dazzling. “Do you really not know the answer?”

Jodi knew. Despite Rupert’s softly-softly approach, he hadn’t hidden how much he wanted Jodi. Couldn’t, with his dick digging into Jodi with every grind and roll. “I don’t know how to do it.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, seriously, I don’t. I mean, I know
what
to do, I just don’t know how to make it good.”

“Ah, see I thought that too when we first met. Thought I’d put your dick in my mouth and start chewing it by mistake, I was so feckin’ nervous.”

Jodi laughed, couldn’t help it. Rupert’s way with words was something else. “So what did you do? ’Cause I’m sure even I would remember someone taking a bite out of my dick.”

“Very funny,” Rupert deadpanned. “If you must know, you told me to treat your dick like my own, and you were right. Once I’d got myself in that mind-set, it wasn’t as alien and terrifying as I thought, and it all kinda clicked.”

Treat it like my own.
Jodi closed his eyes and called on the clandestine occasions he’d pleasured himself in the weeks before he’d come to realise his desire for Rupert was everything he was missing. Pictured every squeeze, every twist, and combined the memories with the more recent ones he had of Rupert doing it for him—his strong, warm grip and devilish tongue.
I can do this.

Jodi opened his eyes and moved down Rupert’s body, absorbing Rupert’s sharp gasp.
Here goes nothing . . .

A few days and
many
mutual orgasms later, Jodi found himself home alone. Rupert was on his mind, as ever, but with him at work until morning, Jodi was trying to keep busy.

For the most part, he’d succeeded, but it was early evening now. He’d been to his appointments, done all his exercises, and run out of things to clean. He’d even managed to reheat the curry he and Rupert had cooked together the day before without burning the place down, though it had crossed his mind that such a thing would bring Rupert home quicker than the end of his shift.

Idiot.

Jodi closed the dishwasher with a thump. Though eating as much as Rupert wanted him to was hard going, making dinner with him had become one of Jodi’s favourite things to do. By all accounts he’d used to be good at cooking, and these days, muddling through, using every pan in the kitchen to make chicken madras, was almost as much fun as relearning some of the other skills he’d forgotten.

Skills. Ha.
Heat bloomed in Jodi’s gut. He drifted to the living room, recalling Rupert’s gravelly moan when he’d come from Jodi’s touch that morning, and the night before, and the night before that. Treating Rupert’s dick like his own had turned out to be easier than he’d imagined, and making Rupert come? Watching him, entranced by him, absorbing every breath and groan? Damn. Beautiful didn’t quite cut it anymore. Who knew having another man’s cock in his mouth could be so fucking magical?