Wake (101 page)

“I didn’t want it to get in the way,” he says quietly. I push back the sides of his shirt to look at his entire chest, fair and slightly freckled. It only takes a moment for his nipples to react to the open air and they withdraw into tight ovals. Just like in the hospital, I want to commit every inch of him to memory—every freckle and scar and ridge of bone and muscle. My scrutiny sets Jem on edge again, and he sits back on his heels and begins to close his shirt.

“Hey.” I grab his hands to stop him from buttoning up. “Stop that.”

“It was stupid,” he says to his lap. “I’ll put on a t-shirt or something.”

“No, you won’t.” It’s ridiculous the lengths to which Jem will go to hide from himself. I’m not done looking at him yet.

Jem glances up at me long enough to see that I’m not going to back down on this. He bows his head again and takes his lip between his teeth. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and avoids looking at me. Intimacy is a careful balancing act with Jem, because even when he wants to touch and be touched, the slightest gesture can make him self-conscious again.

“You wouldn’t let me beat myself up like this if it were the other way around.”

Jem doesn’t quite know what to say to that. He sits there brooding for a few seconds and belatedly tries to cover his chest with his shirt.

“I don’t want to argue anymore about how beautiful you are,” I tell him, and shift to straddle his lap. I push his shoulders back and part his shirt. “Now pipe down and let me appreciate you properly.” And just to level the playing field, I take my shirt off too. Jem tries to continue being irritated with me, but my breasts are quite distracting.

Jem’s chest is full of little surprises. His nipples—which are pleasantly sensitive, for a guy—are firm from the open air and tighten further in response to my touch. They’re asymmetrical, too; the left one is pointing toward his elbow.

“That’s good luck, you know.”

“What?”

“Okay, fine, I just made that up.” I tug his shirt off and Jem lifts his arms obligingly. “Lie back,” I tell him.

Jem reclines against the pillows, watching me study him. “Do you remember cuddling with your shirt off when you were high?”

“When was this?”

“In the hospital, that day your painkillers were screwed up.”

“I don’t remember.” I run my hands up his sides and along the undersides of his arms, spreading them as I reach toward his inner elbows. The new hair under Jem’s arms is blond. The hairs on his arms and chest are darker, but only just. I remark on the color and Jem shrugs. “It’ll probably change, you know.” I blow across his underarm, watching the new hair tremble, and Jem recoils with a scolding look. “You tickle me, and I swear to God…”

I take off my bra and the transgression is forgotten. He traces the edges of my breasts with his fingertips, like they’re fragile or fleeting and he wants to memorize their shape. I run my hand through his hair and Jem complains about cowlicks. He tries to flatten it with his hand, but it only makes his hat-head worse. “God damn,” he mutters. “And this thing is only going to get in the way.” He touches his oxygen tube and scowls. “Maybe we should just cuddle.”

I trace the outline of his gauze patch. “You didn’t tape this up so we could cuddle,” I argue, and Jem’s ears turn pink. I ask what he has in mind, but he refuses to tell me. “Did you cover it up just so you could hide it?”

“No. I didn’t want it to get caught, or be in the way. I wanted things to go smoothly with you.” He laughs weakly at himself. “Like I’ll ever manage not to screw that up.”

“Want to know a secret?” I ask. Jem raises an eyebrow at me and I trail little kisses up his jaw to whisper in his ear: “Sex only goes smoothly in the movies. It’s awkward, and messy, and in some positions there’s a high probability that you’ll fall over, but that’s okay because it’s still really fucking fun.”

“I can’t do that right now,” he reminds me.

“I know. We’re just going to roll with it and enjoy ourselves. And it’s likely going to be messy and awkward, and you’re not going to get embarrassed because that’s par for the course, right?”

Jem doesn’t make me any promises, but he does try. It eases his anxiety somewhat when I roll off him and we resume the side-by-side position we used this morning, during the movie. Lying like this, with neither one of his being dominant over the other and with no obvious way to segue into naughtier things, we can just hold and touch and make out—and we do. A lot.

There are things about Jem that I get to discover, now that I can touch him skin-to-skin. He likes nails against his back, gently trailing the ridge of his spine. The stretch of skin between his collarbone and shoulder is sensitive to kisses—the long, wet kind that make him turn to mush when applied to his neck.

Jem’s inhibition recedes as we kiss, and his hands begin to explore on their own. One even explores below the waistband of my sweatpants, cupping my ass beneath my underwear.

I return the favor and Jem murmurs against my lips, “Don’t you dare mention bread dough.” I laugh and ask him if he remembers having a face made of bread.

“What?”

“You made me touch your face when you were high. You said it was made of bread.”

“I did not.”

“Yup. And Elise tried to eat your eyebrow.”

“Now you’re just making stuff up.”

“I am not.” I spank him teasingly and Jem bites my lip. “Can I see all of you?” I ask. It’s a long shot, but if I don’t ask there’s no chance at all. Before he can answer I start to shimmy out of my pants. Nudity is a team sport, after all.

“You can keep your underwear on.”

Jem blushes. “Um, maybe?” His eyes are locked on my underwear. I decide to test the limits of a ‘maybe’ by slipping my hands under the back of his pants, touching his bum and thighs over his boxers.

Jem turns shy when I start to remove his pants. First he tries to distract me by making out, and he almost succeeds. I’m waiting for him to say no and tell me to stop, but he doesn’t. When making out fails to put a stop to things, he starts to make excuses for keeping his pants, telling me that he isn’t aroused yet. That’s still not a ‘no’ or a ‘stop.’

“Neither am I.” Jem shivers as I palm him through the thin layers of cotton and I ask what he wants to do right now.

“Don’t take it personally if I don’t get hard, okay?”

“Of course.”

“I want you to lie down,” he says quietly. I do as he says, but not before I turn up his flow of oxygen—just in case.

It’s his turn to discover. I lie back, exposed except for my underwear, and let him touch and kiss and smell and taste. Jem is fascinated with the curve of my waist and hip. He tastes the skin from my neck to my navel, peppering it with tender kisses. His hands trace the sensitive spots—elbows, collarbones, nipples—testing my reactions. It’s slow and languid, and even when he has to take a breather and lie with his head on my chest, his hands never stop moving.

I enjoy watching him look at me. His unguarded looks of interest and appreciation are a wordless compliment. He loves me, and he likes what he sees. Fingertips trace the curve of my pubic bone and the slope between hip and thigh, exploring my shape. Suddenly it all seems very funny, because if I tried doing this to Jem, he would shut down completely.

“What?” he says, and draws his hand away. I put it right back where it belongs.

“I’m enjoying myself. You?”

Jem smiles timidly. “Yeah, I am too.” I beckon him closer for a kiss and he happily complies. His tongue teases my lips and I chuckle warmly. I missed that wonderful appendage.

“More?” Jem offers with a smirk. I think he’s teasing me. And I think I like it.

“Please…but stop if you can’t breathe.”

He snorts. “Duh.” Jem rests more of his weight against me and cups my neck with his hand, angling our kisses for comfort. I wrap a leg around his hips and pull him in closer. I like feeling him so near.

Jem’s tongue tastes like kiwis and grapes. I can’t be certain if the pounding against my ribs is his heart or mine, so I reach over and turn his oxygen up a little more. I’d rather the fun not end in a blackout.

“Stop worrying,” he says against my lips. He’s right; I should let it be. I follow Jem’s lead—tongue, and lots of it; hands in hair; fronts pressing closer and closer together.

Jem needs a brief break to cough, so I kiss his neck while his mouth is occupied.

“I’m sorry.”

I don’t accept apologies in bed. I want his mouth back, now. The easy resuming of our activity seems to please Jem. He doesn’t question it, at least, and his self-conscious timidity is forgotten in the midst of having his lower lip sucked.

That tension begins to creep back when I kiss his ears, though. His hands are on my breasts, teasing me gently. I ask if he needs a break to rest and Jem sighs against my mouth. “Can you take my pants off?”

“You sure?”

And then he gives me a pair of quiet, wonderful words: “I’m ready.” He doesn’t mean that he’s hard, because we both know there’s a slim chance of that happening no matter what we do, but he’s ready to show me everything. Underwear doesn’t hide much, but it gives the il usion of being covered. He’s not truly
naked
with shorts on.

He’s got Pac Man on his boxers. I think it’s cute. He thinks my plain black cottons are boring. Since we’re teasing, I slip my hand through the fly of his boxers and stroke the skin along his upper thigh. I tease, but touch nothing he wants me to.

Jem’s fingers brush against the outside of my underwear. I palm his ball s—briefly—before I go back to teasing. He shivers against me, delighted and afraid at once.

“We’ll stop if it hurts,” I promise him. Jem nods and leans in for a kiss.

“Feels good,” he admits softly.

“Can I see all of you?”

Jem hesitates. “You first.” I obligingly slide my underwear down and kick them away. I want to take the loving look he gives me, seeing everything, and give it right back to him.

My hands settle on his hips. “May I?”

“Are you sure?”

“Please.”

Jem sits up halfway and lifts his bum off the mattress while I push away his shorts. I slip them down past his hips, and he helps kick them the rest of the way down his legs. It only takes Jem a moment to regret his decision to take it all off.

“Lie back.” Jem complies, but he leans on his elbows instead of fully reclining and keeps his knees drawn up like he doesn’t trust me. I work around that, lying across his lap and kissing his thighs.

Jem sighs and ever so reluctantly parts his knees a few more inches. I take my time with him, making every touch a gentle, worshipfull gesture. Jem manages to thoroughly enjoy himself.

“God,” he says, and pulls away slightly. His thumb brushes my moist lip and he says, “Give me a minute.”

“You okay?”

“Need to breathe.” He leans back on the pillows and pulls in a few deep lungfull s.

“You’re beautiful,” I murmur, and run my hands up his thighs and torso. Jem’s skin is pleasantly flushed and slightly damp with sweat.

“Can we work on you for awhile?” he says when he’s regained some breath. I tell him to do as he likes, and he shifts down to be face level with my chest. He looks so happy, grinning like a sweet idiot before laying his weight on my chest with an appreciative hum and kissing every inch of available skin. I could get used to this—this feeling of being appreciated. Jem is going to spoil me.

I hear him mutter ‘peaches’ as he takes my right breast in his hand. He flattens his tongue against my nipple and blood rises to the surface all over my skin. My blush amuses him.

“Like that, huh?” Jem echoes my sigh of pleasure as his lips close around my nipple, sucking it gently.

It’s one of my favorite feelings—to be flicked between his tongue and lip, and the near-pain of it when my nipple grazes the edge of his teeth. He licks away the stinging pinches of his teeth and moves to the other breast.

“You have the best tits ever,” he says between kisses. I wonder if that sounded more eloquent in his head, but decide I really don’t care. I like this relatively uninhibited Jem.

He gives my left breast as much attention as the right, in the interest of fairness, and then leans up to kiss me.

“My neck,” he says against my lips. I shift to give him what he desires: open mouthed kisses, licks and nibbles along his neck and collarbone. It drives him crazy, especially the skin below his ears.

“God,” he murmurs, and moves his hand up my thigh. Jem’s hand is shaking, but he’s gentle and he knows what he’s doing. The first five seconds alone are better and gentler than any other hand I’ve ever had down there, and then he starts to play with me.

“Damn.” I pant against his neck. “Twelve years of music pays off.” Jem chuckles at that and stifles a cough.

“Yes?”

“More.” I’m not sure what I mean by that, but he does. I bite down on my lip as he changes the tempo,

driving the sensation deeper into my skin. It’s heaven.

“Inside?” he breathes. How sweet of him to ask.

“Please.” So what if I can hardly breathe? He can; that’s all that matters. I take him in. We moan in unison and I have the bizarre impulse to call jinx. Jem turns back to my breasts, kissing and suckling at my nipples. He can’t hold in a few small coughs. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t care.” I touch as much of his skin as possible while I rock back and forth on his hand, compounding the pleasure his fingers give me.

“Neck?” I offer. Jem leaves my breasts for the moment to expose his neck to me. He’s earned some attention of his own.

Jem’s unoccupied hand goes to my knee and makes me straighten it. He’s mewling from the kisses I place higher on his jaw, just below his ear, as he straddles my leg and rests his weight on my hip.

“Yes,” I encourage him. He’s still soft, but his cock is tucked between us, subject to gentle thrusting against my skin as he continues to touch me.

Jem moans into my mouth and I think I heard ‘I love you’ on the end of that.

“I love you too.”

“So good…”

“More?” I should be careful what I wish for. Jem shifts his hand and the room promptly melts away. I couldn’t care less about trivial nonsense like breathing right now, arched into his chest, throat open with a soundless scream. He rides the high out with me. Jem holds my gaze and never looks away—I couldn’t if I tried.