Better Than People (Garnet Run 1)

Jack locked his arm around Simon’s waist and slowly thrust against him.

“Yeah, I’d bring you right to the edge, over and over. Watch the way your face gets so pink. Watch you thrash around, trying to get more of my cock.”

Simon’s hole clenched at Jack’s words and the feel of that cock hot and hard against him.

“Jack,” Simon begged. “Jack.”

“God, the way you say my name.”

Simon squeezed his eyes tight shut, unable to stand a single stimulus that wasn’t Jack.

“Jack,” he whispered. “I n-n-need you.”

Jack’s shudder shook him.

“Fuck! Fuck, I need you too,” Jack groaned, and Simon felt him come, felt the heat and the pulsing heft of him. It sent a bolt of lust through him that made him lightheaded.

Jack gasped one more time and shuddered out a low moan. Then the hand that had been on Simon’s thigh slid into his pants as well, and Simon spread his legs wider. One rough finger rubbed against his hole, sending shivers through him. He threw his head back and let Jack do as he wished with him, all energy concentrated on the hum of pressure that was building inside him.

“Mmm, finally,” Jack drawled, “when you couldn’t take it anymore, I’d wrap my hand around you—” He wrapped his hand around Simon’s aching flesh. “And I’d stroke you, and stroke you, and fuck you, and fuck you, until you lost it.”

His questing finger pressed inside Simon and the pulls on his cock were long and slick and his voice in Simon’s ear was low and hot. He curled his finger inside Simon, and the sparks caught fire. Every sensation raging through him coalesced into an explosion that snapped his hips and gushed from him in screaming pulses.

Jack held him and worked him until he was just shuddering pleasure, until his body was twitching with every touch, but couldn’t feel a drop more pleasure or he might die.

A minute or two later, Simon’s eyes fluttered open. Jack was stroking his stomach and kissing his hair. He felt liquid with ease and relished the steady thump of Jack’s heartbeat against his shoulder.

Still a little shaky, he looked at the sketchbook again. The drawing was slightly smeared where he must’ve clutched it.

“Is there more?” he asked, voice raw.

Jack buried his face in Simon’s hair.

“Not yet.”

Simon turned the page anyway. Branches laden with snow, acorns hanging in clusters, tattered leaves, pine boughs.

“I wasn’t lying about the trees,” Jack said, arms hugging him close.

Chapter Twelve

Jack

“Haven’t seen you in here in a while.”

Jack jumped in his seat at Charlie’s voice.

“Sorry. Thought you heard me come in.”

Jack shook his head.

He’d wandered into his studio under the guise of dusting. He hadn’t let himself examine why he’d need his drawing table dust-free because...well, that’s why it was a guise. He’d dusted the bookshelves, pulling out a volume here and there and flipping through. When his armpits began to ache from standing with his crutches too long, he’d settled gingerly at the table. He’d flipped through Two Moons Over, as he often had before he started drawing in the past, and his hand had reached for a piece of paper automatically.

“Is that us?”

Charlie peered over his shoulder at the scattered pages.

“Um, yeah.”

Jack started to gather the pages so Charlie wouldn’t look, but his brother was already studying them.

“That’s the time you hid in the woodpile and got swarmed by fire ants,” Charlie said, chuckling at the memory. “God, your face. You really thought you’d found the best hiding spot.”

Jack smiled and grabbed another drawing and shoved it at Charlie.

“Yeah, well, you weren’t such a paragon of sense yourself.”

Charlie groaned at the drawing. He’d been twelve and Jack had been eight and they’d gone fishing in the stream south of the cabin. Charlie had tried to show off and make up a new way of casting. He’d flicked his rod back like he was fly-fishing, and through some combination of coordination, wind, and bad luck, Charlie’s hook lodged in the back of his shoulder.

“I really thought I’d invented fly-fishing with a spinning rod,” Charlie said, soberly.

“And I really thought you were gonna fall in the stream the way you jumped around like you’d been shot.”

“It hurt!”

“It was a fishhook,” Jack scoffed.

Charlie smiled, then looked at him assessingly.

“You seem...strangely happy.”

“Asshole,” Jack muttered. But he felt strangely happy. Not just happy in comparison to how awful he’d felt the last eight months. But a deep, rooted happiness that had a lot to do with Simon. Simon who could cook casseroles and knew how to tat lace. Who liked to be held down and spread open and tormented with pleasure until he couldn’t talk for moaning, rather than for shyness. Simon, who kissed him like he worried that each kiss might be the last and smiled at him like he wanted this to never end.