I was still running the operational case against this—what it would mean for me, for Jasper, for all of us—when Jasper moved.
His hand came up, palm warm against my chest, and then he was leaning forward. His mouth found mine in the dark with none of the carefulness I’d come to expect from him. Just straightforward want, the kind you couldn’t fake even if you tried.
It stopped me cold for exactly one second—Jasper kissing me, Jasper choosing this—and then my hand was on the back of his skull, fingers pressing into his hair, and I was kissing him back hard. Not pretending desire, but actually feeling it, letting it rise up through my chest and into my throat.
Jasper made a sound against my mouth—low and involuntary—and it landed somewhere in my chest before it registered anywhere else. His lips parted under mine, his body leaning into the contact.
I could feel the slight tremor running through him—not fear, but something adjacent to it, the tension of a man who wasn’t used to getting what he wanted.
I eased us toward the bed, one hand still in Jasper’s hair, the other at the small of his back. The mattress hit the backs of his knees, and then we were sitting, then lying down, my body settling over his.
Jasper’s hands found my shoulders, my chest, the solid warmth of me beneath my shirt. His touch was careful at first, then less so—like he was remembering how to want something, how to ask for it without words.
I got his shirt off with quick, efficient movements, then took my own off. I took my time working my way down. My mouth at his throat, feeling his pulse jump under my tongue. The ridge of his collarbone, the slight hollow at its center. His nipples—first one, then the other—tongue and teeth and the pressure of my palm that had him gripping the sheets and breathing in pieces.
I looked up at him from there, registering the flush across his cheekbones, the bruise still fading along his jaw, the set of his mouth—parted and wanting.
Something moved behind my ribs—not quite tenderness, but adjacent to it—and I kept going, tracing the line of his ribs, the jut of his hip, every place that had been handled badly and was now being touched with deliberate care.
I catalogued his responses—every place Jasper tensed, every place he relaxed, the rhythm of his breathing as it changed from careful to wanting. But this wasn’t clinical. This wasn’t a mission brief or a threat assessment.
This was Jasper, who’d asked me not to leave him alone, who’d kissed me without hesitation, who was looking at me now with the directness of a man who’d made a decision and was sticking with it.
By the time I got my hand around his cock, he’d stopped thinking about anything outside this room. I could see it on his face—the blankness that came with surrender, the way his eyes went unfocused when I stroked him slow and deliberate.
He was warm and heavy in my hand, already slick at the tip. His hips moved without permission, a small, unconscious motion that told me exactly what he needed.
I kept my strokes even, watching his face. Jasper’s eyes were half-closed now, his mouth open, breath coming in short pulls that didn’t reach the bottom of his lungs. He looked wrecked already, and I’d barely started.
He got his hand on me in return—one palm flat against my stomach, the other wrapped around my cock through my jeans—and the sound it pulled out of me was more honest than anything I’d said out loud in weeks.
I reached for the nightstand without being asked, one hand still working between us, and found the small bottle of lube Jasper had tucked there. A hope neither of us had named yet.
I held it up, meeting his eyes directly, not softening the question. Jasper didn’t flinch, didn’t look away, just nodded once—a short, definitive movement that carried more weight than its single syllable should have been able to.
I worked him open with the same focused patience I brought to everything—one finger, then two, slow and thorough, watching his face for every shift from tension to want. When I hit the spot that made his back arch off the mattress, his hand fisted in my hair, holding me exactly where he wanted me.
“Stop being careful,” he said, voice rough at the edges. They were the same words he had spoken before. They had the same effect.
I added a third finger and crooked them just so, and Jasper stopped talking entirely, one hand fisted in the sheets, the other braced against my shoulder.
As soon as he was ready, I scrambled out of my clothes, the sound of ripping clothe echoing through the bedroom air.
When I finally pushed inside, it was slow and full, and I had to breathe through the tightness of it, both hands on Jasper’s hips, holding him steady. He was hot around me, tight, his body giving way inch by careful inch.
I went completely still, giving him a moment, the muscles in my arms trembling with the effort of holding myself back. “You okay?” I asked, voice so rough I barely recognized it.
Jasper nodded, then rolled his hips to prove it, and I exhaled hard against his throat and started to move—the roughness coming back then, the weight of me, the grip of my hands on his hips, the pace building until the headboard was making noise against the wall.
I had stopped thinking about Gerald, about Sterling, about any of it. There was just this—Jasper beneath me, his eyes on my face, his body taking everything I gave him and asking for more.
I got my hand around his cock and stroked him in time with my thrusts, watching his face. His eyes had gone completely unfocused now, his mouth open, breath coming in short pulls.
I came with my hand wrapped around his cock and my mouth pressed against his temple, the rightness of it washing through me in waves that left me light-headed and gasping.
Jasper followed a few strokes later, his body going rigid beneath mine, then softening as the tension left him all at once.
We lay tangled and breathing in the dark, the farmhouse quiet around us. My weight was solid against Jasper’s chest, my breath evening out as my heart rate slowed.
