Lachlan makes the gesture and kisses Jules.‘I love you.’
‘Do you wanna fuck me?’
‘You know I do.’
‘How bad?’
‘Baby.’
‘Bad enough to risk getting caught?’
Lachlan groans again, but in a different way.‘You’re killing me.’
‘No one can kill you, bodyguard.You’remine.I’d take you back from God and make him so sorry for trying,’ Jules whispers, eyes overbright, like they hold what makes lightning deep in their core.Lachlan buries a rippling shudder; wishes it wasn’t so intrinsically connected to his dick.‘You’re mine now.I never had anything before that was mine.’
Sweetheart, you have everything,he does not say because a kneejerk counter isn’t worth being so catastrophically unfair.Jules has all that money can buy but freedom has no price-tag.
‘Well I am,’ Lachlan says plainly.‘I’m yours.’
‘Am I yours?’
‘Do you want to be?’
That too is unfair given the hideous conversation that went down between Jules and his father before they left, but he can’t help asking it.Jules tangles fingers in his hair, says, ‘I’ve been yours ever since you sewed me up.’
Lachlan kisses him, bittersweet things twisting violently within; atowel-wringof crushing love and the wet crash of water flooding and filling him in a way nothing else ever has.He holds Jules’ face in both hands, tasting him, branding possession with kisses as deep as he can give them, the way children make potions of mud and berries and wishes of whispers to the moon, so too Lachlan would possess and be possessed by love, kisses and skin.
It shouldn’t get him like it does, it shouldn’twrenchengines to life after years dormant and rusted, but they deal in extremes, both of them, albeit in different ways and so extremes speak like poetry writ large in blood and risk and the ever-present threat looming overhead like a storm refusing to break, makes tension thick and heavy, soaks his tongue in metal and madness as he crawls on top of Jules, now flat on the bed.
‘Say it again,’ he gasps harshly, hand slipping down Jules’ waistband to palm his cock, skin to skin, he’s so hard already.
‘I was yours since that night, and I know you felt it too,’ Jules moans into his mouth.‘We were both bleeding.’
Lachlan fucks him on the bed, pins hands above his head because his boy wanted it, and it’s so fucking intimate and risky that when he comes he doesn’t even realise he forgot the condom, hefillsJules with himself, can only hearwe were both bleedingover and over as Jules’ tight clutch milks his orgasm in waves and he feels the tell-tale slip and slide between their partially clothed bodies, meaning Jules came untouched.
Breathing ragged, head light, he kisses Jules with delicate tenderness, shaking.He’sshaking.It was conditioned out of him years ago, nervous system put through shock-training, but he’s trembling now, still inside Jules, lost to this love and desire andneedso wild control cannot temper it.
It’s dangerous for Lachlan to lose control.
It issofucking dangerous.
‘I didn’t wear…’ Lachlan mutters, head still swimming in the spacey absence of gravity.Jules softly bites the flesh of his shoulder, planting sloppy kisses wherever he likes, tasting him.‘I forgot.’
‘I know.’Jules whispers, nuzzling deep into the crook of Lachlan’s neck before sucking a bruise into being.‘I wanted you to.’
?
Lachlan does a full circuit by night.
The adults are in the pool, so he purposefully avoids that area.The beach has been cleaned up.You’d never know a party took place.The waves wash in and out, soothingly constant and the moon catches the surface of the water.
It makes Lachlan think of her.Shimmer.God, he misses her so much.
When he finds the good spot, he uses the satellite phone to call Danya, who answers on the third ring.
‘Lachlan.’
‘Hey,’ Lachlan says, relieved despite himself.‘Sorry I couldn’t call until now.How’s things?’
