I slip my knee between his thick, solid thighs and scoot closer. “They are. So is yours.”
A shadow spreads across his face. “Yeah, not so much my parents. Especially my dad.”
“Was he hard on you?”
“You could say that.”
My stomach dips with his honesty. I’ve been wanting to learn more about him, but he always has this invisible barrier up between us that you can feel.
“Talk to me,” I say when he goes silent.
He closes his eyes and presses his face between the crook of my neck and shoulder. I rub his back and kiss his head.
“Dad is a… hard man,” he starts and pauses again. “I get it. My grandparents came here from the Ivory Coast for a better life, but it was difficult. Generational trauma, I think they call it. They had my dad and pushed him so hard to succeed out of fear that he’d fail. In turn, he pushed me. Pushed me so hard that…” Jett plays with my T-shirt, his hot breath on my skin growing faster. “As soon as he learned how fast I was at running, everything in my life revolved around it. Every single thing. From what I ate to how I lived. No downtime, no hanging out with friends, drinking, no spring break at the beach. I lived and breathed running.”
“Jesus,” I say. A picture starts forming in my mind about what it’s like to be an athlete pushing themselves hard enough to reach the Olympics, the pinnacle of achievement. Those men and women make it look almost easy, and they appear so eager. You don’t see what they really go through, the damage to their bodies and minds.
“It was the constant pressure to live up to his standards,” he continues. “No, not standards. Demands. All I could think about was success. Never fail. What would my grandparents think if I did, after all they went through to better our lives? When I lost a race, I failedthem.” His voice breaks. “That’s what he told me, anyway.”
I kiss his head again and hold him tighter. “God, that sounds horrible. I’m so sorry. That’s too much for a child, let alone an adult. How are things now between you and him?”
He simply shrugs. I’ll take that as not good.
Jett says nothing else, and something tells me not to prod him about it. He gave me a little bit about himself, and that’s enough. I’m confident that once we grow closer, he’ll open up more.
“Jett, you still awake?”
“Yeah.”
“As I said, I really like where this is going, and I really like you.” Usually, I’m bold and just ask, but he’s being vulnerable, and I’m still a little uncertain. Not about him in my life, but about the direction we’re headed in or if we’re standing still. Instead, I suck it up and just say it. “I want more, Jett. So much more. Like more than just sex. I really want to get serious with you. Start a relationship. You have so many different sides to you. I want to wake up next to you tomorrow, and each day after, to discover something new about you. Because every time I do, I really like what I see.”
He pulls back to look at me, his eyes wide with surprise. “You… want to be boyfriends?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Jett cups my face and presses his lips to mine. The kiss isn’t as hungry as it usually is. It’s slow, lazy, and full of tongue. It doesn’t take me long to grow hard, and I feel him swell against me, too.
“I want to try sex when we get back… if you want,” I say when we come up for air.
He lifts an eyebrow, his eyes dazed. “Sex?”
“Yes. You know… all-the-way kinda sex.”
He smiles so sweetly. “Yeah, we can do that.”
Feeling more confident, I sit up, push Jett onto his back, and straddle him. My hands rest on either side of his head as I smile down at him. His are on my hips. “Got lube around here?”
He juts his chin at the nightstand. “I think there’s still some in there. We gotta be quiet though.”
“Of course,” I say, climbing over him to pull open the drawer and reach for the lube. When I find it, I drop it on the bed and pull out my cock from my underwear. He watches me, then pulls his out, too.
I grab the bottle and squirt oil into my hand, then toss it somewhere. I wince when it hits the floor a little too loudly. “Sorry,” I whisper.
His smile is crooked as he slowly shakes his head. “I’m starting to think that quiet and you aren’t friends.”
I stick my tongue out at him, and when I fist our lengths together, it cuts off his laugh. He groans, closing his eyes as I start stroking us, slowly at first.
I lean forward, rest my head against his, and close my eyes. We both breathe heavily, but we don’t kiss, focusing on the budding pressure and friction of our cocks and my hand. Surprisingly, what gets me harder and more turned on is thatJett’s now mine. Sex just feels different when you’ve committed to someone. To him. He feels right. Wanting him is easy.
