Page 95 of The Fire Line

Jay felt it immediately.

“No?” he asked quietly.

Harris could hear his own breathing in the small room. Nobody had ever touched him there. He had understood abstractly that Jay might eventually want to, but thinking about the possibility had required nothing from him. Feeling Jay’s hand there was different—unfamiliar enough to raise every instinct Harris had for caution, while beneath that uncertainty something warmer pulled in the opposite direction.

Jay began to withdraw.

Harris caught his wrist before he could.

“Didn’t say no.”

“You stopped breathing.”

“Still breathing.”

“Hmm. That’s debatable.”

Harris held his gaze. Saying what he needed should not have felt this difficult after everything they had already done together.

“Slow.”

Whatever Jay saw in his face wiped away the teasing. His attention settled completely on Harris.

“Okay.”

He kissed him again, softer now, while his hand stayed where it was. There was no push for more, only the steady warmth of Jay’s palm and one fingertip tracing slowly along the crease. Harris felt his body begin to loosen by degrees.

Jay waited for it.

Only then did the touch shift, brushing deliberately across his opening without pressing inward.

The sensation itself was small. Harris’s reaction was not.

His fingers tightened behind Jay’s neck as heat shot low through him, startling enough that for a second he could think about little except the fact that he had liked it.

Jay paused against his mouth. “Still okay?”

“Yup.”

The second pass came just as slowly.

This time Harris’s body answered before his head could interfere. His hips shifted into the touch, and the sharp breath Jay drew against his cheek told Harris he had felt the movement too. Jay’s hand tightened at his side.

That reaction made everything hotter.

Harris still could not have said whether he wanted more. The question felt too large and too far ahead. Right now, he knew only that he did not want Jay to stop, and he was beginning to understand that he could let that be enough.

His hand found the front of Jay’s jeans.

Jay’s head fell back against the saddle rack with a rough, immediate “Fuck.”

Then footsteps sounded in the aisle.

Harris locked up so fast it hurt.

Voices followed, close enough that he recognized Evan before the words became clear. Someone else was with him—Pete, maybe—but identifying the second voice immediately became the least important problem Harris had.

Jay’s hand vanished from his jeans.