Page 87 of Playing By Ear

They’d barely started, but for Jamie it felt like the end of his world as he knew it. Long gone were all thoughts of Falcon’s total domination that would offer him a safe, familiar role to play. No fantasy could match the reality he and Perry were building together.

Maybe this was what it was like to be one with another, to be more than just bodies in space producing friction. Maybe this was what all those love songs were blethering about! For the first time in his life, Jamie had glimpsed one dark corner of another person’s soul. Amid the ruins of his “empty” books, Perry had revealed the absolute mess he was on the inside. Which meant maybe, someday, he would understand Jamie’s mess too.

As they kissed and kissed, Jamie folded his thighs around Perry’s hips, the better to feel the mesmerizing sway of his body in its slow but relentless rhythm. Waves of swollen heat flowed from the place they joined, rising and lapping right up to the border between pleasure and pain before receding again.

Perry broke their kiss, his breath coming hard, likely more from holding back than from exertion. “All right, Jamie?”

“Aye.” That question and its answer held more weight than usual. “Feels like my eyeballs are melting.”

Perry stopped. “Is that good or bad?”

“It’s so good.” Jamie anchored his arms around Perry’s smooth, muscular back, forbidding himself to look away or make another joke. “Can you see me?”

“Clear as day from this distance.”

“What do you see?”

The corner of Perry’s mouth quirked. “The way your lashes flare each time I move in.”

He did it again, and Jamie couldn’t stop his eyes from widening. He couldn’t stop anything.

“What else do you see?”

Perry’s gaze dropped to Jamie’s mouth. “Your lips are swollen, and extra red.”

“From all that kissing. And your st—” He gasped as Perry filled him deeper, reaching that glowing place inside. “Your stubble. Oh, God.” He dropped his arms to the bed and grasped at the duvet. “Perry…”

Perry propped himself up on his hands. “No more talking, then?” His hips did a sly spiral.

Jamie could only jerk his head back and forth. He was no longer helping to drive this train. All he could do was hang on and submit to the ride.

Somehow, somewhen over the next two or threeternities, as Perry drove him deeper into delirium, Jamie managed two words that blended into one—had to blend into one, because each on its own would have meant the opposite of what they meant together, the opposite of what he wanted.

Don’t stop.

Don’tstop.

Dontstop.

Then all words left him, and it was only his moans rising and joining into one shriek after another, and even if the walls hadn’t been thick, even if the whole world had been watching and listening, Jamie couldn't have held in these sounds, not without detonating into so much flesh and shrapnel.

But when he finally came, his voice strangled itself, and all that left his throat was a thin, high squeak.

Then Perry’s voice filled his senses, a soul-deep groan that took the form of Jamie’s name. He bent low, bringing their faces together again. As he throbbed deep within Jamie, Perry’s lips crashed upon his, and the last of their cries were uttered into the other’s still-ravenous mouth.

The kiss lasted well past the ripple of aftershocks, and past the instant Perry eased out of his body, leaving behind a warm, pulsing space. It lasted while Perry rolled onto the bed next to him, turning Jamie onto his side so they could keep kissing and touching and drawing out this moment into something like forever.

Chapter 17

“Having the oddest sense of déjà vu,” Jamie said as they made their way down the crowded West End pavement. “You?”

Perry grinned and squeezed Jamie’s biceps, still in a daze from the previous night’s lovemaking and the morning’s languorous follow-up. “A bit, yeah.”

On the surface, this tableau was rather like the first minutes they’d spent together. Though the street was different, and the tarp over Jamie’s trolley now covered bags of books instead of busking equipment, the weather was equally wet, and once again Perry held an umbrella in one hand and Jamie’s arm in the other. He’d no clue back then that the man he’d just met would one day lift him from his darkest moment and carry him from hell to heaven.

Now he knew that even if the last of his vision vanished tomorrow, he will have already glimpsed the most important sight: Jamie’s face full of rapture, all traces of reticence gone.

“Nearly there,” Jamie said as he came to a stop at a corner.