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I’m suddenly glad the pop he’d handed me was caffeine-free, and out of stubbornness, I’d only taken a couple of small sips. I definitely didn’t need to suffer the indignity of trying to pee with Jeb right beside me.
“I’m fine.”
“Good,” he says, and then the light of the devil comes into his eyes. “Cause now it’s time for you to tuck me in.”
One-handed, he pulls at his shirt, and the line of snaps keeping his shirt together pull apart, delivering a teasing glance of the soft, darkish blond happy trail as it leads up his golden-tanned skin to his six-pack abs and then to his lean, muscled chest.
“Guess I should have taken off my shirt before I handcuffed us together. I don’t feel like playing Houdini to maneuver it off.”
So fascinated by the terrain of his upper body, I don’t register Jeb’s words, or realize he’s staring at me with an amused tilt to his lips that tells me he caught my slow, worshipful appraisal of his body.
He just winks, and while I’m trying to fight the blush his winks always trigger in me, he makes it a hundred times worse. With a simple twist of his fingers, he undoes the buttons of his jeans. A shimmy of his hips and they fall to the floor, where he steps out of them to reveal a pair of tight black boxer briefs. I swallow and then swallow again at the way he fills them out.
I hold my breath, afraid that he’ll keep going and afraid that he won’t.
“Your turn,” he says, looking down at the oversized hoodie and skinny jeans that are my uniform when he isn’t forcing me to dress up for some absurd reason, like pulling a job he insisted we needed to ‘dress to impress’ for or to attend a party at Cash’s house.
“I’m good.”
“What do you mean, ‘you’re good’? You could at least take off your jeans off.”
“I mean, I’m good like this. I’ll sleep with my clothes on.”
“Won’t you be hot?”
“I’ll be fine,” I say stiffly.
He lets out a long breath. “At least take off your shoes. I don’t feel like getting kicked all night.”
I do as he says and slip off my shoes and toe them under the bed so they’re aligned.
With his free arm, Jeb motions for me to get in the bed first. I climb on my knees all the way to the other side and cling to the edge of the mattress.
He turns off the light and settles in next to me. I inhale a deep breath.
“Night, Eli,” he says, but I don’t respond.
I’m too busy trying to ignore that he’s too close.
The temptation is too much. I could so easily pretend to be sleeping and roll over and fit my body tight against his, skin-to-skin. I ache to feel him touch me.
With the exception of the few too-brief and too-tempting touches Jeb gave me when we first met, no one has touched me since my mother’s disappointed caress of my cheek before she left our apartment. I was fifteen.
The hunger of my stimulus-starved skin goes so deep that sometimes I swear it’s settled into my bones until they feel hollow.
It is my punishment for that day. One I accepted as my due—until I started having fantasies about Jeb. They’d started out tame. I’d imagine the zing of electricity that would go up my spine if he put a casually friendly hand on my shoulder or the feel of his rough, callused hand against my palm if he held my hand. Lately, though, my fantasies hadn’t stopped at hand-holding. I couldn’t look at Jeb’s full lips without wondering what they would feel like against mine, and woke up dreaming about the sensation of his calloused hands on my cock.
I told myself that these thoughts were okay. That I could secretly have them, but then Cash got shot, and I realized what a distraction they were. Not only had I endangered a member of our crew, I’d been shirking my other duties. How many lives had been lost because, instead of scouring the web for data patterns that would identify a new hate group or recognize when an existing one was amping up its violence, I had been fantasizing about Jeb touching me?
I’d promised myself I wouldn’t let myself get distracted again, but here I am, lying here next to him, yearning for the slightest contact.
I have to get away from him. Tomorrow, as soon as we figure out what Patriots Now is up to and we take care of the money, I’ll ask Johnny or Daisy to take me to the airport so I can get as far away as possible from Jeb and the things he makes me want.
* * *
The dream starts out like it always does. The exact way the day happened in reality.
It’s fall in New York. The trees are red and gold, and I’m rushing down the busy street, dodging tourists and idiots who can’t walk and text at the same time. I feel sick from the guilt churning in my stomach at the terrible things I’d shouted at my parents. I’m hoping if I can get to temple before the services for the beginning of Sukkot begin, they’ll forgive me.
