Signs of Life (23 page)

Jeremy pulled back to the tip and then slammed back home, baring his teeth at the tightness and pressure as Kai’s ass clamped down on him. He dragged back out slowly, exulting in Kai’s frustrated sobs, the way he scrabbled at Jeremy’s hips, trying to pull him in.

“Please, Jeremy,
please
!”

At that Jeremy’s control snapped, and he lifted one of Kai’s legs to his shoulder, pushing his other knee up and far out to the side, beginning a brutal rhythm, the sound of the bed creaking and Kai’s guttural cries music to his ears. Sweat dripped off the end of Jeremy’s nose as he hammered into Kai, watching as he braced his hands against the frame of the bed above his head to keep from being forced into it.

“That’s it, Jere,” Kai hissed. “Deeper!” Jeremy dragged Kai’s other leg up to his shoulder too, then rose up and gripped the top of the headboard for purchase, bending Kai almost in half, grunting as he hilted himself over and over, angling for that spot he knew would make him scream. Suddenly Kai arched his back, his body tight as a bow as he convulsed into orgasm, spunk hitting the underside of his chin and splashing across his chest.

The sight of Kai’s pleasure had Jeremy roaring and coming hard, the rhythm of his hips stuttering as he emptied himself with wrenching pulses into the condom, feeling the muscles of Kai’s ass massaging him, wringing every drop from his aching balls.

Jeremy eased Kai’s legs off of his shoulders and pulled out, holding on to the condom to keep it in place before falling to his back in a heap. Kai lay there bonelessly, his legs still splayed, his damp cock resting against his belly, half-hard, a droplet of come glistening on the tip.

Jeremy couldn’t help himself and rose up again, pushing Kai’s knees farther apart before leaning down and taking Kai’s cock into his mouth, swirling his tongue around the head, cleaning him up, growling at the taste. Kai twitched, moaning from the oversensitivity until Jeremy took pity on him and released him, kissing his way up Kai’s body, lapping at the glistening trails of come that streaked Kai’s chest and chin.

Grasping Kai’s chin, he shoved his tongue deep into his mouth, and Kai sucked eagerly on it until Jeremy finally pulled away and rose shakily from the bed. He pitched the condom at the wastebasket in the bathroom, wetted a cloth, and wiped Kai down thoroughly, gently, before tossing the soiled cloth on the floor and then pulling Kai into his arms.

Kai burrowed into him, his face buried in Jeremy’s sweaty neck, and they drifted into an exhausted, sated sleep.

WHEN THEY
awoke a couple of hours later, they were still entwined, Kai’s head on Jeremy’s shoulder. Jeremy waited for the restlessness to strike, the intimacy to make him uncomfortable, and it did, but to a more manageable degree than ever before. He hugged Kai closer, kissing the top of his head, and he stirred sleepily.

“You need to get up?” Kai mumbled, his muscles tensing as if he was going to shift away.

“No,” Jeremy whispered. “I’m okay.”

After a few more minutes, Kai did move away, but only to prop some pillows behind him and relax back into them with a sigh. Jeremy followed suit, looking around Kai’s bedroom with interest. He leaned over to the nightstand and picked up a picture of Kai and Loren, taken at the summit of some mountain, both of them with one arm wrapped around the other, their free hands in the air making a “hang loose” sign.

Jeremy looked at the picture closely, seeing Kai’s sun- and wind-burned cheeks, the days’ old stubble.

“That was the summit of Mt. Rainier,” Kai murmured. “It was brutal as hell, and fuck, was I glad to get back to civilization.”

“When did you meet Loren?” Jeremy asked, setting the picture back on the nightstand and turning on his side, facing Kai. Kai reached out and trailed his fingers through Jeremy’s hair, brushing it off his forehead, making Jeremy want to purr like a cat.

“I met him around eight years ago while we were both in community college. I was taking some general ed courses, trying to figure out what to do with my life, and he was enrolled in a criminal justice program, his ultimate goal the police academy. We were paired up for a project in a class; that’s how we got to know each other. Found out we had a lot in common, things like hiking, camping. We just clicked.”

Kai sighed, obviously lost in his memories. “Anyway, to make that part of a long story short, we became friends. He figured out pretty quickly that I’m gay, but I lied and told him I’d just gone through a bad breakup and wasn’t interested in dating or sex. One night we got drunk and he started running his mouth, told me that he was gay too, but he could never come out if he wanted to have a career in the police department. And that was his dream, to follow in his dad’s footsteps, his older brothers’.

“After a while he tried to kiss me, got sort of insistent, and that of course triggered me. I overreacted, said some shit.”

Kai shook his head. “He was embarrassed and angry and I felt terrible, so for months we avoided each other as much as possible. Then one day he was waiting for me after one of my classes, handed me an iced coffee and asked if we could talk. We went back to his place, and he said that in one of his criminal justice classes they were doing a ‘victimology’ course, learning how to deal with victims of violent crimes, domestic violence, that sort of thing. It sort of clicked in his mind, how I’d reacted the night I freaked out over a kiss, and a different night when I’d fallen asleep on his couch watching a movie and had a nightmare. He’d woken me up, and I’d brushed it off as nothing, but he put it together with stuff I’d been shouting during the nightmare and asked me point-blank if I’d been raped.”

Kai’s body tensed at the memory, and Jeremy reached out and took his hand, linking their fingers together. Kai leaned down and gave Jeremy a quick kiss and a reassuring smile, then resumed his story.

“My face must have given the truth of it away, and he said that whatever happened to me wasn’t my fault. I completely broke down at those words, told him the whole story about what had happened to me. I hadn’t told anyone about it, not my foster parents, not my teachers, my probation officer. That day I couldn’t stop talking. Total word vomit.”

Jeremy lifted their joined hands to his mouth and kissed Kai’s fingers, and Kai continued, “I really expected him to get up and walk out the door, because it was some heavy shit and who wants to deal with someone else’s heavy shit, especially a closeted gay man with problems of his own? But he didn’t, just sat with me and let me talk.”

Kai fell silent as he stared off into space, and Jeremy waited him out, rubbing his thumb gently over the back of Kai’s hand.

“When I was finally done talking, I fell apart again, and he just held me. It was the first time I had let a man touch me like that since before detention. And even before that, my sexual encounters with men consisted of blow jobs and hand jobs behind gay clubs that I managed to slip off to. I was underage and looked it, so I couldn’t get into the clubs, even with a fake ID. I used to wait outside and sometimes a guy would pick me up and I’d blow him in the alley, or we’d jerk each other off.”

“Jesus, Kai,” Jeremy whispered. “Were you a virgin before you went to jail?”

“Not
technically
,” Kai replied in a wry tone. “There were always plenty of girls hanging around my crew, and I fucked them every now and then for show. I was a horny kid, and I usually could get through it, at least enough times that the guys didn’t get suspicious. But no, I had never been with a man before I went to jail, not fully, not—like that.”

Jeremy’s gut clenched with horror and sympathy. But he knew Kai didn’t want or need his pity, so he hid his reaction as best he could, not trusting himself to speak for a moment.

“When I’d gotten a hold of myself, Loren said he thought the first thing I needed was to learn how to really defend myself, and he’d been researching various self-defense classes and thought Krav Maga would be the best fit. He’d already arranged for a free trial class, and we went together, ended up enrolling. As time went on and I got more self-confident, he started with casual, off-handed touches when we were alone together, worked our way up to holding hands and cuddling while watching a movie, then one night he asked if he could kiss me.”

Kai smiled at the memory. “He was so careful, so gentle, but he was shaking. It was hard for him to hold himself back, a gay man with little experience, and he wanted me. But he knew how important it was that I trust him, so every time I asked him to stop, he stopped, no questions asked, no recrimination. Looking back I don’t know how he did it, letting me kiss and touch him until I couldn’t anymore, until I put the brakes on everything over and over again. It went on for weeks like that.”

Kai shifted, disengaging his hand and reaching behind himself to plump the pillows up and settle himself more comfortably. He immediately took Jeremy’s hand again, and Jeremy squeezed his fingers gently, encouragingly.

“I was frustrated too because I wanted more. I wanted to be able to have sex, enjoy myself with a man I cared about. But every time he put his hands on me in a sexual way, I was done, couldn’t go on. One night when I got to his place, he said he’d had an idea, and led me into his bedroom. I watched as he pulled out a pair of police-issue handcuffs that he’d borrowed from his dad, and you could have knocked me over with a feather when he took all of his clothes off, lay down on the bed, and then handcuffed himself to the bed frame. He yanked on them, twisted and pulled, and he wasn’t getting free. He couldn’t touch me, and yet he was all mine.”

Jeremy watched as Kai’s eyes grew heavy-lidded with the memory, his accent thickening as his voice dropped to a husky rasp. “For the first time in my life, I was able to explore a man’s body the way I’d always wanted to. I was safe, and I had all the time in the world. It wasn’t a hurried, half-clothed grope in an alley or a quick suck-off in a dirty bathroom. He was like a feast, and finally I could see what turned a man on, what made him hard, what made him come.”

Jeremy felt a sensual shiver run through Kai’s body, and goose bumps rose up on his skin, his nipples pebbling with remembered arousal.

“It’s a good memory,” Kai said hoarsely, and Jeremy knew that’s all he’d say about it. “As time went on we were able to progress to him having one hand free, and so on from there. It took months but eventually we were able to make love. I know I’m lucky, Jeremy, to have found someone so patient and kind. I owe the fact that I’m able to enjoy a normal sex life now to him.”

“He was just what you needed, Gorgeous,” Jeremy said gently. “It’s no wonder you fell in love with him.”

Kai smiled sadly. “Looking back, it was more a combination of gratitude, friendship, and the infatuation of first sex. I convinced myself I was in love with him, and he let me down gently time and time again, saying it was too soon to say that, let’s just enjoy ourselves. He tried not to hurt me, but he made it clear he wasn’t going to settle down with me, live out and proud with me, even encouraged me to date other people. But he was my comfort zone, my safety net, and it wasn’t that easy.”

Kai sighed, shifting down from the pillows into Jeremy’s arms again, and Jeremy held him close.

“One night he convinced me to go up to a gay club in Portland, and I ended up sitting at the bar watching him troll for other men. God, that fucking hurt. But he had never made me any promises, never led me on. He helped me get past a life-changing trauma, and I will always love him for that. And through the years he’s been there for me over and over. He and I aren’t meant to be more than friends for a lot of reasons, and I accepted that a long time ago. My Krav Maga gave me the self-confidence to date again, which I’ve done sporadically, less so in recent years because I’ve been so busy with school and my career. Since he won’t come out of the closet and date anyone, we’ve fallen into kind of a fuck-buddy thing the last couple of years. The sex part of it is more convenience than anything else.”

Jeremy kissed the top of Kai’s head. “I think you’re an amazing man, resilient and more courageous than anyone I’ve ever met.” He held up his hand when Kai opened his mouth to say something, continuing, “Loren may have helped you, but you did all the work, Kai. I’m in awe at what you’ve overcome.”

Jeremy gasped as Kai suddenly pushed him to his back and swung his leg over Jeremy’s hips, straddling him, leaning down to kiss him hotly. “Thanks. Because, baby, I sure wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on you. You rock my world, and then some.”

Jeremy arched his back as Kai circled his hips, rubbing Jeremy’s suddenly very interested cock with his. Jeremy grasped his waist to encourage his movement, and the time for talking was over.

“KAI?”

“Hmm?” Kai’s voice was drowsy, husky, and Jeremy pulled him closer, loving how Kai threw his leg across both of his, snuggling against him.

“About Loren—”

Kai lifted his head and looked Jeremy in the eye. “I slept with him a few times over the summer,” he said, smoothing his hand up and down Jeremy’s chest and belly. “So it was after our night at the club but before we met again in Liliana’s office. Since then I promise that it’s only been you.”

Jeremy took a deep breath. “Kai, I’d like us to stop using condoms,” he whispered. “Since Brent there hasn’t been anyone else, and I know there won’t be. Is—is that something you’d consider?”

Kai reached up and stroked Jeremy’s cheek. “Hell yes. Since I saw you again in that office, I haven’t thought of anyone but you. I want to be with you, Jeremy.”

Jeremy sighed, a cautious happiness taking root, and Kai leaned down and kissed him gently, sweetly.

“I need to ask Loren for his test results so I can share them with you,” Kai murmured between kisses, “and then we can ditch the condoms. I’ve never had unprotected sex with him, but—”

“I’ve never had unprotected sex with anybody,” Jeremy said softly. Kai pushed up on his elbow in order to stare down at him.

“Not even with Brent?” he said incredulously. “You were married and you still used condoms?”