100 Days (28 page)

“Probably would’ve been healthier, not gonna lie.”

“Well, anyway. If I’m honest, it was
one
reason… just not the
whole
reason.”

Jake nods, mostly to himself, and they lapse into silence. After a few mo­ments, Jake turns the volume back up, unsure what to do with this new piece of infor­mation. He’s beginning to think that Aiden is approaching a crossroads. It’s been a subtle shift, so much so that Jake is only just starting to notice that Aiden no longer discusses their movies with his usual passionate analytical fervor. Instead, he tends to focus on the sound and music, picking out pieces of the score that strike him as either particularly fitting or at odds with the scene.

Noticing that the skin of his left arm is starting to feel tight, Jake lets it drop from the window and murmurs absently, “I think my arm is getting sunburned.”

Aiden glances at him. “Want me to take over in a little bit?”

“Maybe,” Jake says. “Hey, do you remember that time I got sunburned at Hampton Beach and you ended up icing my legs for me?”

“I still don’t get how you can burn through SPF seventy in an hour,” Aiden replies, shifting in his seat to turn and face him.

“It’s called being pale,” Jake tells him. “We can’t all have beautiful, model-quality skin that doesn’t even know what a sunburn is.”

“Beautiful, huh?”

“Shut up.”

“No, really, tell me more,” Aiden says, leaning on the arm of his seat and propping his chin in his hand.

Jake remains silent—usually this territory warrants exploration, but while driving it is decidedly perilous.

Aiden goes on, “Because, you know, ‘beautiful’ is probably how I’d describe your skin, too.”

Jake scoffs, and yet in the pause that follows, knowing he’s taking the bait but quite unable to resist, he asks, “Since when?”

“Oh, since… Alabama, maybe? Is that where we were when I gave you that massage?”

“I think so.”

“Well, either way, since then. Let’s just say I was really glad when you said you didn’t want it to be a one-time thing.”

“You were, huh?”

“Yep. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have gotten to figure out all these things about you.”

“What things?” Jake asks. He wants to kick himself as soon as the words are out of his mouth.

“Oh, I don’t know…” Aiden trails off, stretching his arms over his head. He seems to consider his words carefully, and Jake licks his lips with a dry tongue. “That tongue, for instance. I mean, I’d never have known you can do more with it than just tying knots in cherry stems.

“And we probably shouldn’t talk about exactly
what
you do with it,” Aiden continues, his voice hushed, as if he’s speaking in riddles and prayers. “We also probably shouldn’t talk about how badly I’ve been hoping you’d drive off the road for the last hundred miles so I can drag you back to bed.”

“You wouldn’t exactly have to drag me,” Jake says, clenching his jaw and tightening his grip on the steering wheel.

Aiden chuckles to himself, low and dirty, and turns his gaze out of the win­dow. But the seed is planted in Jake’s mind, and while they drive on with only his Johnny Cash playlist and the rhythmic hum of wheels on asphalt to sound­track their progress, his thoughts drift.

Growing up, Jake always felt as though he looked at the world more closely than everyone else. He seemed to pick out the tiniest details and take mental photographs to remember them by: the single droplet of water left on a window long after the rain had passed; the almost invisible, hairline crack in a cup from his mother’s tea set; the drooping end of the tinsel where, try as he might, he couldn’t keep it wound around a branch.

Yet Aiden is different. The mental images Jake takes of him are far more sensory: the curve of his cheekbone under Jake’s thumb, the softness of the skin behind his knee, the taste of his lips in the last seconds before he falls asleep. They’re tied up with the panoramic shots: Aiden dancing under pulsing lights, the only enticing thing in a sea of what
should
have been enticing; Aiden splayed out and spent, a sheen of sweat covering his back after his third orgasm; Aiden waking up with pupils already blown wide, pulling Jake on top of him for lazy morning sex somewhere in the middle of Kentucky. These are the most precious pictures he’s ever taken.

By the time an hour has passed, Jake is uncomfortably hard in his jeans; he can’t focus on any of Aiden’s comments about Arkansas being Happy-Mart country or Hot Springs supposedly having its own red light district. Instead, he focuses on the lips and eyes and hands that know exactly how to undo him, and he’s almost frenzied in his craving.

His frustration hits its peak when Aiden glances over and, upon noticing Jake’s predicament, does nothing more than toss him a knowing smirk.

“You fucker,” Jake says. “You know exactly what you’re doing, don’t you?”

“Who, me?” Aiden asks, all wide-eyed and innocent. “The guy who was practically celibate?”

“Oh my god, shut up,” Jake says, and finally decides to act on his instincts. He drives them off the freeway, following the signs for Buffalo River Na­tion­al Park and barely keeping to the speed limit. He winds tighter and tight­er un­til they’re finally parked and he grabs Aiden by the wrist, yanks him up­right and leads him to the bedroom without so much as a word passing be­tween them.

In almost a parody of their night in Philadelphia—a hazy picture in his mind that blurs around the edges—Jake pushes Aiden down onto the edge of the bed and leans over him.

“What do you want?” Aiden asks.

“This,” Jake says, gesturing down at himself, “is your fault. So I want you to shut up.”

“Shut up and… what? Just take it?” Aiden asks, and when Jake nods, his brown eyes grow darker with the hint of a challenge. He smirks again, lifts his chin and says, “Make me.”

Jake lets out a noise between a growl and a groan, pitches forward and kisses him with no finesse whatsoever, sloppy tongue and lazy lips. Even as Aiden puts on a show of struggling against Jake’s grip around his wrists, he hooks his legs around Jake’s waist to pull him closer, still daring him to chase, challenging him to deliver and betting that he won’t in the world’s most willing game of cat and mouse.

With only a few breaks in contact, reluctant to give up a single second of the release he’s been craving, Jake manages to strip them both entirely naked. As he settles his body over Aiden’s, his teeth raking the skin of Aiden’s neck, he feels Aiden’s limbs go intoxicatingly lax for a fleeting mo­ment and it almost makes him want to stop, catch his breath and make this last.

Jake pulls back to drink him in, rests his crossed forearms across Aiden’s chest and lets them bear his weight.
You really are beautiful,
he thinks, tracing one fingertip along Aiden’s bottom lip… and then Aiden raises his head off the sheets just far enough to whisper against Jake’s mouth, “Do something useful.”

With that, the moment passes as quickly as it came, swept away by the heat and fire that boil Jake’s blood.

“
Useful?
” he manages, screwing his eyes shut as Aiden’s cock drags along the length of his own; this is an appetizer when he wants a five-course meal. He pulls Aiden farther up the bed, straddles his hips and holds him down with one hand. “Fuck you, Aiden Calloway.”

“That’s the idea,” Aiden says without missing a beat. His roguish grin defies Jake to resist, and Jake has had just about enough.

“You know what? I told you to shut up.”

“And I told you to make me. But if you’re not
up
to it—”

Jake puts his hand over Aiden’s mouth, locking eyes with him as he moves to straddle his chest. He waits until Aiden blinks up at him with wide, humoring eyes and nods. He works the tip of his index finger between Aiden’s lips and tugs his mouth open, holding himself just out of reach and reveling in the heat of Aiden’s bare chest against the skin of his thighs.

When Aiden rears up far enough to lick across the head of his cock, it’s like relief painted onto his skin, second by exquisite second. Aiden sinks his mouth over the tip and sucks hard, his eyes fluttering shut. A moan vibrates through Jake’s sensitive flesh and up, up, up, a puddle of warmth tingling in the pit of his stomach.

Jake’s breath stutters in his chest when Aiden slowly pulls off with a barely there graze of teeth along his shaft before going back to working him over at an agonizing pace that is nowhere near close to enough. Jake begins working his hips back and forth, tangling his fingers in Aiden’s hair and pumping his cock between Aiden’s stretched lips; he spirals at the sensation of tight, wet warmth around him, driven further with each snap forward.

He finally pulls back when his thighs begin to shake. His breathing is labored. Aiden looks up at him with a smug expression and licks his lips.

“I hate you,” Jake exhales raggedly, but he can’t help the traitorous smile tugging at his mouth.

“Evidently,” Aiden agrees, schooling his features into an exaggeratedly sym­pathetic expression. “Why’d you stop?”

Jake moves back far enough to free Aiden’s arms only to grab his wrists, pin them at either side of his head and fix him with a look. “Because I’m not letting you off the hook
that
easily.”

“Oh,
so you were about to… right. I get it,” Aiden teases.

Jake shakes his head. “You just don’t get it, do you? You need to
stop talking.”

With that, he climbs off of Aiden, flips him onto his belly and holds him there with one hand on his back while he palms a condom and their three-quarters empty bottle of lube from the nightstand. Aiden’s muscles shift beneath his overheated skin and, after rolling on the condom and slicking up, Jake can’t help but scratch his fingernails along Aiden’s spine, leaving bright red trails in his wake.

“You don’t need to—”

“I know,” Jake interrupts firmly. They’ve been doing this every night for the past week, and their prep routine gets shorter and shorter every time. He presses an open-mouthed kiss to Aiden’s shoulder as he leans over him and winds his hand back into his hair, damp with sweat at the nape of his neck. He nudges Aiden’s legs apart and presses in slowly; Aiden lets out a stuttering breath that sounds like long-awaited release.

Jake knows Aiden’s body well; how much he can take, how far he can be pushed—these are the secret parts of him that Aiden has allowed him to learn, has given freely even though it’s probably far more than Jake deserves. But being wrapped in this velvet heat expels all such thoughts from Jake’s mind as he drives into Aiden over and over, holding him down by his head and shoulder. Aiden takes it all so beautifully, muscles contracting and loos­ening beneath Jake’s grip.

“I… fuck—harder,
please…
”
Aiden begs, the words a broken moan that settles at the base of Jake’s spine; the bundle of nerves there fires sparks through his every cell. Jake bites his lip against a loud groan; he’s losing control at a rapidly accelerating rate and won’t be able to hold onto himself much longer.

Instead he holds onto Aiden, hooking his hand under Aiden’s arm and up over his shoulder; the skin turns white where his fingers press into the flesh.

“Jake, please,
please—”

He covers Aiden’s mouth with his left hand, unable to take anymore. Aiden is undone, so utterly undone that it spurs Jake on, faster and faster until his hips jerk forward of their own volition and he has to press his forehead to Aiden’s temple to block out the look in Aiden’s eyes, so open and vulnerable and brimming with something that can’t possibly be.

Aiden bites down on Jake’s third finger as he comes, tensing and clench­ing around him, and it’s that shock of pain that pushes Jake over the edge, a de­bauched grunt the only sound that leaves him as his body bursts outward and back in on itself.

With the little strength he has left, he manages to carefully untangle him­self from Aiden, get rid of the condom and collapse onto the cool, wel­coming sheets.

“Old man,” Aiden whispers into his ear, the mattress sinking beneath his weight as he lies down next to Jake and draws circles on his upturned palm.

“There’s only a hundred days between us, lest you forget,” Jake reminds him, and turns onto his front. “I can still kick your ass.”

“I think you just did,” Aiden says, chuckling mostly to himself. A com­fortable quiet falls, the only sound that of their matching labored breaths as they both regain their equilibrium. Jake can just feel Aiden’s fingertips tracing patterns on the skin of his back; the ghost of a touch, but still there. “Your freckles are fading.”

“Hmm?”

“I said your freckles are fading.”

“Good. I hate them,” Jake says.

“I bet I could make you like them.”

“Remind me that we don’t need to buy any more coffee for you.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

“You’re the only person I’ve ever met who’s buzzed
after
an orgasm, and it makes me hate you a little bit. You neither need nor deserve coffee,” Jake rambles. He doesn’t care if he’s making sense, not when his body feels both leaden and weightless.

Aiden chuckles again, and Jake hears him fumbling through one of the drawers in the nightstand for a moment before letting out a triumphant, “Ha!” and moving across the bed to straddle Jake’s waist. He winces a little at a jolt of sensitivity, and soon begins to feel a tickling drag across his neck.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Making music,” Aiden answers vaguely.

“Wait, are you—are you
drawing
on me?”

“Shh. I’m in my creative space right now.”

“Such
a dork,” Jake mutters, but pillows his arms on his head and lets his eyes slip closed—Aiden can’t be dissuaded when he’s in this sort of mood, and Jake doesn’t have the energy anyway. “You writing lyrics, too?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Hmm… yeah. Write me a song I can wear.”

He imagines himself looking down on them from above, Aiden bent over him, picking out melodies on wavering staffs and covering Jake’s skin with quavers and half-measures and treble clefs until he feels as if he’s made of Aiden’s music.