Page 44 of We Were Never Lovers
It was Jack who found him, pressed a kiss that was more of a breath against his lips, a kiss that couldn’t hold with the way Sean was pounding into him, and it was Jack who pulled away, gasped and went taut, ass clenching around Sean’s dick, muscles so tight it stole Sean’s breath.
“Did you just…” he whispered.
Jack muffled his response in the sheets, not a word but a noise, high-pitched.
“Oh, fuck,” Sean said, hips driving in with force, overwhelmed by how hot that was.
His orgasm felt like it started in the soles of his feet and surged through his legs to his balls, tightening before releasing, his come driving into Jack with shoves of his hips.
His arms were shaking as he came back to himself. He hung his head between his shoulders, his panting breaths fanning the blonde hair at Jack’s nape. Jack’s laboured breathing moved through him, the pulse inside him squeezing and releasing on Sean’s cock. Sean shuddered before pulling back and out.
He rocked back onto his heels, caught his breath and looked at Jack sprawled beneath him. He took a moment to just look—the sheen of sweat on Jack’s shoulder blades, his arms still trapped above his head, his biceps bunching and releasing but not moving, not trying to get free.
Jack made a broken noise when Sean got off the bed and it hit Sean with an ache in his chest. It was a noise he knew Jack didn’t want to make; he stroked his flank.
“Just gettin’ some water.” He watched as Jack tried to relax, tried to hide that reaction.
Sean slipped out of the room, thigh hurting, head unsure.
When he came back, Jack had rolled onto his back, his arms still tangled above his head. His eyes were closed and his chest heaved.
“Here,” Sean said and held up a glass of water.
Jack opened his eyes and looked up at him. There was a careful blankness in his gaze; Sean got the distinct feeling he was trying to make what’d just happened less than it was. His body was taut, like he was trying to hold himself rigid when what he wanted to do, needed to do, was collapse into the mattress and let Sean take care of him.
It was all a bit much for Sean after the best sex of his life, but there was nothing he could do to break the tension descending around them. He placed the water on the bedside table and went for the shirt tangled around Jack’s arms, careful not to meet his eyes. Jack let him, even though he could’ve done it himself, but it felt right as Sean pulled the material away and dropped the shirt on the floor, rubbed Jack’s wrists, worked the muscles of his forearms with a deep rolling motion of his thumbs, his fingers, watched the skin turn pink as the blood rushed up. Jack’s breath fanned over his cheek and Sean glanced down his chest, saw the pectoral muscle pulsing in the glow of the lamp.
“You’re okay,” Sean murmured and wondered where the words came from.
He let Jack’s arms go, levered himself down to sit on the edge of the bed, felt Jack moving behind him.
“Here,” he said and handed the glass over.
“Thanks,” Jack said, his voice rough as he took it.
Sean sat naked and listened to Jack’s throat work as he drained the water. He could feel the warmth of him at his back. The glass appeared in his periphery and Sean placed it back on the bedside table.
When Sean glanced back, Jack was staring at the ceiling, still giving Sean nothing. Sean rubbed his eyes with his palms, wired but tired, terrified he was going to do the wrong thing here.
Jack’s palm on his spine was a balm he didn’t know he was waiting for. Without looking at him, he reached forward and hit the lamp. In the dark he turned, pushed into Jack’s space and made him move to his side, pushed him until Sean was out of the wet spot. He wrapped his arms around his thick torso and held him.
It wasn’t until he heard Lola’s nails on the floorboards, felt her land softly at their feet, the bottom of where their legs were tangled together, that he felt something inside him unclench.
Jack was warm in his arms and Sean pressed a kiss to his shoulder that made him shudder, relax, and let go into the hold. Sean tightened his arms and kissed him again, felt Jack go lax and drift into sleep.
And this was just mates helping each other out?
14
Sean wanted to killJorge. He was used to working hard; hell, he’d played footy from the moment he woke up when he was a kid, during recess and lunch at school, then ran home with Jayden and played again with all the brothers in the neighbourhood until his mum or one of the aunties came and told them to get inside and eat something, “It’s pitch black! Whaddya boys think you’re doin’?” In high school, it’d been training, running, playing. The years took on a memory of motion—boots hitting grass, worn out sneakers hitting bitumen, always running, the memory of his dad telling him when they’d watch every game from Friday to Sunday, Sean tossing the ball up and catching it as they watched, “Skills will get ya so far, but if you’re the fittest, ain’t no one gonna catch ya.” Before he died, Sean had a distinct memory of him smiling approvingly when Sean came inside from the black streets, his body flushed warm against the cold, his dad ruffling his hair; he knew the work would be worth it. His dad had been a brilliant footballer andwith an uncle in the league, Sean knew he was going to make it too, but not without “bloody hard work,” his dad said as his mum chastised both of them, “Not if he gets sick!”
So, Sean knew how to work hard. And normally, he followed his coaches, the trainers, the physios, without complaint. But Jorge was really pushing it since Sean got the cast off. He worked Sean in the gym, ribbing him in Spanish and making him do one more set, now one more, and how about one more? until Sean’s lungs burned with a lack of oxygenated cells, and his muscles screamed with the lactic acid they were struggling to expel.
“Problem,” Jorge said with his perfect, white teeth grin, “is you been sitting on your ass for six months, sí?”
Sean would have liked to put him on his ass.
The truth he didn’t want to acknowledge was that Jorge wasn’t doing anything a physio shouldn’t be doing. The program was designed to get him back in shape and strengthen his leg in time for preseason, nothing unusual about it. But Jorge had also decided to flirt outrageously with Jack during the home sessions. It was Jack’s fault. Jorge had been mildly flirtatious when Sean was in the cast, but the Monday after they’d fucked, Jack had gone red and laughed to hide it, his gaze dropping to the floor, the chuckle emanating from that big body in a way that was endearing, a neon sign that might as well have said he liked it.
