Wrapped in Bas’s arms in the back seat of a cab, his senses flooded with everything Sebastian, Jacob made his decision. Stupid, awkward, and likely a long shot, but Bas understood what Leah didn’t, what Emily and Wes hadn’t. Bas had said it was all right. That Jacob didn’t have to change. That he had him. Jacob had asked Bas to stay before and he had—back in San Antonio. He’d be asking more now. Jacob prayed the answer would be different than after Martin’s the other night.
Bas’s hand on his back as they exited the cab was a shot of confidence. As was Bas standing close as they claimed their room keys from security, and Bas, hand still on his back, leading him past the lounge to their room, on the same side of the closed door for the first time in two nights.
In the short entry hall, Bas stepped past him, reaching for the light, and Jacob acted on his decision. His maneuvers, when focused, in the water or in combat, were far from awkward. Using one of the martial arts moves his father had taught him, Jacob caught Bas’s raised wrist and spun him around, slamming his back against the wall. Holding his outstretched arm against the wall, Jacob curled his other hand around Bas’s neck.
“Jacob,” Bas gasped, lifting his free hand between them.
Had he said Pup, Jacob might have stopped. But Bas didn’t. So neither did Jacob. He slanted his mouth over Bas’s, crashing his lips against the ones he’d barely brushed the other night and had wanted every second since. They were warm from the outside, chapped from the chlorine . . . and unmoving.
As was the man he held pinned.
Fuck.
Had he read this wrong again?
Ready to walk the plank of mortification once more and claim that underwater locker, Jacob pulled back to gauge Bas’s anger. Only it wasn’t anger he saw. Bas’s blown-wide pupils blotted out his blue irises and a deep blush stained his high cheekbones. Add to that the pounding pulse beneath Jacob’s hand, and the stiffening cock against his thigh, and Jacob didn’t think he’d read this wrong after all.
Parting his lips, Bas ran his tongue along where Jacob’s lips had been pressed.
Jacob watched, enraptured, his own cock aching. “Please, Bas,” he whispered. “I just want somebody to fuck me. For one night.”
Bas inhaled sharply and retreated as much as the wall would allow. “‘Somebody’?”
“You.” Releasing Bas’s wrist, Jacob trailed his hand slowly up Bas’s arm, tracing the colorful designs. “I watched you on TV four years ago, and I thought you were the most gorgeous being I’d ever seen. And then I met you at Trials, and you were even more gorgeous in person.”
The hand against Jacob’s chest pushed him away. “So this is some kind of fan fantasy?” Bas’s clipped tone sent Jacob reeling back another step.
“Yes,” he said, trying to pay a compliment, then brain catching up to his mouth, corrected his stalker-ific mistake. “I mean no!”
Shit, he was screwing this up. Raking a hand over his head, cursing again his hair that was no longer there to grab, he took a deep breath and started over.
“I know you now. You get me. But yes,” he admitted, because fuck, it was out there already, “I’ve fantasized about you, for years.”
Bas growled, the good kind, and the sound went straight to Jacob’s dick. Lifting his hands, he approached slowly and laid his palms on Bas’s chest, running them over the hard, toned muscles beneath the cotton polo. “It was you I was thinking about that night in the tattoo parlor.”
Eyes flashing, Bas grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him closer. “I am not a fantasy.”
“I know.” Jacob rubbed against him, from chest to cock. “I want the real thing, not the fantasy.”
“What about Leah?”
“You’re the one who gets me. I want you.”
In the blink of an eye, Bas forced them across the foyer, and Jacob’s back hit the opposite wall. Despite the strength unleashed, the hands that rose to cradle his face were gentle.
As gentle as anyone had been with him in years.
“Are you sure?” Bas asked.
“Stay tonight, please.”
Bas answered with a deep groan and a breath-stealing kiss. Fierce and gentle at the same time, Bas drove his tongue through Jacob’s lips, plundering his mouth, as he cushioned Jacob’s head from the wall with his hands. With a thigh shoved between his legs, crushing the rest of him between a hard body and cool plaster, Jacob hummed contentedly as Bas pinned him. Face caged between colorful arms, body warmly trapped, he was safe in the cocoon of Bas’s creation, the other man always looking out for him, even in this.
But the cocoon wasn’t quite complete. Snaking his arms around Bas’s neck, Jacob reached up and blindly unwound the rubber band holding together Bas’s topknot. Loosened, long blond dreads tumbled around them. Jacob had seen them down so seldom, he took a second to admire, but only just, as Bas’s mouth coasted lower, lips and tongue teasing his throat.
The strangled “ungh” he made was humiliating, but Bas’s deep chuckle in the crook of his neck wiped the embarrassment clean. Jacob had missed that sound. Head lolling to the side, gaze snagging on Bas’s arm, Jacob eyed the tattoos he so badly wanted to touch. And taste. He tugged at the back of Bas’s shirt, trying to get it off.
Bas stepped out of his arms, and the cocoon shattered.
The rising panic—that this was all just a dream, that Bas would change his mind, that Jacob had asked too much and would be left alone again—must have shown on his face. Bas finished yanking off the shirt and rushed close, framing his face. “Hey now,” he whispered. “I’m right here.” Bas kissed him, unhurried and deep, and Jacob’s panic receded, reassured of the here and now. When next they broke, it was Jacob who wandered south, trailing his mouth down Bas’s neck to the top of his right shoulder where the tattoos started.
Jacob’s fingers led, touching; his lips followed, tasting.
The dark line work brought to mind licorice, chocolate, and the Turkish coffee Bas loved so much.
The reds and purples, summer berries.
Yellows, sun and sweat.
The blues and greens, water and chlorine—neither a figment of his imagination like the others, the hours they spent in the pool impossible to wash away.
Their lower bodies began to rock, finding a rhythm as Jacob continued his exploration, torturing them both with fingers and lips. Until he neared the lonely initials on Bas’s chest. Bas cut off his tour, hauling him up, and Jacob feared he’d done something wrong.
Bas silenced his doubts with another claiming kiss. A noise escaped, another mortifying “ungh,” when Bas slid a hand down between them and palmed Jacob’s cock through his jeans, stroking him up and down. Jacob was lucky he didn’t come right then.
Bas snickered against his lips. “Think you’re ready for bed.”
Jacob nodded furiously but couldn’t reason how to move off the wall. Bas, of sounder mind and body, peeled him from the plaster and led him into the room, hand at his lower back. They shuffled to the side of Jacob’s bed, where Bas left him with a gruff, “Undress.”
Shedding his clothes, Jacob was suddenly struck shy, which was ridiculous since he and Bas had shared a room and countless locker room showers. But everything about this moment was different—the intent, where it might lead, what it might mean. He kicked his jeans and boxers aside as doubt resurfaced. Was he really going to do this? Live out his fantasy? Risk the morning, the team, the medley relay gold for one night for himself? And what if this one night went horribly? What if he embarrassed himself more? Handjobs and blowjobs were one thing, but Bas was experienced, and he was still—
A bottle of lube hit the bed, and Jacob gulped back his runaway doubts. He was sure Bas heard them. “Gonna ask one more time. You sure, Pup?”
Fifty-fifty, but when rough hands landed on his hips and a hard cock nestled against his ass, uncertainty fled, burned away by raging desire. Seizing Bas’s left hand, Jacob drew it down to his cock. “Yeah,” he panted, thrusting into Bas’s grip. “I’m sure.” He angled his face, kissing the underside of Bas’s prickly jaw. “We need condoms.”
“Not the only way to fuck.”
Jacob only had a second to be disappointed before Bas dipped his head and captured his lips, all gentleness gone. Tongue plunging into Jacob’s mouth, hand stroking his cock, Bas rocked against his backside and shuffled them forward. When his shins hit the mattress, Jacob climbed up on the bed, Bas following behind him, never once letting go of his mouth or cock. They stroked, rocked, and kissed until Bas broke away, nuzzling the spot behind Jacob’s ear. “Grab the bottle.”
Bending, Jacob reached for the lube, and Bas’s hand coasted over his backside, fingers tantalizingly close to where Jacob wanted them most. He fumbled the bottle but came up with it on the second try. The hand on his backside disappeared, then reappeared in front of him, palm up. “Pour it,” Bas ordered.
Hands shaking, Jacob managed to snap the lid open and up-end the bottle, squeezing a generous amount into Bas’s palm. Jacob thought he was going to use it on his cock, but Bas began to jack himself instead.
Jacob nearly shot. “I want to do it,” he begged, starting to turn.
Bas had other ideas, slapping Jacob’s hip with his other hand. “Legs in a little tighter.”
Confused but willing to follow Bas anywhere, Jacob did as told, and promptly had his mind and world blown. Bas’s slick cock eased between his thighs, rubbing across his taint and nudging the backs of his balls.
“Oh God,” Jacob groaned, head falling back onto Bas’s shoulder. Slick hand reaching around, Bas jerked him off, drawing out more incomprehensible sounds, until he claimed another deep, devouring kiss, dreads falling all around them.
Rough and gentle.
Everything of Jacob’s fantasies.
“Not gonna last,” he panted when they came up for air.
“You don’t have to last. Lean forward and grab the headboard.” Bas splayed a hand in the middle of his back. “Ride it, Jacob. Ride my cock, and let go.”
Words were too hard. The pressure in his balls was too hard. His cock was beyond too hard, bordering on painful. He tightened his thighs and bore down, loving it when Bas rocked harder. Switching hands, Bas jacked him faster, while his slick fingers trailed over Jacob’s ass and down his crack, teasing his rim. Jacob’s muscles clenched, trying to draw him in, and his cock exploded, come filling Bas’s hand and dripping through his fingers onto the sheets. Bas grunted behind him, thrusting until a surge of hot, sticky wetness coated Jacob’s thighs.
Under their combined weight, Jacob sank to the bed, taking Bas with him. He ignored the mess and enjoyed the warm weight of Bas half on top of him, lulling him to sleep with soothing passes of his hand over his back. “That’s it, Pup. I’ve got you.”
He turned his head toward Bas and smiled unseeing, losing the battle with his eyelids. “Jacob,” he said. “I like when you call me Jacob.”
Bas’s hand swept from his shoulder, down his back, and over his ass. Jacob tried to give chase, to lift his hips after it, but he was so tired. Had been for days. But he was safe now, here with Bas; he could rest.
Bas’s lips brushed over his. “Sleep, Jacob.”
“Only if you stay,” he mumbled half to the pillow, half to Bas.
He was asleep by the time Bas answered.
Jacob shifted on the bed and winced, the sheets sticking to his chest and stomach, an uncomfortable reminder of the previous night’s pleasant activities. And a reminder he needed to shave soon, now that the meet was finally upon them. He smiled into his pillow, eager for the day ahead, for a change. Until a blast of cold air hit his back and his groggy mind woke the rest of the way up, realizing what—who—was missing. No soothing hand coasting over his back, no warm body blanketing him, no blond dreadlocks sweeping his shoulders.
Eyes still closed, he rolled off his stomach and peeled away the sheets, hoping against hope, and the realities of a twin bed, that maybe Bas was still in it with him. His bare back hit cool plaster and hope faded.
No Bas.
Just Jacob.
Cold and alone.
This was why he never asked for what he wanted, never put himself first. The opposite invariably resulted.
He yanked the sheet up over his head, not wanting to face the cold, disappointing morning. Bas was gone or asleep in the other bed, having left Jacob’s. Either option shattered the fantasy cocoon he’d inhabited last night. He’d been spiraling, on his way to hitting rock bottom, but Bas had caught him, wrapped him up safe and sound, and given him what he’d asked for.
Well, most of it.
Not the only way to fuck, Bas had said, and proved it. Jacob had fallen asleep satisfied, disappointment banished. But in the lonely light of morning, he was second-guessing everything. Had Bas even wanted to fuck him? Jacob had thought so, by the way Bas had hungrily kissed him, how he’d taken care of him, by the groan and shudder of Bas’s body behind him when they’d come.
But was all that just a favor for Jacob? Was Jacob so terrible in bed that Bas had fled? Or had it really meant nothing to Bas? Just some handjobs, simulated fucking, and a little ass play? Had Bas ever intended to stay? Realizing he’d fallen asleep before hearing Bas’s answer, never hearing a yes, sent Jacob spiraling again.
His blaring phone alarm greeted him at the bottom.
No curses or groans from across the room.
Bas was definitely gone, then.
Jacob opened his eyes, verifying what the rest of his senses had told him. Adding insult to injury, Bas’s bags were packed and on his bed. He’d done all that while Jacob slept, then left. A third morning waking up alone.
Scooting off the end of the bed, Jacob snagged his pants, dug out his phone, and silenced the alarm. Device in hand, he ignored the low-battery warning and scrolled through his other notifications—no messages from Bas. He considered texting him, then decided against it, not wanting to confirm his failure just yet.
He plugged the phone into the wall charger, grabbed his undergarments, and carried them into the bathroom. He startled at his reflection in the mirror. His body didn’t look like it’d been used by someone who didn’t care. With a careful hand, he tested the tenderness of the kiss bruises on his neck, compared his fingers to the marks left by longer ones on his hips, and stared at the bruises on the backs of his thighs.
Thank God they were in suits today, and thank God for jammers, because he looked like he’d been fucked by someone who’d wanted him badly. Hope flickered as he washed away the other evidence of last night’s desire on his thighs and stomach. Maybe Bas had gone for a run, or downstairs to the lounge to sketch, or out to grab a couple of coffees for them. Maybe the worst case Jacob’s mind had jumped to wasn’t the case at all.
He hurried through the rest of his shower, toweled off, and tugged on his boxers and undershirt. When he stepped back into the room, Bas was there, tucking his tablet into his messenger bag. But unlike yesterday, when Bas had seemed withdrawn and surly, today he was smiling wide. In his light gray suit, pristine white shirt, and blue paisley tie, eyes glowing to match and dreads tied neatly back, he looked stunning.
Jacob crossed to stand behind him. “Hi.”
Bas glanced over his shoulder, and his smile faltered. “Hi.”
“You left early,” Jacob said, ignoring the creeping tendrils of doubt trying to snuff out his wavering hope. “I didn’t hear you shower.”
Bas zipped up his bag. “Alex and Dane’s room.”
Stepping closer, Jacob considered running his hands over Bas’s shoulders and down his arms, but the stiff set of the other man’s spine warned against it. Jacob’s hands hung suspended in midair, before he lowered them. “You didn’t have to do that.”
Bas slipped out from in front of him, the split of his suit coat whispering over Jacob’s fingertips. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
As Bas moved around his bed, checking closets and drawers for stray items, Jacob retreated to his side of the room and dressed. Doubt no longer crept; it stomped with each fluttering beat of Jacob’s sinking heart. “How are they this morning?” he asked, struggling to make conversation.
“Alex and Dane? Good. Mo called.” Dane’s mentor, and a close friend of Alex and Bas, Mo had made the team but not the trip, sidelined by an injury back in Colorado Springs. “His wife had the twins.”
That explained Bas’s earlier smile. “Why didn’t you say so? Or come wake me so I could have been there with you?”
“You hardly knew Mo.”
Jacob staggered where he stood, shirt half buttoned, tie hanging loose around his neck. “I did know Mo. He’s a teammate.” Such a momentous occasion in any teammate’s life meant something to all of them. Or did Bas not think Jacob a true member of the team? He was just the new guy, one who performed erratically at best. He could be replaced. Alex and Dane had a history, Alex and Bas were best friends. They’d closed ranks around their family, leaving him on the outside, alone.
He grabbed his father’s dog tags and sank onto the end of his bed, staring down as he tumbled the metal plates. “I would have liked to have been there.”
Bas’s big hand covered his, stilling the motion, and when Jacob looked up, Bas was kneeling in front of him, face and voice no longer cold, but not inviting either. “You needed the sleep, Pup.”
“I needed—”
Bas’s fingers tightened. “One night, that’s what you said you needed.”
Yes, that was what he’d said, all he’d asked for, and by the flash of something across Bas’s eyes—a plea almost—one night was all Bas could give. Jacob had known that in his head, but his heart . . . He was fourteen all over again, asking for more than he could or should. Jacob glanced away, before he asked Bas to stay and sent him packing for good.
“Now, we need to work.” Standing, Bas grabbed his bags and headed for the door. “Bus leaves in ten. Alex wants to talk media strategy, and Dane has some pointers. We’ll save you a seat.”
Jacob tried to convince himself it was all he needed. Bas was still talking to him, Alex still considered him a teammate, and Dane thought enough of him to give him pointers. But as the dog tags slipped from his grasp and hit the floor, the sound as hollow as he felt, Jacob knew he needed more.