Page 63 of Puck Tease
"Never."
"If you leave," he threatened, driving so deep I saw stars, bright pinpricks of light behind my eyelids, "I will hunt you down. I will drag you back by your hair. I don't care if I get arrested. I don't care if I get expelled. I will burn the world down to keep you."
The words should have triggered a cold, visceral terror, a scramble for escape. They should have been the moment I felt the icy certainty of a police report forming in my mind. But God help me, a strange, burning heat spread through my chest, twisting my gut in a way I couldn't explain.
He reached under my stomach, his fingers finding my cock. It was leaking, a steady stream onto the bench, making a slick mess on the leather. He started to jerk me off.
The sensations overwhelmed me: the cold glare of the mirrors, the acute risk of a security guard's footsteps, the raw pain of his grip, the utter fullness of him inside me.
"Jax, I'm gonna cum!"
"Do it," he roared, his voice thick with exertion. "Cum for me. Mark the bench."
My spine snapped back like I’d been shocked, hips jerking hard enough to slam the seat. Cum shot out of me in thick, endless ropes, splattering the vinyl, my fist, his forearm, hot and slick and everywhere. My vision tunneled, then flashed white, gone for a heartbeat while my cock kept pumping like it was trying to turn itself inside out.
Jax slammed in one last time, balls-deep, and stayed there. I felt his shaft swell, then kick, hard, once, twice, again and again, each brutal pulse flooding me with heat that spread fastand deep, thick jets painting my insides until I was dripping with him. His growl vibrated straight through my back, low and ragged, my name punched out between clenched teeth while he unloaded everything he had, filling the raw, empty ache I’d carried since the second I walked away.
He collapsed on top of me, his heavy weight pressing me into the bench. We lay there, a tangle of limbs and sweat, our skin slick. The gym fell silent again, save for the ragged sound of our breathing.
Jax’s heavy breaths slowly evened out. He turned his head, resting his cheek against my back.
"Don't," he whispered, the single word raw, fragile. "Don't ever do that again."
I felt the moisture of his breath on my skin, warm and damp. And something else. A cold wetness. A tremor ran through his body, subtle but unmistakable. His shoulders shook.
I reached back, my fingers finding his hand, still gripping the bar support. I laced my fingers through his, fitting them together.
"I won't," I promised, the words a low murmur. "I'm staying."
He squeezed my hand, a crushing grip that made my bones grind together.
"Let's go home," he said.
He pulled out with a soft sound. He helped me up, his hands steady on my waist. He pulled my shorts up for me, smoothing the fabric over my ass.
We walked out of the gym, the automatic doors hissing open and closed behind us. He didn't let go of my hand, his grip firm and possessive. He led me to his truck, opened the passenger door, and buckled me in.
He drove us back to the apartment. He didn't guide me to the guest room, didn't point me towards the couch. He led mestraight to his bedroom, to his bed. He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me tight against his chest. He tangled his legs with mine, a heavy anchor.
And for the first time in four years, his breathing deepened, his body went slack, and he fell asleep before I did, his arms clamped around me like I was the only thing keeping him from dissolving into the darkness.
The blackmail was a ghost now. The game, a forgotten memory. Now, there was only the raw, visceral fight to keep breathing. And we would do it, clenched together, or not at all.
13 – THE RUMOR
The first whisper of it floated across campus on a Tuesday, a barely-there breath of air that prickled the hairs on my neck. By Wednesday, it had taken root, a dark, pulsing thing in the collective consciousness of the student body. Thursday night, it had teeth. It stalked the quad, a palpable presence that seemed to shift the very air around us.
This wasn't the video. Jax had erased that, wiped it from existence, and the absence of its digital footprint was a silent promise I held close.
This was something formless, a shapeless dread that crept into every corner. A campaign of hushed words and darting eyes. I’d walk into the dining hall, the clatter of silverware and the drone of conversation abruptly dying around me. Forks paused mid-air. Heads swiveled. The silence felt like a physical weight, pressing down on my shoulders, making my ears ring. Later, Jax would recount the locker room scene: the rookie players, mid-joke, their voices catching in their throats the moment he stepped through the door. Their eyes, wide and quick, would jump from him to the floor, or to the chipped paint on the ceiling, anywhere but his face.
Have you seen the way Carter looks at his roommate?
I heard he stayed in his apartment instead of the team dinner last week. Again.
Someone saw them in the truck at 4 AM, parked behind the library.
I sat hunched on the couch in our apartment, a tremor running through my left leg that had nothing to do with restlessness. My phone felt hot in my palm, the screen a glaring white rectangle. The anonymous campus confession app, YikYak, scrolled like a venomous ticker tape. Each new post made my stomach clench tighter.
