Page 30 of In Too Deep
The flat in London. Chris falling apart in his arms. Sirens. Grief. Words neither of them could take back.
“I did it to give you your life back…”
His grip on Jake turned almost desperate. Too tight.
“You okay?” Jake mumbled into his chest, cheek resting directly over Harrison’s heart, no doubt feeling the uneven, relentless thud of it.
“Mm.” Harrison forced the sound out.
“You’re kinda squeezing me really tight.”
Harrison made himself loosen his arm. “Sorry.”
“S’okay. Breathing’s overrated anyway.”
A laugh escaped him despite everything, and Harrison pressed his lips to Jake’s bare shoulder.
God, he’d needed this.
Every second of it.
It might not have been why he’d come here tonight, but the instinct itself was horribly familiar. Big cases had always followed Harrison home. Some worse than others. There had been nights in London when he’d walked through the door still carrying whatever he’d seen, wired and unreachable, unable to switch off simply because his shift had ended.
Chris had always known.
No questions. No awkward explanation required. Twenty years together had given them their own private language, and Chris had understood when Harrison needed talking down, distracting, touching, holding. When he needed something good and warm and alive beneath his hands to remind him the whole fucking world wasn’t what he’d spent the day looking at.
Harrison hadn’t had that for three years.
Until tonight.
His hand stopped against Jake’s back.
Fuck.
That was what scared him.
Not what they’d done. Not Jake naked above him, or the things Harrison had asked him to show him, or even how badly he wanted to eventually let Jake make good on every filthy promise implicit in it.
This.
The fact that Harrison had come here carrying something he couldn’t bear alone and, without consciously choosing it, had reached for Jake. And he wasn’t ready to examine that too closely. Because wanting Jake was becoming frighteningly easy.
Letting himself have him was something else entirely.
Jake must have sensed his unrest because he lifted his head. “You sure you’re okay?”
Harrison managed a small, strained smile and pushed Jake’s hair back from his face, allowing himself the indulgence of looking at him. “It’s been a tough day.”
Even to his own ears, the flippancy rang hollow.
Jake clearly heard it too.
He propped himself up, forcing Harrison to meet his gaze, then drifted one hand down Harrison’s side, slipping his fingers, subtly but deliberately, beneath the hem of his shirt.
Harrison’s breath caught.
It was barely anything. A few inches of rough fingertips ghosting over his skin. Yet somehow that tiny touch undid him more than everything they’d just done.
