Chase the Stars (Lang Downs 2 ) (28 page)

R
ELIEF
surged through Jesse as Chris stroked his scalp. He bent the little bit to close the gap between them, keeping the kiss gentle and loving for the moment. He didn’t expect it to stay that way for long, but he lingered for now, brushing their lips together, back and forth in sweet, tender contact to feed the heart. Chris made no move to speed things up, his fingers stroking through Jesse’s longer hair but otherwise resting trustingly in Jesse’s embrace.

The emotion of the moment overwhelmed Jesse, and he pulled Chris tightly against him, burying his face in the crook of Chris’s neck. “I’m sorry I fucked up,” he said, his voice muffled by Chris’s skin.

“Hey,” Chris said, pulling back and tipping Jesse’s chin up so their eyes met, “that’s life sometimes. We’re back where we need to be, well, mostly, and back on track. Nothing’s fucked up.”

Jesse nodded. “I think it’ll take me some time to really realize that. Last night was, well, bad.”
“You love me. I love you. We have a place we can be together. The rest is just a question of working out the details,” Chris said. “We can spend the rest of our lives doing that if we need to.”
Jesse sucked in a breath at hearing the words from Chris directly. Not that he’d doubted Seth, but he hadn’t realized how badly he needed the reassurance of hearing it from Chris.

“I don’t suppose you brought condoms with you,”

Jesse said hopefully.
“I was coming to fight for you, remember?” Chris
replied. “Of course I brought condoms because I couldn’t
be sure what you’d taken with you and I wasn’t going to
search your room. I might have given up before I ever left
the station if it’d been empty.”
“It wasn’t empty,” Jesse said. “I was coming back.
Well, no, last night when I realized what I’d done and how
badly I’d messed up, I thought about not coming back, but
I came to my senses this morning.”
“Good,” Chris said. He kissed Jesse quickly and
opened his bag to pull out condoms and lube. “Caine
warned me I might have to make you see reason, and I
would have done my best, but this is so much better.” “Straight to the make-up sex?” Jesse teased. “Do you have a better suggestion?”
“No.”
Jesse kissed Chris again with more passion this time,
licking the seam of Chris’s lips. They parted for him,
inviting him inside the way he hoped he’d soon be inside
Chris’s arse. He took advantage of Chris’s willingness,
twining their tongues together as he slid his thigh between
Chris’s legs. Chris moved against him, rubbing
provocatively against Jesse. It felt so good, so right, after
the gut-churning nothingness of the night before. Jesse slid
his hands down to cup Chris’s arse, urging him to move faster, harder, anything but stopping. Chris moaned and
followed his head.
Jesse attacked Chris’s mouth, hard, nearly brutal
kisses born of desperation and near loss. Chris met him
kiss for kiss, bite for bite until they were clawing at each
other’s clothes. Jesse finally pulled back.
“Naked. Now.”
Chris groaned and practically tore his clothes off, his
lightly furred, perfectly
real
body coming into view. Jesse
advanced on him, pushing him backward onto the bed. He
followed Chris down, biting at his nipples before soothing
them with his tongue, doing everything he could think of
to drive Chris wild.
It worked if the way Chris bucked up against him
was any indication.
He followed a meandering path over the line of
Chris’s ribs down to the treasure trail that bisected Chris’s
stomach. He lingered for a moment at Chris’s navel,
fucking it with his tongue, but the seductive scent of desire
beckoned him on.
Chris tasted so fucking good when Jesse finally
licked his way to the head of Chris’s cock. Chris’s
wordless shout made Jesse smile and want to wring more
delicious sounds from his lover.
God, just thinking the word made him tremble. He
wanted to cover Chris with his body and fuck him into
oblivion, and then hold him all night long. And tomorrow
night. And the night after.
He sucked Chris deeper and reminded himself he
could do all of that. Tonight, tomorrow night, forever. “I’m not… gonna last,” Chris groaned.
Jesse thought for an instant about pushing Chris now
and getting him all worked up again for a second round.
Chris was only twenty. His recovery time wasn’t in
question, but Jesse didn’t want to wait. He pulled back and
stripped quickly before returning to the bed to cover Chris
as he had imagined doing. The sheen of sweat on Chris’s
skin eased the slide of skin against skin as Jesse pressed
Chris into the mattress.
“Enough foreplay,” Chris groaned. “Fuck me
already.”
Jesse grabbed the lube and made quick work of
preparing Chris, urged on by the constant stream of
admonishments, obscenities, and groans coming from his
lover. Another time, he’d draw this out, fucking Chris with
his fingers until Chris couldn’t stand it anymore, but
Jesse’s own patience had waned, and the need to seal their
promises in the most carnal of ways spurred him to hurry. When he replaced his fingers with his cock in Chris’s
arse, he leaned up to find Chris’s lips again, echoing the
driving of his hips with the movement of his tongue,
claiming Chris, giving himself to Chris in every way he
knew how.
Chris returned his devotions kiss for kiss, caress for
caress, until Jesse thought he’d come apart at the seams,
simply explode because his feeble skin couldn’t possibly
contain this much joy, this much need, this much love. Then Chris came apart beneath him, writhing on the
bed as his body shook with release. Jesse bit his lip, trying
to prolong Chris’s pleasure, but his own need had grown
unbearable, and he gave in trying to stave off his climax. He collapsed on top of Chris, all the upheaval and
alcohol of the past few days catching up with him and
leaving him feeling hollowed out and created anew. Chris’s arms wrapped around his shoulders, keeping
him in place when he would have rolled to the side. “Don’t
leave.”
“I wasn’t leaving,” Jesse promised. “I was just going
to stop squashing you.”
Chris draped his legs over the backs of Jesse’s thighs.
“Squash away.”

J
ESSE
took a deep breath as he stepped out of his car shortly after lunch the next day. He and Chris had each driven their own car back to Lang Downs, but he’d kept Chris in sight through his rearview mirror the entire way.

“You’re back sooner than I expected,” Macklin said as he came out of the barn.
“I figured things out faster than I expected,” Jesse replied.
Macklin nodded. “There’s stalls that need mucking out.”
Jesse figured that was as close to a “welcome back” as he was likely to get given the way he’d run out, but he wasn’t just back for the season. He wanted to stay.
“I’ll get started as soon as I change my clothes, but first….” He took a deep breath and reminded himself this was what he wanted. Chris came up behind him and put his arm around Jesse’s waist. The simple gesture sent all the doubts scattering. “Do you have room for one more around here permanently?”
Macklin didn’t answer immediately, studying Jesse’s face, looking rather pointedly at Chris’s stance, and then at Chris’s face. “You’ll have to stay in the bunkhouse or move in with Chris and Seth. We gave the only empty house to Neil and Molly.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Store your kit and get to work. I expect my yearrounders to set a good example for the others. Chris, that goes for you too.”
He strode off before Jesse could stop him.
“That’s a yes,” Chris said, as if Jesse could really doubt it, but it made him smile.
“So where should I toss my kit?” Jesse asked Chris, not wanting to presume.
“In our house, of course.”
Jesse leaned over and kissed Chris quickly.
It was good to be home.

About the Author

A
RIEL
T
ACHNA
lives outside of Houston with her husband, her daughter and son, and their cat. Before moving there, she traveled all over the world, having fallen in love with both France, where she found her husband, and India, where she dreams of retiring someday. She’s bilingual with snippets of four other languages to her credit and is as in love with languages as she is with writing.
Visit Ariel’s website at http://www.arieltachna.com/ and her blog at http://arieltachna.livejournal.com/.
Read Caine and Macklin’s story in