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Chapter 1 - Very Hands On
Jake was exactly where Adrian's DM had told him to be at exactly the right time. The message read:
Adrian:
Room 1614. Face down, black jockstrap. Blindfold on the nightstand. I’ll be there by 10. Bringing a surprise.
Jake had taken Adrian's extra key when he left his room the night before so he could let himself in and arrive with time to prepare. By 10 he was in position, hole slick and aching, waiting. He knew Adrian wouldn't be punctual. Adrian would be downstairs somewhere, nursing a bourbon, perfectly aware that he was up here. Squirming. Anticipating.
Who the surprise might be had driven him crazy all day. He had a hunch. It was almost too much to hope for.
His hole was still tender from the night before. Yet he craved more.
How had it come to this? Adrian sat on the company's Board of Directors and was Jake's professional mentor. And here he was blindfolded, face down in a jockstrap, waiting for him to walk through that door. Jake, a man who'd never once imagined anything sexual with another man, whose idea of male bonding was tennis and cold beer, now craved cock. Lived for it. Quietly organized his professional life around nights exactly like this one.
What the hell happened to me? he thought.
Then he pushed his ass in the air and waited for the night to begin.
Six Months Earlier
Jake was now well into his second year as the Chief Marketing Officer of Forrester, Inc., long enough to stop waking up in disbelief, not long enough to stop keeping score. By age 35 he was on the Executive Leadership Team of a Fortune 500 company, running a $75 million marketing budget and a team of fifty-five and he had never, not once, lost when it counted. He kept score on everything. He was off to a strong start and he knew it.
So when Darius Whitfield, his CEO, called an unscheduled ELT meeting and announced that Adrian Mercer would be joining the Forrester Board, Jake heard the name and felt a hand press flat against his chest.
Adrian Mercer was, by any measure, a phenomenon. He'd built Hawthorne Row from a single Chicago men’s store into one of the most recognized men's brands on the planet, not by chasing trends but by seeming to conjure them. The fact that he was openly, unapologetically gay only amplified his authority in a category that prided itself on rugged masculinity. The trade press called him a visionary. His competitors called him something less printable. Gay insiders knew something else: Adrian had a weakness for a certain kind of man, accomplished, controlled, presumably straight, and a reputation for leaving them considerably less certain of that last assumption. Jake had studied his work for years, the way an athlete studies his opponent. He had not studied the rest of it.
After the meeting, Darius kept him behind. “This is not a vote of no confidence,” he said. “Your potential here is as high as anyone I've hired. But the gap between wanting the Chair and getting it is mentorship. I went and got you the best available.” A beat. “Adrian asked to work with you specifically. He's followed your career. Called me personally when I brought you on.”
“I don't know what to say,” Jake said. He always knew what to say.
“You've earned the attention. Own it,” Darius responded.
What no one knew was that Adrian had been watching Jake for some time. He'd tracked him through a telecom success story, a restaurant chain turnaround, and now Forrester. LinkedIn had led to Instagram, which had led to a closer look. A string of beautiful women came and went in Jake's feed, striking, accomplished, exactly the kind of women a man like Jake was supposed to want. None seemed to stick. People who knew him called it a fear of commitment. Adrian had a different theory: the women hadn't failed to hold his attention. Something else had. He noted this with considerable interest.
At 6’1”, Jake carried himself with the unconscious ease of someone who had never had to try too hard, not at tennis, not at school, not at making a room warm up the moment he walked in. Dark brown hair that flopped slightly. Slate-blue eyes that exuded confidence but had something restless underneath them, something still looking. He'd recently added real muscle to his tennis player's frame, shoulders widened and rounded, chest thickened, the kind of definition that announced itself through a dress shirt. Adrian had seen a lot of captivating men. Jake Sullivan was near the top of his list.
When Darius called with the Board seat and the mentorship, Adrian played it cool and said yes immediately. His intention was clear to him, even if he was only partly honest about its full shape: the attraction was real, but underneath it something else was operating. Jake Sullivan was a man who hadn't yet found the right door. The most useful thing Adrian could do was open it. He probably wouldn’t keep him; Adrian didn’t even pretend to be monogamous. He’d open the door for Jake and see who was waiting on the other side.
Adrian called that same afternoon. “Jake.” Not a question. Not quite a greeting. Just his name, delivered with a calm that somehow implied the call had been expected to go exactly this way.
Eleven minutes. That's how long the call lasted. By the end of it Jake had agreed to weekly sixty-minute sessions, confirmed the next Board meeting in Nashville, and heard the phrase “very hands-on” in a professional context that didn't feel entirely professional. He'd noted it as likely one of Adrian’s ideocracies and told himself it didn't mean anything.
He put his phone face-down on his desk, straightened his jacket, noticed an unexplained swelling between his legs, and went back to work.
***
Adrian set his phone down and leaned back in his chair. That had gone well. Jake was eager…too eager? Jake Sullivan, it turned out, was exactly who Adrian thought he was.
Nashville was two months out. Adrian blocked Tuesday on his calendar and texted Jake:
Adrian:
Coming in a day early. Arrive Tuesday if you can. Afternoon meeting, then dinner. We'll call it an orientation.
Four minutes later:
Jake:
Already booked. See you Tuesday.
Of course he had. Adrian smiled; not the one he used in meetings, but the quieter one, with some teeth in it.
* * *
In the two weeks before Nashville, Jake worked closely with Cole Ramirez to sharpen his Board presentation. Jake brought Cole aboard shortly after he joined Forrester. Cole’s title was Director of Consumer Insights, a title that didn't come close to capturing the enormity of his contributions, the clearest thinker on the team and the person Jake trusted most when the work needed to be right rather than just presentable. He had quickly become Jake’s right hand man.
Cole was built like someone who had decided in his early twenties that his body was his personal identity and had never wavered. 6’2”, north of two hundred pounds, second-generation Mexican with the kind of dark complexion that California sun only deepened, black-eyed, a jaw that could cut glass and a five o'clock shadow that arrived by noon. His shoulders were wide enough that fitted shirts were a necessity, his chest thick, his forearms mapped with muscle, a dark trail of hair running from his sternum south in a way that his fitted t-shirts did nothing to conceal. He wore his clothes close to the body without any apparent vanity; it was simply how he dressed. At thirty-one he was plainspoken, observant, smarter than hell and had the confidence to call bullshit when it was most needed.
Cole was gay, not closeted exactly, just quiet about it; he considered his private life private. His colleagues had their theories. The theories were correct. Jake had noticed early on that he was drawn to Cole in a way he couldn't entirely account for. He told himself it was the quality of the work, and that was true as far as it went. But there was something else underneath it, a magnetic pull he couldn't name and didn't examine. He described their friendship to people outside the office as being like brothers. Cole heard him say it once, smiled, and said nothing.
Beyond the office, the gym had become the foundation of their friendship. Cole was a 5AM man, no exceptions, and Jake had gotten pulled into his orbit and never looked back. They went hard for two hours at the Equinox a block from the office. After six months Jake had added twenty-plus pounds of muscle without losing an ounce of definition underneath, the kind of result that made people notice. Jake looked in the mirror and was surprised by how much he liked what he saw, and more surprised, though he wouldn't have admitted it, by how carefully he was looking.
There was a shorthand between Jake and Cole that took most people years to develop. Cole never softened a thing, which was exactly why Jake relied on him so heavily. They built the Board presentation from scratch over two weeks, and when they finished, Cole said what he always said when they'd conquered something together: "Te quiero, cabrón." It translated loosely as I love you, you bastard, which was exactly how Cole meant it and exactly how Jake had learned to receive it, as the most affection either of them would ever put into words without making it strange. Jake had never questioned it. He'd never had a reason to.
As they prepped for the big meeting, Cole couldn't shake the feeling that Jake wasn't quite himself. It wasn't the work, his attention was fully on it, maybe more fully than usual. It was something else. He mentioned Adrian Mercer more than the situation required, brought him into sentences where he didn't quite belong, and there was a quality to it Cole couldn't entirely name: not nervousness, not admiration exactly, something charged and slightly unfamiliar.
Cole had done his own quiet research on Adrian. He knew the reputation, not the press version, the actual one, the one that circulated in the circles Cole moved through on weekends, far from the office. Adrian Mercer had a type. Accomplished, controlled, presumably straight, and likely to have that last assumption proven wrong. Cole watched Jake tweak a slide for the fourth time and felt something he didn't have a clean name for either, something low and uncomfortable that had nothing to do with professional concern and everything to do with the fact that whatever Jake was feeling about Adrian Mercer, he'd never once looked that way talking about Cole. He said nothing. It was probably nothing. And even if it wasn't, it was far too early to know what to do with it.
The morning of his flight, Jake pushed harder in the gym than he ever had. He wanted to be sharp. Prepared. He told himself it was professional focus. What he didn't examine was the other thing, the low, unfamiliar current that had been running since Adrian's call two weeks ago. He wanted to show well. Not just professionally.
In the locker room afterward, Cole was across from him post-shower, moving through the unhurried ritual of getting dressed, and Jake found himself noticing things he had no particular reason to notice. The architecture of Cole's torso. The dark trail of hair that ran down his abdomen and disappeared. The girth of his cock when his towel slid off. Jake looked away, looked back without meaning to, and then made himself stop. He told himself it was clinical familiarity, a heightened awareness before a high-stakes meeting. He knotted his tie, picked up his bag, caught his flight to Nashville, and did not think about it again.
* * *
Adrian walked into the meeting room of the downtown Nashville hotel at exactly two o'clock. Jake had been there since one-thirty. He’d seen pictures of Adrian, but in person he’d be hard to miss: 6'2” at least, broad through the chest and shoulders, a dark suit cut close to the body that hugged his biceps and quads without fanfare. Strong jaw, silver at the temples, the kind of face that belonged on a different era's movie poster. He was, Jake realized with a disorienting jolt, one of the most physically striking people he had ever been in a room with. Then Adrian extended his hand and the thought dissolved.
“You look different than your photos,” Adrian said, stepping back to assess him. “You've been working out.” No flattery in it. A straightforward observation.
For his part, Adrian had done his own inventory the moment Jake walked in. The IG photos hadn't adequately conveyed what six months of serious training had done. His shoulders had widened and rounded. His chest pressed forward against his shirt. The tailored trousers hugged him in a way that Adrian had to deliberately stop noticing. He kept this to himself with no particular effort and took his seat across the table.
The work session was ninety minutes of the best professional preparation Jake had ever received. Adrian asked questions rather than giving corrections, and Jake found himself revising his presentation in real time, arriving at framings he hadn't had before. When they finished, Jake said it had been more useful than two weeks of internal prep. Adrian said: you did the work, I just asked the questions.
“Dinner tonight,” Adrian said, gathering his things with casual certainty. “The real mentoring happens away from the table. People are more receptive when they're not behind a laptop.” A half-beat. “More open.”
Jake said he'd be there.
The Mockingbird was Adrian's suggestion, texted with an address and a time and nothing else. Jake looked it up, noted it was nothing like the steakhouses where board members usually ate, and thought, of course, considered, deliberate, Adrian.
He arrived two minutes early. Adrian was already there, bourbon in hand, corner table, entirely at ease. He stood when Jake approached, which was a small formality Jake hadn't expected. They settled in. Jake took the room in without appearing to: the lighting, the crowd, the particular ease of men who were comfortable with each other in ways that didn't look like a business dinner. Several tables of men together in ways that raised the question in Jake's mind: business, or something else?
Jake reached for the cocktail menu. Adrian watched him take in the room.
“You're not going to ask me why I picked this place,” Adrian said.
“Should I?”
“Most men in your position would have made it an issue.” He took a measured sip of his bourbon. “Usually within the first thirty seconds.”
Jake looked up. He'd registered the room by now. He held Adrian's gaze. “You picked a place you like,” he said. “I'm your guest.”
Something shifted in Adrian's expression. Not quite a smile. “Would you have asked if I hadn't said anything?”
“Eventually,” Jake said. “Maybe.”
“The fact that you didn't need to, that tells me something.”
“What does it tell you?”
Adrian considered. “That you can walk into an unfamiliar room and simply be in it. You don't need to control every variable.” He let that sit. “Not everyone can.”
Jake let his gaze move naturally across the room and noticed, or allowed himself to notice, two men at the bar whose body language made the restaurant's nature unambiguous. He returned to the menu without comment and ordered the bourbon Adrian recommended.
The conversation moved into professional territory, which was almost a relief. Adrian asked about the Board, about Darius, about the places where Jake felt he had ground to make up. Jake found himself being more direct than he would have been with anyone else and couldn't entirely account for why. Somewhere into the second bourbon he became aware that he'd been talking for twenty minutes about the gap between what he knew intellectually and what he trusted in his gut, not a conversation he had with colleagues, or friends, or anyone. He paused. Jake felt heard for possibly the first time in his life.
“You're harder on yourself than anyone in that room will be tomorrow,” Adrian said.
“I know. It's my strength and my weakness.”
“Be careful.” Adrian turned his glass on the table. “If you let it, it'll become your ceiling.”
When the check came Adrian took it without discussion. Jake didn't argue, which was unusual. Walking out, Adrian guided him through a narrow gap between tables with a hand briefly between his shoulder blades, two seconds, maybe three. Jake's whole spine registered every one of them.
Outside, Adrian put his arm around Jake's shoulders and pulled him in. “You're a talented man. You'll do well tomorrow.” His hand dropped casually down Jake's back and grazed his glutes with an open palm. Jake knew he should've flinched. He didn't. He leaned in and said, “I know. But thank you, sir.”
He walked back to the hotel alone. He thought about the room. The hand on his back. On his ass. He knew he and Adrian had connected. Really connected. He had no idea how much.
* * *
He was in the hotel gym at seven. Adrian was already there, stringer cut so aggressively at the sides the fabric existed mainly as a formality, shorts four inch inseam at most, and underneath, pressed against his hip through the thin fabric, the unmistakable outline of a jockstrap waistband. Jake recognized it. He was savvy enough to know that jockstraps hadn't been athletic equipment for some time. He said nothing.
They trained the way Jake and Cole trained, each of them quietly raising the threshold without saying so directly. Adrian watched his form, corrected it once, and the correction was exactly right. Between sets: “You've put on real size. The training is showing.”
“Cole keeps me honest,” Jake said.
“Cole is lucky to have you as a training partner.” A pause. “So am I.” He picked up the bar before Jake could respond.
Jake presented to the board at 11. It landed cleanly, the room went still acknowledging his command of the material. He wanted Adrian to be proud of him. It was a strange thing to want in a boardroom; he knew it and it didn't stop him. He kept catching his eye contact drifting to Adrian's side of the table, and the third time, Adrian made the smallest possible motion, two fingers lifting and sweeping imperceptibly toward the rest of the room. Jake corrected. He held the whole room and didn't look at Adrian again until he was done.
He took his seat. His phone showed a notification. He turned it over.
Adrian:
Good boy.
Jake read it twice. Something moved through him that he couldn't immediately name, not quite pride, not quite a professional compliment, something warmer and more unsteady than either. He looked up. Adrian was already in a low conversation with the board member on his right, relaxed, attentive, entirely composed. Jake looked back down at the screen. He waited until no one was watching, then looked over at Adrian and mouthed, quietly: "Thank you, sir."
Adrian, without turning his head, let the corner of his mouth move. Very slightly. Just enough.
At the group dinner that followed, Adrian had Jake on his left again. From the ELT end of the table: a low-grade attentiveness, not hostile, just noting. Under the table, texts:
Adrian:
Henderson just referred to millennials as “young people.” He is 51.
Jake:
He also said “synergy” 4 times in his ops review. I counted.
Adrian:
I stopped counting at 3. Respect for your discipline.
Then the signal shifted. Each text arriving with the ease of two people who had established a warm camaraderie, then moving somewhere else, a place that sent chills through Jake’s body.
Adrian:
Great workout this morning. Now I understand where that body comes from.
The text was so out of context, so unexpected, Jake didn’t have time to respond before the next text arrived from Adrian.
Adrian:
You were exceptional today. The room was yours. I wonder sometimes if you have any idea how much stamina you have.
Jake read that one twice. He knew what stamina meant in a boardroom context. He also knew, with a clarity that was slightly uncomfortable, that Adrian was aware of both definitions and had chosen the word with exactly that awareness. He typed back:
Jake:
I'm learning.
Adrian:
Yes. You are.
As the dinner broke up, one final text:
Adrian:
Stop by my room in a few minutes. 714. I have something for you.
Jake typed a thumbs-up and put the phone in his pocket and returned his attention to the conversation and did not think about what he had just agreed to do.
* * *
Jake went to his own room first. To breathe. To think. He sat on the edge of the bed with his jacket still on and looked at the far wall.
He was a 35 year-old CMO of a Fortune 500 company, sitting in a hotel room in Nashville trying to talk himself into or out of going to knock on a Board member's door at 10:15 at night. The texts had been, he turned this over carefully, charged, even predatory. He could admit that. Adrian had a way of making even a professional observation feel like something was being offered alongside it. Jake had known that since the first phone call. He had filed it as a quality of the man and told himself it wasn't directed at him specifically.
Tonight it had felt specific.
He took off his jacket and hung it. Straightened his shirt, then thought about why he'd straightened his shirt and made himself stop thinking about it. He was going to have a drink with his mentor. That was what was happening. It was ten-eighteen. He gave himself until ten-twenty and walked down the hall to 714.
Adrian opened the door before Jake had fully knocked. Jacket gone, tie gone, collar open three buttons down, enough to show the white of a fitted undershirt. He looked, if anything, more imposing at ease than he did assembled.
“There's the man of the hour.” He stepped back and held the door. “Come in.”
The suite was larger than Jake's. On the credenza: Blanton's, single barrel, the good stuff. Two glasses already set out.
“I had them send it up,” Adrian said, pouring without asking. “I don't drink anything else when I have the option.” He handed Jake a glass. “You've earned it.”
They sat, Adrian on the couch, Jake in the chair across from it. Adrian passed along what Margaret Chu had said at dinner about his consumer framing. Jake accepted it with less surprise than he probably should have shown, which Adrian noted with satisfaction.
“You knew the presentation was strong,” Adrian said.
“I did.”
“That's the thing. You're learning to trust yourself.” He let that sit. “That's what changes when you stop performing for the room and start owning it.”
Jake turned his glass in his hand. The bourbon was exceptional. They talked, Adrian asking more than he told, Jake finding himself going further than he'd meant to. Somewhere in the second bourbon Jake asked why him, why Jake. Darius had brought mentors onto the Board before. There'd never been this level of personal investment.
“Because most talented people I meet have optimized for the one thing they're good at and closed off everything adjacent to it,” Adrian said. “You haven't. You're still open. You're still, and I mean this as a precise observation, figuring out what you want.” A pause. “That's rare.”
Jake held the look for a moment, then looked at his glass. He wasn't sure the conversation was still entirely about career development. He wasn't sure Adrian intended him to be sure.
“It's getting late,” Jake said. Not moving.
“It is.” Adrian didn't move either. Then he stood, which resolved it, and walked Jake to the door. At the door he turned.
“7AM tomorrow. Hotel gym. I'm not going easy on you.” He let the smallest pause exist. “We'll both need to be in shape for what's coming.”
Jake said good night. He walked to his room, sat on the edge of the bed, and stared at the far wall for longer than he had before. He thought about the phrase “…still figuring out what you want”. He thought about “..both need to be in shape for what’s coming”. He thought about the fact that he had sat in that chair for forty-five minutes and hadn't once wanted to leave.
What kept him awake wasn't the bourbon or the adrenaline of a strong Board meeting. It was something older. He lay in the dark and thought about his father, a man who was never cold, never unkind, simply elsewhere, the way men of that generation who were building something were always elsewhere. Jake had learned early that the way to get his attention was to perform. He'd spent his whole life performing. He'd built an entire life out of it.
What he hadn't understood, until approximately the last forty-eight hours, was what had been missing. It wasn't recognition, he'd accumulated plenty of that. It was the specific warmth of someone telling him they were proud. Not that he'd done well. That they were proud of him. His father had never said those words. His brothers hadn't. And yet Adrian, a man he'd known for two days, said it like it cost him nothing, like it was simply a fact you stated and not a gift you rationed.
Jake didn't know what to do with that. He lay there in the Nashville dark and put those thoughts away carefully. He turned off the light. He did not, for a long time, sleep.
* * *
The second day ran its course. Jake asked two questions during the strategy session, both framed at Board level rather than ELT level, and felt he'd landed somewhere real. He sensed it from his ELT colleagues too: a low-grade attentiveness, not hostile, just noting. He didn't care. He was busy pleasing someone else.
After the session broke, Adrian found him near the elevators. “Board-level questions,” he said without preamble. “You know that.” He looked at Jake with the expression that made him tingle. “I'm proud of what you've done in these two days. Not the performance, anyone can perform. The growth.” He let that sit, then added, in a mock-casual tone: “Keep an eye on your phone tonight. Our day's not over.”
Two separate dinners that night; the Board at one, the ELT at another. Yet, the texts came:
Adrian:
Whitmore just told a story about his college tennis career that lasted eleven minutes. No follow-up questions were asked.
Jake:
I'd have had follow-ups. Mostly about the eleven minutes.
Adrian:
That's why you belong at this table.
Then, as Jake’s table was gathering itself to leave:
Adrian: My room. 9 tonight. 714. I want to finish this conversation properly. Bring your appetite for good bourbon and an open mind.
Jake read it standing at the coat check. He typed back before he could stop himself:
Jake: Yes. Sir.
He quickly showered in his own room, stood in front of the mirror longer than necessary, and acknowledged what he was dressing for. Dark jeans, fitted through the leg. A white t-shirt that Cole had once described as not leaving much to the imagination.
He looked at himself for a moment. He didn't know what he was doing. He knew exactly what he was doing. He put on his shoes and went upstairs.
* * *
Adrian opened the door at 9 exactly. He'd changed as well, open-collar shirt, top two buttons undone, dark jeans, barefoot. He looked more imposing at ease than he did assembled. His eyes moved over Jake once, briefly, and something in his expression settled.
“You look good,” he said. Not a pleasantry.
The suite was the same one, sitting room, a half-open bedroom door, and beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass, the Nashville skyline spread out in amber and dark, unexpectedly beautiful. On the credenza: the Blanton's. Two glasses.
Adrian poured and suggested the balcony. They went through the glass panels onto the deep cushioned sofa with the ottoman and the city below them like it was theirs for the taking.
They talked. Adrian asked more than he told. Jake found himself going further than he'd meant to, which was the pattern with this man. The first bourbons disappeared. Adrian poured a second round, set the bottle down, and turned slightly on the cushion to look at Jake directly.
“I want to tell you something. And I want you to actually hear it.”
“All right.”
“What you did in these two days, not just the presentation, the whole of it, is remarkable. Not remarkable for your stage or your level. Remarkable, full stop.” He looked at Jake steadily. “I am genuinely, deeply proud of you.”
Jake felt it move through him, that thing he had no adequate language for, the warmth that went to a place in him that had been waiting, without his knowledge, to be reached. He looked at the skyline. He looked back.
“Thank you,” he said. “I don't…” He stopped. Started again. “I don't hear that often. In those exact words.”
“I know,” Adrian said simply. “I know you don't.”
The silence between them was easy, which was unusual for Jake. He sat in it for a moment without trying to fill it.
Then Adrian reached forward to the lower shelf of the balcony table and set a flat tin beside the bourbon bottle. White, clean logo, a Lowell Herb Co. pre-roll, the kind of packaging that didn't need to announce itself.
“Do you partake?”
“Sometimes,” Jake said, which was a generous accounting.
“This is the good stuff. Lowell, they farm it properly, very clean, nothing that's going to make you feel out of control. Just amplified.” He picked up the tin. “You've had a remarkable two days. I think you've earned the right to actually enjoy them for a minute.”
Jake looked at the skyline. At the tin. At the man next to him on this balcony in this warm Nashville night with the bourbon and the view and those words still turning over in his chest.
“Sure,” he laughed softly.
They sat with their feet on the ottoman, shoulder almost to shoulder, the city spread out below them. Jake felt it arrive, not in a rush but in a tide. The bourbon's warmth and the cannabis found each other and became something softer and more present than both. The skyline became more itself. The air was exactly the right temperature. He was aware of the man beside him more profoundly than before.
Adrian stubbed the pre-roll and set it down. He picked up his glass, turned slightly, and lifted it toward Jake.
“To you,” he said. “To what you were before I met you, which was already extraordinary. And to what you're becoming, which is going to exceed everything you've imagined for yourself.” A beat. “And to the fact that I get to be here for it. For you.”
Jake touched his glass to Adrian's. “To you,” he said. “For being the first person who ever actually said it. And made me feel like I was worthy.”
They drank. Adrian set his glass on the side table with his right hand. And then, so naturally that it didn't announce itself as a gesture, he let his left hand settle on Jake's thigh. Not grasping. Just resting. Present.
Jake didn't move.
He was aware of the hand. He was aware of everything, with a clarity that the warmth inside him had sharpened rather than blurred. He was aware that he should, by any standard, be standing up and laughing it off. He was aware of all of that and he stayed exactly where he was.
In the instant he contemplated whether to lean in or leave, his life flashed before his eyes: a father who was never cold, just absent. A lifetime of performing to be noticed. An adult life of beautiful women who came and went, leaving him strangely unaffected. Older brothers who chafed at the word gay. A career built on meeting standards set for him, not by him. All of it flooded through in an instant.
Then he looked into Adrian's eyes. Felt his closeness, his warmth, his approval.
Everything else washed away. He stayed.
Adrian leaned in, slowly enough to leave room for a different outcome, and kissed him.
It was soft. That was the thing Jake noticed first and would turn over for a long time afterward, the softness of it. He'd braced for something foreign. What it was instead was warm and unhurried and very sure of itself, and Jake, who had been standing at the edge of something for two days, leaned into it.
Adrian pulled back. Not far. “Was that all right?” he asked quietly.
Jake looked at him. He leaned in and kissed Adrian, just as Adrian had kissed him, and said, “I think you got your answer.”
Something that was actually a smile appeared on Adrian's face, the real one, unguarded, the kind Jake suspected very few people got to see. He set his glass down. Jake set his. And Adrian pulled him in.
It was different than any kiss Jake had experienced, not in its mechanics, which were not so different, but in its connection. There was something in the combination of Adrian's authority and the care that undid something in Jake's chest, some last tension he hadn't known he was carrying. He kissed back. He found he didn't need to think about it. It turned out that not needing to think was the point. For the first time in his life, he surrendered.
Adrian's hand moved up from his thigh, over his shirt, and then, slowly, asking the question at each step, slid underneath the fabric. His thumb found Jake's nipple and Jake gasped without meaning to.
“Okay?” Adrian said against his mouth.
“Yes.” It came out steadier than he expected. Between kisses: “I've never done this before.”
“I know,” Adrian said. “I've got you.”
Something about those three words released something in Jake that he couldn't have named. He let it go. Whatever it was, he let it go.
Adrian drew back and looked at him with an expression that was tender in a way that felt more intimate than anything that had happened yet. He slid off the couch, crouched at Jake’s feet, and with the unhurried deliberateness he brought to everything, removed Jake’s shoes and set them to one side. Then his socks. He looked up, just for a moment, as though checking in. Jake held the look and nodded.
Adrian stood, reached for Jake’s hand, and brought him to his feet. Never breaking eye contact, he unbuttoned Jake’s shirt, slowly, button by button, as though he had all the time in the world, and eased it off his shoulders and set it aside. He stood back and looked at Jake the way he’d looked at him the first time in the meeting room, that same unhurried inventory, except that now there was no table between them and nothing professional about it. His eyes moved across Jake’s chest, his shoulders, the definition of his stomach in the low light from the city below.
“Christ,” Adrian said quietly. Not to Jake. To himself.
Jake stood there in the Nashville night and felt, for the first time in his adult life, genuinely and completely desired. Not admired. Not assessed. Desired. It was an entirely new experience and it hit a part of his consciousness he didn’t know existed.
Adrian stepped close again, his hands at Jake’s waist, and unbuckled his belt with the same patience. Jake’s hands found Adrian’s shoulders, not pushing, just finding, and when his jeans were gone and he was standing in nothing but his black boxer briefs, the fabric doing very little to conceal how his body had already answered every question the last two days had been asking, he felt no impulse to cover himself or explain himself or retreat. He owned it. His mind had made Adrian proud of him. Now his body was as well.
Adrian looked at him, at the evident outline of his arousal, the dark fabric gone darker at its tip, and met his eyes.
“You’re sure,” he said. It wasn’t a question. But Jake answered it anyway.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m sure.”
Adrian’s hand tenderly cupped his bulge through the fabric, a slow, certain pressure. Jake heard himself make a sound he didn’t recognize, a sound his body had been waiting to make for considerably longer than two days. His eyes closed. His head went back. He let himself go. Again.
Adrian drew the briefs down and stepped back to look at him fully, openly, with a frank and unashamed appreciation that would have made Jake self-conscious an hour ago and now made him feel unflinchingly virile. He was past self-consciousness. He was somewhere on the other side of it where the only thing that existed was this balcony and this night and this man looking at him like he was something worth looking at.
Adrian sank to his knees.
He looked up at Jake the way he’d looked up at him across board tables and dinner tables, with that same complete, focused attention, but tonight looking back up into his eyes as if to ask permission. Jake nodded. Adrian took him in hand and then, slowly, into his mouth.
Jake made a sound he’d never heard himself make before. Half surprise, half pure ecstasy. He’d had his share of oral from the women who’d come and gone, but this was something else entirely. Adrian’s mouth had been engineered for the purpose. His tongue found the underside, worked its way up to the frenulum, teased the slit leaving Jake nearly in tears. Then he swallowed him fully giving Jake his first actual “deep throat” experience which recontextualized everything that came before it. He couldn’t fathom how this pleasure had existed so long without him knowing about it.
Jake’s hand found the back of Adrian’s head without deciding to and held on. The world narrowed to the warm Nashville air, the city lights below, and the extraordinary patient attention of this man’s mouth.
“I’m close,” Jake said. His voice was not entirely steady.
Adrian drew back, looked up at him, and rose fluidly to his feet. He was breathing a little faster.
“Your turn,” he said.
Jake surprised himself by accepting it, even anticipating it.
Adrian unbuttoned his shirt and let it fall. Underneath was exactly what years of training had implied: the chest, the definition, the body of a man who had made a commitment to himself and kept it for twenty years. Then his jeans, then his briefs, and he stood in front of Jake in the Nashville night with the ease of a man entirely comfortable in his own skin.
Jake looked at him.
He had never in his life stood in front of another man and felt what he felt in that moment, which was pure want. He understood want. He had simply never aimed it here, never pointed it in this direction, never imagined it could go here. And yet. There it was. As straightforward and undeniable as anything he’d ever felt.
Adrian sat back on the couch and looked at him, patient and unhurried, and Jake went to his knees. Adrian’s hand found the back of his head gently, not directing, just present.
“Just do what feels right,” Adrian said, his voice lower now. “There’s no wrong way.”
Jake found him with his hand first, orienting, and then with his mouth, tentatively at first and then, with the particular focus Jake Sullivan brought to every single thing he’d ever tried to do well, more confidently. He felt Adrian’s breath change. Felt the hand at the back of his head tighten very slightly. Found a rhythm. Heard Adrian say his name once, quietly, in a way that had nothing professional in it.
He was surprised by how natural it felt. He’d expected wrongness, or possibly revulsion, or the weight of every assumption he’d made about himself. Instead, he felt the thing he always felt when he was doing something well, the clean, uncomplicated satisfaction of it, amplified by the knowledge that it was Adrian he was doing it for, that the sounds Adrian was making were because of him. He wasn’t sure whether the pleasure was about the act itself or about being the cause of Adrian’s undoing. He wasn’t sure it mattered.
“Jake.” Adrian’s voice was careful, pulling back from an edge. “Come here.”
He rose. Adrian was already standing, and what happened next happened in a single motion, Adrian’s arms around him, a brief dizzying lift, Jake’s laugh of surprise as the city swung past them, and then they were through the glass panels and into the suite and Adrian was carrying him with an ease that should not have been as affecting as it was, and setting him down on the bed where the lights of Nashville came through the curtains in long amber lines.
Jake lay on his back, nude, in no hurry to be anywhere else. He knew what Adrian wanted and he wanted, badly, to give it to him.
Adrian looked down at him. Jake looked up.
“Still okay?” Adrian said.
“Ask me again,” Jake said, “and I’m going to take it personally.”
Adrian’s smile, when it arrived, was the real one. Jake had been working toward it for three days without knowing that’s what he was doing.
-End of Chapter 1-
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