There It Is
Jake laid nude, flat on his back, in Adrian's bed with the Nashville lights coming through the curtains and he was not apologizing for it. That was the first thing he noticed. Lying there in the room of a man he had known for three weeks, this version of himself that would have been unfathomable a few days ago. He’d have assessed the situation and arrived at the only possible solution, which was to leave. But he laid there expecting that course of action to show up. It hadn’t. Or maybe he didn’t want it to.
What was present instead was something he couldn’t imagine, let alone explain. Something that felt, with an embarrassing simplicity, like wanting to stay.
Taking his time, Adrian stood at the foot of the bed and looked at him. Assessed him. And Jake, who had spent his entire adult life managing how he was perceived, lay there and let himself be assessed. More than that, he let his arms fall open, his legs relax, his body settle into the mattress in a posture that offered rather than protected himself. He wasn't sure where that came from. He didn't contemplate it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. He let it be what it was.
"You are," Adrian said quietly, "genuinely remarkable." He said it the way he said everything, as an observation, not a seduction, which made it touch him more deeply than a seduction would have.
He moved onto the bed and laid himself over Jake, his full weight, settling gradually, their bodies finding alignment, and Jake felt something he had no word for. The closest he could get was held. Not trapped. Held. The full presence of a man’s body against his, warm and deliberate and entirely without apology. Adrian's chest against his chest, their legs intertwined, and between them the unmistakable evidence that this was mutual. Jake had never felt, nor even seen another man’s erect cock live, let alone pressing against his own. And now he felt Adrian slowly grind against him, hard and insistent. He let his animal instinct take over and pressed himself back into Adrian like they were two best friends reuniting after a long absence. Adrian’s cock felt so right against his that he mindlessly tried to find every way, every angle to have them meet and get to know one another better.
Their hips found a slow rhythm. Adrian led, Jake responded enthusiastically. No words were needed; Jake was saying everything Adrian needed to know without saying a word. Adrian's mouth at Jake’s jaw and then his neck and then back to his mouth, and Jake's hands, now being driven by lust instead of thoughtful consideration, found Adrian's ass, the breadth of it, the muscle, the warmth, and pulled their slabs of meat into him without deciding to. He had never felt more present in his own body. He had spent his life slightly outside himself, watching his own performance, grading it in real time. This was the opposite of that. Nothing he was doing was premeditated or even considered. There was only this.
Jake had never felt more secure. He understood, lying there, that this was what the word meant, not the absence of threat but safety. Safety from what he couldn’t know. But he was safe. Being known and wanted. More than wanted, desired. This was another example of things he couldn't deal with yet, so he didn’t. Instead, he pressed his mouth against Adrian's and stopped thinking.
For his part, Adrian was aware that something had shifted in how this was unfolding. He had seduced enough men like Jake before to know the pattern, to know where it went and to manage it accordingly. What he hadn't accounted for, lying here with Jake’s hands gripping his ass, and Jake’s mouth against his, was the unique quality of Jake's surrender. Jake hadn’t made this decision consciencely. Jake just let it happen, with a wholeness that Adrian had not planned for.
"Turn over," Adrian said.
It wasn't a request. His tone had changed, subtly, like when the temperature changes and you realize you need a jacket. Jake heard it and his body responded before his mind caught up, rolling onto his stomach, once again ignoring the voices in his brain saying this isn’t right. He noticed, from some detached observation post in the back of his mind, that he didn't resist. And that not resisting felt like relief, not defeat. Relief from not making decisions. The relief of surrender.
Adrian's hands moved over his back, his shoulders, his spine, his flanks, with an attention that was somewhere between clinical and reverential. "You've done serious work," he said, which in Adrian's language was the same as saying something extraordinary. His hands reached Jake's lower back and paused.
"Trust me," Adrian said.
"I do, sir," Jake said, into the pillow. The word came out without hesitation.
Adrian left the room. Jake heard the bathroom, a brief movement, the sound of something being retrieved. “Hands and knees”, he said from across the room.
He lay in the amber light and waited and the thoughts returned: He raised himself to his hands and knees on a man's bed in a Nashville hotel suite at midnight, waiting. Waiting. As though the most natural thing in the world was to be on all fours, ass in the air, waiting for a man to come back and do whatever he wanted to do to you. He, Jake Sullivan, who had never waited for anyone, who had organized his professional life around being prepared, making something happen, not waiting for it to happen to you. Now he was here, in this position, waiting.
He tried to find an objection to this. Part of his brain said, stop the madness. Take control of the situation. That was the part that confused him most. He was not a passive man. He had built his life around always knowing what the right next move was. And here he was, in the most passive position of his life, and what he felt was not humiliation or outrage or the urgent need to reassert himself. What he felt was inexplicably right. As though the position fit. The relief he felt was staggering.
Was it the bourbon? The Lowell pre-roll, still warm somewhere in his bloodstream, softening the edges of things? He considered this honestly. It wasn't. He was warm and relaxed but he was not impaired. He knew exactly where he was, what he was doing, and was completely at peace with that. The choices he had made to get here were less like overt choices to do something specific and more like small surrenders to the inevitable. However he got here, the choices had led him here, waiting doggy style on this bed, and he had made all of them voluntarily. And eagerly waiting for whatever came next.
It occurred to him that maybe it was Adrian's approval he was chasing. That he was on his knees, literally, for the same reason he'd contorted himself professionally, the same hunger to hear the words “I’m proud of you” or “Good boy.” That this was the same drive wearing different clothes.
He sat with that for a moment.
Then he thought: maybe. But that didn't explain the other part. It didn't explain the yearning that lived in his body and had nothing to do with approval, the visceral man-on-man desire that had been building since the time Adrian's hand had rested on his ass as they’d left the restaurant two nights ago. That wasn't a hunger for praise. That was something else, something more fundamental, something that had apparently been there, quietly, for longer than he had known.
He heard Adrian come back into the room and he stopped thinking.
* * *
He had expected, if he'd expected anything, which he'd been careful not to do, something uncomfortable. Something he'd have to endure on the way to something else. To please Adrian, if nothing else. What he did not expect was Adrian's hands at his hips, repositioning him gently, and then the warmth of Adrian's mouth in a place that Jake's entire existence had not prepared him for.
He felt his breath first. What could that mean…heavy breathing on his hole? That alone sent chills up his spine. But that was just the warmup. Unexpectedly and inexplicably, he felt something warm and soft touch his hole, a place that he’d never considered sexual. Until now.
Jake made a sound that surprised even himself. It was pure animal.
What could only have been the tip of Adrian’s tongue was teasing his hole, playfully tempting it to open for him. The feeling was so exquisite, Jake had to remember to breathe.
“Oooohhhh…” he whimpered. It took all his energy just to whimper.
Adrian continued. This time he made small circles around the hole with his tongue, again teasing Jake, letting him know what a gift his hole could be and there was more where this came from.
Jake reverted to the animal sound from before.
“Like that boy?” Adrian said with a bit of a sneer. He knew there was no turning back now.
Jake could only respond with sounds that resembled crying.
Adrian upped the ante. This time he flattened his tongue and swiped it slowly up his crack, starting at his taint and landing squarely on his hole
An audible gasp was Jake’s only response.
Jake had not known this existed. That was the simple, bewildering fact of it. He was 35 years old and he had not known that this was even a thing, that a human body could experience this sensation, that this pleasure was available to him. Adrian's tongue moved with the same patient deliberation he brought to everything, present, unhurried, absolutely focused, and Jake's hands found the sheets and held on.
"Oh my god," he said to no one. To the pillow. To whatever version of himself was still capable of forming words.
Adrian's hands were at his hips, steady, keeping him in place, which Jake needed, because he found himself pressing back, to seek more, to close whatever distance existed between his hole and Adrian’s tongue. Adrian let him. He read the responses the way he read everything, adjusting, finding the precise technique that made Jake's breath go ragged, his shoulders dropped and his back arched wordlessly begging Adrian to keep going. Go faster. Slower. Deeper. Wider. Narrower. Just don’t stop. Never stop. Never.
It went on.
It went on long enough that Jake lost track of time entirely, which had never happened to him, he wasn’t a person who lost track of time. He was a person who always knew what time it was. He did not know what time it was. He knew only the sensation, and the sensation had become his world. He was like a man addicted. He’d do anything to keep this going, or, god help him, take the next step. He was an animal and animals don’t make choices. Choices are made for them.
Somewhere in the middle of it he thought: this is what it would feel like. This was the physical expression of the emotional charge he’d been receiving from Adrian, the “I’m proud of you’s” and the “Good boy’s”. And the thought revealed the simple fact that he wanted it. He wanted whatever came next. He wanted it with an urgency that circumvented his rational decision-making personality and gone straight to something more feral.
"Adrian." His voice was wrecked. He didn't care. "Adrian, please."
Adrian slowed. "Please what?" He said it with perfect calm and Jake understood in that moment that the question wasn't cruelty, it was Adrian confirming his authority, his control, and Jake’s lack of both. He wanted Jake to say it. He wanted Jake to arrive at it himself, in his own words, without being prodded.
Jake pressed his forehead into the pillow. Everything he had ever been, the athlete, the executive, the controlled, self-sufficient man who had essentially raised himself and never once asked for help, all of it was here on this bed and all of it was absolutely fine with what was about to come out of his mouth.
"Fuck me," he finally uttered. Those two words actually left his mouth. "Please...I need you to…” he stopped. Started again. "Please."
The words hung in the Nashville night and did not embarrass him, which surprised him as much as the fact he said them in the first place.
Adrian's hand moved up his spine, from base to shoulder, a slow and certain line. "Good boy," he said quietly. And something in Jake's chest, that thing that moved every time those two words arrived, moved again, and he pushed his ass back up into the air, silently begging Adrian to take him.
Adrian was careful. That was the other thing Jake had not prepared himself for. This was unchartered territory for Jake, but, culturally, he was vaguely aware of what this could be like. What he hadn't built into the model was this, the patience, the attention, the unhurried way Adrian read his body and adjusted accordingly, without being asked, keeping one hand always in contact, always communicating: I've got you.
Adrian started slowly, frustratingly slowly. Jake was becoming needier by the minute, but Adrian had experience working for him. He adjusted Jake so as to resemble a table. One could say “doggy style” but Adrian was more refined than that. But most importantly, Jake’s waist was at a 90 degree angle, back parallel to the mattress, legs to the knee perpendicular to the same mattress, perfect for entry.
Jake knew this was it. It was coming. Adrian leaned down to his hole one more time to give it a farewell kiss. He pulled back and quietly asked Jake if he was ready. Jake whimpered, almost cried, and nodded his head.
“Good boy”, Adrian responded.
Jake heard felt Adrian reach for something, the sound of a cap being snapped on or off, and then the unmistakable feeling of a wet, slippery finger entering his hole and pushing in very, very slowly.
He gasped. Nothing ever had gone into this place before, not even at a doctor’s exam. And now there was something. There was a burn, for sure, but Adrian was nearly surgical. He let his finger sit, motionless, allowing the sting to quickly subside. He pulled it out slowly, applied more lube and repeated. This time there was nearly no pain and Jake was curious how and why it didn’t hurt more. Adrian did it again, but this time with two well lubed fingers, and re-entered this time stretching the hole. Jake was shocked how little discomfort there was and found himself starting to rock into his fingers to take more.
“Slow down, cowboy”, Adrian laughed.
The next time Adrian entered, his two fingers seemed to go on an exploration, Jake not understanding what they could be looking for in there.
Until the found it.
“Fuuuuuuck….” Jake exhaled. “What is that?” he panted.
“That’s your prostate, board boy”, Adrian smiled. “We’re going to have a lot of fun with that tonight.”
Adrian pressed and circled it with his fingers, reducing Jake back to animalistic groans.
Adrian pulled his fingers out for the last time, and readjusted Jake’s hips.
“Deep breath, then exhale slowly”, Adrian commanded.
Jake felt it. Something warm, hard and cylindrical pushing into his hole. It stayed there unmoving, taunting Jake. Jake knew what it was and he was ready. He was more than ready. He craved it. He wanted what was clearly the tip of Adrian’s veiny cock to breach him. “Please sir”, he was now reduced to begging.
Adrian said nothing, but Jake felt his response. A brief, tight, burning sensation like a match was lit just inside his hole. Adrian had done this many times before, so he stopped, allowing Jake to adjust to the intruder. And faster than Jake could’ve imagined, the sting subsided. He was being fucked. An alien cock had entered his hole and it felt right. Adrian’s experienced lube job had seen to that. He couldn’t breathe and he dared not move. He was on a high wire and any wrong move could destroy the moment.
But he was barely in; he had a long way to go.
“Breathe and exhale”, he ordered.
On Jake’s exhale, he pushed in again, the first time since he entered. He knew it would burn for a moment, but it would subside if he held still. He did.
Jake groaned, more from gratitude than pain, Adrian thought. He was right.
It was a night of firsts for Jake. All good. And this topped everything that came before it.
Before he knew what was happening, Adrian repeated, “Breathe and exhale.”
Jake did as he was told, now knowing he wouldn’t be split in half as Adrian pushed in further. It stung. He held still. And then it didn’t. Something changed, some interior shift, some accommodation, and the discomfort transmuted into something that was not discomfort at all.
But it wasn’t just the absence of pain…could it be…the presence of something good. Could a cock slowly sliding into his rectum actually feel good?
“Breathe and exhale” he heard.
He wanted more so he willingly complied.
Adrian pushed, it stung, the sting faded, and the pleasure intensified.
“More please, Sir, more”, Jake heard the words come out of his mouth. How the fuck did that happen, he thought to himself.
“Greedy little boy”, Adrian said in response.
“Last one. Breathe.” He said.
Jake knew what to do and was rewarded. He felt a fullness and warmth he’d never considered possible. When he felt Adrian’s balls graze his, he knew he was “balls deep” as he and his buddies used to say in their conquest of women.
But it wasn’t a girl Adrian was balls deep in. It was him.
“You ok cowboy?” Adrian asked.
“More than ok, Sir.” With that, Jake had a moment of clarity. When and why had he started addressing Adrian as “Sir”? He didn’t know where it came from, but like so many things tonight, he didn’t overthink it. It just felt right.
But it was only now starting. Adrian moved. Slowly. Finding the angle.
Jake thought it was as though someone had located, inside him, a switch he hadn't known was installed. Was it the same switch that Adrian searched for and found with his fingers? A point of contact that sent a current through him from the base of his spine to the back of his skull, that made his hands grip the sheets and his back arch without any instruction from his conscious mind. He heard himself make sounds he had never made, low, involuntary, stripped of every performance quality he'd spent his life developing. Raw. Honest. The sounds of a man who had stopped managing his own experience and was simply having it.
"There it is," Adrian said, low, with the satisfaction of a man who has found exactly what he was looking for. He adjusted the angle deliberately, found it again, held it.
Jake's entire nervous system lit up.
"That's your prostate," Adrian said, in the same tone he might use to explain a board-level strategy. As though this were information Jake needed and he was simply providing it. "I'm going to spend some time here."
"Jesus Christ," Jake groaned. It was not a complaint.
“Adrian will do," Adrian said, and Jake laughed, actually laughed, in the middle of all of this, which was perhaps the most surprising thing that had happened in three days of surprising things, and Adrian's hand tightened at his hip and the laugh dissolved back into something that was definitely not a laugh.
Adrian was on a mission. He’d found his target and he relentlessly went after it, always finding new ways to attack from a different angle, each one sending Jake to a new level of ecstasy. Jake couldn’t even mouth expletives, he was so wrought. His ass fought to take it deeper, longer, at whatever angle would give him more pleasure. He had long ago abandoned anything resembling self-respect. His livelihood, his life had been reduced to one thing: the pleasure of being fucked by Adrian’s thick, veiny, overly ambitious cock.
Without warning, Adrian gently pulled out and rolled him over on his back. Jake cried “No….” like he was being punished.
It was unhurried, a hand at his shoulder, a fluid shift, and then Jake was on his back and Adrian was above him, weight distributed, looking down at him with those eyes that didn't miss anything. Jake looked up. The Nashville light fell across Adrian's face. His shoulders. The controlled power of him, poised above, entirely present.
"Sir," Jake whispered appreciatively. He didn’t contemplate it. It just came out.
“Boy”, Adrian responded. Like Jake, it just felt like the right thing to say. Then he found Jake's wrists and pressed them gently into the pillow above his head, one in each hand, and held them there.
Jake didn’t fight it. He let allowed himself to be restrained, and, once again, something that was inherently wrong had become natural. Adrian’s dominance was not him losing. This was him deciding. There was a difference, and he knew the difference, and he lay there with his wrists held and felt, for the third time that evening he reveled in the relief of letting go.
Adrian peered into his eyes from inches away; Jake could read his mind. He was saying ‘get ready for round two’. And at that precise moment Jake felt the warm, stiff presence at his hole again, but this time driving more aggressively, leaving the slow, considerate entry behind.
“Take my cock”, he growled looking straight into Jake’s eyes as he thrust in. Hard.
“FUCK!” yelped Jake.
Adrian had gone full-in and held it there, giving time for Jake to readjust.
In moments, Jake’s face went from panic, to pain, to absence of pain, to glorious fullness, to pure lust.
“My boy likes this, doesn’t he?” gloated Adrian.
Jake was melting. He’d never known such pleasure. He could only croak out the words…”Fuck….yes….sir….”
Adrain pulled out and pushed back in to give Jake a taste of what’s was coming.
“Like that?” he asked again.
“Oh, please sir, fuck your boy….fuck me.”
“Oh, I intend to…” Adrian sneered.
Jake, wanting to take Adrian as deep as possible pushed his ass into Adrian’s cock and wrapped his legs around his back.
“My boy wants it badly, doesn’t he…?” Adrian leered.
All Jake could do was repeat himself…” Please sir, fuck me hard. Fuck your boy hard…”
Adrian growled and thrust into him hard.
"You feel that," Adrian said. It was not a question.
"Yes," Jake said. The word was barely there.
"Tell me."
"I feel you fucking me, like a bitch." Jake's eyes were still open, still on Adrian's face, because closing them felt like retreating from something he didn't want to retreat from. "I feel everything."
"Good boy," Adrian said, and held his wrists, and moved.
“Am I Sir? Am I a good boy?”
"Yes, and you're mine right now," Adrian said, low, not breaking rhythm. "You know that."
Jake didn't answer with words. His body answered by pushing back into Adrian harder.
"Say it."
"Yes," Jake said. And then, because the word wasn't quite enough, because something in him wanted to give this fully and completely: "Yes, Sir. I’m your good boy."
Adrian's grip on his wrists tightened. His pace changed, deeper, more deliberate, each movement landing on that point of extraordinary sensation that Jake's body was now absolutely relentless in demanding more of. Jake's hands pulled, not trying to escape but Adrian held them. He held them and looked down at Jake with an expression that was intent and warm and entirely in control, and Jake looked back up and thought: I am going to remember this for the rest of my life.
One of Jake’s hand broke free and he moved toward his cock to jerk himself off, but Adrian caught his wrist.
"No," Adrian said simply.
Jake made a sound that was half frustration and half something else entirely.
"Not yet," Adrian said. "Not until I tell you." He found the angle again, found that point, and Jake's entire body arched off the mattress.
"That's not fair," Jake said, which came out with considerably more feeling than he'd intended.
"No," Adrian agreed, and did it again. "It's not."
Jake tried again, the need past the point of negotiation, and Adrian roughly swatted his hand away making it clear that Jake no longer was in charge of his own body, or pleasure.
Jake lay there and let this be true. Actively. Consciously. He was choosing to lie there and let someone else decide. Jake Sullivan was choosing to yield authority over his own body to another person, and his only feeling about this, examined honestly, right there in the amber light with his wrists pinned and his entire nervous system conducting electricity, was gratitude. Gratitude for Adrian’s erect manhood scraping his inner being giving him more physical pleasure than he knew even existed. Gratitude for everything that preceded tonight, the guidance, the care, the approval. Gratitude for…he didn’t know quite what, but he believed his life changed this night and he owed it to Adrian.
He had no context for this. He had no prior version of himself to compare it to. He simply lay there in this new reality of and let it be what it was.
"Now," Adrian said.
Just the word. One syllable. Delivered with absolute authority.
Adrian released one of Jake's wrists and his hand found himself immediately and jerked it to the release that had been building for a long time now. Adrian's other hand gripped his hip and his pace changed and the combined sensation, the pressure at his prostate, his own hand, Adrian's voice, the weight and intent of this man above him, arrived in a wave that started somewhere deep and broke outward through every part of him simultaneously.
Jake came with his whole body. That was the only way to describe it. Not the small, efficient, quietly managed experience of his previous life but something total, his back off the mattress, his hand gripping the sheets, a sound coming out of him that he didn't recognize as belonging to him. Adrian following him over that edge with his own release, his grip on Jake's hip, his breath, his voice passionately repeating his name, the two of them arriving at the same moment with the same completeness as though Adrian had orchestrated it, which he had.
In a night of firsts there was another. The feeling of Adrian exploding inside him like a volcano of hot lava erupting in his rectum, filling his guts with Adrian, leaking out between his legs, feeling the warmth of the liquid seep down between his thighs, and the total collapse on top of him of the man who made this possible.
The room went quiet.
Nashville hummed below them, entirely unconcerned.
Adrian lay on top of him for a long moment, the full weight of him, warm and heavy and real, their heartbeats slowing down together. Then he rolled to one side and pulled Jake into him, not a question, just an arm drawing Jake in, and Jake happily crawled into his side. He lay there in the crook of Adrian's arm with the city lights on the ceiling and did not try to think.
He stared at the ceiling for a long time.
His life had changed. He knew this with the same clean certainty he knew when a strategy was correct, when a hire was right, when a number didn't add up. He didn't need to analyze it. He didn't need to run it through any criteria. Something fundamental had shifted, in this room, in the last few hours, and the person who had knocked on this door at nine o'clock was not the same person lying here now. He was not sure what that meant for any of the things that made up his life before tonight. He would need to find out. Not tonight.
Adrian disappeared into the bathroom and came back with a warm, damp towel. He sat on the edge of the bed and cleaned them both off with the same unhurried attention he brought to everything, methodical, present, without any of the awkwardness that Jake might have expected from the aftermath of something this seismic. He set the towel aside and lay back down and pulled Jake in again.
"You okay?" Adrian said. Quietly. No performance in it.
Jake considered the question honestly. He took his time.
"I think so," he said. "Ask me again in about a week."
Adrian made a sound that was the quieter version of the smile. His hand moved over Jake's arm. "Your job is fine," he said. "Nothing that happened in this room changes anything at Forrester. You know that."
"I know." A pause. "That's not actually what I'm worried about."
"I know it's not."
They lay there for a moment. Outside, a car moved through the street far below. The curtains held the light at the edges.
"I've never…" Jake started, stopped. "I don't know who I am right now. I thought I did. I had a very clear picture." He looked at the ceiling. "It’s a good picture. I like my life. I thought I loved women. None of that is…" He stopped again.
"None of that goes away," Adrian said. "This doesn't erase anything. It adds to it. You're allowed to be more than one thing." He said it without apology or urgency, the way he said things that were true and didn't require emphasis. "Most people just don't find out."
Jake was quiet for a long time.
"Good boy," Adrian said, very softly. And something about the timing of it, the gentleness of it, coming here, now, in this context, undid something in Jake's chest that he hadn't known was still clenched.
His eyes blurred briefly. He blinked it away. He was not going to cry in Adrian Mercer's bed. He had some standards.
"Stay," Adrian said. "I'll set an alarm. You'll be back in your room before anyone is up."
Jake thought about his own room. The alone of it. The bed with the untouched second pillow.
"All right," he said.
Adrian reached to the nightstand and set the alarm on his phone and put it back. His arm returned to Jake's shoulder. Jake settled into it, into the warmth and weight of him, the solid reality of this man who had, over the course of three days, dismantled every assumption Jake Sullivan had ever made about himself and done it with such care and such precision that Jake had not, at any point, wanted him to stop.
He thought about his father.
He thought about all the men and boys who had been given something like this, this unhurried, unconditional attention, and how it had shaped them, and how the absence of it had shaped him, and how it had taken until now, in this room, for someone to offer it in the exact form his body had apparently always known it needed.
He thought: I am going to have to figure out what to do with all of this.
He thought: not tonight.
He fell asleep in Adrian's arms, in the Nashville dark, the city below them carrying on without concern for whatever had just irrevocably changed.
-End of Chapter 2
Please feel free to share your feedback with me @ [email protected]. This story, The Protocol, is largely competed but it helps shape future ideas and stories. Help me figure out what’s next.
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