"Four Days"
After spending the morning in bed together, Jake and Cole checked out of the Hyatt Regency around noon on Friday, both having previously decided to take the day off knowing they would have earned much needed R&R. What they didn’t see coming was that they would be spending it together. The Board meeting was over. This had been, by any measure, the most significant week of Jake's adult life, and going back to the office wasn’t remotely in the cards. Cole and Jake climbed into Cole’s car, Jake had Ubered, and as he pulled away he turned to Jake and said, “We’re going to your place.”
Jake wanted to drop in his lap and suck him off while he drove, but this was all still so new to him. He’d only just learned to suck cock; to do it to someone driving through Atlanta traffic was riskier than he had an appetite for.
So instead, he looked out the window at Atlanta moving past and thought about catching up.
That was the word that kept arriving. Catching up. Less than 24 hours ago he learned Cole had been carrying two years of something that Jake had been walking around completely unaware of. And Jake had been carrying his own version of the same thing without even realizing it, and now they were on the other side of it and there was an enormous amount of ground to cover. Jake was 35 years old and had just discovered, in Nashville and Atlanta hotel rooms, that his orientation, his appetites, and the person he was apparently in love with were all different from the model he'd been operating under. Catching up didn't begin to cover it. But it was the word that kept arriving, and Jake was practical enough to start where he was.
Jake let them in and Cole’s animal instinct was to pick up where they’d left off in the hotel room: nude, in bed, Cole in charge, Jake compliant. But between last night with Adrian and two more rounds this morning, Cole needed some time to recoup, and he guessed Jake did as well. They had all the time in the world.
Them being in Jake’s condo alone was outer worldly. It was exactly the same; it was entirely different. Cole had been there plenty of times, for get togethers, to work, after workouts, but their relationship had always been entirely platonic. Bros. Buddies. Best friends. Boss and employee. If Cole had made a move it would’ve been met with abject horror.
Same condo, but now they were lovers. They both sensed the awkwardness and Cole, the man suddenly in charge, pulled Jake into him, took his face in his hands, and asked, “You ok, board boy?”
Jake smiled, “I’m so fucking ok…”
“Good boy,” Cole answered and gave him a long, unhurried kiss.
Acknowledging they were now living in a new normal, they got down to business.
Jake unpacked. Cole took the bedroom and claimed one side of the closet with a quiet certainty. They spent two hours in the apartment talking about everything that had happened, but neither allowing themselves to believe it was really happening. Literally overnight, Jake and Cole had become an item, and it made each of them the happiest man in the world.
Then Cole went to the kitchen, made himself at home and started cooking.
"You cook," Jake said, from the doorway.
"Don't sound surprised," Cole said. "You've seen my arms. You think I got those eating takeout?"
Jake leaned in the doorframe and watched him move through the kitchen pulling ingredients from the bag he'd stopped for on the way home. The domesticity of it was, surprisingly comfortable, even right. He watched Cole's forearms move and thought about the past thirty-six hours and wondered why it took him so long to see what was now so obvious. The two of them, together, sharing dinner, then sharing their bed.
Dinner was grilled salmon, roasted vegetables, a bottle of wine that Cole selected from Jake's rack like he lived there, which, in fact, he would in short order. They ate at the kitchen island, the city quiet outside, and talked with ease. Cole's foot found Jake's under the island at some point and stayed there, a small and deliberate contact, and Jake looked at him across the plates and felt it move through him.
They cleared the dishes together. Cole refilled the wine. Jake was reaching past him to put a glass away when Cole's hand closed around his wrist and stopped him.
Jake turned. Cole was very close.
"Bedroom," Cole said.
Jake looked him square in the eye, and before he could answer, Cole repeated, "Bedroom." Quietly. With that same certainty that Jake had just started learning made his knees go weak.
He went.
Cole followed him in and closed the door and crossed the room in four steps and kissed him, not the tentative negotiation of two people still tip-toeing into a new relationship, but Cole’s declaration of ownership. He’d waited 18 months for this and he was taking what was owed to him. Jake's back met the wall. Cole's hands went to his hips and gripped him hard, possessive, certain, strong enough to remind Jake that Cole was considerably stronger than him and had no intention of pretending otherwise.
"You know what I've wanted to do since about month two?" Cole said.
"I'm beginning to get a sense of it," Jake said.
“I’ve wanted to see you on your knees, worshiping my cock. My boss, the boy wonder CMO, Jake Sullivan, nude, on your knees, begging for my cock.”
Once again, Jake found a new reason to melt. “Fuuuuucccckkkkk….” he exhaled.
“What are you waiting for board boy?” Cole taunted.
“Nothing Sir”, Jake responded by first ripping off his own clothes and then Cole’s. It took all of about 10 seconds for them both to be nude before Jake was on his knees looking up at Cole.
Jake loved his new role, the one who obeys orders instead of giving them. On his knees directly in front of Cole’s massively hairy cock, he looked up to him and asked, “May I, Sir?”
Without answering, Cole took it in his hand and slapped Jake with his massive member across his cheeks and face. “Count boy”, he ordered, and Jake quickly responded every time the baseball bat-size cock struck his face, “One, two, three, four, five, six.” And then Cole stopped, climbed onto the bed, spread his legs, and said, “All yours board boy”.
Although this wouldn’t be the first time Jake had sucked a man’s cock, Adrian and Cole had both seen to that, this was the first time he was doing so in a way that was explicitly subservient. Cole leaned back and waited for Jake to perform giving no indication that he’d reciprocate. And, once again, the impact of his servility thrilled Jake beyond comprehension. To be relegated to Cole’s hairy crotch with the expectation of sucking him to completion made him ravenous. He thought of nothing but Cole’s pleasure. He wouldn’t be satisfied until he swallowed every drop of Cole’s load.
He started with his balls, slurping, rolling them in his mouth, licking his taint, even reaching down to his hole with his tongue. Cole’s essence, soap, sweat, and a tiny bit of funk was like an aphrodisiac. The he’d flick up and down the shaft with the tip of his tongue, making Cole thrust into his face for more. He grasped his cock at the base and targeted his frenulum, focusing on that for an inordinate amount of time. Then he tried something he’d seen in porn…he stretched Cole’s cockhead to expose his urethra and flicked the opening with his tongue. Cole screamed with pleasure, “FUCK board boy…where’d you learn that?” he shouted. Jake knew he was on to something and repeated the entire process: Taint, balls, shaft, head, urethra, over and over until Cole seized his head and forcing Jake’s cock down his throat. Jake wasn’t experienced enough yet to hold it for long, but his gagging and coughing generated its own eroticism. “Fuck board boy..” Cole said over and over.
Cole created a game where every time Jake deep throated him, he’d count the seconds, adding one second every time. And every time Jake made the count, but just barely. When he got to 10, they both were at their max. Jake could barely breathe and Cole cried, “Fuck!!! I’m cumming!!” pulling out just enough so Jake could breathe and have his face and mouth covered with Cole’s warm jizz. Jake looked up into his face while Cole tenderly tousled Jake’s hair until he pulled Jake’s sticky face up to his and kissed him lovingly.
Looking straight into his eyes, face covered in cum, Cole whispered, "Te quiero, cabrón."
“Me too, Cole. Me too.”
Monday, 8:02 AM
The weeks that followed were a sustained exercise in two things simultaneously: maintaining an impeccable professional front during business hours and making up for lost time every other waking moment.
They were, it turned out, good at the first one. Less interested in the second one than strictly advisable.
Jake's staff meeting. First Monday after the Board Meeting. Eight people around the conference table, Jake at the head. Cole, who had for eighteen months reliably taken a seat two or three chairs to Jake's left, enough proximity to be in the conversation, enough distance to be professional, arrived first and sat down immediately to Jake's right.
Jake looked at him. Cole opened his notebook.
Across the table, Kate Novak, Director of Communications, sharp as a tack, constitutionally incapable of missing anything, noted the seating change with the peripheral awareness of a woman whose job was to notice things and ideate potential scenarios. Beside her, Marcus Webb, Director of Integrated Marketing, was looking at his laptop but had the slightly elevated alertness of a man processing the same data point.
The meeting started. Jake ran it the way he always ran it, efficiently, with the organized precision that his team had come to rely on. Lots of chatter about the Board Meeting and, like the one after Nashville, pride and congratulations for Jake, their leader.
Kate shared that she’d been at a party Saturday night with some of their colleagues and that she heard “Jake saved Lynn’s ass” in the meeting. Jake immediately denied it and was unhappy that it had been interpreted that way. Marcus had been at the same party and heard, thirdhand that Jake was “on fire.” Jake chose not to dispute that.
Cole, secretly bursting with pride, reluctantly refrained from piling on, but he expressed his emotions another way.
Jake felt Cole's shoe nudge his.
He kept talking. Cole's shoe moved against the side of his foot with a deliberateness that was not accidental. Jake's train of thought briefly derailed, he caught it, recovered, continued the sentence. He did not look at Cole.
Cole's shoe pressed more firmly against his. Under the table, Cole's shoeless foot had found Jake's ankle.
Jake's eye twitched. He looked at his notes. He said something measured and correct about the Q3 campaign calendar. Cole's foot stayed exactly where it was.
After approximately four seconds of internal deliberation about professional conduct, Jake moved his foot against Cole's.
The corner of Cole's mouth moved. He made a note in his notebook. Jake looked at the ceiling briefly and resumed the meeting.
Across the table, Kate's phone was in her lap.
Kate:
Are you watching this?
Marcus:
Cole sitting right next to him? Yeah.
Kate:
He never sits there.
Marcus:
He's sitting there now.
Kate:
Something happened at the Board Meeting.
Marcus:
Something happened in Nashville too. He came back….different.
Kate:
Not like this.
The meeting ended. People filed out. Jake collected his notes with the composed efficiency of a man who had just conducted a perfectly normal staff meeting and whose foot had been playing footsie with his direct report for eleven minutes.
Cole walked past him on the way out. "Good meeting," he said.
"Don't," Jake said.
Cole's mouth did the thing. He kept walking.
* * *
Cole hadn't formally moved in. The evidence, however, was accumulating.
Week one: a second toothbrush. A bottle of Cole's shampoo, a cast-iron skillet on the stove that Jake definitely had not owned before.
Week two: three dress shirts in Jake's closet, hung on the left side with the same care Cole brought to everything. A gym bag permanently by the door. The good bourbon, not Blanton's, Cole's preferred label, a small-batch Texan that Jake had not encountered before and now associated entirely with Cole, on the kitchen counter.
Week three: Cole's key on Jake's key hook. When this appeared, Jake looked at it for a moment and then looked at Cole, who was on the couch reading and didn't look up.
"You made yourself a key," Jake said.
"You gave me one," Cole said.
Jake thought about this. He had, in fact, given Cole a key after the second weekend, because Cole had beaten him home and couldn't get in and the situation was impractical. He was pleased he had avoided a formal invitation to permanent residence. He wanted Cole there permanently, that wasn’t at issue, but Jake just wanted it to happen organically, just like it was.
They had started staggering their arrivals and departures from the office by fifteen minutes. Jake's idea, on the Monday morning when he'd nearly held the elevator for Cole by reflex and caught himself. Cole had agreed to it without comment. It was a reasonable precaution. It was also, Jake recognized privately, a daily reminder that the most significant relationship of his life was one he was conducting in secrecy from the fifty-five people he was responsible for, which he was managing by not examining it too closely.
Tuesday, 2:47 PM
Cole sent a meeting invite to Jake's calendar. Subject line: Consumer Insights Quarterly Update. Duration: thirty minutes. Location: Jake's office.
This was unusual. Cole didn’t send meeting invites. Cole appeared in Jake's doorway when he had something to say, said it, and left. He had done this for eighteen months and had shown no inclination to change the practice. An official calendar invite from Cole was, in Jake's experience, unprecedented.
He accepted it.
At two-forty-seven, Cole knocked on Jake's open office door, stepped in, and closed it behind him. He turned the small lock on the handle, a feature of Jake's door that Jake had not, in eighteen months, used once.
Jake looked at the locked door. He looked at Cole.
Cole crossed the office, pulled out Jake's chair, and sat down in it. He looked at Jake across his own desk with those dark eyes and the expression that Jake's body had learned to respond to before his mind had time to weigh in.
"Cole," Jake said. His voice was entirely level. He was a professional. "What are you doing."
"Sit down," Cole said
"That's my chair."
"I know whose chair it is," Cole said. "Sit down."
Jake sat in the visitor's chair across from his own desk, never before experiencing his office from this vantage point. Cole held his gaze for a moment with the specific look that meant he was about to make a decision that wasn't going to be negotiated. Then, with the unhurried ease of a man doing something he'd been thinking about for some time, he unbelted his pants.
"Cole—" Jake's voice dropped to a hiss. "We are at work."
"We are," Cole agreed. He looked at Jake steadily. "And you have about twenty-eight minutes left in this meeting. I'd suggest you use them."
Jake looked at the locked door. He looked at Cole. He thought about the fifty-five people on the other side of that door, the glass panel beside it, the professional reputation he had spent fifteen years constructing.
“Cole!”, Jake remarked, have shock and half pleading him to rethink this.
Cole spread his legs and said quietly, “You know what to do, board boy.”
The indignity alone made Jake’s cock swell. To be able to taste Cole in the middle of the day was frosting on the cake. He went around his own desk, dropped to his knees between his own desk and his own chair, and did what Cole told him to.
By now, sucking Cole off wasn’t new, but every time he did it, he relived the thrill of doing it the first time. Cole’s cock was so much different than his own. Unlike Jake, he had a thick black bush, a set of balls that were so big they created a platform for his cock to rest on. When soft, Cole’s shaft rested nearly vertically on that huge pair of balls. And the cock, hairy like everything else down there, massively thick, and perfectly cut. He was born in Mexico and they sure must have good doctors down there, Jake surmised. But the taste. Every time he pulled it into his mouth he got an adrenaline rush. The smell of his cock was Pavlovian and made Jake instantly hard and dripping wet. The smell alone put him into a sucking frenzy which could be satisfied by only one thing: swallowing every drop of his man. Nothing else mattered, least of all his own orgasm. He still didn’t know the in’s and out’s of a dom/sub relationship; all he knew is that making Cole happy produced his own kind of happiness.
Cole's hand came to the back of his head, not urgent, just present, just claiming, and Jake understood, on his knees in his own office on a Tuesday afternoon, that the nature of their relationship applied regardless of whose name was on the door. Cole was in charge here too. The door being locked was the only acknowledgment either of them made of that.
The walls were thin but the danger made it even more explosive. Cole struggled not to moan out loud, making the experience all the more erotic. Jake tried to “Shush” him repeatedly, but that only made it worse.
“Oh, board boy”, he whispered. “You’re such a good board boy”, he continued as he thrust up into Jakes mouth, now covered in drool and other fluids.
“It’s cumming…I’m cumming…” Cole whispered loudly, and Jake felt and tasted the familiar blast that signaled he had done his job well. Jake wasn’t expecting a mid-afternoon snack, so this tasted even better than usual.
When it was over Cole produced a folded Kleenex from his jacket pocket, prepared, because Cole knew what the meeting was actually about, and reached down and cleaned a small trace of himself from Jake's cheek with a tenderness that was entirely incongruous with the preceding ten minutes and entirely characteristic of Cole.
"Good meeting," Cole said. He buckled his belt, stood, unlocked the door, and left.
Jake sat in his visitor's chair for a moment. Then he got up, straightened his jacket, and walked to his desk and sat in his own chair, which was still warm.
His phone showed three texts from Kate and two from Marcus. He put it face-down.
Saturday Night
"Get your sexy on, we're going out," Cole said, from the bedroom, where he was getting dressed.
"Where," Jake said.
"Burkhart's."
Jake looked up from his book. Burkhart's Pub was Atlanta's oldest gay bar, a Midtown institution, the kind of place that had been there long enough to stop trying to be anything other than exactly what it was. Cole's version of a regular Saturday night, Jake understood, when he wasn't working or at the gym or reorganizing Jake's apartment.
"That's—" Jake paused. "That's where you and Adrian met."
"It's also where I've been going on Saturdays for four years," Cole said. He appeared in the doorway in dark jeans and a fitted black t-shirt that made his shoulders look architectural. He looked at Jake with the level expression that did not invite extended discussion. "Get dressed. Make me proud."
"Cole. I'm not—" Jake heard how he sounded and stopped. He tried again. "I've never been to a gay bar."
"I know," Cole said. "That ends tonight. I want to show my boy off." He disappeared back into the bedroom.
Jake sat with it for a moment. He thought about the fact that six weeks ago he had not known he was gay, or not-straight, or whatever the right word was, a question he'd decided to stop worrying about. He thought about the fact that being seen at a gay bar was a different kind of visibility than the footsie and the locked office door. He thought about being “shown off.”
He thought about Cole's expression, which had not contained a single molecule of room for this conversation to go any direction other than the one Cole had decided. His acquiescence of control made him melt.
He got dressed. His wardrobe was still decidedly hetero, but he found a t-shirt and jeans that he hoped would do the trick.
Burkhart's on a Saturday night was warm and loud and entirely without the self-consciousness Jake had braced for, just a room full of men having a good time, the ease of a crowd that had nothing to prove to anyone. Cole moved through it like he owned the place, which in every sense that mattered he did. He introduced Jake to three sets of friends over the course of the evening before settling in with three guys who were clearly Cole’s posse. Cole introduced Jake in code and heard Adrian’s name being mentioned, and they all seemed to know who he was and what he meant to Cole.
Jake had two bourbons and found that by the second one any apprehension about being in a gay bar, much less being comfortable in a gay bar, had disappeared. All he knew was he and Cole were together, and, by all accounts, Cole was as happy about that as Jake was.
In the Uber home, Cole's hand was on his thigh. Jake put his hand over it.
"That wasn't terrible," Jake said.
"High praise," Cole laughed.
"I'm adjusting," Jake said. "Give me some credit."
Cole looked at him with the warm, dark-eyed expression that was Cole's version of tenderness, contained, as always, but entirely legible to Jake now. "You're doing well," he said. Simply. Like a fact.
Jake felt it land the way Cole's approvals always landed, in the same place Adrian's had, in the place that had been waiting for someone to say that specific thing in that specific way. He thought, not for the first time, about his father and the supply that had been depleted before Jake came along. He thought about what he'd spent thirty-five years performing to earn. He thought about the fact that Cole said it the way he said everything, matter-of-factly, without rationing it, as though being proud of Jake was simply a fact you stated.
That night in bed was nothing short of a marathon fuck-fest. Every time Jake dozed off he felt Cole’s wonderfully warm cock sliding back into him. Before, he had never quite understood the anatomy of gay intercourse; tonight it felt like his hole was custom made to be the garage where Cole parked his cock every night. It fit like a glove. He lost count of how many times that Saturday night and well into the next day Cole’s erect member found his hole and used it as his cum sleeve. But he did it was such tenderness, every time he came, he left Jake counting the minutes until the next time.
Three Weeks Out from Dallas
When Jake pulled Cole into the Dallas board prep six weeks before the meeting, earlier than he'd ever brought anyone into a board prep cycle, the team noticed.
This was not, technically, unusual. Cole's consumer insights were routinely central to Jake's Board presentations. What was unusual was the volume of time Cole was spending in Jake's office with the door closed, the number of times Jake's calendar showed blocks with Cole's name, and the quality of attention Cole received in team settings that Jake had always been scrupulous about distributing evenly.
Marcus:
He just moved the Thursday prep session to Jake's office. Three hours. Just the two of them.
Kate:
There is absolutely no way this is just about Dallas.
Marcus:
Kate.
Kate:
I'm just saying what everyone is thinking.
Marcus:
Nobody is thinking that.
Kate:
Everyone is thinking that.
Marcus:
Okay everyone is thinking that.
Jake was aware that people were talking. He was not so far removed from the rhythms of his own team that he couldn't read the nature of attention that travels around an office when two people are the subject of speculation. What he wasn’t quite sure of yet was whether the source of gossip was perceived favoritism toward Cole, or something else, the something else being, of course, the truth. He handled it the way he handled most things that were true and inconvenient: by being so consistently excellent at his job that the speculation had nowhere to gain traction.
Cole handled it by appearing to be entirely unaware that any speculation existed, which was either genuine or the most disciplined performance Jake had ever witnessed. Jake suspected the latter. He had learned, over six weeks, that Cole's composure was not the absence of awareness. Cole was a man who decided what mattered and let everything else disappear into the background.
Friday Night — Equinox
They finished a Friday night workout at 8:15, two hours, heavy, the kind of session that left both of them with the satisfied exhaustion of work that hadn't left anything on the table. The gym was thinning out, the after-work crowd mostly gone, a few committed Friday-night regulars finishing their sets in the quiet that settled over a gym at the end of a long week.
"Let’s grab a steam," Cole said, unwrapping his hands.
Jake looked at the steam room door across the locker room. Empty, as far as he could see through the glass. "Sounds good," he said.
The steam room at this hour was theirs alone. The heat hit them immediately, dense and eucalyptus-scented, the benches warm, visibility past a few feet essentially zero. Cole sat. Jake sat beside him. They stayed like that for a few minutes in the comfortable silence of two people who had nothing left to prove to each other in a gym setting.
Then Cole looked at him, and unwrapped his towel, revealing his black, hairy groin.
"You know what would make this better," Cole said.
Jake looked at him. The steam. The empty room. Cole’s spread legs.
"Cole—"
"Jake."
"We're in a public gym."
"The place is nearly empty," Cole said. He hadn't moved. He was simply looking at Jake with that dark-eyed patience, waiting for the part where Jake's objections ran out of momentum, which Cole had correctly identified as a matter of time.
Jake looked out the frosted door, and the locker room appeared empty.
He slid off the bench and lowered himself in between Cole’s spread legs. He leaned down to encounter the gift that never stopped giving. The scent was intoxicating. Cole, but amplified by the sweat of the workout and magnified by the steam. Cole was instantly hard and already dripping precum, which, by now, was another familiar and welcome taste. Jake wanted to take his time but the situation was risky. He torn between pure lust and responsibility.
Cole now had both hands on his head, guiding him up and down, at exactly the pace he wanted.
Jake, whose back was to the door, heard it open.
He stopped.
"Keep going," Cole said, quietly. Not moving but keeping Jake’s head at his cock.
"Cole," Jake said, barely a whisper, but with the urgency of a man who was a senior executive at a Fortune 500 company and was currently on his knees in the steam room of the Equinox he shared with twenty of his colleagues.
“He’s cool," Cole said. His voice was entirely level. His hand remained back of Jake's head.
Jake stayed perfectly still. The steam was thick enough that the new arrival, a shape on the far bench, settling in with a week-ending sigh, was a suggestion rather than a person. Jake knew that if they were in trouble, they’d be busted by now. Somehow Cole knew he was ok and decided to continue.
Cole's hand applied the lightest pressure.
This was another first that jolted Jake. Being on his knees, giving a blow job in a public place while being watched by a stranger. It was humiliating. It was exhilarating. It was degrading. It was intoxicating. Best of all, it was out of his control. He bobbed up and down Cole’s cock like a man whose life depended on making him cum. Likewise, Cole made sounds he’d never made before. Jake thought he heard stroking sounds coming from the stranger but was too busy to look.
Cole's hand stayed steady at the back of his head. The steam closed around all three of them. Jake kept his eyes closed and his attention entirely on Cole, and felt the undeniable truth of what he was becoming.
He was becoming Cole's, completely, specifically, on his knees. His own cock was hard and ignored and he didn't care. Cole's pleasure was his pleasure. The service was the satisfaction. He hadn't known his body worked that way. Cole had known before he did.
And then, finally, it happened. Cole seized up in that way he did just prior to orgasm, stood up and covered Jake’s needy face with his cum. Jake tried to catch as much as he could to swallow it, he hated wasting it, and in this case, he’d have to use his towel to wipe it off leaving his own erection on display in the shower room.
Cole sat back down to regain his composure and affectionally wiped off Jake’s face with his own towel. Did he imagine it, or did Jake hear Cole whisper in the direction of the stranger, “Such a good boy.”
Afterward, Jake pulled his towel back around himself with the composed dignity of a man who was going to need a moment before he could look anyone in the eye. Cole stood, unhurried, adjusted his cum-stained towel, and looked down at Jake with that expression, the warm, level, certain look that Jake had learned to read as: you did well. Without saying a word.
They left the steam room side by side. The man on the far bench watched them go. Jake did not look at him. Cole nodded once, pleasantly, as though this were any other Friday night.
In the parking lot, Jake said: "That is never happening again."
"Okay," Cole said.
Jake said nothing, contemplating Cole’s unexpected response.
“Really?” Jake asked, disappointedly.
“Nah….I just wanted to hear you beg…”
Cole then reached across the seat and pulled Jake to him for a long, tongue-filled kiss. It wasn’t a kiss of passion. It was a kiss that said, “We’re on the same team and I love you for that.”
On the ride home, Jake contemplated the depth of what had occurred. Another experience that, in his former life would’ve produced disgust, not pleasure. But the indignity of submitting publicly, in front of a stranger, felt like a release that he’d never known possible. He melted into the thought, not only at peace with it, but aching to do it again.
***
Adrian's texts arrived at intervals, not so frequent as to constitute hovering, not so sparse as to suggest disinterest. He and Jake maintained their weekly calls, which remained professional and genuinely useful, Adrian's strategic eye as sharp as ever, Jake's presentations continuing their upward trajectory. What the calls didn't cover with Jake, Adrian handled with Cole directly.
Jake was aware of this. He'd seen Cole's phone light up with Adrian's name twice in one week and had said nothing, because he understood, on some level, what they were discussing. Or thought he did.
The texts between Adrian and Cole ran on a separate frequency:
Adrian:
How's his head?
Cole:
Sharp. Getting sharper. What we saw at the last meeting is real. But he may need a booster dose.
Adrian:
Good. We need to think carefully about Dallas. The board week is going to require him at a level we haven't seen yet.
Cole:
What are you not telling me.
Adrian:
There's an activist investor attending the board meeting. Name is Hargrove. He's been quietly acquiring a position for eight months. He believes Darius has been leaving value on the table and he's coming to Dallas to say so in front of the full board. Loudly.
Cole:
Does Jake know?
Adrian:
Not yet. I'm telling him this week. But I need your read first. How does he perform under genuine pressure, not board-meeting pressure, actual existential-threat-to-the-company pressure?
Cole:
Better than anyone I've worked with. But he needs to not be in his head. He needs to be operating on instinct.
Adrian:
Which is where we come in.
Cole:
Which is where we come in.
Adrian:
I've been thinking about the last meeting…the protocol. Three nights minimum before day one of the meeting. But I want him sharp for the full week, which means we need to start earlier.
Cole: You want to start the week before.
Adrian: The three of us will spend the weekend in Dallas to prep the strategy, but I can’t get there until dinner on Saturday. Four nights of denial before he walks into that boardroom on Wednesday. If our theory holds, he'll be operating at a level none of them will be prepared for.
Cole looked at his phone for a long moment. He thought about Jake, about the quality of Jake's mind in the days following denial, the elevated acuity that Adrian had observed in Atlanta and Cole had since confirmed in his own observation.
Cole:
That better not mean abstinence for all of us.
Adrian:
Hell no. That’s the point. He’ll get to play, just not cum.
Adrian:
BTW, I’m assuming I’m still welcome in your guys’ bed, like in Atlanta…
Cole:
Jake and I haven’t talked about it, but I make those calls and you’re in. He may catch on to our plan. Can’t predict what will happen then.
Cole set his phone down. He looked at Jake across the living room, Jake at the kitchen island with his laptop, jacket off, sleeves rolled, the focused expression of a man working through something difficult. The man who reported to him professionally and submitted to him personally and was, by any measure, the most remarkable person Cole had encountered in his adult life.
He picked his phone back up.
Cole:
I’ll let him know the three of us will have “relaxation time” after our long workdays. He’ll get it.
Adrian:
Te quiero, cabrón.
* * *
The Wednesday call that week ran long. Adrian spent the first forty minutes on legitimate strategy, the Dallas presentation structure, Jake's positioning on two contested topics that would almost certainly come up. Then he said: "There's something else. I want you to hear it from me before you hear it from anyone else."
Jake felt that tone of voice Adrian used that meant whatever came next was real.
"A man named Hargrove," Adrian said. "Elliott Hargrove. He runs an activist fund out of Houston, they target companies they believe are underperforming relative to their asset base. He's been quietly building a position in Forrester for eight months. He has enough of a stake to demand a seat at the Dallas board meeting and he's taken it."
"He's going after Darius," Jake said.
"He's going after the company's strategic direction, which amounts to the same thing." A pause. "He believes Forrester has been managed conservatively to the point of value destruction. He's not entirely wrong, which is what makes him dangerous. He'll come with data. He'll come with an alternative thesis. And he'll be looking for weaknesses in the leadership team."
Jake was quiet for a moment. He was doing the math, and the answer was obvious to him, "He'll be looking at me," Jake said. "Marketing is the most visible discretionary spend on the P&L. If he wants to make the case that the company is fat, that's where he starts."
"Yes," Adrian said. "Which is why Dallas is not a routine board meeting. It's an argument. And you need to win it."
"What's your position?" Jake asked. "On Hargrove's thesis."
A pause that lasted a beat too long. "Darius is my friend," Adrian said carefully. "He's also been running this company with an abundance of caution that has, in certain respects, cost it. I'm not going to say that on the record. What I will say is that the most effective counter to Hargrove's argument is not a defense of the status quo. It's a demonstration that the leadership team has the capability and the vision to extract the value Hargrove is claiming is being left behind." He paused. "That demonstration is you."
"No pressure," Jake said.
"Considerable pressure," Adrian said. "Which is why you, Cole and I are heading to Dallas the Saturday before the meeting. The three of us will spend time building the strategy. Three days of prep. You'll walk into that room ready for anything Hargrove brings."
Jake absorbed this. "Three days," he said. "And four nights."
"Six nights, the meeting days have nights too" Adrian confirmed. His voice was entirely neutral.
Jake understood what that meant. He looked at the ceiling of his home office. He thought about Atlanta, the sharpness of his mind in those days, the elevated frequency, the sense of operating above his usual ceiling. He thought about what was at stake in Dallas.
"All right," he said.
"Good boy," Adrian said, and Jake could hear the real smile in it.
"You know I'm going to hate every minute of it," Jake said.
"I'm counting on it," Adrian said. "That's rather the point."
Adrian hung up and smiled. Jake figured it out on his own. He didn’t have to break the bad news. Six nights of sex. Five of denial.
Dallas — Saturday Night
The restaurant Adrian had chosen was the kind of Dallas institution that understood power, dark wood, serious wine list, the hush of a room where significant decisions get made. Adrian was already there when Jake and Cole arrived, Blanton's in front of him, corner table, alert and ready to work. He stood when they approached and the three of them did the brief recalibration that three people who have been naked together must perform when they are clothed and in public, which they managed with knowing smiles.
They sat and, as they did, the mood quickly shifted.
"Gentlemen," Adrian opened, with uncharacteristic urgency. “There’s been a change in plans.”
“Now you’ve got our attention”, Cole sat straight up.
“I had an unexpected visitor yesterday at my office. Elliot Hargrove.”
The name landed in the room and sat there.
"Hargrove came to you," Jake said. Not a question.
"Yesterday afternoon. Unannounced." Adrian turned his bourbon glass on the table with the deliberateness of a man who had spent twenty-four hours deciding how to have this conversation and had arrived at a version he was prepared to deliver. "He flew in from Houston. Two hours in my office. He was…candid."
"How candid," Jake said.
Adrian looked at him directly. "He's lost total confidence in Darius. Gradually, over the past eighteen months, and now completely. His fund's position has given him the leverage to act, and he intends to use it." He paused. "But he came to me first, which means he's not simply looking to blow the company up. He wants a landing."
"What kind of landing," Cole said.
"He asked around about the leadership team," Adrian said. "Extensively. The name that kept coming up, across multiple conversations from people with no connection to each other, was Jake's." He held Jake's gaze steadily. "He said he'd heard nothing but exceptional things. That if Sullivan was everything people were saying, he might be persuadable."
The table was quiet for a moment. Jake was doing the math with the speed he always did the math, running implications and sequencing them, the specific processing mode that had gotten him every job he'd ever held.
"Persuadable toward what," Jake said. His voice was even.
Adrian set his glass down. "He wants a restructured leadership. Adrian Mercer as Chairman of the Board. Jake Sullivan as CEO." He said it plainly, without theatre, as though the sentence didn't contain a seismic shift in everything Jake had assumed about the next five years of his life. "Darius remains on the board but steps back from the chair." A pause. "He also mentioned your right hand, he called him Rodriguez, apparently the name got slightly mangled in transmission, as a potential CMO if you chose to elevate him."
Cole didn't react visibly. Jake looked at him anyway. Cole's expression was the composed professional one, the one that didn't give anything away, and underneath it Jake could read that they were in this together.
"He's not making promises," Adrian continued. "He was explicit about that. He needs to be convinced in the room on Wednesday. If Jake walks in there and delivers what Hargrove is expecting based on the reputation, the deal holds. If he doesn't…” he left it there.
"And Darius," Jake said. "He doesn't know."
"He doesn't know. Hargrove is calling him Monday to inform him the meeting has been condensed to Wednesday only, that the conventional board presentation has been set aside, and that Hargrove will be leading the agenda." Adrian's expression carried the specific weight of a man navigating a loyalty that was genuine and a situation that had moved past the point where loyalty was the primary consideration. "Darius will know something is happening. He won't know what until Wednesday."
"That's a brutal way to find out," Cole said.
"Yes," Adrian said simply. "It is." He didn't elaborate, and neither of them pressed him, because the look on his face said that he'd already had the version of this conversation with himself that needed to be had, and had arrived somewhere he could live with, however uncomfortably.
Jake looked at the table. He thought about Darius, the man who'd hired him, who'd called him a calculated risk and meant it as the highest form of praise, who'd brought Adrian in specifically for Jake's development. He thought about what Wednesday meant for Darius and felt the specific discomfort of a man who is being handed something he covets but discovering it comes with a very high price.
Then he thought about the room on Wednesday. Hargrove across the table. The argument that needed to be won.
"All right," Jake said. "Then we have three days."
Adrian looked at him with an expression that was warm and very serious. "We have three days," he confirmed. "And there is absolutely no version of this in which you are not operating at maximum capacity when you walk into that room."
Cole picked up his bourbon. "He will be," he said, with Cole’s sense of certainty and responsibility for making it happen.
Jake looked at Cole. Cole looked back at him with the dark-eyed steadiness that Jake had spent two years misreading and now read completely.
"I know," Jake said. He picked up his own glass. "I know."
They spent the next ninety minutes building the strategy the way the three of them built everything. By the time the main course was cleared, the premise of Wednesday's argument was roughed out on a cocktail napkin in Adrian's handwriting, which was as controlled and deliberate as everything else about him.
Hargrove's thesis, as Adrian had received it, was that Forrester was a premium asset being managed like a utility that optimized for safety over growth, a leadership team that had been rewarded for not losing rather than for winning. The counter-argument was a demonstration that the leadership team, specifically Jake, already had the vision and the capability to extract the value Hargrove was describing. That the transformation was already underway. That the only question was who would be leading it.
"He needs to see it in the room," Adrian said. "Not hear about it. See it. The way you think, the way you move through a hostile question, the speed of it. That's what he came to my office looking for confirmation of. You need to give him the confirmation in person."
"Which means I need to be—" Jake started.
"At your absolute best," Adrian said. "Which we've established has specific preconditions." The corner of his mouth moved. "The good news is that we have four nights before Wednesday morning to ensure those preconditions are met."
Cole said nothing. He refilled Jake's glass without being asked, which was its own form of communication.
"Four nights," Jake said. He looked at his freshly filled glass. He looked at Cole. He looked at Adrian. "You're both enjoying this."
"Enormously," Adrian said.
"It's for the good of the company," Cole said, with the precise deadpan that Jake had learned to recognize as Cole's version of a smile.
"The good of the company," Jake repeated. "Right."
The dinner had shifted, the way their dinners always shifted at a certain point, the professional giving way to something else, the charge between them becoming less like colleagues and more like what they actually were. Adrian refilled his own glass and looked at Jake with the warm assessment that Jake had first observed over a dinner table in Nashville.
"You look good," Adrian said. Not a pleasantry.
"He does," Cole agreed, with smug ownership just under the surface.
Jake looked at both of them. "You're doing that thing where you talk about me like I'm not here."
"You're here," Adrian said. "We're simply making observations." He swirled his bourbon. "How are you feeling? Honestly."
"Professionally? Focused. The stakes clarify things." Jake considered. "Personally?" He glanced at Cole. "Ready for whatever tonight is."
"Whatever tonight is," Adrian said, "is going to require patience, and stamina, on your part."
"I've gathered that."
"Good boy," Cole added, and raised his glass.
Under the table, Cole's hand found Jake's thigh and stayed there for the remainder of the evening.
* * *
They were finishing the last of the bourbon when Adrian excused himself to the restroom.
Cole watched him go and then felt his phone buzz.
Adrian:
I found one. His size. It’s upstairs.
Cole read it. He looked up at Jake who was looking at him with undisguised curiosity. Cole knew that what tonight would require coordination between Adrian and him; and that Adrian’s departure followed immediately by a text to Cole wasn’t pure coincident.
Cole:
I’ll tell him. He’ll take it better coming from me.
Adrian:
Yes, he will. When we get up there, small box, on the table with the lamp.
Unsurprisingly, Adrian returned just as Cole was finishing his mysterious text exchange. The elephant wasn’t only in the room, it was sharing space on the dinner table with unfinished wine and dessert.
“My suite”, Adrian ordered.
* * *
Adrian's suite was the top floor of the Ritz-Carlton Dallas, which established, before anything else, that Adrian Mercer did not do things by halves. Floor-to-ceiling glass, the Dallas skyline laid out below in amber and distance, the Blanton's already open on the credenza. Jake stood at the window for a moment and looked out at the city and thought: this time next week I might be its CEO. The thought was dizzying and clarifying in equal measure.
"Jake," Cole said.
He turned.
"Get undressed," Cole said. "Slowly."
Adrian settled into the chair near the window with his bourbon and crossed one leg over the other with the ease of a man arranging himself for a performance. Cole stood next to him, jacket off, arms crossed, watching.
Jake looked at both of them, Adrian comfortable and attentive, Cole with that dark-eyed authority that Jake's nervous system had stopped pretending to be neutral about. The room was quiet except for the ambient hum of the city below. Jake undid his jacket button and shrugged it off.
"Slower," Cole said.
Jake went slower. His tie loosened and pulled over his head. His shirt, button by button, with the unhurried attention of a man who understood that the undressing was the first part of the service and treated it accordingly. Adrian watched with the frank, unguarded appreciation he'd never bothered to conceal. Cole watched not even attempting to conceal his ownership.
"Christ," Adrian said, when Jake's shirt came off. Quietly. To himself. Exactly as he had in Nashville, the first time. Some reactions, Jake had learned, were reflexive regardless of familiarity.
"I know," Cole said, without looking at Adrian.
When Jake was down to the black jockstrap, the same one that which had become a kind of uniform at this point, he stood in the Dallas light feeling extraordinarily sexy and seen. The bulge in his jock made him proud, so proud he felt honored to offer it to these two men. He had spent thirty-five years being looked at by rooms full of people and had never felt looked at. This was different. This was the attention of two men who wanted him, and he had learned to receive it without looking away.
Cole took a seat next to Adrian and motioned Jake to kneel in front of them. His heart was nearly beating out of his chest, and the very thought of kneeling in front of these two in nothing but his black jockstrap made his cock swell beyond the limits of the jock’s pouch.
As he lowered himself, he noticed Cole holding a small jewelry type box. Once on his knees, Cole handed it to him, saying softly, “We have something for you. Open it.”
Jake cautiously opened it, slid away the tissue paper to reveal exactly what he’d feared.
A black chastity cage. A ring that surrounds the base of your cock and balls and a cage for the cock. Facing down, with no room to grow.
He stared at it for a long moment. The cage was small, precise and entirely unambiguous. Black, matte, the ring and the tube and the small padlock that would make the arrangement official. It sat in the tissue paper like something elegant, which was somehow worse than if it had looked punitive.
He looked up at Cole.
Cole's expression was the one Jake knew best, level, warm, certain. Not cruel. That was the thing that made all of this possible and all of this hard: Cole was never cruel. What he was, was in control. Effortlessly taking every decision away from Jake. Allowing himself to be a step away from himself and belong to someone else.
"Cole." His voice came out quieter than he intended.
"I know," Cole said. Simply. The way he said everything that mattered.
"Five days, four nights," Jake said.
"Five days, four nights," Cole confirmed.
Jake looked back down at the cage in his hands. He thought about what five days and four nights meant in practical terms. The sustained frustration of it, the way his body would remind him every minute of every hour that he was owned, the torment of sleeping beside Cole for four consecutive nights in this condition. He thought about the meetings in Atlanta, about the quality of his mind there, about Wednesday and Hargrove and the argument that needed to be won and what was riding on it.
"It's not a punishment," Adrian said, from the chair. His voice was quiet and entirely serious, the voice he used when he meant something precisely. "I want you to understand that. This is…care. The most focused kind we can give you."
Jake looked at him. Adrian held the look with the steady warmth that had undone him the first time, in Nashville, when he hadn't understood yet what was happening to him. He understood now. That didn't make it simpler. It made it more.
"I know what it is," Jake said.
"Do you?" Adrian asked. Not challenging. Genuinely asking.
Jake thought about it honestly. He thought about what it meant to be handed this, to be told, by the two people who knew him most completely, that his body's release was less important than his mind's performance. That they believed in what he was capable of enough to enforce it. That his deprivation was a form of faith in him.
He thought about the word care and found that it fit in a way that surprised him.
"Yes," he said. "I know what it is."
Cole leaned forward, forearms on his knees, close enough that Jake could smell the cedar and sandalwood. "You don't have to like it," he said. "You just have to trust us."
Jake looked at him, at the face he'd looked at across desks and whiteboards and locker rooms for two years, the face he'd spent most of that time misreading and now read completely. He thought about trust and what it had cost him to learn it and what it had given him in return.
He held the cage out to Cole.
"Put it on me," he said.
Adrian got up and moved to the small refrigerator where he had knowingly left a small bag of ice. “Stand up and lose the sexy jockstrap”, he ordered.
Jake did as told and Adrian, as gently as possibly, pressed the bag of ice into Jake’s groin to make it physically possible to administer the instrument.
Something moved in Cole's expression, brief, unguarded, the look that Jake had come to understand was Cole's version of being undone. He took the cage from Jake's hands with the same care he brought to everything, and, once adequately deflated, Jake felt the cool precision of the ring being positioned, the tube closing around him, the small definitive click of the padlock.
The sound was very quiet. It landed very loudly.
Jake felt the weight of it, not painful, but a heavy, unmistakable reminder of what had been decided and by whom. He had worn the collar and understood what it meant. This was different. The collar was theater, beautiful and charged, something he could feel against his throat in the dark and draw comfort from. This was the physical structure of an agreement that was being imposed upon his body.
He took a breath. The cage held.
He took another. The cage held.
He looked up at Cole, who was watching him with that steady, unhurried attention, reading him the way he always read him, noting everything, waiting.
"Okay," Jake said. The word was small and entirely meant.
"Okay," Cole said back. He put his hand briefly at the side of Jake's face, the gesture that meant: I see you. I have you. It lasted two seconds and contained everything.
Adrian raised his bourbon from the chair. "To Wednesday," he said.
Cole reached for his own glass from the side table. They drank. Jake, between them in nothing but the cage and the knowledge that he had just handed over the last thing he was holding back.
He was theirs. Completely. In every sense that now applied.
Cole and Adrian exchanged a look and undressed slowly, purposefully, and, in Jake’s mind, intentionally erotically.
They settled against the headboard, Adrian on the left, Cole on the right, bourbons retrieved and resting against their thighs, both of them fully and impressively erect. Cole's hand found the back of Adrian's neck and pulled him into a kiss that was unhurried and thorough and clearly not for the first time, though circumstances had previously not arranged themselves this way. Adrian's hand went to Cole's chest. The kiss wasn’t one of affection though, it was one that intentionally conveyed their superiority to Jake. It powerfully conveyed that they were in charge; Jake was their supplicant.
As intended, Jake, kneeling at the foot of the bed, watched this with the torment of a man who wanted to participate in everything he was seeing and had been told precisely what his role was tonight.
Cole broke the kiss and looked at him. "Come here," he said.
Jake crawled onto the bed between them. Cole reached for the rope on the nightstand, prepared, because Adrian came prepared, and bound Jake's wrists behind him with efficiency that surprised Jake. Jake felt the give and hold of the knot and felt his body register it with a unique response: a deepening of attention, a narrowing of the world to this room and these two men.
"You know what to do," Cole said. He wasn't asking.
"Yes, Sir," Jake said.
"Then get to work," Adrian said. He raised his glass slightly. “These cocks won’t suck themselves."
Jake leaned forward.
He started with Adrian, partly because Adrian was closest, partly he wanted to be adequately warmed up for Cole. Cole was his center of gravity now and he didn’t want to disappoint him. Jake worked with the focus he brought to everything he decided to do well, which was all of it. By now he had mastered the mechanics of oral pleasure and was well on his way to becoming an expert. His hands were tied making him physically and psychologically more reliant on his tongue. He knew that and worked it hard. His tongue flicked, licked, and within seconds made Adrian moan. Adrian's hand came to the back of his head, not directing, just resting, the gesture of a man entirely content with where things stood.
"Still the best student I've ever had," Adrian said, conversationally, to Cole.
"Don't tell him that," Cole said. "He’s already got a big head."
The double meaning of the word “head” wasn’t lost on Jake, whose thickening cock was pressing against its new prison. How would he cope with this for four days? But his dirty little secret—and his alone—was that it somehow added to the eroticism of the moment. On his knees, hands restrained behind him, sucking his mentor and lover dry while they passionately made out, excluding him, with his cock in a cage like an animal. His surrender was his own type of orgasm.
Jake made a sound against him that was approximately protest and approximately the opposite.
Cole's hand found the back of his neck. "Switch," he said.
Jake shifted. Cole was different. First it was his signature scent, Cedar and Sandalwood, with a hint of sweat. His signature was an aphrodisiac. Less patient than Adrian, more direct, the hand at the back of Jake's head was considerably more involved than Adrian's had been. He gripped and directed with the ease of a man who knew exactly what he wanted and was accustomed to getting it, pulling Jake in deeper until Jake had to work to keep the rhythm and found that the effort was deeply satisfying.
"Look at me," Cole said.
Jake looked up at him. The eye contact in this position, Cole looking down with those dark eyes, the expression stripped of every professional register, entirely honest, was the thing that undid Jake most reliably, and Cole knew it, and used it.
"Good boy," Cole said. Simply. It landed in exactly the place it always landed.
Back and forth. Adrian to Cole and back to Adrian, the rhythm established between all three of them without words, Jake edging each of them to the threshold and pulling back and moving to the other, the alternation its own kind of discipline. His own body was conducting everything it was always conducting in these situations, the want and the frustration and the specific arousal of performing without receiving, which he had discovered, to his surprise, was a form of pleasure in itself. The submission was the point. The service was the point. Being useful to both of them in this specific way, in this room, on the night before three days of the most consequential preparation of his professional life, there was something in that which he couldn't entirely account for and had stopped trying to.
He was theirs. In this room, at this hour, absolutely and without reservation. And the boardroom was going to get everything that this room produced.
Adrian spoke first. "Cole."
"Yeah," Cole said. His voice was rough.
"Together?"
"Fuck, yeah," Cole agreed.
Jake understood what was coming and Adrian and Cole flipped him on his back and knelt over his head. They furiously gave their cocks the last few jerks they need and then the warmth hit, Adrian first, then Cole, both of them releasing in long pulses that filled his mouth, covered his face and his throat and the collar of his chest. Jake held perfectly still and received it with the reverence of a man for whom the submission itself had become the reward.
Adrian stepped away to retrieve a washcloth, and Cole tenderly fed the cum to Jake with his fingers. Jake couldn’t ignore the look of pure love in Cole’s eyes as he did and when Cole leaned down to deposit the cum he had licked off Jake’s torso, Jake melted.
Adrian returned with a washcloth, warm, prepared, and cleaned Jake's face with the same unhurried care he'd applied at the end of every previous evening, the gesture that was incongruously tender given everything that preceded it and entirely characteristic of Adrian regardless.
"Extraordinary," Adrian said, which was the word he reserved for things he meant absolutely.
Cole untied Jake's wrists and rubbed the circulation back into them with his thumbs, methodical, attentive. Jake let him. He felt the specific combined exhaustion of a body that has been fully present and thoroughly denied, and underneath it the charged, forward-leaning energy that he recognized now as the precursor to the thing Adrian was betting on.
"Get some sleep," Adrian said. "Both of you. Tomorrow starts early."
Cole helped Jake off the bed. They dressed. Jake's legs were not entirely steady, which Cole noticed and said nothing about, walking beside him with the quiet steadiness of a man who will catch you if required and won't make it a conversation.
* * *
Their room was two floors down. Cole unlocked it and they went in and the door closed behind them on the evening and everything that had happened in it. Jake sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the Dallas skyline through their own, somewhat less grand window, and thought about CEOs and activist investors and the arithmetic of what the next four days required of him.
Cole was moving around the room doing the efficient pre-sleep routine he did everywhere — shoes placed, jacket hung, phone on the charger. Unhurried, methodical. Jake watched him and felt the warmth of it, the domesticity of it, the specific comfort of a man who has found his person and knows it.
"Cole," Jake said.
"Mm."
“While I sleep….take it off….?”
"No," Cole said.
"Cole—"
"Jake."
"I won’t touch my cock, I promise.”
"I know," Cole said. "You’re a good boy, but answer is still no." He turned back to the nightstand and plugged in his phone. "Wednesday. After the meeting."
"Wednesday," Jake repeated. "That's four days."
"Four days," Cole confirmed. He pulled back the covers and got into bed with the ease of a man who has said what he's going to say and is finished saying it. He looked at Jake across the room. "Come to bed."
Jake looked at him. He looked at the ceiling. He looked at the Dallas skyline. He thought about Wednesday and Hargrove and the argument that needed to be won.
He got into bed.
Cole's arm came around him and Jake settled into it, the familiar solid warmth of him, the cedar-and-sandalwood smell, the specific weight of an arm that had become, in two months, the most comfortable place Jake had ever been. He felt his own body's frustration as a low persistent hum and acknowledged it and let it be what it was, which was, as Adrian had argued and Cole had enforced, exactly what it needed to be.
He was going to walk into that room on Wednesday, and he was going to be extraordinary.
He was also, between now and then, going to be profoundly and specifically miserable about it, and Cole was going to be entirely unsympathetic, and that was fine too.
"Cole," he said, into the dark.
"Go to sleep, Jake."
"Te quiero, cabrón," Jake said.
A pause. Then Cole's arm tightened around him.
"Yeah," Cole said. "I know. Me too."
Jake closed his eyes. Dallas hummed outside. Three days.
He slept.
-End of Chapter 8-
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