Page 41 of Subduing the Shark

Harold moved first. He came in low, the way he'd been taught during police training, and Jack sidestepped him with the fluid speed of someone who'd been fighting his whole life. Harold caught nothing but air. He turned and Jack was already behind him, one hand on his shoulder, the other on his hip, leverage, balance, and the muscle memory of a thousand shiver challenges directing his body without conscious thought.

Jack took Harold down. Fast, clean, controlled. Harold hit the carpet on his back with Jack's weight on his chest and Jack's hands pinning his shoulders and Jack's face six inches above his own.

Jack froze.

Harold could see it happen. Not the shutdown, not the blankness. The opposite. Jack was too present. He was on topof Harold, he'd won, and every piece of conditioning in his body was telling him what came next. The winner takes. That was the rule. The architecture of the shiver, the foundation everything was built on, and Jack was lying on top of the person he'd pinned and his body knew what was supposed to happen and the knowing had locked him in place.

"I can't," Jack’s voice was tight. His arms were rigid, holding himself above Harold, and Harold could see the war in his face. The conditioning pulling him toward something and the new understanding pushing him away from it. "I can't do this. If I take this position I have to."

Harold shook his head. "You don't have to do anything."

"You don't understand. My body is telling me." Jack squeezed his eyes shut. "I won. I have you pinned. My body is telling me to take what I won. That's the reflex. That's what the shiver put in me and it's still there even though the shiver is gone."

Harold lay still beneath him. He kept his hands open, palms up, not resisting. "What do you want to do?"

Jack opened his eyes. "Let you up."

"Then let me up."

Jack rolled off him. He sat on the carpet with his back against the wall and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Harold sat up and gave him space. Twenty seconds. Thirty. Jack's breathing slowed.

"Again," Jack said.

"You sure?"

"Again."

This time Harold didn't go easy. He came in harder, faster, and Jack met him in the middle and they grappled standing, arms locked, feet shifting on the carpet. Jack was strong but Harold was heavier and Harold knew leverage from years of taking down suspects who didn't want to go down easy. He gothis arm around Jack's waist, swept his legs, and put him on the floor face-up with Harold's weight across his chest.

Jack's body tensed. Harold felt it, the familiar beginning of the shutdown, the muscles starting to go slack. He held perfectly still and watched Jack's face and waited.

The shutdown didn't come.

Jack's jaw clenched. His hands came up and gripped Harold's shoulders and pushed. Not to escape. To resist. To test the weight on top of him, to feel it, to push against it and discover that pushing back was an option. Harold pushed down. Jack pushed up. The resistance built between them, muscle against muscle, and Jack's face wasn't blank. It was fierce.

Jack bucked his hips and Harold's balance shifted. They rolled, tangling. Jack ended up on his side with Harold's arm across his chest and Harold's leg hooked over his thigh and their faces inches apart. Both of them breathing hard. Both of them grinning.

Jack laughed. The real laugh, the one Harold had heard at the pool, rough and surprised and alive. He shoved Harold's shoulder. Harold shoved back. They rolled again. It was a mess, no technique, no training, just two bodies on a carpet pushing, pulling, and testing each other. Jack got Harold's arm behind his back. Harold squirmed free. Harold got Jack in a headlock. Jack bit his forearm, not hard, just enough to startle him into letting go.

"You bit me," Harold said.

Jack shrugged. The smirk stayed on his face. "I'm a shark."

"Fair point."

They were both hard. Harold noticed it the way he noticed everything about Jack's body, automatically, through contact and scent and the shift in breathing. Jack's cock was pressing against Harold's hip through his jeans and Harold's wasstraining against his own, and the wrestling had turned from exercise to foreplay without either of them deciding it.

Jack noticed too. He stopped pushing and looked down at where their bodies met. "This feels different."

"Good different?"

"Real different." He looked up at Harold. His eyes were bright and his face was flushed and his hair was in his face and Harold wanted to wreck him. "I'm hard because I want you. Not because someone won."

"I noticed."

"I want to." Jack's hand found Harold's belt. "I want to this time. Not as payment. Not as service." His fingers worked the buckle with a steadiness that was nothing like the efficient precision of the truck. This was deliberate. Chosen. Jack's hands doing what Jack wanted them to do. "I want you because you wrestled me on a carpet and let me pin you and didn't take anything."

Harold's belt opened. Jack's hand was inside his jeans and Harold's breath left him in a rush and his hips pushed into the touch and the control he'd been maintaining, the patience, the stop-when-it-shifts vigilance, cracked. Jack's hand was on his cock and the grip was firm and sure and the intent behind it was want, pure want, and Harold was done being patient.