Page 47 of Ring Rust

"Fuck," Ryan gasped. His hands gripped the couch cushions. His thighs tensed. Jasper didn’t stop. He rolled his foot in small circles, then slid it up and down again, faster now, using the arch to stroke the full length, letting his toes drag over the tip.

Louder, more desperate moans were leaving Ryan then, fully handing himself over to Jasper’s whims. His hips bucked up to meet each press of Jasper’s foot. Jasper watched his face—jaw slack, eyes glassy—exactly like earlier. He pressed harder until Ryan’s whole body went rigid.

Ryan came with a choked groan, his cock pulsing inside his pants. Jasper felt heat soaking through the fabric against his foot and kept rubbing, milking every drop until Ryan slumped back, panting, the front of his pants visibly wet.

Jasper finally pulled his foot away, leaving a glistening smear on the dark material. Ryan sat there, arm draped over his face, shaky breaths becoming more even as cum seeped through his clothing.

Jasper stood and went to his bedroom, grabbing clean clothes. On the way back to the living room, he found Ryan in the bathroom, washing himself.

“Here you go,” Jasper said. “You left these here.”

Ryan grabbed the pants and nodded, eyes never leaving Jasper’s. “Thank you.”

“Are you staying? I think you should, from the whiskey.”

“Yeah, I’ll?—”

“On the couch,” Jasper added. “I’ll bring you a blanket and stuff.”

“Oh. Yeah, okay.”

Jasper went to the linen closet and hid behind the door, pretending to search for bedding while waiting for Ryan to be done in the bathroom. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do now.

The fight didn’t pan out. He still missed Ryan.

Lashing out by not letting Ryan come didn’t pan out. He gave in, and he’d be thinking about this night for months.

The only thing that changed was the depth of his confusion—which had somehow only grown.

“I’ll be out of your hair in the morning,” Ryan said when Jasper returned to the living room. “I just need to sleep off those drinks.”

Jasper nodded. That was what he wanted. He was pretty sure.

Chapter Thirteen

Ryan wasunderneath a freshly constructed picnic table, one of six he’d put together over the last seventy-two hours. He liked it down there. Hidden beneath the tabletop, he was out of sight of Logan, who’d hit his daily moronic-question quota hours ago, and Beni, who’d exhausted her nosy-sister quota the second she opened her mouth. He didn’t want to talk to her about what happened on the deck the night of the party. He didn’t want to talk to anybody.

When he’d left Jasper’s house the morning after the party, he’d been heartbroken. That wasn’t new. Every time he’d seen him since their fight, Ryan’s heart had split a little further down the middle, until the night of the party finally cut through the remaining threads.

But then, at the house, things had changed. Hadn’t they?

For days, Ryan had been trying to figure out what to do next. Unfortunately, that required thinking about the party, and thinking about the party meant reliving it.

The night of the party was the most they’d touched each other in months, and even now, days later with a sore heart, thinking back on how responsive Jasper was to his touch wasenough to get him hard. The look on Jasper’s face as he begged for the relief only one person could provide gave Ryan the same pleasure he’d feel from Jasper on his knees. He’d relived that moment at least twenty times. And every single time, the memory of being on the deck turned into the memory of what happened after, when Jasper had essentially taken the heel of his boot to Ryan’s heart and ground it into the living room floor like a spent cigarette.

Bringing a date to the party. Letting Ryan become friendly with that date, letting Ryan learn about mold from him. Gifting his watch.

He could forgive all that, if he had to. But begging Ryan to help him come, then forcing him to watch as he got off to thoughts of another man’s mouth on him? Jasper had hurt Ryan in a lot of ways over the last month, but ruining his ability to jerk off in peace was a particularly brutal one.

Ryan poked his head out from under the table and found Beni standing there, holding out a wrench to replace the one Logan had dropped down a drain pipe. Ryan took it without a word, then scooted back beneath the cover of the wood.

“These are really nice, Ryan,” she said, patting the tabletop. “They make the park feel so much cleaner.”

“Yeah. I think so, too.”

“Do you need any help? I’m not super handy, but I could do more than find wrenches.”

“I’m fine. Logan is here somewhere…” Ryan sighed. “Which actually isn’t helpful at all, but at least this way I’m not lying to Jasper quite as much.”