Chapter 12: The First Night

"Stand there," Jarek said.

Averett stood in the middle of the suite's bedroom with his back to the window and the lights of the city behind him.

Jarek crossed the carpet slowly and stopped inches away.

He took the end of Averett's tie between two fingers and drew it out of the knot, the silk hissing against the collar.

"Hands down."

Averett's hands, which had started to rise, went down.

"Good."

The tie dropped on the carpet.

Jarek undid the top button of the shirt, then the second, then the third.

Between each one he put his mouth against the skin he uncovered.

Under the ear, as promised.

At the base of the throat.

On the hollow of the collarbone, where his teeth closed gently and made Averett's breath stutter.

"Jarek."

"Not yet," Jarek said.

"You said I could touch you."

"I said when I told you," Jarek said.

Averett shut his eyes, his fists clenched against his thighs.

He had imagined this a hundred times, alone in the dark, and none of it had come close to the weight of this man's patience.

The shirt slid off his shoulders.

Jarek took a long look and said, hoarsely, "God."

Then he stepped back and pulled his own jacket off, his tie, his shirt, and dropped them one after another on the floor.

The ink began at his right wrist and ran up the whole left arm and across the chest.

Beneath it his body was hard and covered with the pale lines of old cuts.

"Now," Jarek said. "Touch me."

Averett did.

He put both palms on that chest and learned it.

He felt the heat and the ridges and the pulse.

Jarek breathed in sharply when his thumb passed a scar.

He slid his hands around to the broad back and felt the muscles flex and shudder.

Jarek tipped his head and kissed him, deep and slow, and walked him backward until his knees met the edge of the bed.

"Lie down."

He lay down.

The sheets were cool and smelled faintly of the hotel's lavender.

Jarek came over him on his hands and knees, big and dark against the lamp.

Averett looked up into those gray eyes and felt his whole body go loose and bright.

The rest of his clothes went the same way, one slow piece at a time.

Jarek's mouth followed every inch that came bare, down the ribs he had traced in the dark and across the flat of his stomach.