Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 83586 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 418(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83586 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 418(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
“So…what are we gonna do for my birthday?” Jasper pumped his eyebrows up and down.
“Hopefully spend a lot of time naked,” I teased. “There’s a hot tub at the house, and I wanna take you out too, like a date. I also read that there’s a couple of gay bars in town if you wanna try that. There’d be no chance of seein’ someone we know there.” He didn’t respond right away, which I knew meant he wasn’t so sure about it. “We don’t have to go. I was just thinkin’ it might be good for us. When I went with Kendra, it felt good seein’ people be themselves freely, loving each other or wanting each other without any fear.” I wished for that for Jasper, wanted him to see that eventually, we could have that too, if he was willing. It wouldn’t be easy because of his family, but they would have to come around, wouldn’t they?
“We’ll play that part by ear.”
“I can handle that.”
“It’s my birthday, after all.”
“You gonna keep sayin’ that all day? Findin’ ways to say it’s your birthday?”
“Are you surprised by this?” He grinned at me, and it made my pulse go wild. It was crazy sometimes, the power he had over me, and I didn’t think he knew it.
“Not at all.”
In no time, we arrived at the house. The place I’d chosen was a secluded one in the woods, and it had three bedrooms, a large deck, a hot tub, and nothing but me and Jasp for as far as the eye could see.
We went straight to the deck first, where what looked like an ocean of trees greeted us.
“It’s so damn beautiful,” I said. “Every day I wake up and I’m thankful to be alive when I see all this beauty around me.”
“Me too.” Jasper was standing at the railing, and I crowded in close behind him. I pressed my groin against his ass, wrapped my arms around his body, and rested my chin on his shoulder. “Maybe we could have our own place like this one day—back home in Ryland, of course. And I know you got your own house and all. We can stay there if that’s what you want, but—”
“Yeah?” Jasper turned around to face me and held on to my hips. “You’d wanna do that?”
“Would you wanna do that?”
“My mama might have a conniption, but yeah, I think so. We can buy our own land and build it ourselves like we did the cabin.”
“And since I’ll have some say this time, it’ll be even more functional than the house now.”
“Fuck you,” he teased, punching me.
“Ouch. Damn it.”
“You’re supposed to be nice to me. It’s my birthday.”
“Is it?”
“You’re not very nice to me.”
“I’m the nicest.”
I was surprised when Jasper answered me by leaning in and pressing his lips to mine. We kissed lazily, like we had all the time in the world, no fear of anyone seeing us. Here, at this house, we could just be, and damn, did I want that more than anything. I just wanted to live my life with him.
When he pulled away, his arms now around my shoulders, fingertips dancing along the tender skin of my nape, he said, “I like bein’ able to kiss you outside like this. At a house that feels like it could be ours.” He dropped his head back, the long column of his throat right in front of me, and yelled, “I’m in love with Sutton Manning!” at the top of his lungs.
Laughter bubbled out of me, happiness suffusing me. “I’m in love with Jasper Finch!” spilled out of my mouth, voice just as loud as his.
“Woowee!” he shouted, and we dissolved into laughter.
We stayed outside for a little while, enjoying the fresh air. Then, after carrying everything into the house and checking out the master bedroom, we ended up naked, me jacking our cocks together until we came.
“Wanna play?” Jasper asked as we lay naked in bed.
“Sure.” I watched his tight ass when he walked across the room to get our guitar cases. He brought them both over, neither of us making any attempt to get dressed, just sitting on the bed with our guitars on our laps. “What song?”
“Hmm…” Jasper’s fingers strummed the strings as he tested the sound. “‘Cat’s in the Cradle.’”
“I love that one.”
“I know.”
We played the old Harry Chapin song, then lost ourselves in Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
Eventually, Jasper said, “I wanna learn to play the harmonica. We can be our own two-man band.”
“I like that.”
We moved through the times some, from Queensrÿche to Pearl Jam. When Jasper started the next song, it took me less than a second to realize what it was: “Today” by The Smashing Pumpkins. I joined in, my fingers moving from memory, up and down the fretboard. I could count on one hand the number of times we had played this song together, though we both knew it well.