Jude glanced up at him. He looked young again and a little bit lost. His eyes were wide and dark, streaks of honey through the brown. When his teeth dug into his lower lip, Kicks saw that his incisors were slightly turned out. “Logically, of course I know that. I’ve told members of my congregation that time and time again. But I feel like such a fraud when I advise them to be the sort of person I could never be.”
There was something in his tone that sounded like heartbreak, and Kicks reached for Jude without really thinking about it. He became aware of how warm Jude’s hand was though, when he pressed their palms together, and he saw the look of startled want in the other man’s eyes when their gazes finally met.
“When I first got out of the service,” Kicks said, very softly. He never talked about this with anyone, and the words felt honey-thick in the back of his throat, so he cleared it and started again. “When I first got out, I tried to live…I don’t know. Normal or whatever the fuck you want to call it.” His thumb ran over Jude’s knuckles, and the motion felt better than he wanted to admit. “I dated a little, but the first time I got intimate with a guy, he saw my back.”
Jude’s brows furrowed. “Your back?”
Kicks swallowed thickly and glanced away. “Yeah, it’s…” His words died, and he felt Jude’s hand spasm in his.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
But he wanted to. God, he wanted to tell this man every deep, dark, painful, filthy secret. “I was on weekend leave—some buddies and I drove a couple towns over, met a couple guys at this dive bar, watching a game. We got pretty wasted.” He grimaced, thinking about how good he had felt right before it went so fucking bad. “One of them was…kind of flirting, I guess. I don’t know. I thought he was sweet, and when he asked if I wanted to get out of there, I didn’t hesitate.” He passed his free hand down his face and didn’t look over at the rabbi. “I ended up in a truck with his buddies. I don’t even remember if he was there by that point or not.” He let go, but only because he couldn’t bear to be touched while he told this man the rest. “To this day, I don’t know why the fuck they did what they did. Maybe their buddy was trying to bait me—maybe they just wanted to hurt someone.”
“Emilio,” Jude said, very softly.
He shook his head. He wanted him to know. Needed him to know, even if that made no damn sense. “They dragged me out of the truck and beat the fuck out of me, then tied me to the radiator while the engine was on. They worked me over a little more, then dropped me by the side of the road and left. I don’t know how the fuck I got to the hospital. To be honest, I don’t remember much of anything. The concussion and shock from the burns caused some short-term amnesia, and not all of it came back.”
For the short glimpse Kicks was brave enough to look, he saw Jude’s face had gone pale. “Is that how you lost your eye?”
Kicks dragged his tongue over his lower lip. “Damage was too severe—they tried to save it, but it swelled up a couple days into my hospital stay. I didn’t even notice right away, though. The burns were really fuckin’ bad and…” He breathed out. “It took weeks to get the smell of burnt skin out of my nose.” He rubbed his fingers over his mouth and grimaced through a bitter sigh. “A couple years later, this guy at work saw me changing shirts and saw the scars. He made a crack about how they looked like wings.”
Jude let out a quiet breath. “Fucker.”
That startled a laugh out of Kicks who shook his head and felt his mouth stretch into a very small grin. “I actually didn’t mind all that much. It was nice to have someone make a joke, like the shit was normal.” He ran the tips of his fingers over his lips again as he sighed. “People usually think I got hurt in the service. They think all this shit,” he waved his hand at his body where it was twisted and scarred under his shirt and cut, “was because I was brave. And I could never bring myself to tell them it was because I was outnumbered by a bunch of backwoods fucks who left me to die in the middle of nowhere. I feel like a fraud every goddamn time someone assumes the best of me, but it turns out that it was because I was weak. So, if you wanna talk about not feeling worthy…”
“Don’t,” Jude said, and this time, when he reached for Kicks, he held on tight. His hands were a little cooler now, but they curled around the side of Kicks’ neck where his pulse began to race.
He leaned in, unable to help himself. A line he told himself never to cross had been obliterated, and not even God Himself could stop him now. He curled his fingers around Jude’s wrists, and he leaned in so their lips were inches apart. “I am who I am. I’m a fucked-up man trying to keep his shit together—a man terrified of letting strangers close to me because I’ve been burned—literally—and I barely made it through the first time. And you’re the man who saved my life with no goddamn reason to do it…”
Jude let out a soft, watery laugh, and his hands tightened on Kicks. “I had at least a dozen.”
Kicks swallowed, then breathed out through his nose. “Just give me one.”
“This,” Jude said, pressing one hand over Kicks’ beating heart without missing a beat. “From the moment we got on your bloody bike and started on the road here, I knew once wasn’t going to be enough. You were so bloody good—and so ready to just let me take you—to trust me to take you where you needed to go.”
At the words—the praise—Kicks felt like he was on the verge of leaving his body. His eye misted over, his throat went tight, his cock painfully hard against the zipper of his jeans. He worked his jaw, desperate to say anything, but no words would come.
“I wanted to be able to touch you again. I wanted…” Jude’s voice cracked a little, and he paused to catch his breath. “I wanted you to want this again.”
Kicks let out a growl, moving his hands down to Jude’s waist. It was awkward with them sitting. The little breakfast nook was too small to do what he really wanted—to pull Jude onto his lap, to pull his dick out and stroke him until he begged to come. He wanted to let Jude push him down onto the table and punish him after that, for making him wait this long.
But he held on to his composure, baring his teeth. “I have wanted you from the second I saw you.”
“That can’t be true,” Jude breathed out.
Kicks kissed him. He couldn’t help it—couldn’t stop himself. He dragged one hand up, wrapping it around the back of Jude’s neck, and dug his fingers into his curls to hold him there. His other hand moved to Jude’s face, thumb urging his mouth to open, and he slid his tongue inside the moment the other man’s lips parted.
He tasted like sugar and tea and something so profoundly him, it made Kicks’ head spin. It made his stomach clench and his dick throb with need. He wasn’t sure how far he was willing to go—especially knowing he was damn-near addicted to this man, but he also knew he wasn’t strong enough to stop.
“Emilio,” Jude groaned against his lips.
He squeezed his eyes shut until his sighted one was filled with starbursts. “Yeah.”
“Stop me,” Jude begged as his hand crept up toward the front of Kicks’ throat.