Smoky Mountain Dreams (35 page)

“No. Go on. Just feeling so much right now. Don’t stop.”
Christopher wrapped his arms around him and dug his heels into his ass. “Don’t
you dare stop.”

Jesse wanted to take it slow, to wring every bit of pleasure
from this, but he couldn’t stop himself from pounding hard, not when
Christopher was begging for it and kicking his ass like he was spurring him on.

“Please! More! Harder!”

Finally, his balls lurched and he knew he was going to come.
“Chris, I’m gonna—”

“Do it. Come. Show me what I do to you.”

Jesse groaned and reached beneath Christopher to grip his
ass, plowing into him harder than he needed to, absorbed in every expression
that raked over Christopher’s face. Wild joy, fear, love, and near agonizing
pleasure seemed to claim him in waves, and Jesse reached between them and felt
Christopher’s cock already hard again and slick with leaked jizz. Jesse was
close, but Christopher was close too, and Jesse wasn’t going over the edge
until he did.

“What do I need to do to make you come again, babe?” Jesse
whispered, kissing Christopher’s nipple and then biting it gently. “Tell me
what I need to do.”

“Just…oh, God…just…oh,
fuck
,
Jesse.”

Jesse bit his nipple again, harder this time. Christopher
arched up, and a small jet of jizz spurted between their bodies, but Jesse knew
it wasn’t the full thing. He was closer and clearly liked the bites, but there was
something else.

“Tell me,” Jesse urged.

“I can’t.”

“Yeah, you can,” Jesse said, slowing his hips to a slow roll
that made Christopher kick his ass hard with his heels.

“Fuck, I was close and I need—”

“Tell me what you need.”

“For you to go hard. Please, babe, go hard.”

“Okay, but what else?” Jesse kept his pace leisurely and
Christopher
writhed
under him like it was almost
painful to be fucked so slowly. “What else do you need?”

“See me. Need you to see me.”

“You want me to watch you come?”

“Just…everything. See me. See everything about me.”

“Mmm.” Jesse kissed Christopher’s shoulder and whispered in
his ear, “I see you. I see you writhing on my cock, your dick so hard it’s
begging to shoot.”

Christopher moaned.

“I see your heart pounding so hard your chest is shaking and
the pulse at your throat is tempting as fuck.” Jesse bit it gently, and then
licked it, feeling the tiny thunder on his tongue.

“Jesse,
go hard
!” Christopher
said, reaching his hand between them to grip his cock and jerk it fast and rough.

Jesse did, pummeling Christopher, his balls slapping against
his sweaty ass like the whap of the water wheel.

“I see your asshole wrapped around my dick, squeezing me,
trying to make me come.”

Christopher groaned, his hand flying faster on his own dick.

“I see your face all scrunched up—no don’t you dare smooth
it out—that’s good. Just like that. Reaching for it, reaching because you want
to give me everything, don’t you, Christopher? You want to be my babe. I see
you.”

Christopher cried out, head flinging back, and the veins in
his neck bulging as he came for a second time, jizz hitting the headboard,
landing in his hair, streaking over his chest and dashing his face.

“I see that, babe. Shooting for me. I see everything about
you.”

Christopher shook beneath him, coming apart, his balls
pulling up tight and hard, his cock jerking and nothing coming out, empty and
still coming.

“Open your eyes. I want you to see me too. See how hard I’m
falling for you.”

Because it was too soon and stupid as fuck, but Jesse Birch
was in head-over-heels love with Christopher Ryder, and he wanted him to see it
on his face when he came for him.

Christopher shook and trembled, cursing and jerking so long
that Jesse was sure he was going to miss Jesse’s orgasm. But when Jesse started
to tense, cursing and murmuring, “Babe, babe,
fuck
,
I’m gonna come for you,” Christopher opened his eyes to see as Jesse hit the
point of no return. He came so blindingly hard. No idea if he kept his eyes
open for Christopher, no idea what his face looked like when the pleasure
wrenched through him in powerful pumps. It was all sensation and emotion and
connection running through him hard and strong. He collapsed on Christopher’s
chest, his body heaving, hips still pumping, and his balls twinging from the
strength of his orgasm.

Christopher held him and kissed his hair, occasionally
jerking beneath him as his own pleasure seemed to echo through his body.

“I saw you,” he whispered against Jesse’s neck finally.

“Oh, babe. I saw
you
,” Jesse
said, and Christopher clung to him even tighter.

“Okay,” Christopher said, spreading jam on toast
wearing only his underwear because he’d rather gallantly, in Jesse’s opinion,
given him his robe. “Next pour in the water until it hits the two. That’ll make
enough for us both to have a cup.”

Jesse fiddled with the coffee maker. It was late for
caffeine, but Jesse knew they were going to be up all night and not for more
fun, but for the hard work of figuring out what they had started together. And
that meant helping Christopher understand Marcy.

Christopher handed him the plate with toast on it, and then
pulled out a kitchen chair. He collapsed into it and brushed his hair out of
his tired eyes. “So, I understand what happened with Marcy now. I understand
that she’s attached to machines and is, for all intents and purposes, dead, but
technically she’s still alive. And you’re still married to her. Now I just need
to understand the rest. The stuff you were angry about earlier—about Ronnie and
the lawsuit.”

Jesse sighed and poured the freshly brewed coffee into mugs.
He sat down opposite Christopher and passed him one. “I want to let her go.
Ronnie doesn’t.”

“But you’re her husband. Shouldn’t you have the final say?
Wasn’t there some huge legal battle settled a while back that made that clear?”

“The Terri Schiavo case. Yeah. But our situation is
different. See, Ronnie has a legal, valid Healthcare Power of Attorney for
Marcy. It gives her the power to make all of her healthcare decisions and
supersedes my right to make medical choices for her as her husband.”

 Christopher frowned. “Why would she do that? Was it because
of your marriage problems? Didn’t she trust you?”

“She trusted me. We always trusted each other.” Jesse rubbed
his face. “See, that’s the thing. It was an old document from before our
marriage. She signed it when she was having a cyst removed from an ovary when
she was nineteen. Her doctor insisted on her having one before performing the
surgery due to the dangers of general anesthesia, I guess. At the time, Ronnie
wasn’t quite the Bible thumper she’s become, and I really think Marcy believed
that if something happened to her during the surgery, Ronnie would let her go.”

“Why didn’t she sign it over to her parents?”

“I’m only guessing here, but I think she just didn’t want to
put her parents in that position if something went wrong. Whatever the case, I
don’t think she signed that form thinking that Ronnie would keep her attached
to machines indefinitely and at all costs.”

“And then what?”

“She just forgot she had the form, I think. I didn’t know
anything about it until months after the accident happened, and Ronnie showed
up with it right when I was finally prepared to accept the doctors’ prognosis
and let her go.”

“What did Marcy believe about this kind of thing? Did you
know?”

“Sure. Marcy and I had talked more than once about end of
life choices, especially back when that Schiavo case was on the news. She didn’t
want a funeral, or to be buried, and she didn’t want to be kept alive on
machines.”

“Was she religious?”

“Not really. We never went to church. Ronnie was always
pretty active in the church Nova and Tim attended, but when she went to college
she went off the rails with it.”

“How does that kind of thing happen?”

“She got knocked up and the guy talked her into having an
abortion. I know a lot of women have abortions and have no regrets, or maybe
have regrets they can live with, but it wasn’t like that for Ronnie. She
started going to a fundamentalist church and she met her husband there. I guess
she found what she needed. They’ve raised their kids in that church, too.”

Christopher took a bite of his toast and jam, chewed
thoughtfully, and then said, “It looks like our families have more in common
than I thought.”

“Ronnie’s an outlier in my family, but she’s a vocal one.
She wasn’t always…she’s not a bad person,” he admitted. “She’s nice even, I
guess. But we’re never going to see eye-to-eye on this. Never.”

Christopher shook his head. “So, you’re telling me because
your wife signed a piece of paper forever ago and then forgot about it,
everything she told you about what she wanted her death to be like just goes
out the window in favor of her sister’s religious beliefs?”

“Yeah. Legally that’s how it works.”

“But you’re fighting that, right? Because of what she told
you she wants?”

“I am. Or I did.” Jesse took a sip of coffee and then a bite
of toast. The jam was delicious—some sort of berry blend he couldn’t put his
finger on. He savored the little bit of strange comfort its sweetness gave him.
“But everyone from the judge to my attorney always said I don’t have a leg to
stand on.”

“What about your in-laws? Nova and Tim? Are they with Ronnie
on this?”

Jesse shook his head, chewing another bite of toast.
Christopher had a smear of jam on his lower lip, and Jesse smiled, thinking of
reaching over to wipe it off, but then Christopher licked it away. “It’s
complicated. Nova and Tim are less convinced that there is only one right thing
to do here. They’re fine with letting her go if I miraculously pull off a win
in court, and they’re okay with not letting her go if I don’t.”

“They just don’t care?” Christopher’s expression made it
clear that he found that hard to believe.

“It’s not that they don’t care. It’s more that they believe
resistance is the source of all pain. They’re Buddhists. Kind of. They still
attend a Christian church sometimes, but it’s the most liberal,
non-denominational church you can think of. There are like twenty members.”

“In this area, I’m surprised there are even that many.”

Jesse laughed under his breath. “They’re all hippies. Former
Arrowmont artists. That kind of thing.”

“But if they don’t care what happens to her specifically,
don’t they care what this is doing to you and the kids to have her lingering
there?”

“They do care. They just think I’m going about it all the
wrong way. That’s why I agreed to the mediation meetings with Ronnie before
appealing the verdict.”

“How do they think you should handle it?”

“They want me to move on. They want me to be ‘happy’ and to ‘live
my life in the now.’ They want me to file for divorce and let responsibility
for taking care of Marcy fall to them and Ronnie. They promised me they’ll
continue to work with a mediator to try to bring Ronnie around to the idea of
letting her go. But they’re such pacifists and Ronnie is such an asshole that I
know, and they know too, that if I ever make that choice, Marcy will be hooked
up to those tubes and machines forever.”

“But you agreed to the mediation, so you have some hope
Ronnie can be convinced?”

“Hell no. I did it for Nova and Tim because they asked me to
do it and I owe them that much. They’ve been through hell too. She was their
daughter. And Ronnie is their daughter. The tension between us gets to them.”

“And that’s what you came back from today? A mediation
meeting.”

“Yeah. It’s not working. Nova and Tim say it’s because I’m
not actually looking to compromise. I just want to win.”

“Is that true?”

“What is there to even compromise about? There’s no
compromise between taking her off the machines and tubes and leaving her on
them. The closest thing to compromise is deciding not to treat the next illness
that comes along—be it a bladder infection or pneumonia. You’d think Ronnie
might agree to that given her fervent belief that God can do all things; heal
all things. But no. She won’t hear of it. She tells some story of God sending
helicopters to a man in a flood as her reason. I didn’t really listen, but it
amounts to God gave us medicines to use to keep people alive. Even if they’re
not really alive at all.”

“Where do they think you can compromise?”

“Beats the hell out of me. If I give even an inch, the end
result is Marcy on those machines forever. There
is
no
middle ground! How can they not see that?”

“I don’t know.”

Christopher rested his head on his palm, staring tiredly at
his remaining jam and toast. Jesse could see a bruise rising on his neck from
where he’d sucked while they made love, and it made him want to take
Christopher back into his room and do it again. Fuck away this conundrum.