Chapter Text
“Hhrg.” I grumbled out, my face mashed into a pillow. It was so comfortable, as comfortable as the rest of whatever I was laying on, even if it did faintly smell of dust and mothballs. I didn’t wanna get up: I was warm and snuggly and wrapped in a blanket. Just five more minutes. Five more minutes of this heaven, soft and sleepy and warmed by the crackling fire.
My eyes snapped open as I remembered how I had gotten here.
Hazy half-fogged memories drifted by of grumpily, tiredly getting out of the car as it rolled up to the cabin’s snow-swamped exterior, and of immediately collapsing onto the couch before I could even look around. My phone, dragged clumsily out of my pocket with a sleepy grip, read the time out as 12:20 PM. I’d lost half the day to a fucking REM cycle.
“You sleep like the dead.”
I sat up at the voice like it was a siren song and the world came into view, the heavy plaid blanket draped over me falling away. There he was: Jasper goddamn Whitlock, sitting across the rustic wood living room in a padded chair, reading by the light of a dated old glass lamp. A tower of novels sat beside him. Right. Vampire reading speed .
“Jaz.” I breathed. I did a double take. “Oh my god. This cabin . Holy shit .”
Before the suave Texan could get a word in edgewise I bolted to my feet, taking in the kickass lodgings around me. This place was great . It was better than great. The cabin was small, yes— comprised of just a livingroom and adjoining kitchen, a doorway leading to a bedroom, and a bathroom opposite it— but it smelled like rich cedar and wood polish, and everywhere I looked there were little hints to just how long the Cullen family had been in ownership of this cabin. A deteriorating baseball on a stand on the fireplace mantel, a long wooden canoe oar carved with “Saint Ambrose Youths Christian Camp 1977” on a hook on the log wall, a hefty string of bear claws hanging in the kitchen like an ironic garlic braid.
Jasper smiled quietly at my scrambling, slowly standing and shutting his book while I darted across the kitchen and poked my head into the bedroom and stone-tiled bathroom. When I skidded back from the slick kitchen wood floor to the thick carpet before the fireplace, I stopped, glancing over his shoulder at the massive wall of windows behind him. Snow whirled outside, moving almost sideways in the high wind that howled over the beamed roof and thought the towering white-powdered evergreens surrounding it. The mountainside was infinite and thick with forest, sprawling out and down so far into the light-grey blur of the storm I couldn’t see the end of it.
“You should have woken me up.” I said, pushing my hair back over my head a little self-consciously. I’m sure I looked a state, all red-cheeked and wild-haired compared to the immaculately dressed pillar of marble standing before me. “I didn’t, uh, mean to keep you sitting all alone here.”
He struggled, hands in the back pockets of his tailored pants. “The quiet is nice. I don’t get it often. For once, my family’s out of earshot.” That damnable muscle in his flat jaw ticked again, like he was chewing on a thought. His gaze, as always, was inscrutable and laser-like, so intense underneath his sharp brows it almost made me shy away from it.
Maybe in the past, I would have. I would have let my eyes slide away, unwilling to confront his mystery and daunting beauty. But now? I’d tasted his lips, seen him on his very best behavior… and at his worst, unhinged and animalistic. I had brushed lips over the smooth stone of his forehead in the quiet light of my bedroom while he opened his shaking, ancient heart to me, allowing me to dip fingers into its bruised center. And I knew now that that stare wasn’t to intimidate, or scare away: it was to learn. To make sure he was doing exactly what he was supposed to.
Ever watching. Ever waiting for a command, a reprimand. A reward.
But right now, I didn’t need a soldier, or a guardian. I needed him.
After a long moment of silence, the snowy wind howling and moaning, I lifted my gaze to his. No shying away. The little practiced humanisms he always performed— shifting from one foot to the other, making his chest rise and fall, blinking— fell away. His pale pink lips parted slightly. If anything, now, he looked startled by my intensity.
Because I see you now, Whitlock . I thought to myself. You’re no longer the lone vigilant, the sentinel watcher. I’m watching you right back, and I see you.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked him in a voice as soft as smoke. About what I was referring to, that was open to interpretation, even though we both knew: okay with us , with my humanity and your inhumanity, with your fears, with your hopes, with our inevitable collision course. With what we both know is about to happen.
His jaw twitched a few times, mouth opening and aborting several times before he actually got the words out. He pulled his head back, unsure. Hesitation was scrawled on his face: human feelings, worry and apprehension and cautious hope. “Langdon.” He croaked out. “I need…”
I need your patience. Your forgiveness. Your support. Your laughter, your light, your dark, your help. Your love. The thoughts flickered behind his gold eyes, plain as writing on a wall. The ultimate weaknesses, the needs and desires that in his past would have gotten a bayonet in his chest or his crystalline head wrenched from his shoulders. His bloodless, white fingers curled into his palms, diamond nails digging into stone flesh. Maybe he’d never be able to say the words aloud.
Maybe he never had to for me to hear them.
“Okay.” I said simply, no louder than a whisper. As hard as I could, I focused on honing my emotions to two sharp points. Trust. Trust, and desire.
“Fuck.” Jasper growled. And then he was rushing forward just as I was moving to him and we were colliding in front of the fireplace, my hands reaching up to cup the back of his head, his moving to pull me closer.
All our idle conversations about the “Big Moment”, or careful dancing around it— “We’ll take it slow, y’know, when we’re both ready, no rush”— went out the window. Cold stone fingers helped untangle me from my jacket, and I barely tracked how Jasper threw it hard enough to sail across the entire cabin because there were lips on mine that were heated and passionate enough to make my breathing hitch.
I ghosted fingers across him and his cold, perfect skin, shaking when Jasper’s slender digits crept underneath the hem of my shirt.
“Can I—” He said hoarsely, gripping the edge tightly, still pressed hip-to-hip and chest-to-chest with me.
“ Please . All of it.” I demanded. “All of it, I just—” My sentence ended when my shirt was pulled over my head, one hand immediately moving to my lower back while the other one unbuttoned my bra and then my pants. His fluid expertise and vehement rush to see me naked as quickly turned the pleasant warm coals in my lower stomach to real, all-consuming flames licking up my insides, blushing my chest and setting my skin on fire everywhere he was pressed against me. The change hit me like a freight train, making my core shiver. I’d only gotten this far in my daydreams, lying under blankets at home, touching myself and thinking of the man who currently had his fingers hooked under the elastic of my underwear.
“ Shit, darlin’.” Jasper growled out over me. “You’re a dangerous drug, shit.” And just like that he pulled the last piece of clothing covering me away, letting it drop between my legs to the rug below.
My skin erupted into goosebumps and I resisted the urge to cover my chest, my back heated by the fireplace and my front patchy with blush under the eyes that seemed to be memorizing every crease of skin, every follicle’s placement. Jasper’s arms gripped my hips like they were lifelines, and I was reminded of all those times together with him— heat, building and growing between us, only to be frozen by his instincts bearing down in his mind, screaming at him to break, to consume. I felt a hint of it now, in the way his fingers dug into my flesh.
That square-jawed, beautiful face was going stormy, doubt furrowing the skin between his dark blonde brows.
I caught his chin before he could spiral. “Hey.” I said softly when his worried roaming eyes finally found mine. “We’re ready. I trust you.”
“Keep talkin' to me.” He begged.
Jasper’s face dipped down to my collar, planting a soft kiss between my collarbones. God, how the fuck am I supposed to form a coherent fucking sentence when he’s doing this ? That mouth went further down even as his fingers roved, running up the lines of my hips, skating across the sensitive, jumping skin of my lower abdomen. Another kiss, between my breasts, sent energy like a static shock straight to my core.
“Uhh….” I said intelligently. Shit, I don’t think I’ve ever been this wet untouched before. “I really don’t think this is what your parents had in mind when they gave us this cabin for a day.” Jasper hummed out a low laugh against my skin, his lips on the center of my ribs where bone gave way to soft flesh. “I mean, maybe Emmett did, but I’d pretty sure Esme and Carlisle wanted us to go skiing or hiking, you know, good Christian bonding activit— shit .”
Jasper had made me sit, a firm press on both my thighs making my bare bottom land on the brick hearth ledge. He moved downwards with me, on his knees now. “This alright?” He asked me, hands coming to rest on my closed knees from his crouched position on the floor.
I let my head fall back a bit and laughed shakily. Fuck , I was a mess of suppressed hormones and blood-flushed skin, doing everything I could to not grab him by the hips and straddle him: and he was asking if this was okay ? This was more than okay: this was the goddamn dream. “Jaz, if you don’t start moving in the next few seconds, I can’t be held responsible for what I do.”
That signature goddamn blush-inducing smile graced his face, his lips tugging up to one side to reveal pearly-white teeth. “Yes, ma’am.” With permission granted he pulled my thighs open, and oh, I hadn’t been expecting him drinking in the sight of my core to be so goddamn heady and arousing. “Mmm.” He hummed, throaty and low: I couldn't help it, I put a hand up to my flushed face as the noise sent another bolt of heat through me. "Nobody’s gonna be able to come within a hundred goddamn feet of this place, now.”
“...Why?” I squeaked out.
“‘Cuz it smells like you gettin’ absolutely desperate for me, darlin’.”
When his nostrils flared my thighs tried to close on instinct, but he held them open in an iron grip. “Jaz.” I begged. He was a sweet boy, kind and caring and watchful over me and his family. But now, between my legs, there was a darker, richer gleam in his eyes, eager to toy with my pliable arousal.
A single finger finally granted me sweet relief, making my center sing while he softly traced it up and down. His thumb made sudden, quick circles around that delicious bundle of nerves and my stomach clenched, making him chuckle to himself. “Keep talkin’, sweetheart.”
With every circle I got wetter. “God, Jaz, shit . Feels really good. I, uh, I’ve thought a lot about this. Thought about this a lot .” I took the deep, air-vibrating noise he made as encouragement, my voice hitching when that singular digit teasingly dipped at my entrance. I knew I was riling him up, taunting the lion. But I wanted to: he rendered me almost mindless with those magic hands, so in turn I wanted to punch the air from his chest with my words. “Thought about your hands on me, late at night, a lot . I used to, uh—fuck, yes— imagine you climbing into my window and pulling the sheets off of me. Used to imagine how your fingers would feel inside of me.”
Like I was the playwright and he was the actor, he slipped a finger inside of me just as the words left my mouth, and by god it was delicious , cold and strong. My molten heat clamped down around it even as he started languidly pumping it in and out, only stopping to experimentally curl it deep inside and watch me gasp. Jasper stared up at me under those brows like he was trying to read my thoughts, intense and unwavering. Devouring my flushed cheeks and spit-slick lips.
A single finger shouldn't be able to feel this fucking good . He relentlessly pumped me, one hand with an iron grip on my knee and the other burying itself up to the last knuckle in my furnace heat. “How long, sweet thing,” Jasper asked in a voice like sugar and whiskey, “has it been since someone made you cum?”
My brain struggled to formulate a reply: my hands clutched at the hearth’s high ledge as beads of sweat raced down my bare, firelit back. “Uh, I h— shit —I had a boyfriend in junior year.”
“Marley White.” Jasper replied.
I nodded. We’d talked ex-lovers many times, in the solace of empty kitchens or winding woodland hiking paths. “He was— sweet. Temporary but sweet. We spent the night together after the fall dance. Over a year ago.”
That one finger turned to two and jesus christ I was only going to last seconds more, especially after he upped the intensity, a thumb on my clit. “Jaz.” I said warningly.
His focused frown turned to a dark, satisfied smirk: Jasper pulled me open wider, tossing one of my legs up to rest on his shoulder. “Over a year is a damn shame, angel.” He purred. “Pretty thing like you deserves to be treated right . C’mon. Cum for me.”
Those digits curled up inside of me demandingly and I flew over the edge and into oblivion with an undignified whimper, too wrapped up in the blinding, searing moment of pleasure to notice. And when I came down, heart slamming against my ribs like it was trying to escape, he was still there, the pace of his fingers slowed to a leisurely, sluggish pumping.
The aftershocks, pleasant and shivery, made me feel soft. I leaned forward to him and like I had called his name he rose up on his knees, brushing his lips up against mine in the softest, most tender kiss anyone had ever given me while their fingers were inside of me.
“How you feeling?” I asked when I remembered what words were again.
He chuckled breathily. “Pretty sure I should be asking you that question.”
“Jasper. You know what I mean.”
His slicked fingers slowed. “Avery...” He finally admitted, "It’s takin’ all my control not to put you on my lap and move us right to the main event.”
I pressed my hips up into his fingers, curling my body more so I could touch his face with both my hands. “That’s kind of what I’ve been wanting this whole time, Jaz. For, like, months.”
He shook his head. Under my fingers his hair was silky and cool. “You’re not ready.”
The soft bubbling heat he had been coaxing back into my core started to cool for a moment. “... Please tell me you’re not gonna pull some vampire bullshit and tell me I’m not ready for the ‘real deal’. That’s very old-fashioned.”
“No, that’s not what I—” Jasper paused, slowly pulling fingers out of me: I bit the inside of my cheek to protest their loss. “Langdon, I’m not saying you’re not ready, I’m saying I’m… ” He pressed his lips together tightly. If the vampire could blush, he’d be doing it now, orange firelight flickering over his pale face.
What on earth could he be … I wondered with a confused, furrowed brow, before happening to glance down at where he kneeled on the carpet. Those lithe clothed thighs marked dark trails up to his pelvis. Up to the very noticeable, very large member straining against the navy blue fabric. Suddenly I was quite certain about what was causing his hesitation. And I wanted to see it.
“Jasper.” I said after a moment, looking back at his face. I bit my lower lip. “I’d like to politely request that you get naked.”
He took a deep, slow breath, and sighed. But it was an amused, expectant sort of noise. “Anything for the lovely lady.” He drawled as if I was asking him to give me the moon.
I giggled and softly nudged his leg with my foot as he rose to his feet, my knees falling back together. From here, watching him slowly pull his sweater off and undo each button on his undershirt, I felt like an ancient queen, my bare chest in the open air and my skin warmed by the crackling flames behind me.
It didn’t get any easier to see the bites, no matter how many times I saw them. The angled firelight threw them into stark contrast, the deeper ones looking like a stone carver had taken their chisel to a prized sculpture. As if guided by an outside force I rose to my feet, toes digging into the lush carpet as I drifted over to him. His hands stilled on his jeans, half unbuttoned, when I ghosted a hand down his lean pectoral, over his ribs.
“Why only with me?” I asked softly. “You, taking your shirt off. Exposing your forearms. You’re always… all buttoned up, even around your family.” I took over for his now-frozen hands, slowly unzipping his jeans in the electric air. They slid down around his thighs with ease.
Jasper had been suave and controlling when he had wrung my pleasure from me, adept and assured. Now, beneath my hands, he swallowed audibly. “They’re my war wounds to deal with. I wouldn’t go putting their weight on Carlisle’s, or anybody of my other family’s, shoulders.”
“But you share them with me.”
“I…” He paused. When my fingers, light and pink in the mountain air, trailed up his bicep and landed on a particularly savage, twisted scar, he let out a shaking exhale. “I trust you. To not… doubt me, because of them.”
Because the scars are weaknesses too . I realized. Monuments to every time he failed to protect himself, failed to be the perfect soldier. Even now, decades after his time on the warfront, he was still a primary protector, only now it was the Cullens instead of his country or his lover. To show his family that he had ever been vulnerable to attack was unacceptable to him. He was supposed to be strong. Infallible.
Like a rose, the realization that he fucking trusted me with that delicate, weak part of himself that he didn’t even trust his family with bloomed in my chest, bright and awed. I had no words for it. All I could do was tug off his briefs before he could protest and softly palm his dick without looking away from his face. His trust in me was founded . He had to know that.
Jasper’s face morphed from terse inscrutability to wide-eyed, tight-jawed pleasure. He grunted, a large hand flying to my hip for stability as I wrapped fingers around the base of his cock.
Huh, I thought idly, my fingers don’t touch . I looked down, and holy shit. Holy shit .
I had never been a person interested in size. It wasn’t as if the amount of inches directly correlated to the person’s sexual skill: often, it was the opposite. But with Jasper I gaped open-mouthed at the fully erect fucking mammoth-sized dick in my loose grip, its head the same faint purple-pink as his lips.
“Where were you hiding this ?” I said dizzily.
“‘S why I said you weren’t ready— Langdon. ” Jasper choked on his own words when I squeezed him, slowly running my grip up to his head and back down to his base. The skin beneath my fingers was chilly, but it pulsed in keen interest.
“You weren’t kidding. It’ll be like trying to play hide the cucumber in a wallet.”
Jasper laughed in sheer surprise, the sound stuttering when my gentle touches became slow, steady strokes. Fuck, he felt addictive, all silky smooth and gorgeously thick. His hips couldn’t seem to help themselves: they snapped up, fucking into my grip. I hummed appreciatingly at the sight. And just like that, I was ready and rearing to go again. I kept pumping him, almost entranced.
“Langdon.” Now it was his turn to warn me, his voice strained and broken.
“How long has it been for you, Jaz?” I teased him with a smile. “A year for me was agony, especially after meeting you. But how long have you gone without someone treating you right?”
“Nine years.” He ground out.
My stroking wavered when his words registered. Nine fucking years . I redoubled my efforts and he groaned deep in the back of his throat, looking down at where both my hands now pumped him up and down. “Why?” I asked, my throat dry.
“Couldn’t…” He grunted again, hips now rolling to meet my every stroke, “Couldn’t find anyone guaranteed to not try and break my heart.” He made a broken noise and grit his teeth together. “Langdon, I…”
“I know. Do it. Please, Jaz, I wanna see.” I said into the shell of his ear. I pressed against him, heated breasts against his cold chest, my hands working furiously below us. My heart thudded furiously in my ears.
Like a man possessed he wrapped one strong arm around my back and grabbed my hip bone with his other, cumming with nothing but a ragged inhale, his cold and firm body twitching.
I worked him softly through the aftershocks as he pressed soft kiss after soft kiss to my cheek and forehead. When I brought my hands away, I found nothing on them. “Limited supply.” He explained breathily to me. “I already used up everything I was turned with.”
“No condoms?” I concluded.
“No condoms.”
Apparently, vampires have a refractory period of 10 seconds. Before I knew it Jasper was hungrily seeking my mouth again, and thank god for that because the apex between my thighs was fucking burning and I needed touch like I needed air.
“So good for me.” Jasper said against my lips. He picked me up and I yipped in delighted surprise, wrapping my legs around his unyielding waist and grinding against him. “Shit, darlin’. Drivin’ me wild.”
“Then do something about it.” I demanded, fingers weaving into his hair while my eager mouth left his lips shiny.
I was falling through the air before I realized it, and just as my brain noticed the world was sideways Jasper was back to supporting me, laying me out on the carpet before the fireplace, thumb running over my slit while his mouth found my breast. I tugged at his gold hair, hard when I realized I didn’t have to worry about hurting him. It only seemed to egg him on.
Was there nothing more beautiful ? I thought dizzily. I had lived for eighteen years: I’d seen towering waterfalls so high their water was mist, giant angry sea waves crashing against cliffs, newborn children in their mother’s sweaty arms. And in the future I was sure to see more. But nothing seemed to hold a candle to the reverent bend of Jasper’s Hale’s head, the way his lean muscles bunched as he balanced himself over me, the way the tendons in his arm jumped rhythmically as two fingers stirred white-hot pleasure up inside me. He was a vampire, capable of putting his hand through solid rock, capable of snapping the neck of a mountain lion… and he was dedicating every ounce of his focus to being gentle with me.
Because he cared. He cared so much more than I ever gave him credit for.
“Jaz,” was all I could bring myself to say, dragging blunt nails down the meat of his arm, resting fingers of the hand between my thighs, feeling the tendons moving under his skin. “Jaz. God, Jasper.”
Two fingers became three, the stretch only uncomfortable for the briefest second before I relaxed around him, slick and eager. “I’m ready.” I panted against his shoulder. "I’m—”
“Not yet, sweetheart.” His roaming mouth came back to mine, distracting me from the delicious burn of a fourth finger. “Almost there. Almost all opened up for me.”
“I’m not gonna last until I'm ready, Jaz, please.”
“Then put a hand on yourself, gimme one more. One more.” He demanded. His breath was cold, sweet-smelling like crushed juniper and mesquite.
Eager to comply I pressed shaky fingers to my clit, remembering as Jasper took a sharp breath that being an empath wasn’t just limited to detecting fear and anger: it encompassed pleasure as well. The enormous bundle of fingers inside me writhed and scissored and I was pushed into that white-hot oblivion again, keening like a wounded animal, safe in the cold arm that braced me as my orgasm wracked my body with twitches and jolts.
Coming back down to earth meant finally being able to feel the thick, pulsing length pressed against my outer thigh, and noticing how focused Jasper seemed to be on not snapping his hips against the hot, soft skin of my leg. I shivered and breathed raggedly, trying to steady myself, because even though my own soft touches against my core made me want to squirm away from the overstimulation, I wanted him.
And he knew it.
“Give yourself a rest, Langdon.” He said. “Recover.”
My gut rebelled at his words, a rush of no and want it now jumping through my veins: Jasper huffed out a surprised laugh when the emotions hit him. “You are stubborn .”
“You wouldn’t have me any other way.” I said shakily with a grin.
“That’s right.” His gilded eyes were soft, fond and sentimental. In the isolated solitude of the cabin his center seemed to be open, the armor he normally slogged around in discarded for the time being. He was, I realized, as vulnerable as a vampire could be, with a human. Because the body was almost indestructible, eternal and easily-healed. But the heart bore pain forever. And the heart was what he was offering me.
I shifted my body, rubbing my thighs together. “Don’t make me ask again.” I pleaded. I paused, licking my lips. “I just… Jasper, I want to feel you inside me.”
The blonde slowly closed his eyes and let out a controlled exhale. Got him . I caught my lower lip with my teeth to keep from smirking.
“You make it so hard to say no to you, darlin’.” He rumbled out, words colored with his arousal.
Before I could reply he moved like lightning: I gasped when cold hands canted my hips up, pressing my back more firmly into the carpet. Jasper guided my legs up and back, knees as close to ears as my unathletic human body would allow. I flushed a deep, aroused scarlet at my position and shifted around under his cold hands, more wetness flooding out of me. Jasper looked down at me like he wanted to devour every inch of me and leave me shaking, asking for more . His lips parted and I already knew what he was going to ask.
“God, yes Jaz, this is… good, this is really good, would you please do something .” I said quickly.
His mouth quirked up to one side. I wanted to kiss the corner of his mouth that dimpled when he did that. And then, thank god , after literal months of imagining it, and what felt like hours of just teasing fingers, I felt the blunt head of his cock nudge at my entrance, softly sliding up and down it in my wet heat.
“I do have one request.” I said tightly, bringing his laser focus back to me as he expertly swiveled his hips to tease me. Jasper looked up. “...Kiss me.”
I’d never seen him move so fast. Jasper was on me, over me, holding himself over me with a forearm planted on either side of my head, my legs parted around his narrow hips. His face hovered over mine. “Anything for you, Avery.” He said in a voice that made me truly, actually believe him.
His mouth sealed itself to mine and with a gentle, slow movement of his hips, he seated himself inside me.
Jasper went slowly, but I still opened my mouth into the kiss, the air driven from my lungs. He really had needed to open me up that much, get me that soft and pliant: every second I thought he was fully in me there seemed to me more of him, thick and delicious and never-ending. When his pelvis finally rested against me, hilt-deep, I almost couldn’t breath from how full I felt. And Jasper Hale, the courteous fucking gentlemanly empath, had made absolutely sure I had never felt even a twinge of discomfort.
He broke the kiss to just look at me, resting all his weight above me on one forearm and bringing his free hand down to gently place it on my abdomen, just below my belly button. Right where he was rooted within me. And then he began to move.
I let out a broken cry and let my head fall back against the carpet, because my slick heat mixed with his cool, massive cock felt like a borderline spiritual experience. He moved slowly but relentlessly, withdrawing almost to the tip and letting my wanting core suck him back in. Jasper hissed through his teeth when I started helplessly canting my hips up to match his pace, pleasure shooting through my body like sparklers at the sensation of the wet, electric dragging sensation i nside of me.
“Langdon.” Jasper breathed. “L— Avery .”
There were no words, not for this. Not when he saw me, gold eyes inches from mine, and I saw him back. When every organic thrum of my living, breathing, blushing body was matched by his cold crystalline one, like a reflection in a mirror. There were no words for how it felt when he pushed inside and slowly pulled out of me, splitting me open while he pressed a butterfly-soft, reverent kiss between my eyes. His lips lingered.
“Please,” Was all I could chant with the little breath I could suck in with my sweat-slick chest, “Please, Jaz.” I wrapped arms up over his shoulders and behind his head, clinging to him for dear life as his rhythm grew faster, more inflamed and impassioned.
“Perfect.” I barely caught him murmuring over the heady sound of skin slapping against skin, his voice tight like someone had a grip on his vocal chords. “So perfect. Exactly what I— so perfect. Perfect.”
“Yes.” I agreed with him as quickly as I could. He burned away inside me like a beacon: I had never known pleasure like this could be so all-encompassing , like it wasn’t just coming from my core but every single cell of my body. “It’s— fuck , it’s perfect.”
More kisses littered my flushed, shining face: my cheekbones, my forehead, my lips.
“ I love you .” Jasper grunted, like someone had pulled it out of him.
Everything seemed to freeze: every inch of me, every inch of the cabin, every inch of the world outside. The only thing that remained in motion was my wildly-slamming heart.
…What ?
Even Jasper stopped above me. He looked disheveled, his hair wild and his breathing uneven. But beyond that, he looked shocked . Scared. Above me, in the sudden silence, he looked like the true nineteen year old he had been over a century ago. Small. Fearfully waiting for the other shoe to drop.
A ball of emotion knotted the bottom of my throat. “No.” I said.
Jasper pulled his head back in pain.
Fuck. I couldn’t hold it down. The tears were welling up in my eyes. “ No .” I said again more forcefully. Jasper made to pull away from me but my grip on the back of his neck held him in place. “You can’t— that’s not fair .” Tears were spilling down now, from the corners of my eyes to the carpet below. “That’s not f-fucking fair, Jasper Whitlock. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.”
“Langdon—”
“I promised myself this was going to be normal, a run of the mill high school romance, a fun stepping-stone on my journey, fuck .” My voice wobbled and I was practically shouting, but I continued anyway, because the heart in the right side of my chest was burning so brightly at the words it had just heard. “We were just supposed to learn, to grow. I wasn’t gonna become one of those cliché girls that found the love of her fucking life in her— her fifth period class .” I choked on a sob. “You weren't supposed to fall in love with me Jasper, because it’s not fair. Because I also fell in love with you . ”
I thumped a fist against his back, crying and jubilant and happy and mad all at once. Because it wasn’t supposed to be like this. I hated the whole fatalistic notion of it, of mad whirlwind romances, because they weren’t practical, weren’t safe. But I guess he was never either of those things to begin with . All I knew was when I met Jasper four months ago I got a twinge in my gut that said he was important , and I wanted to believe I was more of a master of my own fate than that.
But here I was. Avery Langdon, 18 years old. The girl who wanted to devour every part of the world. And Jasper Hale, 19 years old, the boy who tried his hardest every day to hold that same world on his shoulders so it wouldn’t fall apart because of him. One who wanted a home, and one who would never have a real one again.
Jasper was a marble statue above me, wide-eyed.
“I love you, Jasper.” I said brokenly. The frustration burned away, superficial and pointless. My chest felt swollen with emotion. “I love you so much it hurts.”
“You…” He breathed. His eyes scanned my face, and I felt some phantom force reading me, like he was casting his psychic net out, looking for something. He found it: Jasper’s lips parted softly. “You’re in love with me.”
“Yeah, dummy.” I unhooked my hands from his neck to scrub the tears from my eyes. “I l—”
I didn't get to finish my sentence. Jasper shoved an arm under me and lifted me up as he sat back on his heels, and suddenly he grinding me into his lap and fucking me with a fervor that made a whine of unabashed, heated pleasure slip out from my mouth, my eyes practically rolling back into my head as he slam slam slammed into that magical spot inside of me.
“You love me.” Jasper groaned into my neck. His arms were vices around me, grinding me down onto him, forcing pleasure to rip through me until I was mindless. “Avery, you love me.”
“I fucking love you .” I slurred out. “Jasper, I’m gonna— please, I’m gonna—” I scrambled in futility on his skin, trying to find a handhold, a way to wrap fingers around him, anything to get me even closer.
“I love you , Avery Langdon.” He said into my ear, and that was all it took for me to light ablaze and ricochet into thoughtless ecstasy for the third time in a row. I barely felt Jasper follow me over the edge, pressing up into me and letting loose with a broken, wounded shout. Hands pressed into the meat of my body hard enough to bruise, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
The world was bright and electric and more alive than it had ever felt before, and in our shared wave of seemingly infinite pleasure our foreheads fell together, one hot and one cold.
"I love you." I distantly registered him whispering into my hair. He said the words like a prayer. "I love you, Langdon. I love you."
“If I say pretty please, will you eat it?” Jasper drawled with a smile. He rested his elbows on the old wooden dining table, looking (if I may say so) as cute as a goddamn button in the apron he sported to protect his dress shirt from cooking grease. In his hand he twirled a fork loaded with pan-fried tomatoes and eggs.
I shrugged antagonistically in my seat, still toweling my hair dry from my long shower. “I’ve said it once, I’ll say it a million times: tomatoes are kind of gross.”
“You eat tomatoes every day.”
“Ketchup and pasta sauce are a different matter entirely. If you had my discerning palate, you’d know that.”
Undeterred, Jasper stabbed another tomato slice from the plate in front of him onto the fork. The pan behind him on the small gas stove was still laden with fried eggs. I had come out of the shower and nearly doubled over in laughter at how much food he thought one human person should be eating. “Tomatoes are a very nutritious fruit. They’ve fulla lycopene, vitamin C and K, antioxidants… aaand you don’t care.” He surmised by the end of his speech.
“They’re nutritious. And gross.”
“You’re being obstinate on purpose.” Jasper narrowed his eyes. “You want somethin’.”
“I absolutely do.” Took him long enough to catch on. I batted my eyelashes. “I was thinking we could instill a sort of trade system, wherein I eat this delicious— I mean terrible , honestly horrible looking lunch—” Jasper smirked, preening a little bit at the compliment towards his cooking, “And you kiss me absolutely fucking senseless.”
Jasper sighed, the fork in his hand flagging and clinking as he set it back down on the plate. “That’s all you were after? Well, ma’am,” Hey sidled around the side of the table as he lazily untied his apron, “that service just so happens to be on the house.”
“I know. But I like a little entertainment.” I murmured back, tilted my head up. He kissed me soft and slow, like lovers used to do back when the movies were still called ‘the silver screens’. It felt like summer sunlight in winter.
The cold edge of the ceramic plate bumped into my fingers, laced flat on the table. “Eat.” Jasper murmured against my lips. With a quick final peck he went back to his work, fully focused on scraping the remaining eggs (a little abashedly) into a container to be refrigerated. I hummed in complete contentment when I tasted the literally perfectly seasoned fried tomatoes and crispy-edges eggs—there were even basil leaves in it, for crying out loud— and quickly started clearing my plate. Three orgasms worked up an appetite. Four, if you counted the one where Jasper stepped into the shower behind me and softly coaxed another from my sore, tired, overstimulated body while pressing loving kisses to my shoulder.
“Cook for me forever?’ I asked him through a mouthful of egg.
He chuckled. “I’ll cook for you as long as you’re around to cook for.”
When Jasper threw a glance over his shoulder at the words, I met his gaze with warmth and understanding. I knew what he meant. I loved him, he loved me. But love wasn’t permanent, not for me. Not for humans. It drifted or it died in a million different ways. But that was a price we were both willing to pay: and as long as our love burned bright, we would be here. Those moments would be our little shared part in history, our blip in the eternity of the universe when my life just so happened to cross his.
When we separated, through time or death, it would hurt. But the price tag of pain would be well worth the experience.
“Oh, Langdon.” Jasper said after another few minutes of banging around in the little kitchen.
“No, I’m full.” I insisted quickly, focusing on clearing my plate before he could plop more vegetables on it.
“Not what I was gonna say.”
“What, then?” I lifted my head.
“Happy birthday.” He held a tiny box in his hand.
I smiled immediately, heart going all sunny at his well-wish. I loved how he always reached to my mood changes like that, drinking them in like a tourist on a beach chair, his brow relaxing and the ever-present tension in his jaw lessening. In the box was a slip of paper with a string of numbers on it. I paused.
“Go on. Call it.” He folded his arms over his chest.
I wandered over to my phone still languishing on the couch and punched the number in, holding it up to my ear. The sound of a phone ringing cut through the small cabin air: I watched wide-eyed as Jasper reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a fancy new slide-out keyboard phone, pressed answer, and put it to his ear.
“Hey darlin’.” He said. A second later I heard him over the phone.
“Oh, no way ,” I laughed, utterly shocked, “ You , the guy who’s stubbornly refused to get a phone since they came out in the freaking seventies ? How many contacts do you have on that bad boy already?”
“Just one.”
My laughter faded to a flushed smile.
He whetted his pale lips with his tongue. “I’ve never been that great with gifts. I didn’t know what to get you for your birthday, but I sure as hell wasn’t gonna just throw whatever jacket or shoes Alice picked out at you. I just figured… well, it seems like you have everyone in the damn world in that phone of yours, so I should be there too. Even if it means I gotta carry this hunk of metal with me everywhere.”
My already tender heart swelled in my chest. I said nothing in reply, but ducked my head down to scroll through my recent calls list. Just as Jasper was begging to shift uncomfortably my call went through: he picked it up with a look of entertained confusion.
“I love it.” I told him through the phone. “...I love you .”
It only took him a step and a blink to have me up in his arms, half-twirled around the room, set back down, and thoroughly kissed as per lunch request. When his cold teeth gently nipped at my lower lip, for the briefest moment I saw the flash of a future: lots more kisses, obviously. Linked arms. Jasper, ducking into my workplace to say hello or bring me lunch. Me, waiting for him in the campus courtyard of whatever college he decided to attend. Hiking the Olympic mountains. Traveling to France and fighting to split my time between Alice’s fashion community and Jasper’s old-world history tours. My grandma tutting about how chilly Jasper always was, fetching him a blanket while I smothered laughter. Little moments, tiny fragments of light and goodness that made the whole journey worthwhile.
I didn’t know how long I would have with the infamous Jasper Whitlock. Maybe a whole decade. Maybe just a month. What I did know was however long it was, it was going to be amazing, and the burn of his perplexing gaze and the honesty of his heart would leave a permanent impression on my soul.
I tried to tell him all of this in the kiss. And maybe it worked, because his lips lingered on mine, soft and silky and more loving than anything in this whole damn universe. When I opened my eyes, there were stars in them. In his, too. A whole constellation, just for us.
“Is this a bad time to tell you I may have invited you as my plus-one to the Langdon New Year party in Wenatchee?” I said softly up at him.
Jasper smirked, relished another long kiss, and replied. “Depends. This a bad time to tell you’re fully expected to attend Carlisle’s Easter sermon this spring?”
We both laughed, gentle, open, and ready for our own little bit of forever.
End