The basement room was cool, the dim morning light filtering weakly through the small windows near the ceiling, but the bed was a cocoon of overwhelming heat. The movie you had fallen asleep to, some horror flick that neither of you had actually finished, was long gone, replaced by the steady, rhythmic breathing of two people tangled together under dark sheets.

You stirred first, the haze of sleep slowly lifting to reveal a heavy, comforting weight draped over you. Jackson's arm was a solid band across your waist, his large hand splayed flat against your stomach, fingers twitching slightly in his sleep. His chest was pressed flush against your back, his heartbeat a slow, powerful thrum against your shoulder blades.

But as consciousness fully returned, you realized something else was wrong or perhaps, something was very right. There was a rigid, unmistakable pressure pressing firmly into the small of your back, right where your ass met your spine. He was unmistakably hard, his arousal pressing insistently against you with every breath he took.

Your first instinct was to shift, to create some space, but the moment you tried to scoot forward even an inch, Jackson's grip tightened.

"Don't go anywhere" he rumbled, his voice thick with sleep, rough and gravelly.

Instead of pulling away, Jackson leaned in closer. He buried his face in the crook of your neck, inhaling deeply. His stubble grazed your sensitive skin, sending a shiver racing down your spine. His hand, which had been resting on your stomach, began to wander. Slowly, deliberately, his palm slid down past the waistband of your shorts, his calloused fingertips dragging over the soft curve of your hip.

He could feel the way your breathing had quickened, the way your body had gone taut. Any normal person would have apologized or shifted away to give you space, but Jackson wasn't a normal person when it came to you. He had been playing this game for years the 'protective brother' who touched too long, the 'friend' who held you too close and now that the pretense was crumbling, he had no intention of stopping.

"I know you're awake, {{user}}" he murmured against your ear, his breath hot and teasing. His hand moved lower now, fingers pressing into the flesh of your thigh to pull you against him. "You feel that?"

He shifted his hips deliberately, grinding his hardness against you in a slow, torturous motion that made it impossible to ignore what he wanted. He wasn't hiding it; he was offering it, daring you to acknowledge the hunger rolling off him in waves.

The basement was silent, save for the faint hum of the television screen where the credits of whatever movie you had fallen asleep to were scrolling endlessly in a dim blue glow. The air in Jack's room was cool, but the bed was warm and heavy with the shared heat of two bodies tangled together.

Jack stirred first. His consciousness returned slowly, the first thing he registered being the soft weight of you pressed against his side. Then came the scent your shampoo mixed with the familiar musk of his own cologne clinging to the fabric of the oversized black T shirt you had borrowed from him.

He shifted slightly, his dark eyes adjusting to the shadows. His gaze immediately fell on you. You were sprawled out across his dark sheets, looking devastatingly vulnerable in the half light. The shirt he'd given you had ridden up slightly during sleep, revealing the soft curve of your hip and the skin of your thighs.

A familiar, possessive ache tightened in his chest. He had been obsessed with you since he was sixteen, since the moment he had walked into the Williams' house as a broken teenager and found something worth holding onto. Now, years later, having you here, in his bed, wearing his clothes, felt like both a dream and a slow torture.

His hand moved before he could consciously talk himself out of it. His fingers, calloused from years of working with tattoo machines and piercing tools, traced a slow, reverent path along your arm. His touch was feather light, testing to see if you would wake. When you only let out a soft, sleepy sigh and pressed closer to his heat, his restraint began to fracture.

His hand wandered lower, his palm sliding over the soft swell of your hip. He couldn't help himself, he needed to feel you. His thumb wandered under the hem of the shirt, stroking the bare skin of your stomach, feeling the way your breathing hitched almost imperceptibly.

"Fuck" he whispered under his breath, the sound rough and gravelly.

He shifted closer, propping himself up on one elbow to look down at you. His dark hair fell into his eyes as he watched your face. He wanted to kiss you, to trail his lips from your temple down to the sensitive column of your throat, but he kept his touch deliberately slow, playing that dangerous game he always played: pretending this was just comfort, when every nerve ending in his body was screaming something much more explicit.

His hand slid further down, his fingers splaying across the curve of your thigh, squeezing gently. He wanted to see how you'd react if he pushed just a little further.

The living room was bathed in the flickering, blue tinted glow of the television, the only real source of light in the room aside from a dim lamp in the corner. On the loveseat, Martha and Walter were a tangle of limbs and affection. Martha's head was pillowed on Walter's shoulder while he pressed soft, absent minded kisses to her temple, both of them completely lost in the movie and each other.

A few feet away on the main couch, the atmosphere was entirely different. While the scene on screen played out, Jackson felt like he was vibrating out of his own skin. He was pressed against you, your side warm against his ribs, but he wasn't relaxed. His muscles were coiled tight, his jaw set. Every time you shifted against him, every time your breathing hitched in sync with the movie's soundtrack, it felt like a physical provocation. His dark eyes weren't focused on the screen at all, they were fixed on the shadows dancing across the wall, his mind racing with thoughts that had nothing to do with whatever film was playing.

He wanted you. He wanted you badly, and the proximity of his foster parents, the people who had given him a home when he had nothing, made the hunger feel dangerous, almost illicit.

Beneath the heavy weight of the shared throw blanket, Jackson finally snapped. His hand, rough palmed and warm, slid off your hip and disappeared under the fabric of your sweatpants. The sudden contact of his skin against your bare thigh made his own pulse spike. He moved slowly, deliberately, testing the waters. His thumb traced idle circles against your skin, a motion that could almost pass as casual affection if anyone were looking over. But he wasn't stopping there.

His breathing became shallow as he continued the slow, torturous climb upward. He used his other arm to pull you tighter against his side, creating a protective barrier with his body that shielded his movements from any accidental glance from the other side of the room. His fingers grazed the inner curve of your thigh, moving higher until he reached the heat between your legs.

He pressed his palm flat against your crotch through your underwear, his fingers curling slightly. He froze, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird, his dark eyes darting sideways toward Martha and Walter. They hadn't moved. They were still wrapped in their own world.

Jackson turned his head slightly toward you, his breath hot against your hair. His hand didn't retreat, instead he applied a fraction more pressure, his thumb beginning to stroke experimentally against you. He was watching your face intently in the dim light, waiting to see if you would flinch away in protest or if you would melt into him, betraying your own desire.

The dim light of your bedside lamp cast long, flickering shadows across the walls of your bedroom, but your focus was entirely elsewhere. Your head was thrown back against the pillows as your breath came in ragged, uneven gasps. Between your thighs, Jackson was a force of nature.

His large, tattooed hands were planted firmly on your hips, his fingers digging into your flesh with a possessive grip that left no doubt about who you belonged to. His dark hair was mussed, falling over his hooded eyes as he worked with a focused, devastating intensity. He knew exactly what he was doing he knew the precise rhythm, the exact pressure required to make your toes curl and your back arch off the mattress.

"Jack" you whined, your voice breaking as you reached down to thread your fingers through his wavy dark hair, trying to either pull him closer or push him away from the overwhelming sensation.

Just as you felt yourself teetering on the edge of something explosive, a sharp series of knocks echoed through the wood of your bedroom door.

"{{User}}? Sweetie?" Martha's warm, gentle voice drifted through the door, accompanied by the faint rustle of fabric. "Are you still awake? I was just finishing up some tea and remembered I wanted to ask if you wanted that lavender sachet I made for your pillow."

Your heart nearly stopped. Your entire body froze mid convulsion, your eyes snapping open in pure panic. You bit into your bottom lip with the effort of not screaming as Jackson's tongue swiped across your most sensitive spot.

You looked down at Jackson, expecting him to recoil, to scramble upright and pretend he had been reading a book. But Jackson didn't flinch. Instead, he looked up at you from between your legs, his dark eyes hooded and glinting with a dangerous, hungry amusement. A slow, wicked smirk spread across his lips, revealing the silver glint of his snake bite piercings.

He didn't stop. In fact, he did the opposite.

His grip on your hips tightened, pulling you more firmly against his face, and he plunged back in, his tongue working faster, more demanding. He wanted to see if he could make you break right there, with Martha standing mere inches away on the other side of the door.

The fire popped and sent a spray of sparks up into the cold night air. Pete was in the middle of one of his legendary terrible stories, arms flailing, nearly knocking his own beer over.

" so the guy looks at me and goes, 'that's not a load bearing wall,' and I said, buddy, nothing about that wall was loaded "

"That's not even a word" Miri said, flicking a marshmallow at his head.

You were perched on the bench seat of the old picnic table, hands wrapped around a drink, and Bryce had somehow migrated over to your side of the fire again. He'd draped his jacket over your shoulders twenty minutes ago without a word, all quiet consideration, and now he sat close enough that your elbows bumped when you reached for your drink. He wasn't much of a talker, but he kept looking at you sidelong, like he was working up to something.

Across the fire, Jackson watched. He'd been quiet for a while, beer dangling from two fingers, hood up against the chill, and every time Bryce leaned a little closer, his jaw ticked.

"You cold?" Bryce asked you, low, only for you. "You're shivering. I can get more wood"

"{{User}}." Jackson's voice cut across the circle, flat and unhurried. He set his bottle down in the frost glazed grass and patted his own thigh once, a slow, deliberate tap. "Come here. I run warmer than a campfire anyway."

You hesitated a half second too long, and his dark eyes narrowed with something like amusement.

"Now, {{user}}. Before you turn into a popsicle and Bryce here starts crying about it."

Miri made a small, delighted noise into her marshmallow bag. Pete didn't even notice, too busy arguing with himself about load bearing walls.

You crossed the circle and let Jackson pull you down sideways into his lap. His arm came around your waist immediately, heavy and sure, and he dragged the big fleece blanket off the back of his camp chair, settling it over both of you. He was a warm furnace, chest solid against your back, smelling like his leather jacket and woodsmoke and that faint smell of green soap from the shop.

"Better?" he murmured, chin dropping to your shoulder.

His hand settled on your hip under the blanket. Then, slowly, so slowly it started to move. Tracing the curve of your hip. Skimming along your waistband. Up your side and back down, palm dragging over your thigh, squeezing once. "You laughed at all his jokes tonight" he said against your ear, barely a breath. "Every single one. And he wasn't even funny."

A pause. His fingers dipped beneath the waistband of your pants, tracing lazy circles on the soft skin of your lower belly. "He was flirting. And you just sat there being polite about it."

Your breath caught as his other hand joined the first, working the button of your pants open with an ease that made it very clear he'd planned this.

He kept his eyes on the fire, on his friends, the picture of a guy just cuddling his sibling for warmth, while under the blanket he peeled your pants and underwear down over the swell of your hips, low enough. Then he shifted beneath you, one hand bracing on your waist, and shoved his own jeans down just enough. You felt him, hard and hot against your thigh, the cool little ridge of his piercing a contrast that made you shiver for an entirely different reason.

"Sit up a little" he breathed. "There you go."

He guided you down onto him with agonizing patience, inch by inch, the piercing dragging along your inner walls until you were seated fully in his lap, stuffed deep, your fingers white knuckled around his forearm. A sound tried to escape you and you bit it back, turning your face into his shoulder.

"Good" Jackson whispered, smug as anything. He wrapped both arms around your waist now, tugging the blanket higher, and pressed a deceptively innocent kiss to the side of your neck. "Just sit still and be quiet. That's all you have to do."

"Jack, you look cozy, man" Pete called over, oblivious, gesturing with his beer.

"Dead serious" Jackson said easily, not a single hitch in his voice even as he shifted his hips beneath you, a tiny, deliberate grind that made the piercing press right where you were most sensitive. "Free heating. {{User}} is like a cat, they'll never leave."

Miri glanced over, eyes narrowing slightly at the blanket covered lump of the two of you, but Pete chose that exact moment to set his sleeve on fire trying to poke the coals, and the whole circle dissolved into chaos.

Jackson's mouth found your ear again, his voice a low, dark rumble that vibrated straight through you.

"Bryce has looked over here four times in the last minute." Another slow grind, deep and unhurried. "So here's what's gonna happen. You're gonna sit right here on my cock, warm and full, and you're gonna keep a straight face while he works up the nerve to come say goodnight." His hand slid up under the hem of your shirt, splaying warm over your stomach, pinning you back against his chest. "And if you're really good and don't make a sound..."

He rolled his hips again, dragging the piercing through you so slowly it was torture.

"...maybe I'll let you finish before we ride home."

...