Bonus Chapter: The First Morning
Snowed In with My Brother’s Best Friend
by Jace Wilder
This bonus chapter takes place the morning after Chapter 12. It was too explicit for retail — consider it a thank-you for being part of Jace’s reader list.
🔒 Sign up to unlock the full chapter:
The First Morning
Theo
The kitchen was a crime scene of privilege.
Theo had been in a lot of kitchens. He’d gutted and rebuilt kitchens — ripped out cabinets, rewired outlets, installed countertops he’d cut with his own hands. He understood kitchens at a molecular level. And this kitchen — Nolan’s kitchen, in Nolan’s penthouse, forty-two floors above Park Avenue — was the most beautiful, most useless kitchen he had ever stood in.
The range was a Wolf. Six burners, dual ovens, a griddle plate that probably cost more than Theo’s first truck. It had never been used. He could tell by the factory sheen on the grates, the pristine condition of the burner caps, the absence of any splatter or seasoning on any surface within a three-foot radius. This stove was a sculpture. A monument to culinary potential, untouched by actual food.
The refrigerator contained: half a bottle of Sancerre, a container of olives, three bottles of sparkling water, and a single lemon that had seen better days.
“You live like a serial killer,” Theo muttered, opening the freezer. Frozen meals. Stacked with architectural precision. Of course.
He’d woken at six — habit, hard-wired, the internal clock of a man who’d spent his adult life on mountain time. The penthouse was still dark, the winter sun not yet clearing the Manhattan skyline. Nolan was still asleep in the bedroom, buried under the grandmother’s quilt, one arm extended across the mattress into the space Theo’s body had occupied, his hand curled loosely around nothing.
Theo had stood in the doorway and watched him sleep for two full minutes before his chest got too tight and he had to leave the room.
He found eggs in the back of the fridge — miraculously within date — and butter, and bread that was artisanal enough to be acceptable. He cooked. Scrambled eggs, butter-toasted bread, coffee from a machine so complicated it should have required a pilot’s license. He figured it out through sheer mechanical stubbornness and the understanding that all machines, no matter how pretentious, ultimately just wanted hot water pushed through ground beans.
The coffee was, admittedly, incredible.
He was plating the eggs when he heard it — the soft pad of bare feet on hardwood. He turned, spatula in hand, and his brain short-circuited so thoroughly that the spatula hit the floor.
Nolan was standing in the kitchen doorway wearing Theo’s flannel.
Just the flannel.
It hung to mid-thigh on him — too wide in the shoulders, too long in the sleeves, the hem brushing his bare legs at the exact point where the eye wanted to travel upward. The buttons were done up wrong — off by one, so the collar sat crooked, exposing the line of his collarbone and the fading mark Theo had left on his throat two nights ago. His hair was wrecked. His eyes were soft with sleep. His feet were bare on the cold hardwood and he didn’t seem to notice.
He looked like something out of a fantasy Theo hadn’t dared to have — the specific, domestic fantasy of a man wearing your clothes in a kitchen that smelled like coffee, looking at you like you were the only good thing about being awake.
“You’re cooking,” Nolan said. His voice was rough. Morning-raw. The clipped precision hadn’t engaged yet — he was still soft, still unguarded, still the version of himself that only existed in the first few minutes after waking, before the armor went on.
“Someone has to feed you. Your fridge is a war crime.”
“I have olives.”
“Olives are not food. Olives are a garnish. Come here.”
Nolan came. Barefoot across the cold floor, sleeves trailing past his fingertips, looking like something between a fashion editorial and a surrender. He stopped in front of Theo and tipped his face up — the automatic gesture, the muscle memory of two weeks of being kissed by a taller man — and Theo cupped his jaw and kissed him. Slow. Coffee-warm. The morning version of every kiss they’d had: unhurried, proprietary, the kiss of a man who was no longer borrowing time.
“You’re wearing my shirt,” Theo said against his mouth.
“It was on the floor.”
“You own approximately forty shirts. All of them tailored. All of them hanging in chromatic order in your closet.”
“And yet.” Nolan’s hand found Theo’s chest — bare, because Theo had come to the kitchen in sweatpants and nothing else, because he was in his own home now (their home, God, their home) and he didn’t need to be dressed to make eggs. Nolan’s palm settled over his heartbeat. The same spot. Their spot. “This one was closer.”
“Bullshit. It was on the bedroom floor. Your closet is four feet from the bed. The flannel was further away.”
Nolan looked up at him. The gray-green eyes were clear. Awake now. Aware. And underneath the softness was something Theo recognized — the particular heat that meant Nolan’s brain had gone from sleep to want without stopping at any of the intermediate stations.
“It smelled like you,” Nolan said.
Theo’s hand tightened on his jaw.
“Say that again.”
“It smelled like you, and I wanted to be inside something that smelled like you, and if you don’t stop looking at me like that, the eggs are going to get cold.”
“Fuck the eggs.”
Theo lifted him onto the counter.
One motion — hands on his waist, a flex of arms, and Nolan was sitting on the marble island with his bare legs dangling and the flannel riding up his thighs and a look on his face that was equal parts surprise and finally. The marble was cold under him — Theo saw the flinch, the gooseflesh racing up his legs — and he stepped between Nolan’s thighs and gripped them, pulling him to the edge of the counter until their bodies were flush.
The flannel had ridden up. Nolan was hard underneath it — Theo could feel the press of him against his own stomach through the thin cotton — and the knowledge that Nolan had walked into this kitchen wearing nothing but Theo’s shirt and an erection was doing something to Theo’s bloodstream that should have required medical supervision.
“You planned this,” Theo said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Nolan’s legs wrapped around Theo’s waist. His ankles locked behind Theo’s back. The position pulled them closer — Nolan’s cock pressed against Theo’s abs, Theo’s pressed against the counter’s edge — and the friction made both of them groan. “I simply woke up and put on the nearest available garment.”
“The nearest available garment that happens to be mine, with nothing underneath.”
“An oversight.”
“Nolan Calloway has never had an oversight in his life.”
“Then perhaps it was a strategic decision.” Nolan’s arms came up around Theo’s neck. His fingers slid into Theo’s hair — the gesture that had become second nature, the way Nolan anchored himself when the wanting got too big for his body to contain. “Perhaps I decided that the first morning in our apartment should begin with you picking me up and putting me on a surface and doing something about the fact that I’ve been thinking about your hands since approximately four AM.”
“Four AM.”
“I woke up. You were asleep. Your arm was around me and your hand was on my stomach and I could feel you — against my back, hard, even in your sleep—” His breath caught. “And I lay there for two hours wanting to wake you and not waking you because you looked peaceful and I’ve never seen you look peaceful in your sleep before and I didn’t want to take that from you.”
Theo stared at him. This man. This impossible, wound-tight, devastating man who had lain awake for two hours in arousal because he didn’t want to disturb Theo’s sleep. Who had then gotten up, put on Theo’s flannel with nothing underneath, and walked into the kitchen looking like a wet dream wrapped in plaid.
“You,” Theo said, “are the most infuriating person I have ever loved.”
“And you’re going to do something about it?”
“I’m going to do several things about it. Starting now.”
He kissed Nolan with the specific, purposeful intensity of a man who had a plan. His hands went to the flannel — his flannel, on Nolan’s body, a combination that he was going to have feelings about for the rest of his life — and unbuttoned it. Slowly. One button at a time. Revealing the lean chest, the flat stomach, the trail of dark hair, the rigid length of Nolan’s cock pressed against his own abdomen.
He left the shirt on. Pushed it open but didn’t remove it. The flannel hung from Nolan’s shoulders like a frame, and the image — Nolan, naked and hard, wearing nothing but Theo’s open shirt on a marble counter in a Manhattan penthouse — was going to live in Theo’s memory until the day he died.
“Don’t move your hands,” Theo said. The command voice. The one that made Nolan’s pupils expand and his spine go liquid.
Nolan’s hands went to the counter’s edge. Gripped. Stayed.
“Good boy.”
The shudder that went through Nolan was visible from head to feet. His cock twitched against his stomach, a bead of moisture gathering at the tip, and the sound he made — that small, helpless sound that Theo had first heard in a dark Vermont bedroom and had been addicted to ever since — filled the kitchen like music.
Theo dropped to his knees.
The marble floor was hard and cold and he didn’t care. He gripped Nolan’s thighs — spread them wider, pulled him to the very edge of the counter — and looked up at the man he loved from below. Nolan’s chest was heaving. His knuckles were white on the counter’s edge. His cock was inches from Theo’s mouth, hard and flushed and leaking, and the expression on his face was the one Theo lived for: desperate, surrendered, trusting.
“I’m going to take my time,” Theo said. “And you’re going to let me. And when I decide you’ve earned it, I’m going to bend you over this counter and fuck you until the only word in your vocabulary is my name.”
Nolan’s entire body trembled. “Theo—”
“That’s the one.”
He took Nolan into his mouth. Slow. Savoring. The taste of him — salt and skin and the specific, intimate flavour that was purely Nolan — flooded Theo’s senses. He sucked him deep, tongue flat against the underside, and the sound Nolan made echoed off the kitchen’s hard surfaces, amplified by marble and glass into something that filled the entire apartment.
“Oh — God — Theo —”
Theo worked him with the patience of a man who had been given an entire morning and intended to use it. He varied the rhythm — fast, then slow, then agonisingly slow, his hand working the base in counterpoint to his mouth, his other hand gripping Nolan’s thigh hard enough to bruise. He pulled off. Licked a slow stripe from root to tip. Circled the head with his tongue until Nolan was shaking, his heels drumming against the cabinet doors, his head thrown back and his mouth open on sounds that were barely human.
“You’re so hard,” Theo murmured against the head. His breath was hot on sensitive skin and he watched Nolan’s cock pulse at the contact. “You’ve been hard since four AM. That’s four hours, Nolan. Four hours of wanting. I think we can do something about that.”
“Please — I need—”
“What do you need?”
“You. Inside me. Now. Theo, please.”
Theo stood. Kissed him — hard, deep, letting Nolan taste himself on Theo’s tongue. Then he turned Nolan around.
One hand on his hip, one on his shoulder, spinning him on the marble and bending him forward until Nolan’s chest met the cold countertop and his hands braced flat against the surface and the flannel fell open around him like wings. The position — bent over the kitchen island, bare from the waist down, the shirt hanging off his shoulders — was obscene. Pornographic. And the sound Nolan made when his chest hit the cold marble was a gasp that slid into a moan that slid into Theo’s name.
Lube. Theo had left some in the kitchen drawer last night — optimistic, maybe; prophetic, definitely. He slicked his fingers and found Nolan’s entrance and pressed inside with a directness that made Nolan cry out and push back against his hand.
“Still,” Theo said. The command was automatic. The response — Nolan’s body locking, his hips stilling, his breathing going ragged with the effort of obedience — was Pavlovian. Two weeks of conditioning. Two weeks of learning that Theo’s voice meant safety and surrender and the specific, annihilating pleasure of not having to decide.
He worked two fingers inside. Stretched him. Found the spot and pressed, and Nolan’s forehead hit the marble with a thud and his hands scrabbled for purchase on the smooth surface and the moan that came out of him was wrecked.
“More — Theo — I can take it — more —”
Three fingers. The stretch made Nolan’s back arch, the flannel sliding off one shoulder, and Theo leaned forward and pressed his mouth to the exposed skin — kissing, then biting, hard enough to mark, because this body was his and he wanted evidence.
“Ready?” Theo asked. Already pushing his sweatpants down. Already rolling the condom on. Already positioning himself behind Nolan with a need that was beyond patience, beyond composure, beyond anything except the primal, consuming drive to be inside this man.
“I was ready at four AM,” Nolan gritted. “If you don’t — oh fuck —”
Theo pushed in. One long, steady thrust. No teasing, no incremental entry. Just the full, devastating slide of filling Nolan completely, and the sound that tore out of both of them — Nolan’s broken cry and Theo’s guttural groan — rang through the kitchen and rebounded off the penthouse windows and was, Theo suspected, audible in the apartment next door.
He didn’t care.
He fucked Nolan on the kitchen counter with the specific, focused intensity of a man who had spent seven years wanting and two weeks learning and the rest of his life planning to do exactly this — exactly this, in their kitchen, on their first morning, with Nolan wearing his shirt and crying out his name and pushing back against every thrust with the desperate, graceless hunger of a man who had finally, permanently stopped performing.
He gripped the back of Nolan’s neck. Pressed him flat against the marble. Held him there — pinned, controlled, the full weight of command concentrated in his palm — and drove into him with a rhythm that was fast and hard and merciless.
“You’re mine,” Theo said. Rough. Ragged. The composure gone, the golden retriever gone, just the raw, animal truth of a man inside the person he loved. “In this kitchen. In this apartment. In every room we’ll ever share. You’re mine, Nolan.”
“Yours — fuck — yours —”
“Come for me. Right now. Let the neighbors hear.”
Nolan came with a scream. There was no other word for it — a sound that was torn from the deepest part of him, his body clenching around Theo’s cock in rhythmic, devastating pulses, his hands flat on the marble and his face pressed against the cold surface and his whole being convulsing with a release that was four hours of wanting compressed into five seconds of oblivion.
Theo followed him over. Buried himself deep and came with Nolan’s name on his lips and his hand on the back of Nolan’s neck and the absolute, bone-deep certainty that this — this kitchen, this man, this morning — was the beginning of everything.
* * *
The eggs were cold.
Theo made new ones. Nolan sat on the counter — still in the flannel, buttons done up correctly this time, though Theo had opinions about that — and drank coffee and watched him cook with the particular expression of a man who had just been thoroughly fucked on a kitchen island and was already thinking about doing it again.
“We need groceries,” Theo said, sliding a plate across the counter.
“We need furniture. And art. And something alive — a plant, maybe.”
“You want to keep a plant alive?”
“I’ve kept a private equity firm alive for three years. I think I can manage a fern.”
“We’ll start with something hardy. A pothos, maybe. Hard to kill.”
“Are you comparing my emotional development to a houseplant?”
“I’m saying we both need things that are hard to kill.” Theo rounded the island, stepped between Nolan’s legs again, and kissed him. Coffee and eggs and morning and home. “I’ll build you a shelf for it. Something that actually has personality. Not that IKEA-looking thing in the living room.”
“That ‘IKEA-looking thing’ is a Knoll.”
“It’s sad. I’m going to build you something real.”
Nolan set his coffee down. Put both hands on Theo’s face. The gesture that had become theirs — the cupping, the holding, the way Nolan’s pianist fingers spanned Theo’s jaw like they’d been measured for it.
“Build me everything,” Nolan said. Quiet. Serious. The gray-green eyes wide open and unguarded in the morning light. “I don’t care what it looks like. I don’t care if it clashes with the Knoll. Build me a shelf and a table and a life that has sawdust on the floor and your boots by the door and the sound of someone cooking in the kitchen at six AM.”
Theo’s throat closed. He swallowed. Pressed his forehead against Nolan’s.
“Deal,” he said.
They ate breakfast on the counter. Side by side, legs swinging, the Manhattan skyline bright and cold outside the windows. The grandmother’s quilt was visible through the bedroom door. The duffel bag was still in the living room. The boots were still by the front door.
Nolan leaned his head against Theo’s shoulder, and Theo put his arm around him, and the kitchen — the beautiful, useless, overpriced kitchen that had never been cooked in — smelled like scrambled eggs and coffee and the particular, irreplaceable scent of a home that was finally, finally being lived in.
Real, Theo thought.
This is real.
Thank you for reading!
Loved Nolan and Theo? Browse more Jace Wilder books.