🔥 Bonus Chapter: Home Practice

An EXCLUSIVE bonus scene from Sweat, Stretch, Submit by Jace Wilder

This scene takes place the morning of the epilogue. The full, explicit version of what happened after the terrible sun salutation. Arjun’s POV.

Arjun woke to the sound of his name being moaned into a pillow.

Not by Dan — by himself. He was face-down in the sheets, one hand shoved under his stomach, the remnants of a dream dissolving like steam: Dan’s hands on his hips, Dan’s mouth on his spine, Dan’s voice low and rough in his ear saying hold still, I’m not done with you.

He rolled over. Blinked at the ceiling. Morning light spilled through the curtains of their bedroom — their bedroom, the phrase still new enough to make something warm bloom in his chest — and the space beside him was empty. The sheets were thrown back. The pillow still held the dent of Dan’s head.

The shower was running.

Arjun lay there for a moment and let the dream finish dissolving. His cock was half-hard against his thigh, residual, insistent, the body’s honest vote on the quality of the dream. He pressed the heel of his hand against it — not stroking, just acknowledging — and exhaled. Then he got up, pulled on joggers, and padded barefoot to the bathroom.

The door was open. Steam billowed. Through the fogged glass of the shower, Dan was a blur of broad shoulders and tilted head, water sluicing down his back. He was humming something — off-key, unrecognizable, the hum of a man who didn’t know he was being watched.

Arjun leaned against the doorframe and watched. Eight months of this body under his hands and he still found new things — the way the muscles in Dan’s back shifted when he reached for the shampoo, the dimples at the base of his spine, the line of dark hair that traced from his navel downward and disappeared into the steam. The ass that Dan had once clenched like a fist every time Arjun adjusted his hips in class and that now, in the privacy of their shower, was just — there. Relaxed. A body at ease in its own skin, which was the most beautiful thing Arjun had ever achieved as a teacher or a lover.

“You’re staring,” Dan said, without turning around.

“Professional assessment.”

“Assess faster or get in.”

Arjun stripped off his joggers — the only thing he’d put on — and stepped into the shower.

The water hit his chest like a warm hand and Dan turned. Wet. Flushed. His hair slicked back from his forehead, his jaw clean-shaven, his eyes already dark with the particular intent that Arjun had learned to read like a weather forecast. Clear skies, rising temperature, likelihood of precipitation: certain.

Dan’s gaze dropped. Tracked down Arjun’s chest, his stomach, lower. His mouth curved. “Someone had a good dream.”

“Someone left me alone in bed. My subconscious filed a complaint.”

“I’m here now.” Dan stepped into him. Chest to chest, hip to hip, the full length of their bodies aligned under the spray, the water running between them in warm channels. His cock was already hard — pressing against Arjun’s hip bone with a frank, unashamed insistence. Eight months ago this man had gotten an erection during a prone spinal twist and nearly died of shame. Now he pressed it into Arjun’s body like it belonged there. Because it did.

“Good morning,” Dan said, and kissed him.

The kiss was warm and wet and tasted like water and toothpaste and Dan, and Arjun’s back hit the tile wall and the cold of it against his shoulder blades was a sharp counterpoint to the heat of Dan’s mouth, Dan’s chest, Dan’s hands sliding down Arjun’s sides and gripping his hips with a confidence that still made Arjun’s stomach flip.

“I had a dream,” Dan murmured against his mouth. His hands were moving — one on Arjun’s hip, the other trailing down his stomach, fingers tracing the line of hair below his navel with a deliberateness that was learned, practiced, and devastatingly effective. “About you. Specifically about your — about what I want to do to you this morning.”

“Tell me.”

“I’d rather show you.”

Dan dropped to his knees.

The tile was slick under him and the water beat against his shoulders and Arjun looked down at the man kneeling at his feet — this man, this stubborn, brilliant, formerly broken man who had walked into his studio eight months ago wound so tight he could barely breathe and who was now on his knees in their shared shower with water streaming down his face and his hands on Arjun’s hips and a look of focused, earnest devotion that made Arjun’s cock stiffen to full hardness so fast it ached.

“Color?” Dan asked, looking up through the water. Wet. Grinning. Using Arjun’s own system with a delivery so dry it bordered on flirtation.

“Extremely green.”

Dan leaned forward and pressed his mouth to the crease of Arjun’s hip. An open-mouthed kiss, tongue dragging along the tendon, and Arjun’s hips jerked forward involuntarily. Dan’s hands held him against the wall — firm, steady, the grip of a man who had spent eight months learning how to hold a body and was now deploying that knowledge with intent.

He kissed the other hip. Then the inside of Arjun’s thigh, high, where the skin was thin and sensitive. Then the base of Arjun’s cock — a slow, warm press of lips that made Arjun’s hand slam against the tile.

“Dan —”

“Patience,” Dan said against his skin. “I learned from the best.”

Then his mouth closed over the head of Arjun’s cock and Arjun’s head fell back against the tile and the groan that came out of him was not controlled. Was not measured. Was the raw, unfiltered sound of a man whose composure was being dismantled by someone who knew exactly where all the bolts were.

Dan wasn’t gentle about it. He had learned — had been taught, had practiced, had brought to this act the same relentless, type-A determination he brought to everything — and what he’d lacked in finesse eight months ago he’d replaced with something better: attention. He listened to Arjun’s body the way Arjun had taught him to listen — reading the hitched breath, the tightened thigh, the involuntary thrust — and adjusted. Deeper when Arjun’s hand gripped his hair. Slower when Arjun’s breathing went ragged. The flat of his tongue pressed firm against the underside on each upstroke, and the suction — tight, wet, relentless — was making Arjun’s vision blur.

“God.” Arjun’s hand was in Dan’s hair, gripping, the wet strands sliding between his fingers. “Your mouth — Dan, your fucking mouth —”

Dan hummed. The vibration traveled the length of Arjun’s cock and radiated up his spine and Arjun’s hips bucked hard enough that Dan had to brace both hands against the wall on either side of Arjun’s thighs to keep his balance. He pulled back — a slow, devastating slide, lips tight, tongue dragging — until only the head was in his mouth. Held there. Looked up at Arjun through the water and the steam with eyes that were dark and focused and completely, unmistakably in control.

Then he took Arjun all the way to the root.

Arjun swore in Hindi. His knees buckled. Dan’s throat worked around him — tight, hot, the muscles constricting in a rhythm that was intentional, practiced, learned — and Arjun gripped the shower bar with one hand and Dan’s shoulder with the other and held on while the man he loved took him apart from his knees on a wet tile floor.

Dan pulled off with a gasp. His lips were swollen, his chin was wet, and his cock was straining between his thighs, untouched and leaking. He looked up at Arjun with an expression that was half question, half challenge.

“I want you to fuck me,” Dan said. Water ran down his face. His voice was rough, scraped, the voice of a man who’d just had a cock in his throat and was asking for more. “In bed. Right now. Slow, the way you do it when you’re trying to ruin me.”

“I’m never trying to ruin you.”

“And yet.”

Arjun turned off the water. They didn’t bother drying — just stumbled to the bedroom, dripping, leaving wet footprints on the hardwood, laughing when Dan tripped on the bathmat and Arjun caught him by the arm and Dan used the momentum to pull Arjun against him and kiss him again, hard, against the bathroom doorframe.

“Bed,” Arjun said against his mouth.

“Bed,” Dan agreed, and they fell onto it together.

The good mattress. The one they’d chosen together on a Saturday morning that had involved three stores and a genuine argument about cushion firmness and a compromise that both of them privately admitted was better than either of their original preferences. The sheets were Dan’s — gray, high-thread-count, bought during the apartment renovation — and they were about to be destroyed.

Dan rolled onto his back and pulled Arjun on top of him. Wet skin on wet skin, the friction of water and body heat. Dan’s legs opened around Arjun’s hips with the easy, unguarded willingness that still undid Arjun every single time — this man who had once controlled every encounter, who had topped exclusively for a decade, who had used sex the way he used litigation (efficiently, strategically, with minimum vulnerability and maximum performance) — opening his body without hesitation, without armor, without a single flinch.

The flinch was gone. Had been gone for months. Arjun noticed its absence every time like noticing a scar that had finally faded: proof that something had healed.

“How do you want it?” Arjun asked, settling between Dan’s thighs. Their cocks pressed together — both hard, both slick — and Dan’s hips rolled upward in a slow, grinding arc that sent a shock through Arjun’s entire body.

“Like you teach,” Dan said. His eyes were dark and steady. His hands were on Arjun’s lower back, fingertips pressing in, pulling him closer. “Slow. Deliberate. All the way. I want to feel every inch of you and I want it to take long enough that I forget my own name.”

Arjun kissed him. Deep, slow, the kiss that said I heard you and I’ve got you and this is going to take as long as I decide it takes. Dan melted underneath him — the familiar surrender, the body going pliant, the jaw softening under Arjun’s thumb.

He reached for the nightstand. Lube — always there, placed with the same intentionality Arjun brought to setting out props before a session. He slicked his fingers, warming the lube between them, and reached down between Dan’s legs.

The first finger pressed in and Dan’s breath caught — not in resistance but in welcome, the body recognizing the touch and opening toward it. His face did the thing Arjun loved — the brief flutter of eyelids, the parting of lips, the visible moment of yes traveling from his brain to his body. Eight months ago this part took ten minutes of careful work and constant reassurance. Now it took a breath and a choice.

“Breathe.”

“I know.” Dan exhaled. Smiled — the crooked one, the real one. “I know how to breathe, Arjun. You’ve been teaching me for eight months.”

“And you’re still holding your jaw.”

Dan’s jaw unclenched. The last holdout, the final fortress — the masseter always the last to let go. His body softened around Arjun’s finger, and Arjun curled it forward, finding the spot, pressing, and Dan’s hips came off the mattress and the sound he made — low, guttural, ripped from somewhere deep — filled the bedroom like an instrument finding its register.

“Fuck,” Dan gasped. His hands fisted in the sheets. “Right there — God, Arjun —”

Arjun added a second finger. Worked them in tandem — slow, steady, the press-and-curl that made Dan’s cock jump against his stomach and his thighs shake and his breathing dissolve into the ragged, open-mouthed panting that Arjun knew meant more, deeper, don’t stop. He watched Dan’s face — the closed eyes, the bitten lip, the flush that spread from his chest to his throat to his jaw — and felt the same thing he always felt when Dan surrendered: a fierce, protective, consuming love that was indistinguishable from desire.

He added a third finger. Dan’s back arched. His cock was leaking steadily now, a slick trail pooling in the hollow of his stomach, catching the morning light. His hands left the sheets and found Arjun’s arms — gripping, holding on, the way he held the yoga strap during their Saturday sessions — and his eyes opened.

“Now,” Dan said. Steady. Certain. The voice of a man asking for what he wanted without apology or shame. “I’m ready. I want you inside me.”

Arjun withdrew his fingers. Rolled on a condom with hands that were not quite steady — the anticipation, even after eight months, still making his fingers clumsy. Slicked himself. Lined up.

“Inhale,” Arjun said. The cue. The ritual. The shared language that belonged to them alone.

Dan inhaled.

“Exhale, and let me in.”

Dan exhaled, and Arjun pressed forward.

Slow. One long, continuous, unbroken slide — Dan’s body opening around him inch by inch, the heat and the tightness and the trust of it, the absolute, unconditional willingness of a body that had learned to receive. Arjun felt every millimeter — the grip, the give, the moment Dan’s body stopped accommodating and started wanting, the muscles pulling him deeper. He bottomed out and held.

Both of them still. Breathing. The morning light falling across the bed in long golden stripes, illuminating the place where their bodies joined. Dan’s face was open, raw, beautiful — the expression of a man who was full in every sense of the word and wasn’t hiding from any of it.

“Move,” Dan whispered. His hands were on Arjun’s back, fingertips pressing into the muscle, holding on. “I want to feel all of you. Every stroke. Don’t hold back.”

Arjun moved.

Slow at first — the deep, rolling rhythm they’d found over months of practice, each stroke a full withdrawal and a full return, the pace set by breath and sustained by eye contact. Dan’s eyes on his. Open. Present. Not floating, not escaping, not checking out. Here, in the bed they shared, in the apartment they’d filled with plants and books and a blue couch and a jasmine vine, in the specific, unrepeatable present tense of a Saturday morning in a life they’d built together.

Arjun pulled nearly all the way out — until just the head remained inside — and pressed back in. Slow. Full. Letting Dan feel the entire length of him, the stretch and the fill, the body being asked to open and choosing to. Dan’s legs tightened around Arjun’s waist. His heels dug into the small of Arjun’s back, pulling him deeper, and the groan Dan gave was long and low and continuous, a sound that vibrated in Arjun’s chest.

“God, you feel —” Dan’s voice broke. “Every time. Every time it feels like the first time. How is that —”

“Because you’re present,” Arjun said, and shifted his angle, and Dan cried out — sharp, surprised, his back arching hard as Arjun found the spot and stroked across it with deliberate, unhurried precision.

“There — fuck — there —”

Arjun held the angle. Each thrust a measured, devastating press against the bundle of nerves that made Dan’s cock pulse against his stomach and his hands claw at Arjun’s back and his voice dissolve into the sounds Arjun had been collecting for eight months — the gasps, the groans, the whispered obscenities, the broken repetitions of Arjun’s name that sounded less like language and more like prayer.

The pace built. Not because Arjun chose it but because their bodies chose it together — Dan’s hips rising to meet each thrust, his rhythm syncing with Arjun’s, the mutual drive of two bodies that had spent months learning each other’s frequency and now resonated without effort. Dan’s hand found Arjun’s face. Cupped his jaw. Thumb on his cheekbone — the gesture that had become theirs, the mirrored version of every time Arjun had cupped Dan’s jaw in the studio and on the mat and in the aftermath of everything.

“I love you,” Dan said. His voice was steady and his eyes were clear and his body was wrapped around Arjun’s and the words were not a confession or a surrender or a thing dragged out of him by intensity. They were a fact. Spoken in the morning light by a man who had learned to say them the way he’d learned to breathe — deliberately, fully, without holding back.

“I love you,” Arjun said back. And thrust deeper. And watched Dan’s eyes go wide and wet and the sound Dan made was the sound from the very first session — involuntary, deep, pulled from the vault that Arjun had spent months prying open with patience and hands and voice. The vault was open. The vault had been open for a long time. And what lived inside it now was not grief or panic or twenty years of holding. It was this. Just this. The morning and the light and the man.

Arjun felt the orgasm building. Not from his hips — from his chest. From the place where Dan’s hand was on his face and Dan’s body was around his cock and the love between them was so present, so physical, so real that it registered as a pressure in his sternum that had nothing to do with exertion and everything to do with the unbearable, exhilarating fullness of being known.

“Come with me,” Arjun breathed. His hand found Dan’s cock — hard, straining, slick with precome — and wrapped around it and stroked in time with his thrusts. Fast now. Both of them past the point of slow, past the point of deliberate, riding the edge together.

Dan’s back arched. His jaw clenched and then unclenched — the last muscle to let go, the old habit, released one final time — and his hand on Arjun’s jaw tightened. His eyes stayed open. Both of them, eyes open, watching each other come apart in the golden morning light of a bedroom they shared.

Dan came first. A shuddering, gasping, full-body release — his cock pulsing in Arjun’s fist, hot and wet between their stomachs, his body clenching around Arjun in rhythmic, devastating contractions that pulled Arjun over the edge two thrusts later. Arjun buried himself deep and came with Dan’s name in his mouth and Dan’s hand on his face and the morning pouring through the curtains like something that would last forever.

They lay tangled. Breathing. The sheets were, as predicted, destroyed — soaked with shower water and sweat and come, twisted around their legs like evidence of a crime scene neither of them was sorry about.

Arjun’s face was pressed into Dan’s chest. He could hear the heartbeat underneath — slowing, settling, the rhythm of a nervous system coming down from altitude. Dan’s arms were around him, heavy and warm, the hold of a man who had nowhere to be and was choosing to be here.

“We have to change the sheets,” Arjun said, after a while.

“Later.”

“They’re soaked. From the shower and from — other things.”

“Other things,” Dan repeated, and Arjun could hear the grin in his voice. “Very clinical. Very professional. You sound like you’re writing an incident report.”

“Incident: Patient presented with acute post-coital sheet saturation. Cause: Failure to towel off before engaging in —”

Dan kissed the top of his head. “Stop.”

“— vigorous horizontal realignment —”

“Stop.” Dan was laughing now — the full, chest-deep laugh that Arjun had spent months earning and now received daily, freely, like sunlight. “Later. Sheets later. You, here, now.”

Dan’s arms tightened. His mouth was against Arjun’s hair. “I’m staying right here.”

Arjun smiled into his chest. Closed his eyes. Let himself be held by the man who had learned to hold — gently, fiercely, without conditions, without a timer, without a deadline, without a case file waiting on the coffee table.

“Saturday class in two hours,” Arjun murmured.

“I know. I’ll be in the back row.”

“You’re always in the back row.”

“It’s where I started. It’s where I belong.”

Arjun lifted his head. Looked at Dan — flushed, satisfied, hair a wreck, come drying on his stomach, eyes warm and steady and full of a peace that had been earned through sweat and stretching and the long, patient, terrifying practice of letting go.

“You belong wherever you want to be,” Arjun said.

Dan kissed his forehead. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”

They stayed in bed for forty-seven more minutes. Made coffee. Changed the sheets. Arjun did his morning practice in the living room while Dan sat on the couch and pretended to read the news and actually watched Arjun’s body move through sun salutations with an expression that suggested the news was losing badly.

And then they went downstairs to the studio, where Arjun taught and Dan sat in the back row and breathed, and the morning held, and the practice continued, the way it always would — one breath at a time, together.

Thank you for reading the bonus chapter! If you haven’t read the full novel yet, grab it now.

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