🔥 Bonus Chapter: “Every Peak”

The Noise That Breaks You — Exclusive Bonus Content
by Jace Wilder

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Every Peak

Eli

The tattoo was three hours old and Eli couldn’t stop looking at it.

They were in bed — their bed, in their apartment, the one with the archway where the wall used to be and the cat on the armchair and the city doing its endless, gorgeous work of being loud outside the open window. Zane was on his back, left arm across Eli’s chest, the inner wrist facing up, the new ink catching the streetlight in a way that made it glow against his pale skin.

The flatline was gone. In its place: amplitude. Peaks and valleys, rises and falls, the irregular organic rhythm of a sound wave measured from life. From their life. From the specific, irreplicable frequency of two people who had found each other through a wall and learned to make noise together.

Eli traced it with his fingertip. Lightly — the skin was still raw, still tender, the edges pink with the irritation of fresh ink. He followed the line from Zane’s wrist toward the crook of his elbow, feeling the topography of it, the places where the wave rose and the places where it dipped.

“Does it hurt?” Eli asked.

“A little. In the good way.”

“There’s a good way?”

“There’s the kind of hurt that means something is healing. That kind.”

Eli looked at the wave. At the first peak — a sharp, sudden rise from the baseline, steep and high, the shape of something detonating.

“This one,” he said, pressing his fingertip to the peak. “What’s this?”

“It’s a sound wave. It doesn’t represent specific—”

“Humor me. What’s this peak?”

Zane was quiet for a moment. His body was warm against Eli’s, loose and heavy with the particular relaxation that came from a day that had contained a demolished wall and a tattoo and the kind of honest exhaustion that followed both.

“The first knock,” Zane said. “On your door. The night of the noise complaint. That’s the first peak.”

Eli’s finger moved to the valley after it — the dip, the descent, the wave falling back toward the baseline.

“And this?”

“The silence after you closed the door. When I went back to my apartment and put my headphones on and hated that the music had stopped.”

Eli brought Zane’s wrist to his mouth. Pressed his lips to the first peak. The skin was warm and slightly raised where the ink sat, and the taste was medical — the residue of the aftercare balm Zane had applied with the meticulous precision of a man who followed post-tattoo instructions the way he followed every instruction: exactly, completely, without deviation.

Zane’s breath caught. A small sound — the kind of sound that used to be the only sound, back when Zane’s volume was limited to involuntary microexpressions of physical response. But the catch was followed by something else: a sigh. Low, open, the sound of a man who had decided that breathing audibly was not a threat but a privilege.

Eli’s tongue found the second peak.

“What about this one?” he murmured against the ink. His tongue traced the rise — the steep ascent from valley to crest — and Zane’s arm tensed under his mouth.

“The laundry room,” Zane said. His voice had shifted. Lower. Rougher. The register that meant his body was paying attention to something his brain was trying to narrate over. “When I read the tattoo on your arm. When I—”

“When you looked at my skin like you were memorizing it.”

“I was memorizing it.”

“I know.” Eli kissed the peak. Open-mouthed. His tongue pressing flat against the ink, the heat of his mouth covering the raised line, and Zane’s arm twitched — a fine, involuntary jerk, the reflex of a body receiving sensation in a place it hadn’t been touched before. “I could feel you drawing me. In your head. While you read the words. Your eyes were on the text but your brain was already translating it into graphite.”

“You noticed that?”

“I notice everything about you. You know that.” Eli moved to the valley between the second and third peaks. The shallow dip. The breath between notes. He kissed it — softly, just lips, the lightest possible pressure. “What’s this valley?”

“The couch. The rain. When I fell asleep on your shoulder and you didn’t move.”

“My arm was numb for two days.”

“I know. You told me. Several times.”

“It was worth it. Every second.” He kissed the next peak. Higher than the first two — a sharp, dramatic spike in the wave, the visual equivalent of a shout. “And this?”

Zane’s free hand found the back of Eli’s head. Fingers in curls. Not pulling — holding. The way Zane held things he wasn’t ready to let go of.

“The first time you kissed me,” Zane said. “In the alley. After the song.”

Eli traced the peak with his tongue. Slow. The taste of new ink and clean skin and the faint, underneath-everything warmth that was just Zane — the specific chemistry of a body Eli had learned with his mouth and his hands and the devoted, obsessive attention of a man who treated his lover’s body the way he treated a song: as something to be studied, memorized, played until his hands knew the shape of it in the dark.

“You were shaking,” Eli said against the peak. “In the alley. After the kiss. Your whole body was shaking.”

“I was terrified.”

“Of what?”

“Of how loud it was. The wanting. I’d never wanted anything that loud before. Everything I’d ever wanted had been quiet — controllable. And then you played that song and looked at me and I wanted you at a volume I didn’t know I had.”

Eli moved down the wave. Past the alley peak, into the valley that followed — deeper than the others, a significant dip, the wave descending toward the baseline in a way that looked, on the skin, like falling.

“This valley,” Eli said. He didn’t kiss it. He pressed his forehead against it. Felt Zane’s pulse through the thin skin, the heartbeat that was faster now, faster than resting, the cardiac evidence of arousal and memory and the specific, charged intimacy of having someone narrate your love story onto your body with their tongue.

“The week I shut down,” Zane said. Quietly. Not with shame — with the frank, unflinching honesty they’d learned to practice, the honesty that hurt and healed simultaneously. “The headphones. The white noise. The kitchen—”

“I know.”

“That valley is the ten days I almost lost you because I was too scared to stay in the room.”

Eli kissed the valley. Gently. With the specific tenderness he reserved for the places where Zane was still healing — the childhood wound, the silence, the thirteen years of fortress-building that had kept him alive and kept him isolated and were now, slowly, being replaced by something stronger and more flexible. Not walls. Bridges.

“You came back,” Eli said against the skin. “That’s what the next peak is, isn’t it?”

The next peak was the highest on the wave. A dramatic, soaring spike that rose from the deepest valley like something erupting — not gradually but explosively, the steepest ascent on the entire tattoo.

“The knock,” Zane confirmed. “Three times. On your door. At 7 AM. After I read your letter.”

Eli’s tongue traced the rise. From the bottom of the valley to the top of the peak — the full arc, the complete journey from the lowest point to the highest, covered in a single, continuous, devastating motion of his mouth against Zane’s inner wrist. The skin there was thin, sensitive, threaded with veins and tendons and the intimate infrastructure of a body that was, right now, responding to Eli’s attention with unmistakable urgency.

Zane was hard. Eli could feel it — not through the wrist, through the shift in Zane’s breathing, through the tension in the hand gripping the back of his head, through the nearly imperceptible roll of Zane’s hips against the mattress that meant his body was seeking friction his mind hadn’t authorized.

“Eli,” Zane said. A warning. A request. The two syllables containing both.

“I’m not done.” Eli shifted. Moved down the bed, keeping Zane’s wrist in his hand, the tattooed arm extended, and resettled between Zane’s legs. He looked up — past the wrist, past the peaks and valleys, at Zane’s face. The green eyes were dark. The pupils blown wide. The jaw set — not with the defensive tension of the old days but with the held-breath tension of anticipation. Of knowing what was coming and wanting it and being willing to wait.

Eli pressed his mouth to the next peak. His tongue traced the crest, and his free hand slid down Zane’s body — chest, ribs, stomach, the flat plane of muscle that contracted under his palm. His hand found the waistband of Zane’s boxers and slipped underneath and wrapped around his cock and Zane’s hips bucked and the sound he made was —

Loud.

“What’s this peak?” Eli whispered against the tattoo. His hand stroked slowly. Root to tip. His thumb sweeping the head, gathering the slickness there. Zane’s cock throbbed in his grip — hot, hard, the specific, immediate response of a body that had been building toward this since the first touch of Eli’s mouth on the fresh ink.

“The — fuck—” Zane’s hips lifted. Pushed into Eli’s hand. His fingers tightened in Eli’s hair. “The first time. In your bed. When you told me to let you hear me.”

“And did you?” Eli stroked again. Slower. “Let me hear you?”

“You know I did.”

“I want to hear you now.” Eli’s tongue moved to the next valley — the small, shallow dip between the peak and the one that followed. “Tell me what this valley is while I touch you.”

“I can’t — think — when you’re—”

“Try.”

Zane’s jaw clenched. His body was taut, the lean muscles trembling, his cock leaking in Eli’s hand. The effort of narrating the tattoo while Eli stroked him was visible — a war between the cerebral and the physical, the mind trying to form words while the body tried to dissolve into sensation.

“The morning after,” Zane managed. His voice was wrecked. “At the kitchen table. When we said — no labels. But real.”

“Real,” Eli repeated. He kissed the valley. Pressed his tongue against the tender skin. And his hand tightened — a firm, full stroke that dragged a groan from Zane’s chest, low and unguarded and gloriously loud.

“And this peak?” Eli’s mouth moved. The next rise. The next crest.

“The — oh God — the gig. The front row. When I — when I stood in the noise and didn’t—”

“Didn’t run.”

“Didn’t run. Didn’t — fuck, Eli, your hand—”

Eli twisted on the upstroke. The technique that made Zane’s coherence collapse entirely — a rotation of his wrist, his palm slick with precome, the friction shifting from linear to spiraling. Zane’s back arched off the bed and his head slammed into the pillow and the sound he made was not a word. It was pure voice. Sustained, open, the kind of sound that traveled through walls and filled apartments.

He pulled Zane’s boxers down. Stripped them off. Settled between Zane’s legs and pressed his mouth to the tattoo one more time — the final peak, the last rise, the end of the wave.

“What’s this one?” he said. Against the ink. Against the peak that was the highest in the cluster near the crook of Zane’s elbow, the point where the sound wave reached its maximum amplitude.

Zane looked down at him. Through the dim light, through the haze of arousal, through the tears that had gathered at the corners of his eyes — not from sadness, from the accumulated emotional weight of having someone trace the story of your love onto your body with their mouth.

“You,” Zane said. “That peak is just you.”

Eli’s chest cracked open. Not broke — cracked. The way it always did with Zane, the way Zane’s words found the softest, most undefended place inside him and pressed until something gave way and what came through the gap was not pain but light.

He lowered his mouth. Not to the tattoo — to Zane’s cock. Took the head between his lips, tasted the salt, and sank down with the slow, deliberate, all-consuming attention that he brought to the only two things in his life that mattered: music and Zane.

Zane’s hand was still in his hair. Gripping now. The other hand — the tattooed hand, the one Eli had been kissing, the one with the story of their love inked into the skin — found the sheet and fisted it and the tendons of his wrist stood out against the new tattoo, the peaks and valleys stretching with the motion, the sound wave deforming under the pressure of pleasure.

Eli worked him with purpose. With the specific, confident intensity that came from months of learning this particular instrument. He knew the spots. The underside of the head. The ridge where the shaft met the glans. The pressure that made Zane’s hips lift and the suction that made Zane’s voice crack and the precise, devastating combination of tongue and hand and throat that reduced the most controlled man in Brooklyn to full-volume, neighbor-bothering noise.

He pulled off. Looked up. “Be loud.”

“I’m being loud.”

“Be louder. I want to hear every peak in that wave. I want to hear what amplitude sounds like when it’s you.”

Zane reached for him. Both hands on Eli’s face, pulling him up, and the kiss was salt and heat and the taste of Zane’s own precome on Eli’s tongue. Zane kissed him like he was trying to get inside him — deep, consuming, the kiss of a man who had spent his whole life being quiet and was now, irrevocably, done with it.

“Inside me,” Zane said. Against Eli’s mouth. The same command, the same certainty. “I want to feel you. Now.”

They moved together. The choreography of familiar lovers — the lube from the nightstand, the prep that was quicker now because Zane’s body knew Eli’s body and the opening was trust as much as it was physical, the condom rolled on with hands that were steady because they’d done this a hundred times and would do it a thousand more.

Eli pushed in and Zane’s mouth opened and the sound that came out was the tattoo made audible — a wave, rising from low to high, climbing through registers, the volume increasing with every inch until Eli was fully seated and Zane was making a sound that was sustained and open and loud enough to vibrate in Eli’s chest.

He moved. Not slowly. Zane didn’t want slow tonight — Eli could read it in his body, in the grip of his legs around Eli’s waist, in the dig of his nails into Eli’s shoulders, in the way his hips drove up to meet every thrust with a force that was not desperate but joyful.

“Every peak,” Eli gasped. Thrusting. Deep. The angle that hit the spot. “Every peak in that wave is a moment you chose noise over silence. Every peak is you being brave. Every peak is you saying—”

“I love you—”

“Yes—”

“I love you, I love you, I love — fuck, Eli, right there—”

Zane came with his tattooed wrist pressed against Eli’s cheek, the fresh ink against Eli’s skin, the peaks and valleys of the sound wave touching Eli’s face while Zane’s voice filled the room with the loudest, most sustained, most beautiful sound Eli had ever heard — his own name, said at a volume that made the windows hum, said with the full, uninhibited conviction of a man who was not quiet anymore and never would be again.

Eli followed him over. Buried deep, Zane’s hand on his face, Zane’s voice in his ears, Zane’s body clenching around him in rhythmic, devastating pulses. He came with his mouth pressed to the tattoo — the final peak, the highest amplitude, the one that Zane said was just you — and felt the wave on his lips and the pulse underneath it and the heartbeat that was not flat, would never be flat again.

After. They lay tangled. Breathing. The apartment quiet — the good quiet, the full quiet.

Eli held Zane’s wrist. Pressed his thumb against the final peak and felt the pulse underneath — steady now, decelerating, the slow return to baseline.

“You know what the best part is?” Eli said.

“What?”

“The wave doesn’t end. The tattoo does. But the wave doesn’t.” He traced the ink to where it stopped — the last valley, the final mark, the place where the needle had lifted and the skin began again, unmarked and waiting. “There are more peaks coming. More valleys. More moments we haven’t had yet. The wave just keeps going.”

Zane turned his wrist in Eli’s hand. Looked at the tattoo.

“Then I’ll need a bigger wrist,” he said.

Eli laughed. The sound filled the apartment. Filled the archway where the wall used to be. Filled the bedroom and the studio and the kitchen and every corner of the space they’d built together out of noise and silence and everything between.

The wave kept going.

It was exactly loud enough.

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The Noise That Breaks You is available now — a 103,000-word high-heat MM contemporary romance with neighbors to lovers, forced proximity, a grumpy/sunshine dynamic, and a guaranteed HEA.

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