9. Tate
TATE
ONE WEEK LATER
I don’t know how it happened, but I think I am living with Vince.
I haven’t been home in over a week. After he got me off the first time a week ago, I was legless and limp.
Like a teenager—which I guess I still am, but seriously, I mean like a tween, not an almost twenty year old—I came then passed out on the couch.
I’d woke up on the couch in Vince's lounge room, feeling like he sucked all of the energy out of my body out through my cock. I've never had a blow job like that in my life. Never felt so wanted, so overwhelmed with pleasure.
So close to the edge for the whole experience that a hairpin trigger could have set me off, but holding off just to prolong the pleasure that I was receiving. I didn't want to cum. Well, I did, but I didn’t want it to be over. I wanted it to keep going.
I wanted to feel that pleasure for longer, to feel his touch for longer. But in the end, those eyes, the way that he held me in his hand, in his mouth, the way that he could just pinpoint every erogenous zone that I have, was enough to take me over the edge.
I wish I could have reciprocated, but I didn’t have the energy, and every day since has been the same.
Our day is normal, I suppose. We hang out together, eat together, but whenever I initiate something between us, he won’t let me touch him, then he makes me cum so hard I pass out and forget about it until the next time.
Whenever I have tried to bring it up, he distracted me by touching my dick.
A great avoidance method, if I do say so, but after a week of him dodging the conversation, I’m at a point where I need to know what is going through his mind—and why he won’t let me touch him.
Waking up after passing out on his couch for the sixth time this week has my back aching, a kink in my neck, and my morning wood making its presence known.
That's not exactly what you want to have in someone else's lounge room. At least not when they're not here to help you take care of it, but for all of our fooling around, we’ve never left the lounge room. What I wouldn’t give to be invited into his bed, but he’s never brought it up, and I have felt like it would be overstepping to ask him if we could take whatever it is that we are doing to his bedroom.
I groan, sitting up on the couch, needing a stretch and a hot shower to get my body feeling human again.
Without thinking, I fall into the same routine as the last week that I have spent here.
Heading to the kitchen, I pull out the ingredients to make my usual protein shake breakfast, with an extra shot of espresso in it, cause fuck, I need the caffeine today.
Even though we are on break from training for another three weeks, my body still has me up at the arse crack of dawn without the need to set an alarm, and while I don’t need to work out, I still do a little bit each day just to keep myself limber.
Today, it will be yoga. After quickly finishing my shake and cleaning up after myself, I make my way to the home gym down the hall that I found on my first morning here.
Vince has never told me that I couldn’t help myself, so each morning I have been down here, doing a light workout to keep up with my routine.
Finding the speaker, I connect my phone and hit play on my current audiobook.
Normally for a workout, I will listen to a podcast, but because I just want to have a stretch today, a book is a better fit for my mood.
I’m up to the third book in the series, and I swear I have no idea what is going to happen next.
The main couple has had a ‘will they-won’t they’ going on since they met, and it’s been leaving me on tenterhooks, desperate to know what is going to happen next.
Stripping down to just my shorts, I set myself up in the middle of the room and flow from one position to the next. Letting my mind relax, I lose myself to the tension building in my book and enjoying the stretch in my sore muscles. A week of sleeping on the couch really has caught up to me.
"Two years of wanting you…” I pant in-between kisses on her neck. “I thought would never happen,” she moans, arching into me. l growl, pinning her wrists back as my teeth graze her pulse. "Now that I finally have you under me, I'm going to take my time making you scream for every minute we lost."
“What’s going on here?” Vince says, startling me so much that I fall out of my pose and crash to the floor.
“Oh, fuck,” I mutter, jolting over to my phone and pausing the book. “Um, sorry about that,” I say, sheepishly avoiding his eye contact.
“Um, hi,” Vince says, looking adorably confused.
“Oh, um, hey,” I manage to get out, running my hand through my hair. “Um, good morning.
I hope you don't mind that I kind of, um, helped myself.” I fall over my words as I turn my back on him and make my way back over to the mat where I was doing my yoga.
As awkward as it is having him walk in on me like that, I can’t just not finish out my routine, otherwise I’ll be out of whack for the rest of the day.
“Why are you still here?” Vince asks bluntly.
“Oh, did you want me to go so you can work out?” I ask, confused. It’s not like there isn’t enough space for us to both use the room at the same time. Hell, we have already worked out together a few times this week.
“No, I don’t mean the room. I meant my house. Why haven’t you left yet?” Vince says, exasperation bleeding into his tone.
I’ve heard that tone numerous times when the team isn’t listening or when a play doesn’t go to plan. I don’t like the feeling of having it directed at me.
“I didn’t know you wanted me to go,” I admit honestly. Have I read this whole interaction wrong? This whole week wrong? Fuck. Maybe I should go once I finish my yoga.
“I didn’t say that,” he says with a shrug. “I just thought that you might have.”
“Why would I have?” I ask, puzzled over this whole encounter.
“I thought you might have gone home now that you can prove that we are ‘real’ or whatever it was you were saying the first day. Or hell, even if you didn’t want to go home, you could’ve gone to a mate’s place, a teammate’s place, like there are heaps of options, but why… why stay here?”
Where else would I want to go?
“Because you’re my boyfriend?” I say like it’s a question instead of the answer it is.
“But we aren’t… we aren’t boyfriends, Tate.”
“Well, yeah, I know that. But the world doesn’t. I guess I figured that it would look more creditable if I was here, I guess.”
Sure. That. Totally that. Not that I had no desire to be away from him. Not that I didn’t want to leave his house where I feel comfortable and cared for.
Vince’s eyes flamed wide at those words. And I wonder what he's thinking.
I want to know what he's thinking. But I can't bring myself to ask. I can't bring myself to be shut down by him.
When he's not even sounding like he wants me to be here right now. Like it's an obligation or something.
Fuck, this last week has really shown me just how much Vince knows me.
It’s in the small things, like how every day he always makes my coffee the right way without me even needing to ask.
Or how I noticed that in the grocery delivery he picked up some of my favourite foods.
Hell, the other night I made a comment about how I have been missing watching the current season of What It Takes!
Only to find out that he had recorded it for me to watch, because he knew from my talk around the locker room that it was my current guilty pleasure.
“I just meant that sometimes, guys who are experimenting might like leave after to try and avoid the situation,” he says, gripping the back of his neck and avoiding eye contact with me. Again.
It’s really starting to bug me not having those storm grey eyes locked on me.
“Avoid the situation,” I scoff. “Vince, you’re my boss, it’s not like I’m never going to see you again, I can’t avoid the situation.”
“So, would you avoid the situation if you could?” He asks me, and I feel like that's a convoluted question. Like he's asking something else at the same time, but I don't know what that is.
“Mate, it's too early for weird questions like that. Clearly I didn’t leave to avoid this or whatever, and if the last week has proven anything to me, it’s you who won’t let me touch you, not the other way around. Now, do you want me to go? Is that what this is all about?”
He looks at me with a hint of longing in his eyes.
All I want to do is give him a hug. All I want to do is hold him to me and kiss him like those thoughts I had earlier.
But he's giving standoffish vibes, which is weird because he told me like a week ago that he loved me.
He can't have fallen out of love with me that quickly, could he? Fuck, this is giving me a head complex.
And not, I'm not old enough to be going through a fucking midlife crisis, am I?
“Um, no, it's fine,” Vince says, finally breaking the silence. “I mean, you can stay as long as you want to, I guess.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I guess so. As you said, the paparazzi are following us. It makes sense for us to, you know, commit to the charade and live with each other for a bit.”
“Speaking of, I think it’s time for another date,” I state. “But first, I need to finish my yoga.”
“And I need a coffee,” Vince groans, walking back down the hallway.
I grin to myself as I fall back into the rest of my stretches, happy that I managed to convince him to let me stay just that little bit longer.