Eleven
I WOKE TO the vague wrongness of being somewhere new, a sense compounded by the smell of flowers.
Blinking tired eyes, I turned to find Miles asleep beside me, a hand raised over his head exposing the soft skin beneath his arm and a sprout of hair much darker than what lay on the pillow.
In the half-light, he was all softness and shadows but for the sharp line of his jaw and the faintest of frowns, like his dreams had presented him with a problem.
But I was the one with the problem. He hadn’t invited me to stay. We hadn’t talked about it at all, hadn’t planned; planning something that required thinking about what we were doing.
Not thinking was far easier.
We’d barely made it inside the door the previous night before Miles had dropped to his knees.
There had been nothing playful in how he’d sucked me off this time.
He’d worked hard and fast like the whole evening had been foreplay and he needed this now, and I’d threaded my fingers into his hair and watched him like I’d stepped into a dream.
I had pushed him onto the bed to return the favour, but slowly, taking my time finding out what made him gasp and grip the bedcovers, what made him moan and swear and curse my name.
In the aftermath, we’d lain together sated and exhausted, and my plan to creep back to my own bed had slipped away as my eyelids drooped. Now, I had to escape before he woke and found me where I had no business to be.
Hopefully, he was a heavy sleeper.
I shifted onto one elbow. Miles didn’t stir.
With the warmth of the night, he had pushed the covers down as he slept, low enough that not only was the full expanse of his chest on display, but also the jut of one hipbone.
The urge to dance my fingers over his soft, sensitive skin was almost too much, and I crushed my hands into fists and looked away.
Away from skin I wanted to kiss. Away from his long legs stretching in elegant lines beneath the sheets.
“Jesus fuck,” I hissed beneath my breath. I needed to get out of there before I embarrassed myself.
Entirely naked, I shuffled down the bed and slid both feet onto the floor. I couldn’t remember where I’d left my clothes.
“Are you running away?” he murmured as I crept toward the bedroom door.
I froze and looked back, the sight of him blinking sleepily at me too painfully adorable. “Tip-toeing hardly counts as running,” I pointed out. “But yes, I was trying not to wake you. I meant to leave last night, but I fell asleep. Sorry.”
“Idiot,” he said, and lunged out to grab my wrist, pulling me back against the bed. As my legs hit the edge, I overbalanced onto him, a thoroughly undignified act even without being completely naked. “That’s better, Princess,” he added, catching me in a flutter of white cotton sheets.
“Quit calling me that!”
“No, I don’t think I will.” He hunched over to kiss me, the loose ends of his hair tickling my cheek. “I like it. Suits you.”
“Fuck you!” I laughed and tried to struggle free, but I was like a beetle on my back and before I could get any purchase, he manhandled me onto the bed.
Holding himself over me with a hand either side of my shoulders, he bent to kiss me – a series of light pecks that pulled at my lips only to deepen into long, slow kisses as he brushed hair back from my brow.
There was no heat, he just pressed me into the pillow and slid his tongue along mine like he could keep doing it all day.
Part of me wanted him to. The same part that wanted to throw my arms around his neck and hold him there.
The part that wanted him to keep calling me Princess.
A dangerous, stupid part I couldn’t let him see because I was just his convenient fuck.
“You should stay,” he said, pulling away enough to murmur those words against my lips. “We don’t need to go anywhere today.”
“You don’t, but I already put Danny off, remember?”
“Forget about Danny,” Miles groaned and planted another kiss on my lips, his hair hanging around his face like a gold-threaded halo. “Just be mine today.”
His gaze was so appealing, his voice so soft, his words a simple plea that made my heart thud in my throat. It was all because he was still half asleep, I knew, but I’d drawn a sharp little breath before I could stop myself.
“What?” A puzzled frown twitched his brows and he pulled away a touch, hunting my face for a reply I hadn’t given.
A sultry smile quickly followed. “Oh, come on, you can’t blame a man for wanting hot dick at his beck and call.
After all, I have to make the most of you while you’re living across the hall. ”
Not waiting for an answer, he started kissing his way down my chest, and when he reached my half-hard cock, he took it in his mouth.
Despite everything, there was still something shocking about the sight of Miles Callahan kneeling between my legs, his lips around my dick.
Something forbidden. This man, this way, in this place, at this time – a whole collection of wrongs that somehow came together to feel wholly right.
And now I was rapidly hardening inside his mouth.
“What are you doing?” I asked, feeling at least some protest was necessary.
He lifted his head, smile quirking. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m making the most of you before you run away.”
I FOUND KATIE eating breakfast in front of a morning talk show.
“Why good morning,” she said around a mouthful and a dawning grin. “Can’t remember the last time you were out all night.”
“It doesn’t count when I was just across the hall,” I replied, heading straight for the shower.
“If you got your rocks off at least once and slept in another man’s bed, then it counts no matter how far away it was. Sorry. Those are the rules.”
By the time I’d showered, Katie had given up on morning TV and was clearing out her tennis bag on the floor. With a roll of grip tape in hand, she looked up, frowning. “You all right?”
“Yeah?” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know, only that I’ve never seen you like this before.”
I looked down at my bare chest and the towel around my waist. “Yes, you have. You’ve even had to suffer my arse before yesterday.”
“Accidentally walking in on you in the shower is not quite the same as . . .” She waved a hand, the airy gesture somehow encompassing the everything she’d seen. “And then you couldn’t take your eyes off him last night.”
“He’s hot,” I said with a shrug, disliking where this conversation was heading.
“Is that it?”
“I’m training well and I’m getting laid, what more can a man want?”
Finally dropping the grip tape back into her bag, Katie shrugged. “I don’t know, you tell me.”
“The answer is nothing.” I laughed, and headed for my room in search of clean clothes. “It was a rhetorical question.”
“What about when Wimbledon is over?” she asked, following.
I pushed open my door to find I hadn’t closed the curtains, leaving grey morning light to spill over the small mountain of loose clothes and tennis gear. It wasn’t dirty, but compared to Miles’s room it was a bombsite and I had to fight the urge to tidy.
Katie leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed.
“I don’t know,” I said, seeing I wasn’t escaping her questions. “When I lose, I’ll head home like I always do. Take a couple weeks to prepare, then head out for the US swing.”
“And this thing with Miles?”
“Will be over,” I said, bending to hunt through my suitcase so I didn’t have to worry about what my face was doing. However inevitable the end was, it was still going to suck.
Once I’d gathered clean clothes, I straightened up to find her staring at me like I’d spoken in riddle. “What?”
“Over?” she repeated. “You two couldn’t stop touching each other!
You couldn’t even stop looking at each other!
I know we’re not the same, but are gay men so different that that means nothing?
That you can just switch off that kind of connection when it’s time to leave?
Because qualifying starts in three days, and after that we’re only here for as long as we can stay in the tournament. ”
The reminder that this idyll of sex and training was nothing but a brief bubble hit harder than I’d expected.
Perhaps it was her disbelief. Or the way she’d said ‘you couldn’t even stop looking at each other’ as though the pain of parting wouldn’t belong to me alone.
Unable to answer, I pulled on my shirt in the hope she’d take the hint to leave me to dress.
She didn’t.
“Look, I know I could be on a plane in four days,” I said, turning to face her stubborn stare.
“And yes, that would suck, and not just because I don’t want to go out in the first round of qualifying.
I’m enjoying this. Miles is great. The sex is amazing.
But this isn’t a thing. Maybe we’ll hook up again at some other tournament, but maybe we won’t.
Either way, he’ll still be just a convenient fuck I didn’t have to explain tennis to, okay? ”
She regarded me steadily for a few long seconds, then nodded. Shrugged. “Okay.”
“Good. Now, we’re heading to the court soon. How do you feel about getting put through your paces by the world number four?”
WITH ONLY FORTY minutes before Danny called, Miles and I started first. Unlike the day before, we traded service games, but once again played with the sort of speed that precluded deep thought.
He didn’t say it was to test if I could back up my success, and somehow that helped.
Helped too, perhaps, that Katie’s questions had left a different sort of worry tying knots my stomach.
Whichever it was, I soon loosened up, the confidence of knowing I had done it once making it much easier to do again.
Katie had started off calling the score before getting swept up mimicking an over-excited commentator until we were losing as much breath to laughter as tennis.
It was nothing like my usual training sessions and yet everything I needed, and when Danny called, I ceded the court with regret.