Twenty-Seven #2
I loved that he’d been keeping count, but I swallowed the urge to say that the off-season could last as long as it liked if home was somewhere with him.
It was too soon to say it. We’d talked almost daily since Paris, sometimes for hours, but I was awfully aware we’d only been together in the same space for a total of a few weeks since I’d started calling him my boyfriend – a fragile foundation upon which to build a life together.
A life that wasn’t even possible yet. Until he was free of his parents, sharing space during tournaments and stealing these occasional weeks was the best we could manage.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, having leaned back to see my face, his luminous beneath the stars.
“Nothing in particular. Between cold water and hot boyfriend, it’s quite hard to form coherent thoughts.”
“You’re a terrible liar,” he said and kissed me, and with his arms around me and his tongue sliding against mine, I could let myself sink into his steady presence and forget the worries that nibbled at my edges.
Especially when he wrapped his legs around me, grinning at the ease with which I could hold his weight in the water as he bent to keep kissing me.
Being able to hold him so in the moonlight was such a rare, romantic thrill.
We kissed, we swam, we kissed some more and splashed each other, laughing.
It was too cold to spend long apart, a couple of minutes all we could manage before pressing up against each other again.
And despite the ocean’s best attempts, our touches got hotter and our kisses deeper until Miles had his legs around me and I was rubbing against his arse in a way that was driving us both wild.
“If water wasn’t the worst lubricant ever,” he said, baring his throat to the night sky with a sigh. “I would absolutely demand you fuck me right here.”
“Not everything needs lube,” I replied, taking hold of his cock.
He let out a sound part groan, part shiver. “True, but I want you inside me. Why don’t we go back? You know, before our dicks freeze off.”
We walked back, the towels we wrapped around our waists utterly failing to hide how hard we were.
The moment the door closed, I ripped his off and dropped to my knees, loving his gasp as I took his cock in my mouth.
His skin was tight with the cold and he tasted salty from the sea, and god I had missed this.
Missed the way he hummed and touched my hair, missed the way he set a hand to the nearest wall for support, the way he held his breath – a breath he let out on a guttural groan when I took him all the way into my throat.
“Fuck, Mat, that’s new,” he said as I drew back, concentrating hard on keeping my throat relaxed. “Oh my god,” he added as I did it again, slow and steady, savouring every moment of this reversal. “Fuck, that’s—Mat, you can’t keep doing that or I’m going to come in three seconds.”
I looked up at him, all innocence, and kept going.
“Oh fuck, no, don’t you dare,” he growled.
“I do not have enough energy to do this twice tonight and I need you inside me. Tomorrow, you can make me come in the ocean and in your throat and wherever the fuck you like but—” He broke off with a sharp, shocked little cry and I pulled away before I could accidentally push him where he didn’t want to go.
There would be time to tease him and taste him again, our whole weekend having no plan beyond enjoying one another as much as possible.
“Fuck, that was close,” Miles said as I bullied him toward the bedroom. “And now I’m having regrets because it felt amazing.”
“No regrets, we have plenty of time.” I shoved him onto the bed, sending him sprawling in the way that delighted him.
He loved being pushed around, loved being made to forget his height and his strength, loved submitting – not just to me but to the desires of his body.
And god it was hot that he loved me having my way with him while he begged for harder, faster, fuck me, fuck me, his cries so free as he pleaded for me to come inside him.
Nearing the end, I pulled him onto my lap like I was still holding him out in the ocean, and chest to chest we rocked together gasping.
The weight of him and the sudden slowing of the pace shredded me, and I came fast, setting my teeth to his neck and barely staying the urge to bite.
Then with him still atop me, I kissed him as I stroked him to climax, until he tilted back his head and groaned to the ceiling as he whispered my name and came on us both.
We showered together after that, cleaning off beach and sex, and as we laughed and kissed beneath the hot water, I found my chest growing tight.
I wanted to hold onto him and never let go, but like every other week we’d spent together, this one would end too.
Then the season would begin and us would get hidden away behind hotel doors.
And if I was doomed to only ever have brief spurts of playing well, it wouldn’t be long before I was back playing tiny tournaments in completely different cities, and us would stop existing at all.
I tried to let the worries go so they didn’t spoil our time together, but once we’d pulled on clothes and were considering a midnight snack, I couldn’t even hitch a smile for the weight of them.
“Hey.” Miles paused in the act of towelling his hair. “You’re making that troubled, thinking face again. What’s up?”
“I just don’t want this to end,” I said, opening the pantry and staring unseeing at its contents.
“This meaning this trip? Or this meaning us?” he asked, wary.
“Both? Fruit and yoghurt? Granola? Or do you want something more substantial?”
Miles swung his towel over my head, pulling me away from the pantry and into his arms. “Hey, what do you mean both?”
“I don’t know.” I turned within the circle of his towel, looking up at him. “I just worry sometimes, that’s all.”
“About us?”
His gaze was steady and full of concern, and my determination to keep my troubles to myself cracked. “Sometimes,” I admitted. “Like what if one day all this just disappears without a trace?”
Still holding me trapped against him, he leaned back, his expression a little shocked. “I’m not going anywhere, Mat.”
“I know that when you’re with me,” I mumbled, knowing it sounded pathetic but too tired to care.
“But it’s harder to believe when we’re apart.
We’ve talked lots since Paris, but before that—” I hesitated, knowing I was skating close to bringing up the match in New York that we still hadn’t talked about.
I’d been waiting for Miles to do so when he was ready, but held there against his chest and blinking back sudden tears, I finally wondered whether he hadn’t brought it up because he didn’t need to.
Because he had grieved and moved on and there was nothing he needed to hear me say, while I had been left circling it, unable to escape the fear it had lodged in my chest. “Before that I was sure every day you were done with me. Especially after you just . . . left.”
Miles breathed out a soft, “Fuck,” and pulled away, turning his face like he couldn’t bear to look at me.
“I’m sorry. It was such a shit thing to do.
I knew that the moment I did it, I just .
. .” A shake of the head. “I don’t know what I was thinking.
” With his hands on his hips, he glared at the floor for a few seconds before looking at me like he was forcing himself to.
“No,” he said, anger in his dark eyes. “That’s a lie.
I know what I was thinking. I was thinking that I couldn’t let my last memory of you that night be that winning shot.
But neither could I bear the thought of tears and reassurances when everything hurt so much.
I should have waited until the next day to see you instead of being cruel.
I guess when you never said anything, I hoped you’d forgiven me. ”
“Of course I did. But then we hardly spoke for weeks and I couldn’t shake the feeling I was carrying around shattered glass, desperately hoping it wouldn’t break more in my hands. But I don’t blame you,” I added hastily. “I just—”
“Well, maybe you should,” he snapped, taking my shoulders and giving me a fierce little shake.
“This has been ruining you for months, and I was so relieved not to have to talk about it that I convinced myself you were fine when of course it would be eating you up. I fucking walked out on you! I left you worrying that my love was conditional when it’s not.
” He looked on the brink of tears himself and squeezed his eyes shut. “Fuck! I am so sorry.”
I wasn’t sure when I had gripped the front of his shirt, but I tightened my hold then like a cat digging in claws.
“Mat . . .” Miles laid a hand softly over mine. “That match was the hardest loss of my whole career, but I think maybe it was the worst win of yours.”
A nod was all I could manage for the lump in my throat.
“So, if our places had been reversed, if we’d both made it to the final of the Australian Open and you’d never won a major before and the whole crowd—the whole damn nation—wanted you to win it for them, but I beat you, would it hurt?”
I’d dreamed of winning the Australian Open since I was six years old. “Yes.”
“A lot?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t feel much like talking to me for a day or two.”
“Yeah.”
“But would you still love me?”
I bent my head to his shoulder. “Always.”
“Then you know how I felt. Losing that match hurt. I relived so many moments over and over for days, all the shots I should have done better, all the points I should have won, but I never hated you. And no, I never once wished I hadn’t helped you find your form again, because you can’t tell me you didn’t think of that! ”
Of course I had. I breathed a laugh and didn’t look up.
“I was proud of you, honestly,” he said. “I just couldn’t admit it at the time and have been a dick since. God, I wish you’d said something earlier.”