Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
Aidan
“There’s a boy waiting outside for you.”
I follow Doreen’s gaze out of the window and smile.
Ludo is tightrope walking along the kerb outside, Bella at his feet, a shopping bag slung over his shoulder.
I take that to mean he’s cooking, which is fine by me.
I’ve been in the office since six this morning and I spent my lunch break figuring out if my leg is strong enough to climb again.
Newsflash: it’s not, and I’m pissed off, tired, and sore as fuck. Ludo’s shower is better than mine. If he’s game for a night at his place, I can’t wait to wash the day away and pass out in his actual real-life bed.
After some other stuff, of course.
“So?”
“Hmm?”
Doreen nudges me. For some reason, she’s decided that shit is okay. “Is he waiting for you? He’s been there a while.”
“If you don’t know if he’s waiting for me, why did you say he was?”
“Because I’ve seen you in the supermarket with him. I wondered if he was your boyfriend.”
I give her the coldest look I can muster for a woman who makes me six cups of tea a day and makes extra cheese baps just for me. “How is that any of your business?”
Doreen flushes. “It isn’t. I just thought . . . never mind. You’re right. I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
She backs off and returns to her desk, leaving me torn between making things right and getting to Ludo as quickly as humanly possible. The conflict is real, and the ache in my chest tears me apart as I stomp over to Doreen’s desk.
“Sorry for snapping. I didn’t mean to be rude.”
She eyes me over her glasses. “That’s okay. You just surprised me. Bernard warned us you were a grumpy bugger, but you’ve been lovely since you started. I wondered if it was because you had a nice fella.”
“It could be because Bernard’s the grumpy bugger, not me.”
“True, but it takes one to know one, dear.”
She’s got me there, and I can’t deny that her theory is spot on. Ludo has chased away my dickhead tendencies. Besides, why waste energy on other people when I can expend it on him?
The thought has me hot all over. I bid Doreen goodbye without confirming her suspicions and leave the office.
My phone rings as I descend the steps. It’s Michael, but I don’t have time for him right now.
I cut him off, slip my phone in my pocket, and glance up to find Ludo watching me, gaze sharp, tracking my every step until I’m right in front of him.
I cuff his shoulder. “All right?”
A beat so minute I wonder if I’ve imagined it passes between us. Ludo’s eyes dart to my pocket and back again. “Yup. You?”
His voice carries an edge. I tilt my head sideways, but he’s already walking.
I hurry after him. “What’s in the bag?”
“Rice. I made some meatballs earlier, but I thought you might be sick of pasta.”
“I’m not, but rice sounds good.”
“I got some chocolate too.”
“Even better.” I nudge him and keep nudging him until he looks at me. “You know what I like, right?”
A ghost of a smile lights his face. “I’d hope so by now.”
More heat floods me. We haven’t fucked . . . yet, but we’ve spent a lot of time working up to it. By now I reckon he can set me on fire just by looking at me. I don’t know how I’ve managed to get any sleep these last couple of weeks. Not since our slumber parties went nuclear.
And it’s every day now. When we first started hanging out at each other’s places, Ludo would often step back for a day or so, cool things for reasons I never asked him to explain, but he’s different now. He doesn’t seem to want to spend a moment apart, and I’m okay with that.
More than okay.
We make it back to his house. I’m limping like a mofo, but I manage to hide it. At least I think I have until Ludo shoves me onto the sofa and presents me with a bag of frozen peas.
“Ice it. I’ll make dinner.”
I’m still dreaming of his shower, but I take the peas and gingerly lay them over my throbbing knee.
The frigid cold does nothing to ease the tension in my muscles, but it’s a distraction I desperately need.
Sometimes I don’t realise how much things hurt until they no longer do. Or something like that.
Ludo brings me a bottle of orange squash and a bag of chocolate bars. I peer inside. “Whoa. You bought the whole shop.”
“I couldn’t decide which one I wanted.”
He says it as though it makes perfect sense to resolve his indecision by clearing the shelf of Mars Bars, Aeros, and Kit Kats. Perhaps to him it does, and something in my mind clicks. I can’t remember what it means, but the chocolate seems ominous as I root through it, searching for the Snickers.
Ludo disappears into the kitchen. He comes back with crisps and more chocolate before he vanishes again.
I stare at the loot spread out on the coffee table, chewing on the peanut-caramel concoction and willing it to send enough sugar to my brain for me to wake the fuck up.
But I don’t wake up. I eat the chocolate and some crisps and then my dinner, and then I fall asleep with my half-frozen leg surrounded by mess.
“Aidan. Wake up.”
“Hmm? Wha—” I jerk awake, half throwing myself off the couch. My elbow bangs the coffee table, sending crisp packets flying, and I curse like a drunk sailor.
Ludo shrinks back. “Sorry. I thought you wanted to be awake.”
“What does that even mean?” I snap, hauling myself upright again.
He stares, eyes wide, and regret hits me like a truck, slamming into my chest and driving all remnants of sleep away. I reach for him, but he evades, and my hands grasp the distance between us.
“Ludo.”
“What? I said I was sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry. I’m the one who bit your head off.”
“I woke you up.”
“So? It’s fuck o’clock and I’m passed out on your couch. Someone had to.”
“I thought you wanted to be awake.”
The repetition gives me pause. “Why?”
He shrugs and looks away. I sit up straighter and force his gaze back. “Why?”
“You didn’t look happy.”
It’s a simplistic answer that tells me everything and nothing. I try to recall if he pulled me from a dream, but my brain is mush. Without the warning lights of his mood, I have no clue which way is up.
Heartbeats thump. Mine. His. Darkness cloaks us, and I suddenly can’t recall how we got here. It’s all a blur: the accident, the hospital, even the first time we kissed. I can’t remember any of it.
I reach for him again, and this time my hands are rough, demanding, and nothing is going to keep me from him.
We tumble from the couch and onto the floor. Thankfully Ludo has thick carpets, but I barely feel the burn of them scraping my skin as I tear at his clothes.
He’s not wearing many—just a vest and some sweatpants. No underwear or socks. I lean back and raise a questioning eyebrow.
“I took a shower while you were asleep,” he pants out. “And washed up, walked Bella, and—”
“I get the picture.” I don’t mean to growl at him, but his answering smirk adds more fuel to the fire, and I’m on him again before I can contemplate if manhandling him this way is a good idea.
Because it doesn’t matter if it’s a good idea.
For this—for anything—to work between us, I have to trust that Ludo will tell me if he doesn’t like something.
And I do trust him. I trust him almost as much as I want him.
I strip him naked. Then I sit back on my heels as he peels my T-shirt away and runs his thumb over the inch-long scar on my ribs from the chest tube.
He frowns, like he always does, and I don’t know if he knows he’s doing it.
Or why. Then I catch sight of the marks on his body and my fingers itch to trace them too.
I can’t heal him, and I don’t want to, but I’d do anything to take away his pain.
“Aidan.”
Ludo’s whisper startles me. I meet his gaze to find it heated. Hungry. “Yeah?”
“What do you want?”
“What do you want?”
He licks his lips. “Everything, but I don’t want you to be careful. I don’t need it. Do you believe me?”
“I believe you.”
Ludo grins, but it’s more than a smile. It’s a heat-seeking missile that blasts through any imaginary barriers we have left.
I stop thinking and shuffle out of my shorts, sending them and my boxers somewhere behind me.
A thunk sounds.
I’ve knocked something over, but I don’t give a fuck. I’ll fix Ludo’s place later. Right now, I’m so lost in him the ground could open and I wouldn’t notice.
We roll around, fighting for dominance until we realise fucking on the floor isn’t going to work.
Ludo leads me upstairs and I tumble him onto his bed. We roll again, and he straddles me, grinding down hard enough to make my vision blur.
“Fuck.”
He stops. “Am I hurting you?”
“No, god no. It’s not that. It’s the fucking opposite.”
Ludo presses his palm over my heart, as if he can push the feverish beats back in. He leans down, his mouth so close I can taste his lips without touching him. “Are you sure? Because I’m easy, Aidan. We can do this however you want.”
Nothing about my life, including him, has ever been easy, but as I consider his words and what they could mean, I’m happy with that.
I hook a hand around the back of his neck and draw him in for a kiss.
I love you.
He kisses me back.
I love you too.
At least, that’s what he says in my head, and that’s how I interpret his every touch as he moves down my body, kissing every mark and scar until he returns to my dick.
I wait for him to suck me down, but he doesn’t, and I open my eyes to find him leaning over the bed, rummaging in the bedside table.
The arch of his body is so beautiful I don’t wonder what he’s looking for.
His elegant neck and artful spine. His long limbs and slender hips.
I try to picture how this might’ve played out if we met in different circumstances .
. . before my accident and the multiple traumas he’s been through, but my imagination fails me, cos there’s nothing I want more than him as he is right now.
A bottle of lube lands on the bed. Ludo lies down beside me and places it on my chest. “I don’t have any condoms, but I got tested a while back, and I haven’t been with anyone since.”
“I’ve never had unprotected sex, so I’m probably okay too.” The matter-of-factness to my tone makes my words sound far away, as though they belong to someone else, but there’s no escaping the renewed tattoo of my pounding heart and the tremble in my hands as I reach for the lube.
Jesus, we’re really doing this.
My nerves are amplified by Ludo’s silence.
But what he doesn’t say out loud, he says with his wandering hands.
A soft trail of fingertips down my belly, a rough squeeze where I want him most. He brings his lips to my neck and kisses my brain silent again.
My body thrums beneath him, and far from overthinking, I can only feel.
We kiss and kiss and kiss, our lips fused as every other muscle and nerve strains to do the same.
Ludo rubs lube between us, on me and on him, then he rolls onto his side.
His beautiful back calls to me once more, and I fit myself against him.
How he knew this would hurt me the least, I have no clue, but as I ease inside him, I feel no pain, only a tight, wet heat that blows my fucking mind.
I notch my forehead between Ludo’s shoulder blades and groan. “So good.”
He exhales shakily and grips my hand so tight my knuckles crack. “I knew it would be. God, Aidan, I’ve wanted this for so long.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. I-I don’t know when it changed.”
His answer is the same as mine, and I remember the first time I saw him—really saw him, staring at me from across the hospital ward.
Despite the mess I was in, fascination hit me like a lightning bolt, building with affection and attraction to where we are now.
I can’t track the pace. All I truly know is that I’m going to fucking combust if we stay still much longer.
As though he hears my desperate thoughts, Ludo flexes his hips.
The movement is tiny, but it’s all the encouragement I need.
With the hand he’s not clutching in a death grip, I grasp his shoulder and thrust into him.
He gasps an unintelligible sound that might be my name, and pleasure rockets through me.
The primal need to claim him returns and I dig my nails into the soft juncture of his neck.
It’s messy and loud. Ludo meets my every movement with a drive of his own, and the bed begins to shunt against the wall.
I feel like I’ve never done this with anyone.
As if every desire I’ve ever had was for him and I saved it up my whole damn life.
I shove him onto his stomach, ignore the creaking protest in my bad leg, and fuck him harder, leaning heavily on him, pushing him into the mattress. He yelps and arches against me. My hands twitch to soothe him. I want to be gentle. I want to be kind. But somehow I know it isn’t what he wants.
Ludo makes a strangled sound. “I’m so close.”
Relief floods me. And then panic. As ever, I’m fighting a swelling tide, but I don’t want this to be over.
I ease off a touch, hoping to delay the inevitable, but it has the opposite effect.
The change in pace sends new spasms of heat through me, and pleasure coiled deep in my belly sets up an ambush.
Ludo groans and drives his fist into the bed. His body convulses and the sight of him falling apart catapults me over the edge of the cliff.
I fall like a bullet, and for the first time since the accident, I embrace the world as it zips by.
There’s no destination. No hard landing.
Only a sense of belonging that’s wrapped up in something so fucking glorious I can’t comprehend it.
Sounds fall from my mouth: primal, animalistic shouts that leave my voice ragged, my throat hoarse.
Ludo, Ludo, Ludo.
“Ludo, Ludo, Ludo.”
I collapse on top of him. He’s laughing and laughing and laughing, and it doesn’t occur to me for a single second that such a happy thing could ever be bad.