Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
Are you a cuddler ?
Milo
After a few hugs Niall jogs off to finish the run. Silas, carrying Cora, walks beside Oz and me, all of us carrying the fresh coffee they’d brought with them.
“So?” Oz begins.
I immediately shake my head. “No. Not a chance.”
“Milo,” he says in a pseudo-shocked voice. “We’ve been friends for most of our lives, and this is how you repay my care and devotion?”
“We’ve been friends for two years,” I say levelly. “And in that short time, you’ve given me snark and tough love.”
He links his arm with mine companionably. “You say potato. I say potarto.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Stop being so literal.” He shakes his head. “You have to tell me.”
“Nope.”
“But … but I’ll never sleep tonight if I don’t know. Silas, tell him.”
Silas smiles at me, his handsome face warm and familiar. “Leave him alone, Oz. He’ll tell you when he’s ready.”
Oz shakes his head again. “So bloody reasonable.”
I laugh but it stops when I see the old lady from before marching towards us and dragging a very reluctant-looking woman behind her.
“That’s the one I told you about,” I mutter.
His eyes sharpen. “Is it really?”
The old lady comes abreast of us and opens her mouth. “Can I just say …?”
“No, not today,” he says in a lordly fashion, waving his hand in a very dismissive manner.
We stroll past her, leaving her opening and shutting her mouth like a very ugly landed fish.
Oz tuts. “I don’t know why people are so interested in other people’s lives. It’s so petty.” Silas clears his throat and Oz glares at him. “Do you have something to say, Silas, or have you got a cold?”
He grins. “It’s just that I think it might be you who buys Heat magazine and had a very involved conversation with Mrs. Granger a few weeks ago over whether Brad and Angelina would ever get back together.”
“Was it really?” Oz say airily. “They don’t count. They’re not real.”
“Are they made of plastic then?” Silas asks with a thread of laughter running through his voice.
“Have you seen his performance in Interview with the Vampire ?” he says darkly. “There’s your answer right there.”
Silas blinks and then looks down at Cora and smiles warmly. “We’re just going to find Niall,” he says, kissing her on her tiny nose.
We watch him go with Oz smiling in a besotted way. I eye him and when he turns around and catches me, he flushes. “What?”
I grin. “Love looks very good on you.”
“Yuck!” he mutters, and I grin wider and then flap my hands about.
“Ugh! It feels weird without Cora attached to me.” I look over at him. “Are you going straight back to London?”
He nods. “Tomorrow. Another week will do it, I think. Mum’s perilously close to murdering me for mithering her so I think that might be best for all of us.”
I laugh. His mum is a spitfire. I look across the field at Silas who has found Niall. He’s draped in a silver blanket which makes him look rather like a superhero with a cape. He’s grinning at Silas, and the warmth and long years of friendship are very visible between them.
I look back and it’s my turn to flush as I find Oz staring at me. I open my mouth and he shakes his head. “I’m not asking.” I relax and he grins. “But that doesn’t stop me from telling . Silas never mentioned that .”
I have to laugh at the triumphant expression on his face. Finally, I sigh and raise my face to the sky. “Okay, get it over with.”
“I’m not sure what’s happening between the two of you, but I for one am very happy about it.”
“What?”
“You look surprised.”
“That about sums it up.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought you’d say he was out of my league. That we’re very different and don’t suit.”
“Pshaw, who wants the same? I can never understand that. I don’t need to share interests with Silas to want to fuck him sideways.”
There’s a horrified gasp behind us and he turns to see the apoplectic face of the old lady.
“Oh yes,” he says airily. “You heard right. Now, move along, Brunhild.”
I shake my head as I watch the two women give him a wide berth and merge back into the crowd.
“Now, where was I?”
I tsk. “That it doesn’t matter if we’re very different.”
“It doesn’t. Both of you having the same interests is boring.
Although you would get a lot of picture restoring done.
The world might run out of dirty portraits.
” He pauses as if considering that idea but then shrugs.
“It’d mean doing the same things every day.
Like dating grey knitting wool when you should have rainbow colours. ”
“That’s a very mixed metaphor.”
“Okay, posh boy. You know what I mean.” He pauses and looks over at Niall. “I think you’d be very good for each other.”
“Erm, I don’t think so. I dated someone who was like him. It didn’t end well.”
For the first time he looks disappointed in me.
He shakes his head. “I’m sad if you think that, Milo, because it means you’re judging him while still wearing your Thomas glasses.
He’s not the same at all.” He looks over at Niall.
“Sure, he’s bossy, opinionated, and totally convinced that he’s right in every way, and I’d kill him within approximately twenty seconds if I was with him.
” I laugh and he smiles but then turns serious.
“But that’s me and he’s different with you. ”
“How?”
“Softer. You knock his hard edges off. Sometimes when I’m really cross with him, I just have to remember how he looks at you and I forgive him everything.”
“How does he look at me?” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “I really can’t tell you that.
” He holds his hand up when I go to protest. “I genuinely can’t , not won’t tell you.
You have to see with your own eyes and when you do, I’ll know you’re seeing clearly.
Just think on this. Niall may fuss over you and mollycoddle you, but has he ever flat out forbidden you to do anything?
Has he ever said anything derogatory to you? ”
I shake my head. “But that’s just because we’re not together. In my experience that comes after, when the charm falls away.”
“Niall isn’t charming ,” he scoffs. “He’s funny and sometimes ruthlessly honest but he has no artifice or superficial charm.” He pauses. “Niall is charismatic. It’s not the same thing and it’s genuine.” He looks imploringly at me. “Please don’t tell him I said that, will you?”
“I promise,” I say, raising my hand as if we’re in court.
We turn and walk back to Niall and Silas and talk turns to other things, but a tiny portion of my brain lags behind the conversation, analysing and turning over what Oz said. I haven’t come to any conclusions, but I feel a softening inside me as if soon I will.
That night in bed I can’t sleep. The wind is blowing a gale outside. It howls around the house, tossing rain at the windowpane and filling the air with the sound of the trees blowing. Normally, I love this sort of night. I love lying in bed warm while the storm rages. Tonight, I just feel restless.
When we’d come back to the house, Oz and Silas had gathered Cora’s things together and left in a whirlwind of thanks and kisses.
When they’d gone it had seemed strange. I’d made a move to get my things together but Niall had insisted that I stay, saying that although the plumber had got the heating on in Oz and Silas’s apartment, he was going to have to come back tomorrow to do the rest of the house.
I turn on my back again. I sort of wish that he’d let me go because with how turned on I currently feel, the cold in the main house would have acted like a cold shower.
I push the sheets down, feeling the cooler air strike my chest. There’s a film of sweat on me and my cock throbs like it’s got a toothache, pressing against the sheets like it’s got a mind of its own.
I run my hands over my chest, finding my nipples that are standing up in the cool night air.
I twist them in my fingers and heat runs like a ribbon of fire to my cock.
I cup my balls, squeezing gently, and then fist my cock, starting a slow slide through my clenched fist, letting the head pop through my fingers and enjoying the friction.
I work myself steadily, but although it feels good and is something I’ve done to myself so many times, it’s not enough tonight. I feel a little like I’ve woken up from a deep sleep and the numbness has given way to pins and needles and a feeling of being vitally alive.
I pull my hand away and scrub my palms down my face, smelling the pre-come on my fingers. I stare up at the ceiling. I’m twenty-seven and I’ve only had one sexual partner in my life. I feel anger suddenly rush through my body. Why the fuck should I be alone and as chaste as a bloody nun?
Restlessness fills me, making me want to kick my feet about like a horse in a field. I want to fuck and be fucked. I want to feel alive and not like I’ve been left on the scrapheap without a chance of anything different.
I think back to last thing when Niall had gone up to bed. He’d looked at me steadily for a long minute before smiling and leaving me. He hadn’t said anything, but that look had been a challenge and I know my dick would be very happy to take him up on it.
I look at the closed bedroom door. In twenty steps I could be at his bedroom door. A few more and I’ll be standing by his bed. Will he send me away?
I shake my head. I don’t know much, but I know with a bone-deep certainty that he won’t send me away.
I don’t know how it’s happened, but he wants me and it’s obvious.
It must be for me to have spotted it. I hesitate.
Do I want to do this? He is, after all, my older brother’s best friend and casual fuck buddy.
They’ve been screwing for years. Should I even try anything, knowing it has the potential to blow up in my face badly?