Chapter 42
Chapter Forty-Two
NAOMI
Logan started taking turns with his throwing demands, seeming to love the differing distances we were sending him, and showed no signs of stopping.
And I was starting to run out of facts about myself that weren’t related to tennis.
He probably was too. But I now had a whole hoard of interesting Sam facts, and I loved every new one I learned.
Like how when he was recovering from ACL surgery, he let his sisters bleach his hair. Or how he stockpiled the same birthday card at the top of each decade to send to both his sisters each year.
Almost all of the facts that involved his family were to do with Charlie and Hannah, and not his dad, which made me sad, but he seemed to have a great time with them, so it wasn’t all bad.
Due to Logan’s never-ending energy, the temperature had dropped dramatically while we’d been walking, and the two of us had been gravitating closer to each other like we were trying to snatch at heat wherever we could get it.
I wanted to take one of his hands in mine, but we both had them stuffed in our coat pockets to shield them from the bitter cold.
The next time Logan returned the ball, where I learned that Sam could hold a handstand for five minutes on a good day, he dropped it at my feet and then lay down.
“Finally, he’s exhausted himself!” I exclaimed as I reluctantly removed one of my hands to pick up the ball and clip his lead on. Logan popped up on his feet, and we started walking back.
“I think you’ll find you still owe me a fact,” Sam said when we were about five minutes from home. His nose and cheekbones were stained red from the cold, and there was a smile on his face that I wanted to sink into.
“Do I?”
“He dropped the ball at your feet last,” he said with a nod towards where Logan was strolling along.
“Oh, okay.” I racked my brain, trying to think of something that wasn’t tennis-based that I hadn’t already revealed. Then I realised I had something that was a fact, but was much more fun than any of the others.
And might finally break the seal on two and a bit weeks of teasing that was slowly starting to send me wild. The tennis season was over, and there were no more pressing tasks or solid recovery for the next match to think about for a short few weeks.
“I don’t like the look on your face right now. It looks almost evil,” Sam said, making me laugh.
“The T-shirt you gave me after you changed the course of my life is still in my possession. Obviously.” The redness on his face warmed up, which told me all I needed to know. “That isn’t the fact. The fact is, I sleep in that T-shirt. A lot. Sometimes I do more—”
“Please don’t finish that sentence,” he said lowly, almost like a plea.
We reached the front door, and I unlocked it, unclipped Logan, and held it open.
“Leesh! Wyatt!” I called out and waited for an answering call. When neither of them answered, a requirement if you’re in the house, I closed the door but didn’t double-lock it before removing my winter layers, starting with my shoes.
Sam reached out for my coat and hung it in the cupboard like it was a practised behaviour.
“Alright, you can finish the sentence,” he said lowly as he stepped closer to me, putting me almost against the wall by the staircase.
I tipped my head up slightly so I could see him from under the brim of my—his—hat and was struck by how blown his pupils were.
How his lips were slightly parted, and his hands hovered just above my hips.
“It’s actually only a recent development, but sometimes when I’m wearing it, my imagination can run a little wild, and then it’s just a case of me and my rose toy against the world.”
A muscle in his jaw clenched, and his hands finally made contact with the fabric of my hoodie against my waist. His lips were so close to mine that they almost brushed when he next spoke.
“Maybe next time, you can just ask for the real thing.”
And then his mouth was on mine.
The kiss was slow. Languid. A gentle ebb and flow that I could’ve got lost in for hours if I wanted to.
It somehow felt like we were meant to kiss each other, even though this was our first one.
There was an ease there that made my blood run hot, desperate for more.
I couldn’t even find it in me to tease him for breaking first because nothing but want was flooding through my veins.
One of his hands swept up my side to my neck, his thumb resting in the hollow of my throat.
I distantly registered the thud of the hat on the floor.
I broke the kiss first, and Sam wasted no time in pressing kisses along my neck.
“How about now?” I whispered and felt him shudder against me before he pulled back to look at me.
“Get upstairs.”
It surprised me how quickly I climbed the stairs to my room.
It surprised me even more how quickly Sam crowded me on the bed once we got there.
My legs spread wide, and he settled between them, his forearms resting on the bed above my shoulders.
The hard line of him was pressed against my hip, and I shifted upwards just to watch his eyes roll.
He wiped the smile off my face by leaning in and taking my mouth in another kiss that stoked the fire within me more, turning the shifting of my hips from teasing to desperate for some friction.
I caught the little moans escaping him against my tongue until he broke the kiss and once again buried his head in the crook of my neck.
“The rose is the one that sucks, right?” he asked lowly, his voice husky.
“That’s the one.” I gasped as he rocked his hips against me before lifting his body off me entirely and sending a shock of cold over me.
He pulled back and slid down to his knees at the end of the bed before hooking his fingers into the waistband of my leggings.
His eyes locked with mine, and I nodded slightly before he tugged them down and discarded them on the floor.
I expected him to do the same with my underwear, but instead, he just pulled them to the side, revealing what I knew was my slick, wet pussy.
He slowly slid his thumb into me, and his mouth dropped open as he watched my body welcome him in.
He stared for a moment as he moved his thumb in and out before pressing kisses to the inside of my leg.
When he reached the top of my inner thigh, the kiss turned to suction, and the dual actions of his thumb filling me and the pressure against the sensitive skin of my leg drove me closer and closer to the edge.
My body pressed itself into both sensations, wanting more, more, more.
Distantly, I was aware that he was leaving a mark, but I didn’t care. It was far enough up my leg that no one would see it, and if they did, it would probably just blend in with the other patches of hyperpigmentation that lived in the area.
I whined when the pressure of his mouth released and felt him smile against my leg.
“I’m conscious that I forgot to close the door to your room, and we have no way of knowing when the others are getting back, so you’re gonna have to give me the cheat sheet.”
I looked down at him. His lips were swollen and spit slick, his cheeks covered by a perfect bloom of pink, and his eyes a deep bronze mostly swallowed by pupil. I threaded my hands through his hair and pulled slightly, watching the pleasure deepen in his eyes.
“You’re off to a good start. Add another finger and some clit stimulation, and it really won’t take that long.” The end of my sentence was cut off by another whine as he removed his thumb, only for a choked-off moan to be dragged from my throat as he replaced it with two fingers.
Sam once again watched as his fingers pumped in and out of me before he finally wrapped his lips around my clit and sucked.
A quiet moan slipped out as I pressed my hips against his face.
My toy nailed it on the suction front, but it missed an element. One that Sam definitely wasn’t. His tongue started flicking against my clit in a rhythm that matched the way his fingers were fucking into me.
All too quickly, I felt myself rushing to the edge. I could tell that my grip in Sam’s hair was getting tighter, but he didn’t seem to be complaining, and my bottom lip was sore from biting it to stifle my moans.
With a particularly precise curl of his fingers and a tug on my clit, I realised something else was about to happen.
“Babe, if you don’t wanna get soaked, you might want to move your face,” I said, my voice breathless.
He didn’t heed my warning. If anything, he pressed in closer, and that was enough.
My nails scratched against his scalp as my back bowed off the bed, and a rush of liquid squirted against Sam’s chin and forearm.
His fingers slowed, and the pressure against my clit lessened, but didn’t stop.
With a death grip still on his hair, I slumped against the mattress, and he let his fingers slip out of me and released my clit.
I covered my face with my hand and laughed breathlessly.
“Fuck, now I gotta change the—”
“Mimi! Sam!” Alisha’s voice cut through the house.
Sam shifted my underwear back into place and stood quickly. I pushed up onto my elbows.
“Just show a vocal sign of life. You cannot go downstairs right now. Your face is wet, and you’re clearly hard,” I said quietly to him before adding, louder, “Up here!”
Sam cleared his throat before shouting, “Yeah!”
“You want a hand with your situation?” I asked, nodding to his crotch.
“Not right now. I’m gonna go clean up. Meet you downstairs?”
I nodded, and he disappeared from the room.
As I changed my underwear, pulled on a pair of shorts, and stripped my bed, I knew there was no way I was getting this past Alisha without comment.
Sure enough, when I walked through the kitchen to get to the washing machine, Alisha was already in there and raised a perfectly arched eyebrow at me and my two-day-old bedsheets.