40. A Simpler Next
40
A SIMPLER NEXT
Miles
That night, Leighton’s waiting for me at my place, which feels all kinds of right. So I do my best to shake off the wrong feelings from earlier.
This woman curled up on my couch with my mom’s dogs, sliding her thumb across her tablet, is, well, everything. I don’t even know what she’s doing on her tablet, but it looks like a calendar template, so that tells me it’s the pictures. I like that she’s doing it here .
That feels entirely right too—a clear and bright realization, one that’s almost enough to erase the heaviness I feel.
“Hey,” I say softly—soft in tone, not volume.
She’s looking at me, so she can hear me. “Hi.”
It’s wild how one syllable from her makes my heart thump harder. Makes me want to get closer to her. I toe off my shoes and advance toward her, unknotting my tie as the dogs pop up to say hello .
Leighton raises an eyebrow. “Let me do that.”
My heart fills up again, that guilt and unease slinking away. I sink down next to her, the crew hopping back up and surrounding us. I focus on her though, inching closer, and she reaches for the tie and undoes the green knot.
Her fingers on the silk, her skin near me, the scent of her hair—it’s all so intoxicating. I want to just drown in the sounds and scents of her. Forget the shitty way I felt earlier. The guilt I’m carrying that’s all of my own making.
“You won,” she says, stating the obvious.
“You were there,” I say, stating the same.
“I know,” she says, then kisses my jaw so tenderly that I feel unsteady in an entirely good way.
I close my eyes. “I wanted to drive you home after the game,” I say on a wistful sigh.
We discussed that—if she’d waited for me after the game and we’d left together, it might look…too obvious. She leaves when she’s done taking post-game promo shots. She takes a Lyft—I installed my credit card on her app when I was gone in case she needed to take the dogs anywhere—and comes straight here.
Worst case, if anyone saw her? She could say she was letting the dogs out. Plausible enough.
But I hated driving home without her almost as much as I loved seeing her here. I can’t stand the thought of Sunday, when Mom and Harvey return from their cruise and collect the dogs. When she might leave.
Opening my eyes, I glance at the clock on the wall. It doesn’t tick out loud, but I swear I hear every second. Right now, though, I want to inhale as much of Leighton as I can get. So I bury my face in her neck and kiss her slow and tender, leaving imprints of my lips all over her. New tattoos on her skin. Marks I want her to always have. More kisses, more moments, more…her.
She sighs softly against me, her fingers twisting gently through my hair, lighter than how she usually touches me. Leighton’s fiery and tenacious, and she touches like that, too, most of the time—like a warrior goddess who knows how to fight. The same way she likes to fuck.
Right now, though, she’s soft, a summer breeze, a wisp of a kiss.
And when she sets her hands on my chest and gently pushes me away, I understand why—there’s something on her mind. Before I drown myself in her, she’s got something to say.
“What’s going on?” she asks, her eyes full of insight. “I don’t think this is all about you wishing you could have driven me home after the game.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, dodging it because I really just want to touch her, to forget how awful I felt earlier. To lose my feelings in her.
She smiles, the kind that says she’ll allow my innocent question, but not for long. “I can sense your sadness. Your…guilt?”
I drag a hand down my face, then slump back into the couch. Of course she sees it. She’s one of the most astute people I know. She can read the room. She can read situations.
She can read…me.
“Is it what happened earlier? With my dad?” she prompts. “It wasn’t easy for me either, seeing him there, but I felt I needed to…” She doesn’t finish. She doesn’t have to.
“Yes, but it’s also…” I begin, then push the back of my head against the couch, frustration digging into me. “It’s Ty ler too. It’s the fact that I’m so fucking obvious. You’re so good at handling everything. Measured. You’ve got your shit together in front of everyone. Even me. And I’m supposed to be a team leader, yet every time I see you at work I act like the guy in high school trying to impress the girl.”
Her smile is amused, and she’s clearly delighted, but then it fades as she turns serious. “It’s hard for me too. I feel like I’m holding back.”
But does that mean we’re supposed to do something about this yet? This thing between us? I’ve only been back in town for a few days. We’ve only been doing this—whatever this is—for a few days. No way can I pressure her to go all-in on a romance with me, even if I might think I’m ready.
Wait. Am I? I drift off for a beat. Is that actually what this heaviness in my chest is about? Not just the lying, but the growing awareness that maybe…just maybe…I know what I want.
I return to the here and now, my gaze traveling over the strong, centered, passionate, bold woman who’s somehow interested in me too.
And I know—I don’t want to give her up, no matter what.
It’s a privilege—like touching her—to know your heart’s desire. To know the cost.
I think I’d pay that price.
I’m almost certain I’m ready. Ready to face Coach’s ire. Ready to handle whatever comes my way. Ready to face the fallout. Because the way I felt when I walked in the door moments ago? It was like the sun rising, illuminating the truth of the past year or so.
With Leighton, I feel like I can slow down. Enjoy the present. Savor every second without thinking constantly about moving forward. I can just… be . But it’s more than that—I can be happy, and holy hell am I ever happy with her. Every time I’m with her, I don’t want the moments to end, and that feeling’s intensified since I met her. I’ve been falling for her for more than a year. And even when we tried to stay away, I fell more. Even when we tried to be friends, I fell deeper. I look at her, this woman who makes me believe I can handle anything, and I know she needs to hear the truth—even the parts I’m not proud of. “I need to tell you something—when I was with Joanne, she asked me to be more vulnerable, and I said, and I was a dick about it, ‘ My knee is sliced in half—how much more vulnerable do you want me to be ?’”
Leighton’s expression is etched in sympathy. “You were hurting,” she says, exonerating me.
Maybe I deserve it. Maybe I don’t. But I need her to know I’ve changed.
“I’m not proud of that moment. I wouldn’t do that with you,” I say, my voice as raw as my heart feels. “I don’t want to do that with you.”
“Then don’t,” she says, her voice steady, certain.
She’s young and already so strong. She knows her worth. Knows what she wants. And maybe it is me. “I won’t do that,” I say, in a bare promise of who I want to be with her.
A better boyfriend.
I haven’t said those words exactly. But that’s what I want. I want to show her I can be that for her. I have plans for her. If she’ll have me.
She cups my cheek. Her hand soothes some of the guilt away. “But it’s also okay if you’re human. You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to take it all on. I can take things on too.”
“I know that, but I want to take things on for you,” I say. If she’ll let me. If she’ll allow me to carry whatever burdens she needs carried.
“I know you will. You’re amazing with me.” She takes a breath, her eyes searching mine. “And don’t let the past eat you up. We all say things we regret—it’s what we do next that matters.”
Next. I want all the nexts with her.
But I don’t want to lose her with the intensity of my emotions. When my dad took off, I stepped up, learned to cook, handled the cleaning, looked out for my siblings, aced every class, helped in every way. I took everything on as I moved forward. But I’m not that kid anymore. I’m an adult, so maybe I can move forward one step at a time. Starting with a simpler next.
“Next,” I say, turning the word over, tasting its sweetness, the possibility it holds. “I can’t stop thinking about the fact that on Sunday night, you might leave. And I don’t want you to leave.”
Her lips twitch, and the hint of a smile she gives me feels like hope. “What are you saying, then?”
“I want you here,” I say, an admission that sounds as helpless as I feel right now. “So damn much. It’s all I think about, Leighton. That’s part of why I felt awful earlier. Because when Tyler asked me about you, I said we were friends, and I felt as terrible lying to him as I felt lying to your father.”
Something dark passes in her eyes. “I didn’t like having to do that earlier today either. I don’t know how long I can do it,” she says, and that’s the crux of the issue.
We’re sneaking around. This thing with us is borrowed time. Soon, we’ll have to do what I’ve always done in life—move forward. Is she ready, though, like I think I am? “I don’t like saying we’re just friends. Though you are…a friend, and I love that,” I say, taking a small step.
I love so much more about her, but I keep that inside.
Leighton challenges me gently, asking, “What are we, then?”
I hold her beautiful gaze, my heart beating so fast as I say, “So much more than friends. And I want you to stay for longer. Can you…can you just…stay?”
Maybe a few more days, weeks, and we can figure it out. Maybe then she’ll know what I already know—that she’s the one for me.
“No one has to know,” she says, almost like a question.
“No one,” I confirm, since her yes is all I want.
“Just us,” she adds.
“You and me,” I say out loud, and in my head I tell myself I’ll show her that I can be not just a better boyfriend—but the best one. And maybe then she’ll be where I am. Ready too.
“You and me,” she says, reaching for my hand.
I squeeze her fingers and it feels like a promise for a future.
Then she nods to the stairs. “Right now, though, there’s something I want to do.”
I follow her. I’d follow her anywhere.
“A do-over.”
Leighton’s words shimmer in the night air as she leads me into the bedroom. Her camera is perched on the tripod and positioned toward the bed.
A do-over for the day we spent together that started in her studio, and also a do-over for last night.
Except as I glance around the bedroom— ours , this is definitely our bedroom—I wonder if she planned a sexy treasure hunt again. I scan for the evidence, but of course she’d hide lacy things better for a geocacher like me. I’ve got a feeling though—a gut feeling—that she means something else. Something that makes my cells crackle with excitement.
When she meets my searching gaze with mischievous blue eyes, she asks, “Are you ready?”
She has no idea. “I’m always ready for you,” I say.
She tugs on my loosened tie. “Do you still like pictures, Miles?” It’s a tease of a question.
“If you’re in them,” I tell her, running the backs of my knuckles down her cheek.
“Do you still like pictures of both of us?”
Heat roars through me, a scorching fire raging in seconds. “I do.”
“Do you still get off to them?”
I’m a five-alarm blaze now. This woman has my number. “You know I fucking do, sweetheart.”
She nibbles on the corner of her pretty, glossy pink lips. “Then let’s take some pictures of you and me.”
You and me.
The three words I said earlier. It’s like she’s reinventing them. She’s turning them into something wholly new. Something unbearably sexy. Something that’s just for us. And as she unbuttons my shirt, she affirms that, saying, “Just for us. ”
“You’re the photographer. We’re the subject,” I tell her, giving her all the permission she needs.
She grabs her little trigger remote from the nightstand, the one she used more than a year ago in her studio. Moving behind the camera, she fiddles with some settings. When she comes around the front once more, she says, “Kiss me the way you want to.”
I take that filthy invitation and I RSVP. I crush my lips to hers, giving her a hot, deep kiss that goes to my brain. All my synapses are firing, right along with the camera. She must be pressing the trigger, since the Nikon is clicking. My mind is frying and I’m alive and electric with the desire for her. And…with this pulsing need to see what we look like. I don’t know when she’ll snap the next ones but I don’t want to waste a second.
After I give her one more deep possessive kiss that has her melting in my arms, I make quick work of her clothes. Tugging off her shirt, kissing her neck, fiddling with the hooks on her bra. For a second, I consider the implications. She’ll be shirtless on camera. But one look at how fearless she is and I know this is what she wants. I know, too, that she’s in control—that remote in her hand, and the camera she owns are the proof.
I unhook the bra, dropping it onto the bed, because you should be nice to lingerie. Cupping her tits, I bury my face between them, kissing between the valley. Drawing the right nipple into my mouth and sucking, biting, grazing my teeth along it until she’s panting in my arms, all while taking pictures of us. Talk about a multi-tasker. I give the other one the same treatment since fair’s fair when it comes to nipple play.
She clicks, then gasps an “aah.” Grabbing my head with one hand, she breathes out hard and yanks my mouth to hers. She kisses me for a few dizzying seconds all while grappling at my shirt again, hastily shoving it off me while still snapping pictures.
For fuck’s sake, she’s incredible. The way she takes pictures while undressing me is the sexiest thing I’ve ever experienced.
Now, I’m shirtless. That’s nothing new. Nothing that hasn’t been seen on social media a thousand times over. But this is different. Because these images are only for us. Knowing that, I break the kiss but pull her against me, wrap my arms around her then urge her, “Put your arms around me.”
She loops her bare arms around my neck, then presses the button again. I can hear the click of the camera capturing us skin to skin, holding each other in a moment of unchecked desire, but more so…of total trust.
The sound stops and I meet her gaze. There’s so much in her blue eyes—this passion that matches mine, and I hope…the emotions too. But for now, I focus on the physical, asking, “Limits. What are your limits on camera?”
“It’s my camera. As much as you want.”
She’s so fucking fearless. Me too, but I’m also torn. Half of me wants to keep sex itself ephemeral, a memory for our minds only. The other, greedy, dirty part of me wants it all on film. “I want everything till I fuck you. And maybe even that,” I say.
“I guess someone wants it all,” she teases, then holds up a finger and slips away to the bathroom, likely taking out her hearing aids. I’ve learned that’s how she prefers to fuck.
When she returns to me, she lifts her chin. “Take my clothes off.”
That’s all she needs to say .
I’m stripping her bare, peeling off her jeans, then standing in front of her where she’s wearing only a pair of pale pink panties. I drop to my knees as she pushes the button, capturing me worshipping her like she deserves. I look up at her and I’m keenly aware of the position, what it says, and more so what it means about us. She is a goddess. She is my goddess. One hand sifts through my hair, the other takes pictures as my hands circle her waist. I kiss her belly, then lower still and slowly, deliberately peel off those panties.
My engine revs and I groan, need pulsing through me, hot and electric as she steps out of them. I pop up so I can lift her and put her on the edge of the bed. With my back to the camera, and most of her shielded by me, I say, “I want to know how you look when I go down on you.”
She shudders, a full body tremble moving through her. She doesn’t answer with words. She answers with deeds, grabbing at my slacks and undoing them, then shoving them down my hips. I yank them off, and I’m wearing only my boxer briefs when she pushes my right shoulder down so I can kneel in front of her on the bed.
“Like this,” she instructs, the photographer positioning her subject.
She leans back, her chestnut hair spilling down her back, her perky tits pointing up, her lovely legs spread for me. The controller in her hand.
My gorgeous, sexy, daring woman.
She’s a gift, and she’s unwrapped herself for me. I bury my face between those pretty thighs and I kiss her sweet, hot pussy on camera.
In seconds she’s panting and moaning, but the camera’s not clicking.
Pride floods me. She’s so into this she forgot to trigger the shot. I stop for a second, squeeze her thigh to get her attention. When she lifts her face and locks eyes with me, I arch a brow. “Take a picture. It lasts longer.”
Her eyes widen, flickering with surprise and filthy delight. “Yes, sir.”
She raises her hand and makes a show of pushing the button on the remote. Again and again, and the Nikon clicks, recording the back of my head, some of her face—who even knows. Her fingers rope through my hair again as I lick and kiss and suck.
But I don’t let her forget her job. “Push the button, baby,” I tell her once more when the camera’s gone silent.
“If you insist,” she says.
“I really fucking do,” I say, in a tone that brooks no argument.
She obeys, then rocks against my mouth, wet and slick and needy and almost there. A flick of my tongue, a kiss from my lips, a finger crooked inside her, and she’s shaking, shuddering, then dropping the remote, which I’ll call a victory. Then she shouts my name as she comes on my lips for no one to see later.
That’s okay. The memory’s seared on my mind.
I’m more aroused than any man has a right to be. I’m ravenous to look at all these photos right fucking now.
But first I need to live the rest of it. No, I get to live the rest of it.
Turbocharged by lust, I stand and I stare at the beauty in front of me, flushed cheeks, pink spreading all over her chest, breasts heaving.
I grab her chin, roughly tug her toward me the way she likes. “I made a decision.”
“What do you want, Falcon?” she asks. It’s a challenge and I love it .
“I want it all,” I tell her roughly.
Her eyes sparkle, and I can tell I gave her the exact right answer. “You want us fucking?”
Thank god she’s kinky in all the best ways. The ways that match mine. “You perfect, dirty girl. I want you on all fours. Remote in your hand and you taking pictures when I fuck you good and hard and make you come again and again.”
For a second or two, she hesitates, and I try to read what concerns her. But then I don’t have to because she points to a standing mirror in the corner of my bedroom. “Move the mirror so I can see your face.”
That’s it. I’m done. My heart jumps so hard, it’s official. I’m so fucking in love with her. I bend down, cup her cheek, and give her a soft, quick kiss before letting go. “You’re fucking perfect, and I love that you told me exactly what you need.”
Because as I stride over to the mirror, I get the double meaning here too. This way, with me behind her, she can still see my face if she needs to see what I’m saying, to hear me with her eyes.
Naked and lithe, she stretches out on the bed.
Our bed.
Ours.
Everything feels like ours, and I hope she travels to where I am emotionally. But I can do my part in getting her there—by being the best boyfriend there is. And part of being a good boyfriend is listening. I move the mirror so she can watch us—I can watch us too—then grab a condom and shed my boxer briefs.
On the bed again, I climb over her, kiss her sweet mouth, then pull back. “Do whatever you need to do with your camera. But I need to get inside you and then get off to it tomorrow.”
She gasps, wriggling under me, kissing me more.
“Leighton,” I warn. “Do it now. Your man is going to make you come so fucking hard again.”
“So cocky,” she teases, then hustles behind the camera. When she returns to me, she grabs the remote and gives me the most provocative stare. “Make me forget to take pictures.”
“I’ll make sure you remember,” I taunt right back before I grab her, tossing her onto the bed the way she likes being handled.
Rough.
I haul her up by her hips to all fours, position her so she’s facing the camera, then yank her pretty body into place. As her tits sway beautifully, the camera clicks, capturing us.
My sexy shutterbug is already taking pics.
As I run a hand down her back, as I slide on a condom, as I notch the head of my cock against her wet pussy, the camera clicks again and again. The sound of it cranks me up. It’s the sound of her setting the pace, dictating the rules, recording the filthy, beautiful moments we share. Time for me to move it along, so I sink in, my breath stuttering out of my chest in a rush at the tight, hot feel of her. She’s watching me in the mirror. And I know now it’s not just so she can see my lips move. She’s watching every detail of the way we fuck, studying every reaction of mine as I fill her, cataloguing how the pleasure, the heat, the tightness, makes me shake with lust.
I meet her dirty gaze in the reflection. “Watch me,” I tell her in the glass .
“I can’t look away,” she says breathily, her hand curled around the remote, triggering shot after shot.
I ease out, raise a hand, and smack her ass as I slide back in. She yelps and it’s gorgeous. “You like that,” I say. It’s not a question at all. It’s a statement.
Still, she answers with a shuddery, “God yes.”
I do it again, lifting the same hand, easing out, sliding in, and swatting her ass.
She moans, her face twisting with pleasure. She’s not too far gone though. She presses the button. Another click. I ease out. Lift my other hand.
Smack. Click. Fuck.
Soon we find a filthy rhythm. Of triggers. Clicks. Slaps. Thrusts. Moans. And us, as I say to her in the mirror, my jaw ticking, my bones tight with need, “I love fucking you.”
It’s simple. It’s not sophisticated dirty talk. But it’s pure, raw truth.
“I love when you fuck me,” she pants out.
I piston my hips, pumping into her, taking her, and listening for all her cues. Watching them, too, like when her grip loosens. Her hand uncurls. The clicks stop as her breath comes faster. I cover her, my chest pressed to her back, then I slide a hand over her tits up to her throat, and I curl my palm around her. The noise she makes is a needy, desperate whimper.
“One more, baby. Give us one more picture,” I urge.
“You do it,” she says, like she’s too drugged out on the pleasure to think.
I reach for the remote by her hand and press the button. Not artfully like her. But bluntly as I fuck my woman. I fuck her on camera. I fuck her in the mirror. I fuck her on the bed. And I record it for us as I give it to her exactly how she wants it because she gives me everything I want— her . At some point, I stop clicking and it’s just us, two people who can’t get enough of each other as I fuck her to another orgasm. And her sounds, and her screams, and her cries wring a powerful one out of me, too, as we fall apart together.
Watching us in the mirror.
Later, when we’re cleaned up, she brings her tablet into bed with us. She’s downloaded the pictures to a password protected folder. She shows me every single one. It’s the hottest slideshow I’ve ever seen.
“That’s you and me,” she says.
I kiss her temple. “You and me.”
And it feels like the start of a whole new future.
Only, there’s so much I have to figure out. So much I’d have to say to someone—one person I respect immensely.
But most of all what I need to figure out is if she’s as all in as I am. Because that’s what matters most.