Chapter 13 #2
Yes, he lived there. No, I wasn’t going.
Was I supposed to keep that up? Travel up every weekend?
Would he come down to my bloody house with my weird furniture and unmade bed?
No, he wouldn’t because I wasn’t like that and he was the kind of guy who fancied a life with someone like Thomas.
Tall, handsome, tanned with a fancy job in IT and no doubt a posh car.
Not some lowlife GP who drove a clapped-out Peugeot.
A ten-year-old rust bucket of a vehicle where I collected old takeaway wrappers in the footwell and had too many packets of chewing gum in the glove compartment that I never remembered I had, so I always bought more when I filled up with petrol.
Because I was ridiculous. I didn’t even chew gum.
Also? I’d made some weird request about lovemaking, and now I hated myself.
He made me do that. He made me let my guard down, and I said stupid things and now I had to live with everything that I had let out of my mouth.
I made it back to my room, eventually, and the relief that he wasn’t sat on the deckchair waiting for me was immense. I felt like I could temporarily breathe, closing the door behind me and just throwing myself on the bed.
The bed smelled of him.
For fuck’s sake.
But I lay there and let my heartbeat slow down.
Allowed myself space. It was my birthday after all; I was forty, and I was a mess.
If Fox was a mess? I was a double mess. Triple.
Whatever. I was me, and I lived in my house, and I drove my car and went to work, and on the weekends when I wasn’t working, I read and cleaned and did my laundry.
It worked. My life worked, and it was fine.
And now the expectations were too much, and my parents would ask questions and demand answers that I couldn’t give.
And I’d run away again. I’d promised I wouldn’t. Yet I had. I was unreliable and not suited for this. He had to see that. I could?
I was hoping to sleep but couldn’t, lying there in the dark with the curtains drawn and the door shut.
The room was far too warm, and despite not wearing much, I was overheating.
The fan wasn’t doing the job, so I finally got up and opened the patio doors, letting the sea breeze soothe my skin.
The sand and the sea. People lounging on chairs out there on the beach.
The sound of waves and happy people. People like…
well. Not like me. Nobody was anxious and full of fear out there.
In here, I was wanting to vomit up all that breakfast and go back home so I could be my normal boring self. I needed routine. I needed…peace.
I weirdly hoped he would come back, but I didn’t even know his room number.
We hadn’t swapped phone numbers. I didn’t even know the name of the school where he worked, despite him probably having mentioned it.
I was like that. I didn’t take things in unless they were important, and then I forgot just as quickly.
Stupid. But it was easier that way. Just so I didn’t dwell on things.
Newsflash. I was dwelling. I wasn’t joking about the nausea or the stomach-ache. I was nervous and ripped up, and I didn’t give a damn about it being my birthday and I could hear my dad laughing somewhere outside, when all I wanted to do was cry.
This was why I didn’t date. Why hook-ups destroyed me. Why I wasn’t set up for this kind of life.
It was hours later, when I’d managed to have a shower and straighten out the bed. I’d packed and unpacked and tidied up. Refused my parents’ offer of dinner and cringed at their suggestions of having a night in with my Fox.
He wasn’t mine.
Yet here he was, knocking gently on the patio doorframe, disturbing my attempt at lying here aimlessly staring at the ceiling.
“Hey,” he said softly. “Can I come in?”
“How’s the foot?” I asked, concerned. The idiot I was.
“Shut up,” he huffed. “You promised me you wouldn’t run away, yet you did. Right there at breakfast. I’ve given you the day to calm down, but I’m here now.”
Okay? A statement. Not even a question.
“Sorry.” Me.
“Not good enough.”
“I get…overwhelmed.” Why I was explaining myself was beyond me, almost like I was admitting to my shortcomings, which I absolutely was.
Brutally and honestly. “Especially by my parents’ expectations.
I’m supposed to be a grown-up, and whenever I spend time with them, I feel like I never grew past twelve-year-old-me who came out to them on my birthday. They thought it was hilarious.”
“Shit,” he said, looking concerned.
“No, not like that. They were supportive and proud and told me all the right things, but I was really scared, and they were all happy and it…”
“Noah,” he said, and here he was. The real Fox.
The one I was starting to see creep out from under the armour he seemed to carry.
He was ripping his clothes off and hopping across the floor, crawling onto my lap like he belonged there, only wearing pants and blurting out words far too fast. Telling me about his day in small, palatable spurts of words.
“I showered and picked up my phone and got my own clothes back on. I feel a bit more like myself again, which is good, but I missed you. I missed this.”
Kisses. All of his kisses, and where I should have pushed him away, there was no way I would.
My hands were back to crushing curls and squeezing that arse of his.
Kisses, everywhere. Heady, frantic movements and all the words spilling out of his mouth along the way, passing me by like they weren’t even there.
I was just back in the moment. The world suddenly still as he kissed my cheeks.
My eyelids, my nose…my jaw. His mouth moving softly, mapping out my features with his fingers following along.
Every little inch of my skin was getting touched by him, kissed by him.
He missed a bit on my chest, and I guided him back, wanting to remember this forever.
How his lips sucked on my nipple. Bit down on my pec.
Sucked a bruise into my side where it wouldn’t be seen.
He said that; I took that part in. It made me smile, and he kissed that right off my face.
Swallowed it down inside of him, alongside my soul, it seemed.
That wasn’t me being dramatic; it just felt that way.
He took my cock in his mouth and made me shout out loud. The doors still open, the sunshine outside.
“Fuck!” came out of me, and he laughed, then he let me go, leaving me lying here, my clothes half ripped from my body, my head bewildered and confused, as he hopped over to the doors and shut them. Drew the curtains and then dove straight into my bag, returning to the bed with supplies.
He said nothing. Just kissed my toes. My legs.
Smoothed his face along my thighs, making my erection strain dangerously against my groin.
If he wasn’t careful, I would come, right in his face, that tongue on him licking my balls, gently sucking a testicle into his mouth.
Soft. Weird. Very much him, a glimmer of a smile on his face as he looked up at me before releasing my ball with a wet pop.
Lube. Everywhere, along his kisses. His hands moving steadily over my skin, my stomach, my legs… And then he sat up and moved his hand around his back, lube-covered fingers no doubt pressing inside of him.
Then he walked his knees up and straddled me.
“No condom,” he whispered. “Because I want to be close to you. I want it all the way, and I want you to come inside me. That’s what I want.”
“Fuck,” I huffed out, wanting to protest, but I couldn’t. I wanted it. For once in my life, I wanted him to actually do just that. Love me. Make love to me. All the way, with not a sensible thought in the room.
It was bad, and irresponsible. Medically not recommended. I would probably regret this for the rest of my life, and I meant that in every scenario possible, but mostly in the one that involved my heart. For the rest of my life.
“You’ve not prepped enough,” I protested weakly.
“Shut up. Wanna feel you,” he whispered back.
Then he pressed my cock against his opening. Took a deep breath. And then he pushed down on me, and I lost my mind. Truly lost it. I became someone else with him, someone braver than I really was. I became strong and proud and…I became this. This other person I barely recognised.
I flipped him over, held him down and fucked him. Kissed him with everything I was. I bruised his neck and sucked his skin, and I behaved like… I didn’t even know how to describe it.
He was everything and everywhere, and for a second somewhere I caught his eye. Stared at him, suddenly frozen in time.
He looked at me as he came, right there.
His mouth hanging slack, his face red and blotchy from my stubbled skin.
I’d ravaged him and taken him, and my cock was so deep inside of him that I doubted I could ever find my way back out, just watching him unravel before me.
His fingernails in my skin. I wanted them further in, ripping me apart.
His small gasps. The way he looked at me. The way I looked back.
Then I came, a violent, brutal orgasm that tore right through me. I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d tried.
Him and me. And all the love in the world.
For a small second in time, I actually believed just that.