Chapter 22
Finn
Ihate that if Pi had been Megan, or any other woman for that matter, I could have spent the taxi ride to my place snogging his face off.
Maybe if he were just some random dude, it’d be okay too.
But because he’s my teammate and we can’t afford for the local press to find out about us, I settle for covering my arm with my jacket as my hand slides up his shirt and thumbs the dimples on his lower back.
We’re in a London-style cab with the extra fold down chairs behind the driver, and every thirty seconds or so I have to cross and uncross my legs in the other direction.
I’m so ready for this evening’s activities to unfold that all of my blood has diverted to one particular area, and I’m finding it increasingly difficult to focus on Pi’s decoy blow-by-blow analysis of today’s match.
Even Pi himself is struggling to maintain his cool.
His breaths keep stuttering, and I’ve heard more “ums” and “fucks” in the past ten minutes than I have any word relating to rugby.
“Your housemate?” Pi says when we arrive at my house. He cranes his neck to look up the stairs.
“Sven’s in Munich for some work th—” I don’t get to finish my sentence before his lips are on me.
I only put my jacket on as I was leaving the taxi, but he’s already pushing it over my shoulders and letting it fall to the ground.
“We’re just gonna do this the once, yeah? Get it out of our systems?” he asks, for the eightieth time in twenty minutes. He needs to absolve himself of the guilt he’s feeling, and honestly, I’m willing to tell him whatever he wants to hear right now.
“Of course, princess. Upstairs?”
“Can I . . . clean up first?” he asks.
Pi’s in my bathroom for almost half an hour. I don’t know what he’s doing, and I’m certain he’s taking longer than he needs to, but he hums what I think is The Next Generation opening tune to himself. He’s happy.
I use the downtime to change my sheets, because it’s been a month, probably, and if I’m shoving his face into the mattress, the least I can do is freshen them up for him.
A moment later, he steps into my bedroom wearing only his pants and socks. He places the rest of his clothing in a neat pile on top of my drawers. I waste no time stripping down to match his state of undress, and go one further by taking my boxers off and kicking them aside.
I walk over to him, cradle his nape, and kiss him tenderly, gently, achingly. The merest brush of lips on lips. I break the caress, my fingers still entwined in the back of his hair.
Jesus fuck, he’s beautiful.
“I’m gonna fucking ruin you, princess. Absolutely destroy you. Are you ready?”
“So fucking ready.” He pulls off the last of his clothing and sits on the edge of the mattress, his tanned feet scrunching and flexing on the shag of my rug. He rakes a palm down his abdomen and strokes his cock slowly.
I watch him for a while, and wonder if one day he’d let me film him fucking his own hand, then I shake the thought from my head.
There’s no one day. No sometime in the future.
There’s only now. I motion for him to get on his knees.
He does, and our naked bodies press together as we kiss again.
What begins as a patient and gentle embrace quickly evolves into something a little more frantic, feral, desperate, final.
This will be the only time we fuck. He has a girlfriend now.
I have to keep reminding myself of that.
And I have to keep pausing and reminding myself to stay present.
Tell my brain to soak up every minute detail of him, like our hot breaths mingling, the moisture sandwiched between our bellies and his fingers gripping my flesh as though I might float away on a current.
He has a fucking girlfriend now. And I fucking set him up with her.
This is the first and last time this will happen.
We break the kiss, breathless, and I roll on a condom. Pi watches me. He never stops stroking himself. It’s like he’s on autopilot and it’s wildly hot. I apply lube to myself the same way I would have done with any other lover.
“We might want more than that,” he informs me. “I’ve tried it at home and I needed loads more than I thought I would.”
I squeeze out more. So much that my hand is dripping onto my fresh sheets. So much that Pi starts giggling.
“Right, princess, turn around,” I order him. “I need to fill that perfect little hole of yours.”
He turns and immediately drops to his elbows, sticking his ass in the air.
“Damn.” I bite my fist. “That’s a beautiful sight right there. Holy Crickets St Thomas.”
He laughs. “What the fuck?”
“It’s a village near Chard.”
“My dude.” Pi looks over his shoulder at me, arching his back and popping his backside out even more.
I miss all his next words. I’m pretty sure he says something like, “Why are you always talking about Chard when we’re naked?
” but he could’ve been requesting instructions to poach eggs for all I was paying attention.
“Fucking hell, look at you.” I swipe the excess lube onto his hole and push as much of it in with my thumb as I can. “I’m gonna . . . like . . . stretch you?”
“Okay,” he says, breathless.
“No, I’m asking. Should I stretch you? You know more than I do at this point.”
“I thought you did research?” he says, looking over and arching his back again. Damn, that’s a dangerous fucking move.
“Not gonna lie, on all the research videos I’ve watched, they just sort of . . . smashed it straight in there. Raw. You can see there’s lube, but you never see them apply it.” I thumb over his hole once more. I need it. “I’m gonna . . .”
I push my middle finger it up to the second knuckle.
Pi whines, but stops himself. I won’t force him to do something he’s uncomfortable with, and I don’t want him to feel like he needs to put on a show for me, but damn, I wish he would let himself loose. I should have played some music or whacked the telly on to provide some background noise.
The only thing I can reach from where I’m standing without extracting myself from Pi’s butt is the small space heater slash fan on the floor.
I kick the “on” switch with an extended toe and narrowly avoid foot cramp.
For some utterly bizarre reason, the bastard contraption is set to “cold” even though it’s minus one million degrees outside.
The room, however, is instantly filled by the overloud static of air getting pulled inside and swished up.
“What are you doing?” he says, deliberately rocking himself on my finger then swallowing his whimper.
I sink it in further. I don’t tell him my only motive was to provide white noise so he feels less exposed. “It’s boiling in here,” I say instead, but I’m grateful he can’t see the goosebumps erupting over my skin.
Jesus, he’s tight. I pull my finger out and push it back in. All the way out again, add a little more lube to my hand, and push it in. And I keep doing that until it glides in with much less resistance.
I’ve got big fingers, but I slip another in—my ring finger—and work him again until we’re both gasping for the real thing.
“Can I fuck you now?” I ask. I’m sweating, no longer feeling the chill from the fan, and congratulating myself on having such excellent foresight.
“Just the one time, yeah?”
“Of course, princess. Just the once.”
“Then fuck me,” he moans. I line myself up with his hole, drag the other hand down the small of his back, and then hook it over his hip. “Please.”
And then I’m pushing inside him, watching his ass as it swallows my cock. I’m not sure either of us is breathing right now. I may have forgotten how to. He’s so fucking tight. I order myself to take it slow, he likes it slow, but this might just be the most exquisitely torturous shag of my life.
Fuck, Eggs, don’t fuck this up. You’ve got one shot.
I slide all the way inside him.
“Fuuuuccckk!” This is going to be a test of endurance.
I pull out, push back in, like I did with my fingers, only this time it feels as though I’m on a countdown to death. With every agonisingly slow thrust, the pressure builds, and when I increase my pace just the slightest bit, Pi drops from his elbows to his chest.
“Is that okay?” I ask.
“Unghh!” he replies, through a mouth full of duvet. He stretches his arms above his head and gives me a thumbs-up.
I almost laugh. It’s fucking cute. “I can’t hear you with your face shoved into the mattress, by the way. So feel free to make as much noise as you want. Or not, whatever. I won’t hear it anyway.”
And I let my pace build. My words pay off as Pi begins to whine, and whimper, and moan straight into the bedsheets. Occasionally he turns his head to the side to suck in a lungful of air.
I fuck him faster.
He rewards me with a beautiful, “Oh, fuck, Eggo. That feels so fucking good.” He sounds so Australian right now, like he’s forgotten he’s lived in England for four years.
I fuck him harder.
He grips the other end of the bed and whines. Flesh slaps against flesh. Sweat runs down my neck, gathers between my palms and his hips, between the back of his thighs and the front of mine.
I’m not even aware of the sounds I’m making, but I know I’m getting dangerously close. My knees press into the mattress, and I crowd him from behind. Pi obligingly pushes himself onto his hands, elbows extended, and I reach a hand round, grip his cock, and start pumping.
“Oh, fuck. Oh my god,” he cries.
My rhythm is too erratic. It’s jerkier than how he likes to be touched, but I’m dancing on a knife’s edge, and any second I’m going to tumble headfirst into that delicious ravine. I need him there with me. Need him to fall with me.
“Pi, princess, baby . . . are you?” Fuck, I can’t even form words.
Pi doesn’t reply either. At least not the way I expect him to.
He slaps his hand backwards and holds my wrist steady, and then he whines through gritted teeth, spilling over my fist and my clean sheets.
I don’t stop thrusting. In fact, I speed up, until I’m bracing a palm between his shoulder blades and crying out into the chilled air as I come.
Afterwards, I remove myself as delicately as possible, and Pi drops to the mattress like he’s wounded. I get rid of the condom and go in search of a towel for him.
“Do you want to have a shower before you leave?” I say.
Pi blinks up at me, but we both understand there can be no “couple’s” shit between us. This is simply a fuck once to cross it off a checklist and be done with it situation.
“I’ll shower at home.” His home. He accepts the towel from me. “Is this clean or dirty?”
“Well, it was from my bath yesterday so kinda both, but I just rubbed your cum from my fist on it, so it’s less clean now.”
I watch him, fascinated, as he mops up the excess lube from his thighs and between his cheeks.
“Is this your wash basket?” Pi lifts the lid from my hamper and drops the towel inside. “We’re like . . . still good, yeah?”
“Huh?” I say. My mind’s reeling from the evening’s activities and the abruptness of it all ending.
He tugs on his pants. “This won’t make things weird between us, will it? We’re still friends?”
“Of course. Shit, of course we are. All we did was fuck.” I shrug. “No big deal. That was just something that we had to do, and now it’s done we can go back to how shit was before Halloween.”
He pulls on his socks. “Ripper.”
I find a pair of joggers and hop into them. Pi watches me this time, his eyes raking up and down my front, resting on my dick for a few moments. He smiles to himself, then pushes to his feet and climbs into the rest of his clothes.
“Are you okay?” I say, and Pi frowns at me. “Are you sore?”
“A little. But I’m fine. I’m a big boy.”
I swallow down my response. I want him to want me to take care of him, but that was never going to be part of our arrangement.
He pats down his trouser pockets. “Oh, wait, we got a taxi here. I don’t have my car.”
“I’ll order you an Uber.”
My phone’s still in my suit jacket on the hallway floor. I have an unread text message from Megan. She’s on a night out in Cardiff with Georgia, and judging by her spelling, she’s had a skinful.
I got mai tai in my eeye. Hey thar rhymeds. Lovr u xxxx
“Taxi will be here in sixteen minutes,” I say, typing a quick “Love you too xx” in reply.
A weight, like a lead ball, presses against my gut. No doubt it’s guilt. I just fucked someone who isn’t my girlfriend and I have zero intentions to tell her about it.
It should be guilt.
Only . . . it doesn’t feel like guilt at all.
Urgh, what are these feelings?
No, damn it. It has to be guilt. I’m a cheater, it can’t be anything other than guilt.
“You alright?” Pi says, assessing me with his X-ray yellow irises.
“Hmm?” I stash my phone. “Yeah. I’m good, pard, you?”
He doesn’t answer. He simply watches me for a few moments longer. I don’t know, the silence and the scrutiny should be uncomfortable, but it’s not. Pi just has a different way of processing information than most people I’ve met.
“I don’t usually do one-night stands,” I say, because this feels dangerously close to a one-night stand.
“Me neither,” he says. “Like, I have, but they’ve always been girls, and also not one of my best friends, and I don’t really know what to say afterwards. I just sort of awkwardly leave, and then I never see them again.”
I nod in agreement. My phone buzzes in my pocket. “Taxi’s two minutes away.”
“I’m glad we did this, though.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I’m glad it was you.”
Fuck it. I can’t let him walk away like this. I’d never dream of doing what I’m about to do to anyone else, but it could be my only opportunity.
I shove him against the wall, wrap my hand around his nape, and bring my lips to his. Before they meet, Pi’s eyes grow wide in surprise, and he huffs out the cutest little laugh.
My phone vibrates in my pocket again. I ignore it. We continue kissing. The desperate efforts of a last kiss. It rings.
I pull away from him. “Fuck.”
It’s the Uber driver.
Pi puffs out an enormous sigh and opens the front door. “See you Monday, cunt.”
I thumb his bottom lip. “Later, princess.”