Seven #2
“So,” he said, lifting an arm onto the back of the couch. “Since I’ve utterly failed to predict you so far, why don’t you just make this simple and tell me what you like?”
The sudden question was like being thrown into a spotlight. My heartrate sped. “What I like?”
“Yeah, you know: frotting, toys, having famous tennis players suck your toes.”
I winced theatrically, forcing out a laugh in the hope of easing the awkwardness. “Not that one. Definitely not that one.”
“Oh, good, tennis is pretty rough on feet.” When I said nothing more, he lifted his brows. “You know we’ll be here all night if you make me list things for you to say no to. I have a pretty good imagination.”
His gaze was dark and intent and patient, that spotlight wholly on me. “Why does this feel like an on-court interview?” I asked.
With a mischievous grin, Miles held out his fist like it contained an invisible microphone.
“So, Mat, that was a tough match, but you finally got it through your thick skull that you’re not the only one who likes dick, so tell us some things you like.
Not things you want to do right now necessarily, just things you like in general. ”
“I’m really not that complicated, I swear.”
“I’ll be the judge of that, or rather, the crowd will.” He gestured to an invisible crowd in the stands around us.
“Are you trying to make this harder?”
He laughed, the skin around his eyes crinkling in a way that was far too delightful. “No,” he said, “but I couldn’t resist. Just . . . say whatever first comes to mind.”
A lot of things came to mind, all things I wasn’t sure I wanted to say aloud, but then that was the point – the whole conversation just another challenge to see if I could keep up with him. And this would be a foolish place to stumble.
“Let me start you off,” he said when my silence dragged. “You’ve won the coin toss. Do you prefer to serve? Or receive?”
“Either,” I admitted. “Both.”
“Ah, versatile! The crowd are impressed. Go on.”
My laugh was more tension than humour as I tried not to worry what he would think of my answers.
Looking past him helped. “I like . . . well, sometimes I like a bit of a tussle. I like dirty talk. Teasing. Begging. Really, any vocal enthusiasm is good. Having silent sex when you don’t have to is weird.
” My heart hammered and I twisted my fingers together, still not looking at him.
“I like nice shoulders. And handfuls of arse. Having my fingers in someone’s hair.
I like going again ten minutes later because it was so hot the first time.
I like how amazing people look when they’re enjoying themselves.
And . . . I’ve recently discovered that I like famous tennis players blowing my mind with their lack of gag reflex, especially when they go on to post cute selfies at Queen’s that give me an existential crisis. ”
I risked a glance at him, in time to catch the surprised laugh that broke through his smile. “Saw that, did you?”
“Yeah. That picture was quite something.”
His lips twitched as he tried to suppress an all-too-pleased grin. “Anything else?”
“Kissing,” I said with a shrug. “I’m a kisser.”
“You sound apologetic about that.”
“I’ve met people who aren’t fans.”
Miles looked surprised, which suggested he wasn’t one of them.
“Well?” I said, gesturing at the make-believe crowd. “Did they cheer? Or are they booing my poor taste?”
“I think the crowd is . . . impressed and appreciative. Like after one of those ridiculous rallies that end up on hot-shot reels.”
“Ah, but it takes two players to make one of those.” I snatched his pretend microphone. “Miles. It was a difficult task, but you got what you wanted and now—”
Throwing up his hands like a shield, he said, “Oh no, you can’t interview the interviewer! No one cares what an interviewer thinks.”
“I do.”
“No, now the crowd is definitely booing. They don’t care what I like, or maybe . . . maybe they think you should find out for yourself. The hard way.”
“Oh, come on, that’s not fair.”
Miles grinned, the look wickedly glittering. “Who said anything about fair?” he purred. “There’s no fair in tennis, there’s just winning. And sometimes the way to win is to push your opponent into a corner.”
God, everything about him was like dynamite to the groin, all of it a challenge I was determined to keep meeting.
I threw away the pretend microphone. “I’ll push you into a corner,” I growled, and lunged the length of the couch to press him into the cushions with a hard kiss.
For a split second, I doubted the instinct.
Until he groaned against my mouth. Until he ran his hands into my hair.
Until he slid his tongue along mine, our lips crushed together in a sudden, desperate need to exist within each other’s skin.
“And to provoke . . .” he said, pulling away for milliseconds between kisses. “. . .your opponent . . . into doing . . . exactly . . . what you want.”
“So much for reading me poorly then,” I murmured, gripping his hips and pulling him onto his back so I could have the full length of his body beneath me. “You’ve got me all figured out.”
His response was to drop a foot onto the floor, spreading his legs. It was no command, but nothing seemed accidental with him, so I took the opportunity to grind against his arse and earned a satisfied groan from the depths of his throat.
“See?” he said, tilting his head back onto the low arm of the couch, baring his neck. “You’ll have me worked out in no time.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said, our tennis shorts slipping so smoothly together that they hardly seemed to exist. They were just a cruelty of thin fabric keeping our rapidly hardening dicks from touching and I wanted to tear them off, wanted to touch every inch of him.
Yet for all he’d said I needed to work him out, one question loomed large before us.
“Although,” I added with an appreciative hum as his hands gripped my arse. “You’d better answer one question.”
Instead of immediately asking it, I set the tip of my tongue to his collarbone and lightly licked a trail up the ridges of his throat, over the prickle of his stubble to the tip of his chin.
I’d intended to kiss him at the end, but he arched back with a shiver and a gasp, and I filed that sensitivity away for future use.
“One?” he said with forced ease, like he hadn’t just blatantly shown his hand. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” I snapped my teeth, feigning like I would bite him. “Best I know whether you prefer serving or receiving, don’t you think?”
He tensed beneath me for an instant like the question had jabbed him in the ribs. “I . . .” His gaze shied to the TV where the battle of the Peters hadn’t quite finished. “It depends on my mood, but generally I prefer . . . receiving.”
He seemed to be expecting surprise, equal parts awkward and mulish and wholly adorable. Whatever surprise I might have felt days before, it was no surprise at all in the moment, and determined to show only appreciation, I trailed kisses down the side of his neck. “And how is your mood right now?”
“Right now? Right now, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you fucking me since you wanted to murder me at the gym.”
I pulled back enough to look at him and there were those come-fuck-me eyes, dark and heavy-lidded, reaching out like a tempting hand. How I could ever have failed to see them before would be the greatest mystery of the modern age.
“Oh.” I let my lips split into a wolfish smile. “Oh, I didn’t want to murder you. I wanted to shove you against the wall. Wanted to tear off your clothes. Wanted to fuck you with my fingers until you begged for every inch of me.”
“Fuck,” he groaned, pressing needily against me. “Goddamn, you really go for the kill.” He gripped my shorts like he would rip them away. “I already want every inch of you, and I’m far too tired to spend half the night doing foreplay.”
Easy to forget he’d played Queen’s that day, time seeming to have stretched and shrunk oddly since the afternoon he’d showed up at my door with his laundry.
“Mmm, well then your wish is my command,” I said, and kissed him, allowing my thoughts to speed away toward logistics.
He was too tall for the terrible old couch to be comfortable even had I been prepared, which at least made the choice simple.
I dragged myself to my feet, the sight of him lying mussed and hard on the couch one I filed away for posterity.
“My room. So long as you promise not to notice I haven’t folded my laundry. ”
“I intend to be far too occupied to critique your untidiness.”
Such was the size of the apartment that it was barely half a dozen steps to my door, and even less from my door to the bed where I fumbled for the lamp switch.
Its diffuse, golden light had a nicer ambience than the stark ceiling globe, casting a welcome glow over my untidy room.
Like the rest of the apartment, it wasn’t large, space only for a double bed shoved against one wall and the narrowest of desks against the other, my suitcases and racquet bags covering more than half the floor between.
I grabbed the pile of jumbled laundry off the bed and tossed it atop the nearest suitcase, glad I had at least made a moderate effort at straightening my bedcovers that morning.
Miles paused in the doorway and, as though to make the point he had no intention of looking around and was visiting solely on business, pulled off his shirt.
Such a simple act, one he’d done a hundred times in front of crowds and cameras, performed now only for me.
It ought to have been easy to follow suit, but it had been over four years since I’d changed a shirt on court and the act felt oddly vulnerable in the wake of his ease.