Nine #3
As I looked up into dark eyes now owning a bemused little frown, my heart thudded into my throat. “What do you mean?”
He let my wrists go. “Mean? Only that that will be hard to beat.” Rolling off, he dropped onto the bed beside me with a sigh. “I needed that though. Good thing you showed up.”
Easy to forget that I’d come over to check on him. That when he’d started touching me, his father had been berating him. I made to rise.
“No, don’t go yet.”
He caught me before I reached the edge of the bed and pulled me back against his chest, both arms locked around me.
“If I don’t clean up, I’m going to drip both our loads on your bedcovers,” I said.
“Don’t worry about it. I was going to shower and change the bedding anyway.”
I gave in, relaxing against him despite the mess.
He hummed a satisfied, sleepy sound into my hair, as though the call with his dad had never happened.
I’d wanted to shout at the man, but Miles had listened blank-faced like it had been nothing, the words lazy and sloppy and embarrassing left to echo through my head alone.
“Well, that was all . . . a lot,” I said, because I had to ask but ‘what the fuck is wrong with your dad?’ seemed a poor opener.
Miles groaned against the back of my neck and pressed his softening cock to my arse. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“I meant that conversation with your dad.”
“Conversation seems like the wrong word. I can’t remember the last time we had an actual conversation. Though that was much better than usual.”
Unsure what to say, I stared at the sunlight cutting across the vase on the desk, its flowers as bright and cheerful as the ones by the TV. It shouldn’t have been surprising that people sent Miles flowers, and I certainly had no business feeling weird about it. It probably happened all the time.
Miles shifted the arm I had been crushing beneath my shoulder so it lay under my head, giving me a bicep pillow. “Intense families aren’t exactly new in tennis.”
“I guess not,” I said, looking at his hand lying in front of me now, all long, strong fingers and delicate bones. “Though I don’t recall ever seeing your parents at a match.”
“Oh no, they never come. They just manage the business.”
He said it like it was nothing, barely an interesting fact, yet my ill-ease was back.
Even beneath the cocky facade, the real Miles was confident, a man who saw people clearly and seemed to know all there was to know about himself.
Now, a hint of brittleness was intruding upon that picture, a suggestion that this Miles was like the reflection in a mirror – true yet fragile, like he might shatter into a thousand sharp pieces at any moment.
Better to speak or remain silent? Impossible to know, but my curiosity made me ask, “Do they manage everything?”
“Pretty much. My career is the family business, you see. Always has been.”
I frowned at the flowers. “Why?”
“Why not? They invested in me, put all their time and money into making sure I had the best coaches and opportunities. Pushed me to work hard. And when I started making money, I was too young and would have blown it all, so they took care of it and let me focus on tennis. Gradually, the business just became their lives. Sponsorships, team management, investments, media opportunities, modelling plans – I don’t even know half the things they do, but there’s lots of money so I can’t complain.
Shitty of me to get mad at them really, especially since I’m only where I am now because they supported me. ”
“Sure, but you can still be mad that he talks to you like that.” I rolled over to look at him. “I’d have struggled not to hit him if he’d actually been in the room.”
“He probably wouldn’t have said any of it if he knew he had an audience. My parents care very much what people think of them.”
He pulled his arm from around me and rolled onto his back, stretching out with languid ease – a sated lion in the noontime sun. He looked untroubled, and met my ongoing stare with an amused smile and a tilt of his head. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said, but when he lifted a brow, I cracked and shrugged. “I guess I was worried about you.”
“You didn’t seem particularly worried,” he said, adding with a hint of censure, “you sent me one message.”
Whereas he repeatedly messaged whenever I didn’t reply and had broken into my apartment. I winced. “I . . . didn’t want to bother you. I figured you had better things to do with your time than humour me.”
“Humour you? Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“No, but I didn’t think reassuring your current fuck buddy would be high on your list of priorities.”
He breathed out a wry laugh. “I guess that’s fair. But Mat . . .” Miles rolled his head on the pillow to look at me, every second my name hung on his lips pulling me in like gravity. Until he looked away with a shake of his head. “You can message me as often as you like, all right?”
“All right.”
“Good. Crisis averted.”
“I wasn’t having a crisis!” I lied.
“And neither was I. Losing is just tennis.” With a groan of effort, Miles pulled himself off the bed. “Now get up, I’m going to shower and change the bedding.”