around his neck and pull him down onto me.
Matthew grimaced, bit at his bottom lip, lifted himself up a little on his elbows, and I got to watch his face, entranced, while he came.
He slumped heavily onto me, making me grunt, “Oof,”
then slid a hand between us to grab the condom as he slipped out.
I could get both of my arms to move enough to wrap them around him as I let out a long breath. There wasn’t anything to say; there never was after sex like this.
Chapter Fifteen
Andrew was pretty much out of it, sprawled across the bed with a stupefied look on his face, so I kissed him and rolled off the bed. I bundled the gloves and condom up and dropped them in the bin in the bathroom, had a quick shower to rinse the lube off myself, and put Andrew’s bathrobe on.
It smelled of him, more so than even his sheets, and I must admit I smiled and buried my face in the collar as I made my way down the stairs.
Who would have thought that Andrew would be into fisting like that? Guess he wouldn’t want to wander around the hospital with a red bandana hanging out of his right pocket; someone would be bound to get it.
The bottle of wine was still half full, so I gathered up the bottle and glasses, and my backpack, and went back upstairs.
Andrew hadn’t moved, so I just let him be and stacked the pillows up against the bed head and opened my laptop. I’d started in on the revision questions, and was struggling with attempting to condense management of cystic fibrosis down to four paragraphs, when Andrew finally stirred.
“Ngghh,” he said, and he rolled over. Fuck, he was beautiful, the way he looked at me.
“Hey. You all right? Want some wine?”
“Yeah.” I figured he was replying to both questions, and held out a glass of wine as he struggled to sit up.
He spread the towel underneath himself and sat up against the bed head beside me, taking the wine. He looked out of it still, and I could understand that. It took a little while to get back to normal after a really intense fisting—after anything that intense.
My fingers intertwined with his, and he let out a long breath. He was right; it had been a long night.
“Was I bleeding?” he asked.
“No more than expected,” I said. “No tears. Next time, though, we do that with some poppers.”
Andrew laughed and squeezed my fingers. “Babe, at least one of us in this bed is a doctor. Tizanidine is what we need, not poppers.”
I looked at Andrew with the dawning realization that he was right; my days of using illicit drugs when there was a prescription alternative available were drawing to a close.
“Tizanidine?” I retrieved my hand from his and opened the pharmacology database on the laptop.
“Short-acting,” he said. “Not a restricted drug, so no one counts them closely. Won’t fuck me over so much that I can’t work the next day. Not a benzo, so it’s not addictive.”
I was stunned. There was a whole world of substance abuse that I knew nothing about. My housemates often asked about drugs, but I’d always approached it from the angle of trying to find something that was analogous to a street drug.
This was different.
“Fuck,” I said. “What else am I missing out on?”
Andrew’s hand slid up my thigh. “Dunno,” he said. “F is the expert on misusing drugs. I just remember that last time I wrote someone up for Tizanidine, it caught my attention.
Hadn’t expected to wind up being fisted quite this quickly, though. What gave me away?”
There had been that moment of insight, wild supposition, and Andrew had been so utterly submissive that I’d been sure a moment later. “It was the gloves in the drawer. You had powderless gloves there, and there’s only one thing you absolutely have to have powderless gloves for.”
I put the laptop aside and slid down the bed to lie beside Andrew. His hand was stroking me now, coaxing me back to hardness. I closed my eyes for a moment, and he kissed me.
“Sorry, am I distracting you?” he murmured.
“Mmm, yeah. I think you’re supposed to be supportive of my studying, aren’t you?”
Andrew’s mouth was pressed against my neck now, sucking on the skin. “I guess so,” he said. “Anything I can help you with?”
“Tell me what you know about erectile dysfunction,” I said, and we both burst out laughing.
“Point taken,” he said and he let go of me. “I’ll go get some work of my own and leave you alone.”
Andrew fell asleep some time later, slumped down in the bed, photocopied documents on wrongful dismissal cases strewn across the blankets, and I didn’t disturb him. It was only the fear of impending failure that stopped me from turning the laptop and light off and going to sleep, too. I was pathetically behind with revision, there was a mountain of stuff I needed to do for my placement, and I was hopelessly short of time, too. It was an appalling time to get involved with a new lover.
Andrew woke when I finally turned off the laptop and put it away, and he stumbled sleepily to the bathroom to brush his teeth when I went to the loo. I’d never really done the whole domesticity thing before, had prided myself on avoiding romantic entanglements even when I’d been seeing someone, and was caught completely by surprise when Andrew said,
“You can leave a toothbrush and razor here if you want.”
Stunned wasn’t an adequate description of how I felt, and I guess I must have been staring at him like an idiot.
Andrew’s fingers curled around the back of my neck gently and he smiled at me, then kissed me quickly, tasting of mint.
“Hey,” he said. “You don’t have to. I am, however, amused that you cope beautifully with powderless gloves, but look like I’ve kicked you when I suggest you might actually be back here again, maybe even on a regular basis.”
“Fuck,” I managed to say, and it did nothing to help with the idiot status. “Um, yeah, that would be good.” All right, I was being less of an idiot now. Hopefully.
Andrew kissed me again, and his stubble was rough on my cheek. “And before you have a panic attack over this, I’ve got Henry staying all this weekend, so I can’t see you again until next week.”
“I wasn’t going to have an anxiety attack,” I said defensively.
“Sure,” Andrew said, and he grabbed my arse as he walked past me. “You’ll be pleased to hear that I don’t have to be at work until eight tomorrow, so the alarm is set for six thirty.”
I leaned my forehead against the mirror. “Twit,” I muttered to myself.
“I heard that,” Andrew called out from the bedroom.
Chapter Sixteen
All hell broke loose the next day.
I’d left Matthew sitting at a bus stop not far from my place and driven in.
The Troll was waiting for me, simpering, a hand full of messages, when I tried to sidle past her desk. “Dr. Seagate is here to see you.”
I filed the scraps of paper into a pocket without reading them and waved to F where he was lounging against my office door. He looked like shit.
“What’s up?” I asked, unlocking the door.
“Feces,” he said. “Diced and tossed through the air very fast.” He kicked the door shut and slumped down in
