He ended up against the wall again and I must have had something to do with it because my hands were gripping his upper arms, the short sleeves of his T-shirt hiding where I knew the tattoos to be. The abrupt cessation of his mocking laughter deafened me; he was shocked, and I was worried.
“Did I…” I gulped, deciding that ‘trying again’ wasn’t good enough—I had to finish my sentences or Steven would just take the piss again and I’d never get my point across. “Did I hurt you?”
Steven shook his head slowly. “Nope. You’ll have to try harder than that if you want to hurt me, Kit.”
“I never wanted—”
“But you did.”
My grip on him slackened but not enough to break contact.
“Hadn’t you better let me go?”
And even though nothing in his posture or muscle tension told me he thought of me as a threat—more like an irritation—I did so, by degrees. My grasp became nothing more than laying my hands on him and when I finally broke contact, Steven gave a quiet, mocking laugh.
“I mean,” he went on, “you wouldn’t want anyone to see you touching another man, would you?”
“What do you mean?” This made no sense. He’d told me to leave, but hadn’t made me, as he so easily could. He’d suggested I let him go and I had but he did nothing to move away from me. If anything, his self-confidence mocked me. He felt far more comfortable standing in his own skin than I did touching it. “I’m out. Everybody knows—”
“Yeah. Everybody knows you’re gay. You just don’t want anyone to know you’re human. I don’t think there’s much danger of that any more. You’re a fucking robot, sometimes, Kit. I mean you—”
The thought, my God, he tastes good, drifted through my mind and only afterwards did I realise I wasn’t imagining it. If, for a nanosecond, I’d felt him resist, I would have stopped; I would have disentangled my hands from his hair and pulled away, but there was no resistance, just tension born of shock that I’d dared, then he melted against me.
I knew I had him when his hands came to rest on my waist, resting there for a second before he pulled me in.
He might have melted against me but one part was still hard.
“Are you sure you should be doing this?” Steven murmured. I hadn’t realised what was happening when I’d kissed him and now, I hadn’t realised who’d broken it, but at least he didn’t push me away.
“Kissing you? Why?”
He shrugged, glancing over my shoulder and nodding at the living room doorway.
“People might see you kissing me and we can’t have that, can we?”
I looked over my shoulder, wondering if he’d nodded at anyone in particular but there was no-one there. No-one watching us. When I looked back at Steven, he laughed.
“You’re still scared someone might see you vulnerable. Or turned on, aren’t you?”
“I don’t care about them. I don’t fucking care if they see.”
Steven’s lips parted but he said nothing, giving a very good impression of a man surprised by what I’d said.
“Is there someone else here?”
Coming back to life, he rolled his eyes. “Kit, there are lots of other people here. Tiff, Jason, Isaac, Gemma, Gary, others. My mates. Then you.”
“You know what I mean. Have you got someone else here?” Jesus, now I sounded like a crazy bastard.
“No. No. What the hell do you think I am? Do you think—”
“I’m staying.”
“Oh, you’re—you’re staying?”
“Yeah.” Only then did I realise I was still touching him, palms laid flat against his chest by now, no longer holding him against me, pulling him by the hair or arms, just touching. As soon as I noticed, I lifted my hands away. “Yeah, I am.”
“Even though you’re not wanted here?” He smirked, daring me to argue.
“Gemma and Gary want me here.”
The smirk disappeared.
“They tricked me into coming so they must have thought it was a good idea, and if you kick me out, you’ll have to disappoint them and you did invite them, right? I mean, they’re still your friends and you can’t embarrass them by telling me to piss off—”
“Fuck off, Kit. I believe I told you to fuck off.”
“Semantics.” I shrugged.
“I can’t believe you were determined to get me out of your house and now you won’t leave mine.”
“Now I’m here, I might as well stay.” I backed away a step, adjusted the hang of my jacket across my shoulders by shrugging, then ran a hand through my hair.
“Might as well,” Steven echoed, and this time I couldn’t tell if he was mocking, agreeing or simply rolling the words around his tongue to see how they fit. And he cleared his throat.
“We’ll talk about this later.”
I didn’t know if I audibly exhaled in relief, but the pressure inside me eased just a little.
A minor victory. But now I had the rest of the evening to get through. I was certain Steven would torture me first before talking, to ensure I suffered a just punishment for treating him so dismissively. Circulate, entertain his guests, have nothing to do with me in public, but I probably deserved it. And it was a start.
Chapter Fifteen
So I was hyper-conscious of Steven all evening, shooting glances his way at every opportunity? It was entirely mutual. He’d lever himself off the floor—the settee and armchairs being already overloaded with houseguests—and head to the kitchen to grab himself another beer; my eyes would follow his course automatically. I’d step past him on my way to the bathroom; he’d run a hand through his hair and catch my eye with a tilt of his head. We made our mutual attention more obvious with our failed efforts to completely ignore each other.
Gemma’s efforts failed too. Her attempts to not look smug met with as much success as Gary’s. Look at you two, trying not to look at each other,
