“What, like I wanted you?”
“Yes.”
“You really are fucked up, Blackman.”
“Yeah. That’s one thing we can agree on. Maybe there’s no fucking reason for it. Maybe I’m just a screw-up. I don’t need psychoanalysis, just…”
“Psycho anal sex?”
I tried to give him my be serious face, but hell, if humour was what it took to get us back to where we needed to be, so be it.
Steven took a deep breath, so deep I saw his chest heave. “I’m going to bed now.”
Oh. So that was it, then. A conversation without end. No resolution.
“Well. Guess, I’ll—”
“I thought you were staying?”
Okay, Kit. Time to be bold. “Depends. No point bedding down on your settee if there’s a perfectly good bed at home, is there?”
He inclined his head, studied me with narrowed eyes. Maybe he was trying to figure out whether or not I was joking. I didn’t even know myself. “Get in the fucking bedroom, idiot.”
“You say the nicest things.”
“I deserve to get away with it after the way you’ve treated me.” He pushed at my back with one hand, nudging me across the threshold to his bedroom. It was strange, seeing his things in the wrong room. But he lived here now.
“So.” I turned to face him as he clicked the door shut behind us and nearly asked what now? After being the one to back off, I was the one concerned about what would happen in the morning. “I’m staying, then?”
“Looks like it.”
“And in the morning?”
“In the morning you’ll freak out and leave.” Steven sighed, and the exhalation sounded wistful, full of regret.
“How do you know?”
“It’s what you’ve always done before. But…” He shrugged, and slipped his arms around my waist. “I let you, so I’m to blame as well.”
Uh-oh. I didn’t like the way this was going. He had one eye on the morning after before we’d experienced the night before.
And now I knew how he’d felt. Served me right, I supposed.
“I could leave, but I’m still here,” I pointed out.
“Yeah. How long for, I don’t know.” His lower lip dragged over mine in a kiss that wanted to be something more. “Nothing to stop us having a bit of fun, though, right?” He inched back, and there was an unspoken challenge in his words. “I’ll regret this in the morning. Unless something changes.”
I tilted my head, but even from that angle, the expression on his face made no more sense. “If you’ll regret it, then—”
“Ignore me.” He shook his head, pulled me closer. “Just tired. Drunk too much. The stress of moving. All that. Nothing important. I promise you.” He took another deep breath and inched his hands under my untucked shirt.
I thought it was him who’d gasped but a second later realised the sound had come from my mouth. Jesus, it hadn’t been that long since he’d touched me, surely? Was I that addicted to him that his hands on my abs, then settling on my hips, made my head spin?
“Fuck, I’ve missed you.”
It took another second again for me to realise he’d spoken this time, and he startled, looked up at me sheepishly from behind his long lashes, as if he’d confessed something he should have kept secret.
Steven hauled up my shirt; maybe a button pinged off; a seam certainly threatened to tear; that telltale zip rent the relative silence, our heavy breathing the only backdrop.
“Wait.” I stopped, but Steven froze. Any obstacle I put in the way of us getting naked, in bed and fucking, must have seemed to him like a step backwards. I’d done it to him often enough. “Tiffany. In the next room. Won’t she…?” Did I have to spell it out?
“You better not have decided you fancy my sister more than me, Blackman.”
“Fuck no.”
“Thank God for that—”
“Privacy. That’s all. Nothing more than that.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it. The bed’s not against the adjoining wall so I can get as violent as I like with you and she’ll sleep right through it.”
“God damn it, Kenton.” We fell back onto his bed—the covers the same, but in a different room with the door in the wrong place and his personal belongings arranged incorrectly.
He tore at my clothes, and I let him, too stunned by his speed and desperation to put the brakes on. Too worried about confusing him if I did. I’d let him do what the hell he liked to me if it convinced him I really wanted to be here.
I broke off one of his desperate kisses to catch my breath and frowned. He paused too, one hand on his shorts, ready to pull them off and watched me. Waited for the panic that never came. The only thing that worried me wasn’t coping with him looking at me. It was what I’d do if he ever turned away.
“I do want to be here, you know.”
He cocked his head, dipped his gaze to my mouth. “Really.”
Whether it was a question seeking confirmation or mere sarcasm I wasn’t sure.
“Yeah, well, ‘here’ isn’t the thing. Just…” I shook my head. “Never mind.” The unspoken ‘with you’ would have been too much. Strange that I wanted to say it, but my main concern was whether or not he’d be able to hear it.
Steven bit his lip and for a millisecond I thought I’d caused offence but all he was doing was reaching for the bedside cabinet. “Had to keep my shit on standby.” He laughed.
“Didn’t think I’d get lucky tonight, though.”
“What can I say? I’m a manwhore.”
“Only for me, I hope,” he muttered, tearing at the foil packet, glancing at me and turning away again, his face colouring slightly as he realised I’d heard.
“You’d be surprised.” I fell onto my back and waited for Steven to speak. Or touch me.
To do something, but once he had the condom and lube on in record time, he slowed right down.
“Well?” He lifted his eyebrows, nodded at me in expectation and it took a while for the penny to drop.
“Oh. Oh. “ He was waiting for me
