He moves the way he plays. Patient, then relentless, reading me, giving me exactly what the reading tells him. His cock drags over the place inside me that empties my head. Again. And again. I stop being able to do the thing I do. The narrating. The guarding. The staying one step ahead. My hands map his back, the muscles working under them.
“Harder,” I tell him. “You won’t hurt me. You never once hurt me. That was the whole tragedy of you.”
“I know exactly how much you can take.” He gives me harder, and it a sound comes out of me I don’t recognize. “I studied it for two years. There was a test after.”
“Did you pass?”
“I’m passing right now. Look at your face.”
“Nobody’s around,” I remind him between breaths. “Make me loud, Marek. Two years you only ever got the quiet version.”
That does something to him. His rhythm turns mean and perfect. He gets a hand between us and wraps my cock and strokes me in time with every thrust. I stop keeping any of it quiet. There’s nothing to keep it from. The sound of it is its own kind of daylight, the thing I swore I’d never settle for less than, happening in the full light of a Sunday afternoon.
“Look at me.” He feels me getting close and slows, buried deep, holding us both at the edge. “Give me all of it. Don’t you dare look away.”
I don’t hide. I let him watch every second of it, the way he let me watch him. He fucks me deep and works my cock in his fist and keeps his eyes on mine, and when it breaks it breaks everywhere at once. I come with his name in my mouth and my eyes locked on his, spilling hot over his fingers and my own stomach in pulses that leave me wrecked. The clench of me drags him over a breath behind. He drives in as deep as he goes and comes with a low, broken sound, nothing held back anywhere, both of us shaking through the whole long finish of it.
He doesn’t pull out right away. He stays. Forehead to mine, still inside me, both of us wrung out and gulping air like men who just finished ninety minutes in the heat. We stay joined a long time after. Because we can. Because nobody has to go.
“That’s what it’s supposed to be,” I whisper into his hair before I’ve decided to say it. “That’s the whole thing you kept driving away from.”
“I know.” His hand goes flat on my chest and stays. “I’m not driving anywhere. Do you understand? I’m not counting the hours to anything.”
“Say that again in three days and I’ll believe it.”
“I’ll say it Wednesday night. After I ruin your afternoon on the pitch.” He tips his head up to look at me, giving me a soft grin. “That’s a promise, not a schedule. You taught me the difference.”
“I’m starting to regret teaching you things.”
“Too late. I’m a very good student. You said so once, in Naples, with your mouth full.”
And there it is. The thing my whole careful life warned me against. I let myself believe him.
I stop guarding the door. I let the warmth all the way back online, the rationed thing I’ve kept leashed, and it floodsthe room. It feels like relief. It feels like the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done. To believe this is to hand him the exact instrument that gutted me last time and trust him not to use it.
I do it anyway. It’s the most deliberate risk a man can take, wide awake, knowing the number and choosing to bet it anyway.
Later I cook, because of course I cook. He sits on the counter and watches me build pasta from what’s in the house. He steals basil.
“That basil goes in at the end,” I tell him.
“I’m inspecting it.”
“You’re eating it.”
“I’m inspecting it with my mouth.” He hooks a heel around the back of my knee, keeping me in the kitchen, within reach. “Feed me properly and I’ll stop stealing.”
“That is not how it works. You steal because you’re a defender. Defenders take what isn’t theirs. It’s your whole job.”
“I’m taking what is mine,” he says. He steals more basil. I let him. Neither of us says out loud how large that sentence just got.
It’s so exactly the life I want, the stolen basil and a man on my counter with nowhere he needs to be, that my throat does something inconvenient. I turn to the pan so he won’t see. Of course, he sees.
“You’re allowed,” he says, quietly, behind me. “To want it. You’re allowed to have wanted it the whole time.”
“I know I’m allowed. That was never the problem.” I put the basil in at the end, the way my father does, the way I’ll do until I die. “The problem is what it costs to want it out loud. I paid that once. I’m paying it right now, standing here. You can’t see the bill. I’m looking straight at it.”
“Show me, then.” He says it carefully. “What does it cost?”