Our eyes met and every nerve ending in my body lit up. Setting me on fire. It wasn’t fair that all he had to do was look at me and my resolve weakened. That sort of power never did anybody any good.
Come on. You need to leave because you are keeping professional boundaries. Don’t get sucked in by his puppy dog eyes and the fact that he smells like heaven.
Scrambling for a coherent thought, I said, ‘I’ve got a lot of work to do. We have a deadline for the first draft and I’m not sure how many rounds of edits it will need, so I really need to get stuck in.’
Good. A well reasoned argument. Ironclad some would say.
Oliver rose to his full height. Because of our position on the sofa, when he stood up his chest was only centimetres from mine, and he looked down at me with an expression I couldn’t read. I always got the feeling that whenever Oliver looked at me, he was searching for something—scanning my facial expressions for a tell. What it was he was hoping to find, I had no idea. I wasn’t sure if I desperately wanted him to get the answers he needed, or for him to never find them so he could keep looking at me like that.
‘Stay,’ was his guttural command. His breath tickled my cheeks, warming them more than they already were.
‘I’ve, uh, got to w-work,’ I said, fumbling over my words. Already losing my train of thought. That’s what having him so close did to me. It was infuriating. Maddening.Wonderful.
His fingers linked with mine at our sides. The touch feather-light. My breathing stuttered.
‘Stay,’he repeated.
Like a fly drawn to sticky paper, I couldn’t unpeel myself from his trap. More importantly, I didn’twantto.
My head bobbed without my consent. ‘Okay.’ The wordsleft my mouth leaving me wondering if I was really the one in control of my body.
The smile spreading across his face wiped away all my previous reservations. The things I would do to see that smile honestly frightened me. I’d never before felt this kind of pull towards another person. There was an undefined closeness linking us together, I wasn’t ready to give a name to this feeling thrashing in my chest. But Iknew.In my bones and my heart I knew what it was. This feeling that in twenty-eight years of life, I’d never experienced before—at least not in this visceral way.
A throat clearing brought us out of the moment. I took a wobbly step back from Oliver who still wore a self-satisfied grin and spun my head around to find Rosie grinning madly up at me.
Oliver left us to it, going over to help George with the pizza making process. I held up a finger to Rosie.
‘Not a bloody word.’
Miming, zipping her lip and throwing away the key, she sat back on the sofa and pulled her legs up so they were tucked underneath her. Her shoulders wiggled like she couldn’t contain her excitement.
I rolled my eyes. However the action was only half-hearted as the butterflies in my stomach still hadn’t settled.Stupid things.
41
OLIVER
Ican’t recall the last time I laughed so hard my stomach cramped and tears rolled down my cheeks. Maybe because it’s never happened. Even when I was a kid, I had a sole focus. One thing that eclipsed all other parts of my life, includingfun.It was my mother's greatest plight when I was growing up. Her words still clatter round my head somedays;‘be a little boy. Go and rub dirt on your face and scream your lungs out.’She’d smile affectionately at me and sigh, knowing that all I wanted to do was go into the garden and practise my footwork.
Experiencing the mindless happiness that takes you out of your life for a moment, that lifts that weight from your chest, that makes all the darkness recede, if only for a little while, wasn’t something I had experience with.
Yet here I was, clutching my side and doubled over on the floor as I watched for what felt like the fortieth time that evening, my brother get completely owned. Only this time, it wasn’t Fallon handing him is arse, it was Rosie. I’d seen the look pass between the two girls when they decided to switch. They smirked at each other when George had enough ofFallon’s “cheating” and she held up her hands and handed the controller over to Rosie. Obviously thinking that being so mercilessly thrashed at Mario Kart was a fluke, he steeled himself for Rosie. The look of horror on his face was what made me burst out laughing. Only thirty seconds into the race it became clear that she was even better than Fallon at the game. She destroyed him. Sitting back casually on the sofa beside him, completely at odds to his hunched over, on edge demeanour.
‘This is fucking rigged. You both know the same cheat codes,’ he exclaimed.
‘Don’t hate the player, hate the game.’ Fallon giggled softly beside me. George and Rosie had staked their claim on the sofa hours ago when we started this Mario Kart marathon. Fallon had flopped down onto the floor, leaning her back against the sofa, within arms reach of Rosie who would every now and again absent-mindedly run her hands through Fallon’s hair. The action made Fallon’s eyelids droop and her shoulders lose some of their tension. The action instantly relaxing her. I took the seat next to her, ignoring her raised eyebrows when I settled a blanket over both our knees.
I wanted to be close to her.Neededto be close to her.
George threw his controller down. ‘I hate this game.’ He stood up and stretched. ‘I think that’s all the bollocking I can handle for one evening. I’m gonna head off.’
I felt Fallon tense beside me and I knew what the next words out of her mouth would be and I desperately didn’t want to hear them. Placing the hand that had been steadily getting closer to her all night, on her thigh, I brought my lips to her ear and repeated my words from earlier.
‘Stay.’
Not expecting me so close, she gasped softly, turning her head so our eyes locked for a brief moment before her gaze dipped down to my lips. A soft moan rumbled in the back ofher throat. It was so quiet I wasn’t even sure she realised she was making it. I would happily kick George and Rosie out this minute if I could hear her do that again, only with my mouth sucking on her silky soft skin.
Every morning in the shower as I gripped my aching dick, I remembered how her body writhed under mine as I buried my face in her pussy. Getting Fallon off was one of the most beautiful things in the world, and I’d chop off a limb to feel her come from my touch again.
