“It’s only fair if you use my toy, you scream my name when you come.”
With a wicked smile, I text back,“I don’t scream, you uncouth bastard. I moan like a goddamn lady.”
Putting the phone aside, I rededicate myself to the task, letting the book close as my imagination provides me with a far richer picture. Seb, palming himself in the next room, less than a foot away. He’s the Seb from the open-air shower, one hand braced on the wall, the other working himself into a frenzy as the water sprays over his sun-kissed skin.
My knees draw together, pulling upwards at the force of the orgasm the image elicits. With the bit of my brain still operating, I call out, “Gareth,” before shutting the toy down, my nerve endings suddenly alight with too much stimulation to take a single second more.
Within a moment, my phone buzzes and my satisfied grin grows broader.“G? Over my dead body.”
“If that’s what you insist.”
“Do it again and do it properly.”
I lay for a while, panting slightly, my chest covered in a light sheen of sweat.
Part of me insists I don’t take orders from him, but another, deeper part wants to do just that. To bow to his authority, the same way I obey a teacher in class.
So, with barely a pause, I crank up the toy again. Feeling lightheaded with relief that even if I didn’t agree to his conditions we still seem to have arrived at a truce.
CHAPTERELEVEN
SEB
At practice on Saturday morning,I can’t keep my mind in the game. Each time I lose concentration, even for just a second, I hear my mother’s apologetic voice from her call yesterday afternoon. “I’m sorry, honey. Everyone I tried turned me down for a loan.”
It’s the shame in her voice that rankles most; more than the money, which is always a pipe dream until the cash is clutched in my hand.
A dozen times during the afternoon and evening, I wanted to bust down Esme’s door, to take it out on her, lay the blame at the feet of the person most deserving. There’s a twist of pride inside me that I didn’t. Another that when I heard her using my gift, I just used it to get me off, to help me go to sleep.
Not as a reason to force myself inside her room, insideher, and destroy everything I’m trying to build.
The texts were lighthearted enough to bring a smile to my face. It’s almost like we’re back to the people we were before the devastation of her betrayal. The girl who always caught my eye in class; the gentle flirtation between us.
Back then, I’d never found the courage to ask her out. A dozen others who’d swung and missed assured me she wouldn’t even if I did; that her parents were hella strict on that point, going overboard to keep her from the riff raff who were good enough to go to school with but apparently not to date.
And… I’ve fumbled another pass, this time for an entirely different reason.
“Clarkson! Off the field,” Coach yells at me, signalling Antoine that he’s up as replacement.
When I pass by him, he points to the showers. “You’re done for the day. Wait in my office after, I need a chat with you.”
My heart skips a beat then thumps so hard it makes me dizzy. I need practice time, need hours spent on the field. How the hell is he meant to assess me without it?
“No. Put me back on. I need the chance to show you what I can do.”
Coach’s eyes skate back to mine, surprised at the challenge. “I’ve seen what you can do. Why don’t you show me how well you can follow instructions?”
His attention is caught by something on the field. He blows his whistle and strides over to the boys still out there, shouting directions and standing with his hands on his hips while they scatter into a new formation.
I don’t have another option. I walk into the changing rooms and the crawling sense of failure sends a glut of bile into my mouth, the sour taste of another dream dying.
In the showers, I crank up the heat until my skin burns red. Then I switch it cold, sending another confused arrythmia pounding through my veins before my heart adjusts.
While I’m sitting with a towel around my waist, laying out my clothes, my movements slow until they cease altogether. The mass in my throat can’t be swallowed past, saliva pools in my mouth.
It’s only as the other players come into the changing rooms in a slow dribble of ones and twos that I cycle back to my usual speed. I pull on my clothes, check my appearance in the mirror, then stride through to the coach’s office.
The only thing left is for me to be punctual to my dismissal.
