“What do you usually eat?”
My answer is delayed by me stuffing my face with food as amazing as it looks. “Fuck me, that’s good.”
Tam slides his fork out of his mouth, lips twitching. “How do you make everything sound like sex?”
“It’s a skill. An unintentional one.”
“I like it.”
“Yeah?”
Tam makes a low sound and reaches for his beer. “Don’t encourage me.”
He grins a little, but the quip feels loaded in a way I’m not prepared for. That maybe he’s not either. So I rewind and answer his question. “I eat terrible things when I’m at work. I try to put it right on my rest days, but I’ve had a lot going on recently.”
A yawn punctuates my words. I eat more, feeling the comforting benefits of real food swamp my system, and I know if I let myself, I could sleep right here with my head on Tam’s kitchen counter.
“Do you cook?”
“Me?” I chew a mouthful of salad and nuts, appreciating a combination I’d never have thought of. “Yeah…I mean, I can. Doesn’t mean I do. The dude I was seeing—eating wasn’t really his thing, and I can’t be arsed much when I’m on my own.”
It’s more than I mean to say, but Tam takes it all in. He asks me more questions and I tell him no lies. We clear our plates, drink beer, and wash up. I learn that his parents live in the south of France, where they moved after he grew up in Solihull, and that his brother—Sab—has a baby girl who Tam adores.
In turn I tell him more about serving overseas, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I don’t mind sharing, and I’m greedy for every nugget he gives up about himself in return. But he doesn’t say any more about his biker past, the scar on his back, or what unnerves him about the hospital, and midnight rolls around before I know what’s happening.
Tam walks me to the door. He has sugar on his lips from the Mr Kipling stash he broke out after the washing up, but he licks it off with a swipe of his tongue too fast for me to fall into thinking about doing it for him.
But I think about it anyway, as we say goodnight and I walk away, and I imagine his gaze on me as I round the fence he repaired a few days ago and let myself into the annex. Then I find myself annoyed that the small space smells of me instead of him. Of the pine-scented detergent I washed my bedsheets in when I couldn’t wind down after working all night.
Yesterday, I liked it. I hate it now, and the cosy space feelscold, reminding me that I need to google how to use a log-burner without setting the place on fire, and hang out at home long enough to appreciate my efforts.
Ineedto go shopping.
But thanks to Tam, that can wait, and I swap my clothes for soft joggers and flop onto my bed, letting my thoughts drift and spin until they inevitably return to him. To his dark hair and simmering gaze potent enough to keep the death I brought home from work locked up where it belongs. His concentration as he’d cooked like a boss. The faint shyness when he’d shown me his work, and the gentle flirtation he’d tossed my way all night as if he had no idea how healing it was to the wound Skylar’s indifference left behind—a wound that reopens as I lie alone in bed without the balm of Tam’s easy company, the gaping hole in my self-esteem widening as insecurities creep in, egged on by the nasty git living on my shoulder.
He wasn’t flirting.
Course he wasn’t. Why would he? I’m the calamity neighbour who can’t get it together enough to cook a meal or fix my own car. He invited me in because I’m pathetic and perhaps I wear my craving for affection all over my stupid face.
Stop.
I try, but I’m not good at regulating negative thoughts when I’m this tired and my brain is searching for something—anything—to avoid processing the work-related disquiet Tam distracted me from with his sexy tats and French cooking. Before Skylar, I’d have picked up my phone and found a hookup. But it’s been months since I had anything but my hand for company, and I’m not in the mood for the comedown of a lonely wank.
So, even though I know—Iknow—it’s a bad idea, I thinkabout Tam some more. About his unshaven jaw and olive skin. His rough, tattooed hands that somehow produce the most delicate written art I’ve ever seen. And the boyish grin he’d dazzled me with as he’d dumped a box of apple pies on the kitchen counter.
“I have a sweet tooth.”
Shouldn’t be sexy. It is, though, and I feel that reality creep through me, warming my blood and pooling south in my groin.
My dick hardens. It’s a reflex to reach for it—to palm myself through my sweats before my hand dips lower. It’s masochism to stop myself and groan at the ceiling. Denying myself release is a bad idea, which leads to bad decisions. Torecklessdecisions when I’ve made a vow to be kinder to my soft heart.
Fuck it.
I give in and wrap my fist around my cock, arching into the sensation even though there’s a bruised part of me that wants it over with. My eyes fall shut and I fixate on the slow build of friction and pleasure, jaw clenched, muscles contracting. I know how to make this fast. How to white out my mind with a quickening pace, losing myself in detached ecstasy.
Tonight, though, the harder I chase it, the more out of reach it feels.
Come.
