“Full. I feel full. Like you’re everywhere.”
A laugh comes out of him broken and warm and his body clenches around me when he laughs and the clenching sends a bolt of heat through me so sharp my rhythm stutters. I grip his thigh and pick up the pace.
His hand goes to his cock. He strokes himself in time with my thrusts and I watch his hand on himself while I thrust into him.His pre-come slicking his hand. His cock flushed and leaking and his fist working over the head on every stroke.
“I’m close,” he says. “Don’t stop. Tobík, don’t stop.”
I don’t stop. I drive into him, deep, the angle right, my hand replacing his on his cock because I want to be the one. His hand falls away and grips my forearm. His cock is hard and slick in my fist and I stroke him in time with the way I’m moving inside him.
He comes. His body arcs into mine, his cock pulsing in my hand, hot, his come spilling between us, his face open and wrecked and beautiful. His body tightens around me and the tightening pushes me over. I come inside him with my forehead against his and his hand on my face and his eyes still open.
I still after my cock stops pulsing. His chest rising and falling. His hand still on my face. I pull out slowly. He makes a small sound and I kiss his mouth. I clean up in the bathroom. I come back and clean him, his stomach, his thighs, between his legs, the careful attention of a person who knows what this means. His eyes are on me while I do it.
“You’re taking care of me,” he says. “You’ve been taking care of me. The whole time.”
“I wasn’t taking care of you. I was watching you and hoping you’d let me close enough to care.”
I lie down beside him. He pulls me against him. My back to his chest. His arm around my waist, his hand on my stomach. The circles begin, slow and sure.
“Tomáš texted me,” he says. “During the press.”
“What did he say?”
“He said: I don’t understand yet. But I’m not going anywhere.”
I’m quiet. His chin is on my shoulder. His breath is warm on my neck.
“He’s not going anywhere,” I say. “Is that enough? For now?”
“For now it’s everything.” His hand keeps moving on my stomach. “What do you need? From me. Right now.”
Nobody has asked me that. Not in bed, not with his hand on my stomach and his breath on my neck and his body still warm from everything we just did. Tomáš assumes I need protection. Mami assumes I need warmth. Marchetti assumes I need books. They’re all right. None of them complete.
“Someone who sees me and stays,” I say.
His arm tightens. His mouth presses against the back of my neck. Not a kiss. A seal.
“I’m staying,” he says. “I signed a contract with a city.”
“You signed a contract with a football club.”
“I signed a contract with a city. The club is the paperwork. The city is the reason.”
I turn in his arms. His face in the lamplight. Blue eyes. The curls against the pillow. The jaw I’ve been thinking about since I was sixteen years old. He looks like a man who is home and knows it.
"I love you. I don't think I said it, but I do." I lean closer and kiss him.
"I love you too. Maybe longer than I ever thought I did." He tightens his hold on me, kissing me softly.
“You’re going to walk the Beltline with me,” I say. “Maria’s going to assign you a name. That’s what she does. She took one look at me and I’ve been Tuesday for seven months.”
“Is Tuesday taken?”
“Tuesday is mine.”
“Then she’ll find another day. I trust Maria.”
The laugh comes out of me warm and full. His eyes track it the way they always track my face and the tracking isn’t covert anymore. The tracking is his hand on my stomach and his eyes on my mouth and his body against mine in my bed in my apartment in the city I built before he walked into it.
