“Denying you?” Sloan said, and then answered her own question, “Yes.”
Matty’s eyes dropped briefly to Sloan’s mouth. “I really want you to kiss me.”
Sloan exhaled through her nose, almost a laugh, but not quite. “I know.”
“I wouldn’t stop you.”
“That’s part of the problem, too.”
“In what way?”
Sloan considered the question. “Because I like deciding when you might…find release. And right now, we’re both exhausted and tomorrow will be here before we know it.”
She touched Matty’s face then, just once, fingertips at her jaw—light enough to be almost nothing, intimate enough to feel like far too much.
“Try to sleep,” she murmured. Before Matty could answer, Sloan leaned in and pressed a kiss to her forehead instead.
“What if I wanted to touch myself?”
“I’d say…no, I want you to resist.”
Then she drew her in, close and warm beneath the duvet, leaving Matty to lie there awake with all that wanting still alive in her body.
Chapter thirty-one
The alarm went off at seven and Matty groaned; mostly from lack of sleep and a little because of the warm body tucked in behind her.
Sloan stirred and turned away, cool air rushing into the space she left as she reached for her phone on the bedside cabinet. Bleary-eyed, she checked the screen, tapped out a message, then set it down and pressed back in against Matty.
“Go back to sleep.”
Matty didn’t need telling twice. Her eyes closed and she drifted off almost at once.
Sloan, however, stayed awake.
For a moment, she just lay there, watching as Matty snored gently beside her. She felt torn about it. How easy it was and yet, how easily it could all go wrong.
That was the part that unsettled her.
Not the hangover. Not the late night at the hospital. Not even the fact that Matty had stayed.
Wanting Matty was one thing. Wanting her when Gloria had taken to her so quickly was another. Sloan had not seen her mother warm to anyone like that in years. If this went wrong, it had the potential to blow up in her face in a way no other mother issue had.
At the club, or with anyone who understood her terms, Sloan would have known exactly where she stood. With Matty, she didn’t have a clue. There were no rules here. No agreed shape to any of it. No guarantees. But then, there never were, were there?
***
When Matty woke again, the clock beside the bed said it was just before eleven, and Sloan wasn’t there.
She sat up, blinking around the room, trying not to think about the incessant need that still throbbed between her thighs.
“Shit,” she muttered, scrambling out of bed.
Opening the bedroom door, she could hear music downstairs and imagined Gloria watching the telly where Sloan had left her.
A smile played across her lips as she imagined Sloan, as tired as she had been, getting up and seeing to Gloria before heading off to work, leaving Matty to enjoy a lie-in.
Descending the stairs, Matty could hear music as it played softly in the background, but it was coming from the kitchen, not the lounge.
