Page 10 of 72 Hours

When I looked back at him, his eyes had clouded over a little. I could’ve kicked myself. I’d been facetious, just like I always was, but I’d been talking about someone else’s work, not my own. I was out of line, and I knew it. He might be really pissed with me, might think I was laughing at his role in the Department.

“Sorry,” I blurted out. “That didn’t come over like I meant.” I reached for my glass, to cover the embarrassment with a drink. He reached for something at the same time. Our hands nudged knuckles.

My body went white hot with excitement.

“It’s okay,” Niall said, and he sounded like he meant it. He didn’t move his hand and, quite frankly, mine might have been soldered to the cloth, hanging on to that small touch like discovered riches. Our fingers lay against each other’s for several moments. Niall’s gaze flickered to my face and away again. He looked wary but calm.

“Good,” I replied. I reckoned I had my answer about his preferences, but my throat was too tight to manage anything more articulate. There seemed to be a lack of blood flowing to my heart. It had all gone south.

The waiter had been hovering for some time at the edge of the room. By then, we were the last ones in the restaurant, and we’d definitely taken longer over a couple of plates of salad and pasta than anyone really had the right to. We were still smiling at each other—mine was so broad it must have looked more like a grimace—when the poor guy snatched his chance and waved the menu between us. “Coffee, sirs?”

Niall looked fully at me. It was a look of such astonishing intensity that I felt suddenly breathless. His eyes were so deep that I felt momentarily dizzy; I felt as if the floor shifted under me. I tried to put my napkin down carefully and only succeeded in dropping it off the table altogether.

“Coffee, Tanner?” How could someone put so much communication into two such banal words?

I gazed back. “Not here,” I replied. Hoped to God my voice wasn’t shaking as much as my heartbeat. “Got some at home. I live just a few blocks away.”

“I’ll get my jacket,” he said.

LET’S FACE IT, I’D had more than my fair share of dating; had a couple of other guys’ share, probably. But it had been a while since anything regular, and nothing had ever really lasted. No one had ever kept my attention longer than a shared summer, or finding casual warmth in bed. Just a few weeks’ unencumbered fun. It’d been several months since the lack of such company had even bothered me. And I’d definitely never felt so drawn to someone that I couldn’t hold my hands at my sides, that I couldn’t tear my eyes away from that person, or stop thinking about what it would be like to kiss him....

But that’s how it was with Niall.

He walked beside me as we made our way around the corner of my street, just kind of normal, two guys wandering along. He had his hands in the pockets of his light-coloured trousers for a while, and he’d slipped his jacket back on, as the evening was cool. His shirt was a thin fabric, and I’d seen the line of his muscles underneath it during supper. I do remember thinking—again—how that shade of blue really suited his colouring. I felt shabby with my jeans and my garishly-patterned shirt, but when I’d stumbled into my clothes that morning, I’d not envisaged the day ending like this. I felt all sorts of strange new things, to tell you the truth. Most of all, I felt every inch of him along the shared side of my body; I was conscious of every breath he expelled into the cool night air. It had never been such a long and charged journey back to my apartment.

I’d been living there since I joined the Department, though Judith was looking into something more secure for the Project Team members, so I’d probably be moving again in the near future. I’d always moved fairly regularly. You could have justifiably called me a bit of a traveller, even if I wasn’t part of an established community. So I kept a lot of my stuff in boxes and trunks, didn’t have much time for formal furniture. Just needed a reasonable kitchen, a comfortable bedroom, and a top-notch bathroom with power shower. That made me happy enough. I didn’t watch TV, though I listened to music quite a lot. I had my system fixed up to turn itself on the minute I opened the front door, just to greet me with something good. And yes, you may well think, why was I rambling on about my household habits? Guess it was a measure of how nervous I felt that night. Nervous about what he’d think of my place; nervous of inviting him back there, like I couldn’t remember if I’d washed up after breakfast, or left my spare boots in the middle of the hallway, or yesterday’s jeans out on the couch....

I discovered that wasn’t really an issue, of course.

I fumbled with the key of the building to get in. When the lock first clicked open, even before we’d taken a step through the doorway, that was the first time he touched me properly. Suddenly there was one of his strong, steady hands on my shoulder, turning me to face him, then the other one running slowly around the line of my jaw. I stared into his eyes, and they looked darker than ever. Maybe hungry; still wary. I didn’t know his expressions well enough then. My own eyelids felt heavy with seductive delight, and my lips parted very slowly as if to release a silent groan. Swear to God, I nuzzled up against his palm like some needy cat.

He whispered very gently into my ear, and I could feel the brush of his hair against my cheek. “Tell me now, Tanner, if you’d rather I didn’t come in. I don’t know you well enough. Don’t know if this is okay. Shit, I don’t know anything, really.”

I didn’t answer with such mundane things as words. Couldn’t even be bothered with a nod. Just let my chin tilt up so that our lips were millimetres away from each other’s, and I could breathe in the warmth of his tentative whisper. Then I opened my mouth and took in his darting tongue.

We were going to bump heads that night, for sure.

​​​Chapter 5 – Tuesday 01:25

I stirred on the cushions, uncomfortable and restless on the floor of my trailer, with only memories to entertain me. A cool breeze on the street and a good meal lining my stomach; that was partly what I remembered from that evening, all those months ago. But clearest of all was the precious memory of how fantastic Niall tasted!

I’d been in some kind of sensual heaven. He kissed like a demon, but a very sweet, very sincere demon. His tongue was hot and fast and fucking gorgeous. He tasted of the wine, the pasta sauce, and the mints that came with the bill. He pressed fiercely against me, like he’d been holding himself back for the last hour or so but was now released from whatever inhibitions he’d had, and his hands twisted sharply into my hair at the back of my neck. I could feel strands working loose from the tie and his fingertips pressing on the thin skin at my nape. His eyes were open, watching my reactions, and his hands never strayed past my shoulders. He was waiting, I think, to double check I was okay with it all.

I may have been an acting coach at work, but no one had ever accused me of being difficult to read when it came to sex, in all its forms. I slid both my arms around his waist and pulled him in even closer, tight against my body. My lips pressed back hard against his and I gasped my willingness into his mouth. I felt his body tighten and the muscles slide against my own, all the way from torso to knee. The door eased open behind us and we half-fell into the hallway, laughing, groaning, still nipping at each other’s lips.

“Which floor?” he gasped.

“Fifth.” I’d never cursed the broken elevator as soundly as I did that night. We stumbled up all five flights, bumping our hipbones on the banister, scuffing our shoes against the wall. From the way we clung to each other, we were like a single melded body with two sets of limbs. I nudged him around each landing, taking every chance to run my hands inside his jacket and down his sides, his warm torso tantalising me from underneath the thin shirt material. As I groped for the keys to my apartment, he seemed to be the only thing holding me upright, clutching my shoulders and gasping into my neck, his fingertips tracing the pulse in my throat, caressing my skin with the damp heat of his palms.

We tumbled again through a doorway, panting from our exertions and from a barely contained passion. But this time when I kicked the door closed behind us, I knew it was just us now; just the two of us, blessed privacy, and a mounting excitement that had consumed any shred of sense left in my brain.

The music playing in my apartment? It was pure soul... a low, slow beat and a voice rich with sensuous humour in every syllable and tone. I barely registered, except to feel the familiar comfort of it around me. Kind of my favourite music, coincidence or not.

And all those worries I had about the state of my place? Thankfully, we never went anywhere near the kitchen to check up on my housekeeping abilities. We also bypassed the lounge where, in fact, there were several piles of my laundry on the couch, some clean and some embarrassingly crumpled. As we staggered down my narrow hallway, he shrugged off his jacket and I dropped my keys someplace I didn’t see and, frankly, didn’t care. I toed off my boots and socks in a trail of laughter and hot breathy kisses. When I mumbled something about the coffee I’d promised him, he laughed directly into my face and kissed me again, so soundly that my eyes closed against his forehead and I felt his taste seep into my very veins. I felt him kicking off his own shoes and fumbling at my buttons. I’d wanted to take some time, to savour the suspense of peeling his clothes off of him—to tease him, perhaps, with my own unwrapping. Then his hands came up underneath the cool fabric of my shirt, running fingertips across my exposed nipples, and suddenly instantaneous nakedness would have been way too slow for me.

The bedroom wasn’t hard to find, mainly because I pushed him bodily through the door, and we fell onto the bed, entwined again as that four-limbed beast. By now, my shirt was hanging from my body by nothing more than a single sleeve, but in return I’d managed to open his without ripping off any buttons in my impatience, and also tug down his zipper. He palmed my groin, pressing his hand against the swollen excitement under my jeans, but I had a hand inside the cloth of his underwear, and I had a hold of flesh—damp, hot, and tangled in amongst curls of hair already sticky with excitement—and I was making him groan aloud in a very satisfying way.

He felt exquisite. Precious. I couldn’t understand my reverence, but there was no mistaking it. I’d never felt like that before—nor since, for that matter.