Page 123 of Not That Complicated

My voice came out broken. “Uhhh. That’s really. That’s my pitch. That’s really all there—oh god yes, there.There. Right there.” My stomach muscles drew in tight as he stroked me. And then let me go with a playfully cruel smile on his face.

I humped up beneath him, and caught him by surprise. “Hah,” I said, knocking him over and rolling on top. It was a short-lived victory. He continued the roll and I was pinned beneath him again. “Crap.”

“Nice try,” he said.

“The pitch or the move?”

He considered. “Both.”

We fell into silence and stared at each other again. “Sooo,” I said. I hooked a leg up around his hip. “Thoughts?”

“I think I’m going to fuck you.”

“Or...”

He smiled, slow and filthy. “You want to fuck me?” He drew my hand back until it was resting on his tight, round arse. My fingers spasmed and dug in.

Adam laughed. “That’s a yes,” he said.

I opened my hand and stroked over his buttock instead. “Actually, it’s a no.”

He didn’t seem too devastated. Adam might be flexible, but he’d made it clear from the first that he had a strong preference to being on top.

“I was wondering...”

“Mm?” He grasped my thigh and pulled me down a little. I now had both legs around his narrow hips, and he was resting between them, propping his weight on his elbows.

“If maybe, uh...”

“Ask me, Ray,” he said. “There isn’t anything you can’t ask me for.”

“If instead of fucking me, you’d like to...if you could...” I pushed a tangle of red-blond curls back from his forehead, then let my fingers slip down to hold the side of his face. “If you’d like to make love to me instead?”

He gazed down at me in astonishment.

“No?” I said. “That’s fine. Just because I love you it doesn’t mean you have to love me back. People are on their own timetables. I know that. They don’t always run, you know. Side by side.”

“Yes,” he said meaningfully. “I do know.”

“Fucking it is,” I said, trying not to be disappointed.

“Ray,” he said, exasperated. “I’ve been in love with you for months.”

“Wha—?”

“Infatuated with you for years. In love with you for months.”

“Since when?”

“Since you actually deigned to talk to me. Let me in. Let me close.”

I stared. “And infatuated? Foryears?”

“The first time I saw you, I was eighteen. The whole time I was working at the Co-op, I used to hope that you’d come in when I was on the till. Better yet when I was stocking shelves, and you’d have to brush past me. I won’t tell you I fell in love. Again, I was eighteen. I’d shag anyone.”

“Like Fraser.”

“Yeah. That was a few years later, but, yeah. As we have established, I didn’t know about you two. And then I did, and I came to apologise. And, baby. Your face. Your beautiful face.” He ran a curled knuckle along my cheekbone. “You made me grow up. I’d never seen anyone so hurt. I’d never been the one to hurt another person like that.”

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