Page 82 of Read My Lips

Simon tilted his head, blinking at me maddeningly, like he was still waiting for the so what. Heat crept up the back of my neck.

“You act like I’m the best interpreter you’ve ever had, but I’m not.” The shame of spelling it out for him lodged in my throat, too dry and too hard to swallow. “I can’t be.”

Simon hummed. “And yet the fact remains, you are.” He nudged in against my shoulder, and his body heat bled into me. He didn’t pull away. “Listen to me. You’re exactly who I need, Ben Cooper. You always have been. No matter what you wear. Or who brought you up. Or what you choose to tell me. It’s always been perfectly fine.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

Door key abandoned in the lock, Yoda mug dangling from one hand, Simon tugged the collar of my t-shirt. Playful, but hard enough to pull me a step towards him on the slippy tiles of his communal entrance hall.

“Simon.” I rooted in, leaning back, making myself heavy with dutiful resistance. “I should really head home soon.”

“Why?” Simon grumbled. “It is still a work day.”

Shoulders braced against the glossy paint of his flat’s front door, he stretched his long, lean body invitingly towards me. Smug and unsurprised to catch me looking.

“This isn’t a holiday, Ben Cooper,” he said, putting on a school-teachery kind of voice, “just because Mel doesn’t like the optics of us showing up at the office.”

He ducked to nose against my neck, and I hummed, failing to hold onto anything other than the feel of his lips on my skin tickling like a froth of bubbles bursting all over me. I didn’t know what to do with my hands.

This was dangerous. I wanted his mouth on me again and again. Not just for this constructed window of time where real life stopped existing. And that was not an option.

“Actually”— I levered him back with my palm to his chest, forcing him to watch me speak—“I thought we agreed that’s exactly what it was.”

“Did we?” His cool eyes skimmed playfully down me – head to foot. Then he raked his gaze all the way up with the same excruciating thoroughness.

My tongue went dry.

“Simon…”

“I’m joking.” With a dull, careful clack, he set the Yoda mug down on top of the bank of pigeon holes, stretching distance away. “Ben, you can go home if you want to go home. I’m not⁠—”

“No—” Shit. Yesterday he’d talked about taking advantage, and now I was making him think he really was.“—I want to stay.” Matt could wait. So could the shopping. In fact, the whole of the rest of my life could go and do one. “I’m just wondering what I’m going to be interpreting for you all afternoon.”

Simon snorted softly, amusement crinkling his face.

“How to fake a relationship, of course. Do keep up.”

His fingers knotted into the neck of my t-shirt again, and he gave another tug. This time, I went with it.

His free hand skirted my side, fingers pushing up under my t-shirt, my hip, my spine, muscle and skin and tendons and bone.

He’d barely left space for me between his thighs. I didn’t need much to plaster in along the incline of his body. I kissed him. And he straightened urgently, drawing taller, pulling me into him with a hand at the small of my back. Done playing, I arched to meet him as he licked into my mouth, groaning around his tongue.

Oh. Fuck going home. I was officially doing anything he bloody wanted. Right here in his entrance hall if he’d let me.

Simon rolled me against his front door, arm above my head blocking me in, our bodies rocking together with each heavy breath. And⁠—

The door fell inwards.

Simon stumbled back, and I lurched for him, grabbing uselessly at his arm, trying to keep us both upright with sheer willpower against gravity’s revenge. Our feet tangled. Everything twisted. We went down in unstoppable slow motion, as inevitably as a Jenga tower collapse.

My hip hit the floor, the air whooshed out of my lungs, and the whole building shook with the aftershock of our impact.

Behind us, someone cleared their throat obnoxiously loudly. “Did another ‘train’ get ‘cancelled’?”

Fuck. I rolled off Simon, scrabbling upright, balancing self-preservation with keeping him in conversational alignment. “What the hell is Sev doing here?”