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He’s watching me with his chin tipped up, warily, lust and fear tangled together all through him. “You’ve thought about it, right? You want to say it. You think that if we were in love, maybe all this shit would work out; we could go back to Seattle and have a fucking normal relationship, get married, start a fucking family. Some part of you is mad at me for not being able to love you like that.”
“I don’t know.” I want to understand the shape of love, not because I think it might be better than hate but because sometimes I wonder, just for a second, if it might be another name for the same feeling. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
He pulls me against him, arms around my shoulders. “I can take it; it’s just a game. Tomorrow we’ll try something else. This is your chance.” His lips brush my forehead. “See if you can change my mind. I bet Gray told you I'm clean, right? So tell me you love me, then fuck me sweet and slow, bareback, until I’ve got your cum running out of me.”
I groan at his words, my whole body aching in time to the throb in my cock.
He’s so tense, braced for it, but I make him wait. As the humid Mediterranean wind drifts through the curtains and the moon shines in on us, I take him gentle and deep until he forgets all about words and when we come at the same time, me in him and him in my hand, I cover his body with mine and tell him I love him, just once, just to try the sound of it on my lips.
He doesn’t say it back, doesn’t say anything, but I don’t need him to.
Because it’s just a game.
Victor
I don’t want to touch him that night, after we fuck. I want to practice sleeping alone, so that when he goes home I don’t lie awake for weeks, going insane.
But my body wants what it wants and when I wake up in the night we’re wrapped around each other, my face in his neck, his legs between mine. I roll over and put my back to him again, telling myself to try harder.
In the morning, I’ve laced my fingers through his and pulled his hand under my head to use as a pillow.
I’m lost, and my heart’s a broken compass that will never get me home.
I shake him awake so early the sun is barely starting to come up, the sky pastel and trailing cotton-candy clouds.
“Are you ok?” He sits up, rubbing his eyes. His hair is everywhere, his face puffy and squinty, and I wish I could add it to my list so I never forget it.
“I’ll drop out of the race to Capri, if that’s what you want.”
He wakes up the rest of the way in an instant. “Really?”
It’s not some huge gesture. I’m not ready anyway, and maybe I don’t feel like dying this time.
I narrow my eyes at him. “Don’t make me repeat myself.” I start hunting for my phone, and he laughs, all deep and throaty.
“Our phones are in the oleander bushes.”
“Shit.”
We both get up and pull on pants, stumble down the long, steep staircase. It smells sweet enough out here to give me a headache, and the dew on the grass soaks our bare feet. Once I find mine hanging out of a bush, we use the flashlight to find his. He looks over my shoulder as I text Kat:Tell Alek I’m out. And I hope your plane crashes on the way home and scatters flaming pieces of your bodies across the Atlantic.
I’m still jittery from last night, all the crazy things I said, so I pass the phone to Ethan. “You do it.”
His lips quirk as he deletes the last sentence and hitssend.
When we’re back upstairs, crawling under the covers, Ethan whispers, “Thank you.”
“I’ll text him back if you don’t shut up.”
My head finds his chest and he rests his palm gently against my forehead. His skin is cool even in the thick, sweaty air. “The mouth on you.” He’s smiling, and so am I.
I don’t mean to fall back asleep, but it happens before I can stop myself.
