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“Hey, now,” he said wiping down my front. “It was just a question. A request for information. I need to know these things.”
“Nothing to know.”
“Benjamin,” he said in a low tone I knew far too well.
“Sex is not on the cards,” I declared, trying to keep my voice steady. I took a sip of wine. It tasted bitter. I didn’t understand why.
“Look.” Mark took the glass off me, putting his down next to it on the table, before fisting the front of my shirt and using it to steer me sideways so that I was lying down with him lying across me. Like we’d always done. Him. Me. Like this.
Safewas the first thing that came into my head. I’d always been safe with Mark, and I thought, perhaps, that’s why I could relate so much to Hugo, because Hugo had this massive need to be safe like I did.
“Mark?” I said, hearing the desperation in my voice.
“Yeah?” His fingertips were on my cheek, stroking hair out of my face. “We always talk better when we cuddle. So, talk to me.”
“Why am I like this?” I might as well ask because I had no clue myself.
“You mean, why are you the most awesome human on this planet?”
I stayed silent.
“You’re just you. You’ve always been like this, since the first day I met you. You are Benjamin, and there are some things about you that are unique to you. Like the fact that…”
“Yeah?”
“I’m just going to say it, okay?”
“I don’t like sex,” I blurted before he could call me out on it.
“I know. Honesty suits you, mate.”
“I’m not your mate.”
God, I loved him. Especially when he held me close like this. I pressed my lips into his hair, and he sighed in contentment.
“Remember when you went for that big yearly medical check-up and the doctor asked about your sex drive?”
I grinned. Yeah. I’d told Mark about it, confused about both the questions and my evasive answers.
“You’re perfectly normal, Benjamin. You know that, right? You’re a bloody excellent cuddler.”
“And you’ve always got naked with everyone and anyone,” I countered. It sounded cruel, but he knew I didn’t mean it like that.
“I was going through my slutty period. And look at me now. All grown up and settled with one man and one man only. I have no idea what happened to me.”
“He tamed you, and you needed that. You needed someone to just grab you and sit you down and tell you everything would be fine. Finn was that person. I hated him at first, really hated him. He was bloody annoying.”
“Persistent.” Mark smiled. I could feel it.
“Handsome. And you were being all sneaky, pretending nothing was going on while lapping it all up.”
“He is handsome, isn’t he?”
“Yup.”
“Did you know…” He rose up on his elbow so he could look at me, his hand on my chest, my fingers combing through his hair. “Finn still talks to Hugo’s dad. It’s really weird, but it’s like…he has no friends. Finn just exists, and all he does is work and hang out with me. He’s phoned his parents once in all the time I’ve known him. I don’t blame him—his parents are a piece of work—but then he got obsessed with sorting outHugo coming back to work, and then he started pestering Hugo’s dad with irrelevant work stuff, and he still rings him. They talk about football. Golf. Finn knows shit about golf, and he sits there and laughs. I was starting to worry at one point, but they’re truly just two lonely idiots. Both of them start off their conversations asking how Hugo is, and then they talk for, like, twenty minutes about…” Mark’s face grimaced in disgust. “Sport.”
“You hate sport.”
