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For a long moment he gazes down at me and it’s still a bit soft bastardy—which I’m pretending very hard not to be taken by—but also sort of knowing. Which I find faintly unsettling. “That you are, Sam Becker.”
I’m not quite sure how to respond to that. Maybe it’s just weird to have Jonathan agreeing with me. So I pull him back down on top of me and we get back to kissing. The last time we did this we were telling ourselves it’d never happen again, which gave it a sense of urgency. And that was sort of exciting at the time, but also sort of distracting—like when you go to one of them “all you can eat for a fiver” buffets and you feel you’ve got to get your money’s worth, which means you can’t stop and savour anything.
Now, though, we’re savouring. Even if there’s this edge fromboth of us where we can’t quite believe it’s happening. Which is its own—and, fuck, maybe I’m turning into a soft bastard myself because I can’t think of any word for it except magic. It’s just nice, y’know, to be held like someone’s afraid you might disappear on them. Because usually with me it’s the other way around.
Magic aside I do, eventually, come to the conclusion that the Premier Inn chose their carpets to be hard-wearing, not to be comfortable for getting off on, and my elbows are getting a bit abraded like.
“How about,” I say, “we take this to the bed?”
We take it to the bed, me pulling off my jumper en route. Jonathan reclines against the headboard and—figuring it’s my turn since I was the one getting the carpet burns—I climb enthusiastically over him. I’m about to go in for another kiss when I realise Jonathan is looking up at me with an unexpected level of uncertainty. And it does to occur to me that between thinking we’d never be anything and discovering we were going to be something, I’ve probably got a bit carried away.
“You all right?” I ask.
He nods. “Very.”
I tuck my palm against the sharp line of his jaw, where it’s nicely rough from a day’s worth of stubble. And it gives me this little shock of pleasure, just to be able to touch him. In that casual way, like he’s mine. Which he is, I guess? Fuck me. “We can go back on the carpet if you like?”
To my surprise, it’s almost as if he wants to. “Um. We don’t have to.”
“Do you have some kind of floor fetish I should know about?”
“What? No.”
“It’s fine if you do. I’m not judging. I’m up for most things.”
“I don’t have a floor fetish,” he snarls, in a very Jonathan-like way. “It’s just being on the bed is very… It creates an expectation.”
“It doesn’t have to. I know I took off my jumper pretty sharpish, but I’m not going to rush you into anything.”
He gives an annoyed kind of huff. Which is also very Jonathan-like. It’s very on brand for him to take my trying to respect his boundaries as a personal insult. “I’m not a—this isn’t my first—I don’t need to be coddled.”
“Oh great,” I say. “Get your keks off. I’ll start lubing up the kumquats.”
“Where would you evengetkumquats at this time of night?”
“I always carry a couple, just in case. You never know when you might get lucky.”
Turning his head, he bites me right on the fleshy bit under my thumb. “You’re not funny, Sam.”
“Did you just bite me?”
He looks sheepish. “No.”
“Fair enough. My mistake.”
This time, he does something that’s perilously close to a nuzzle. “It’s just,” he says reluctantly. “It’s been a while. I may be out of practice.”
Frankly, it’s been a while for me too. “Okay, but what would you practicing look like?”
“I think it would look…” He sounds adorably confused. “Like me having sex with someone?”
“And then you’d slap him on the leg and say,thanks mate, that was a good practice.”
“So what would you do?” Now he sounds adorably irate. “Drills in front of a mirror?”
Leaning in, I brush my mouth against his. “I don’t think it’s something you need to practice.”
Fuck, I hope it’s not. Otherwise I’ve been winging it for years.
