Bad Case of Loving You

The dining area was mostly empty now, well after most people’s meal break, and I ate my plate of bacon, eggs and beans in a rush before I looked closely at the other people lingering over their meals.

“Why are most of the people here homeless?” I asked Andrew.

He bit into his toast and looked around the room. “Food’s cheap,” he said. “Security leaves them alone until it’s lock-up time.”

I looked at the grime-caked man swathed in innumerable layers of clothing at the next table who was eating packets of sugar, and then at the sign over the drinking fountain. ‘This fountain is not a sink’. The sign had puzzled me on my first day here, but it kind of made sense that people would need to be told that now.

Andrew smiled at me wryly.

I handed him the keys in the car park and said, “You drive.

You don’t want to know what I did to your clutch driving here.”

There was something about how Andrew looked at me as he took the keys that made my stomach lurch. “Security cameras,” he said, and he unlocked the car and got in, then leaned across and unlocked my door from inside.

I slid down in my seat and put my feet on his dashboard, and Andrew leaned across and kissed me.

“You okay?” he asked, and he touched my face gently.

Was I okay?

“Fuck, what if you hadn’t been there?” I said, and his fingers slid into my hair.

“You would have done exactly what I did, except possibly for putting the IV access in. Heidi would still have been okay,”

he said reassuringly, then we were kissing, slow, coaxing kisses.

I melted. He tasted of bacon and egg and himself, and the metallic smell puzzled me until I realised it was Heidi’s blood I could smell on him, and on myself. That was a little creepy.

His hand was sliding under my T-shirt, and across the flaking patches of dried blood on my chest, and it didn’t stop me from finding his cock through his scrubs.

He pulled back a little shakily and I could see his teeth and lips shining in the car park lights. “How about we go back to my place and shower?” he said, and it sounded like a damned good idea.

“You think we’ve had enough sex in a public place for one night?” I asked.

Andrew chuckled and nodded. “Oh, yeah, let’s go somewhere private for a change.”

Chapter Fourteen

There was a real luxury in leaning back against the tiles and letting someone else scrub the dried blood out of my pores and the creases of my skin. Matthew’s hands were gentle, and there was nothing sexual about the slide of the wash cloth down my arm, but my body was miles ahead of us, taking each stroke of my skin and completely misinterpreting it, leaving me hard, stomach muscles fluttering as Matthew pressed kisses against my belly.

When we’d come home, I’d cracked a bottle of chenin blanc for us, cranked the central heating all the way up, and had been standing here, under the stream of hot water, while Matthew drove me completely crazy, long enough that the taste of the wine was fading.

Not a bad thing in itself, not when Matthew stood up again and kissed me, replacing the taste with his lips and tongue.

Fuck, I could see the headspace he was in, feel it in his fingers as they brushed across my neck, pressing briefly against my carotid, thyroid cartilage, then larynx. “Go and make sure you’re clean,” he said, turning the shower taps off.

“I’ll wait in the bedroom for you.”

When I walked into my bedroom, Matthew was standing beside the bed, towel wrapped around his hips, his hair dripping still. The top drawer of the nightstand was open, and when he looked up from studying its contents, I knew my cover was blown.

There wasn’t anything particularly incriminating there, no porn or toys, not with a pre-pubescent son that lived with me some of the time, but there was enough for Matthew to put the pieces together obviously.

He undid his towel and tossed it on the bed, and he was rock hard and naked and so utterly gorgeous that breathing was difficult. He picked up one of the packs of gloves and undid it, laying the sterile package out on the nightstand. Part of my brain was still on the same planet as the rest of humanity because I noticed that he put the first glove on with the correct technique, sliding his hand in without touching the outside. The second glove went on right, too, fingers of the first hand inside the cuff, the quick wriggle of his hand, then the casual sorting out of fingers. There was a snap of latex on skin and I thought my knees would fail.

Fuck.

He tossed a strip of condoms onto the bed and pointed at his abandoned towel.

I crawled every inch of the way.

The mattress sagged under his weight, but I kept my eyes closed tight. I didn’t want to see him, didn’t want him to see me either; I was too naked for this.

Latex-clad fingertips trailed softly up my spine and Matthew’s lips brushed over my ear, the damp tails of his hair tickling over my shoulder and neck. “Shh,” he said, and his fingers traced circles over my scapula.