by Anna Bloom
Answer him I did. With my fingers tangled in his hair, my nose pressed against his skin, my body shuddering with what could only have been a combination of shock, elation, and exercise.
Like two balloons filled with helium, I grasped onto the sensations, soaring into the sky with them.
This was happening.
Things had been said and I didn’t know if I could exist in a world where they were unsaid.
Before us the future stretched into an unknown.
Matthew had told me he loved me. That he would search for me until there was no place left to look. Now that I knew the truth between us, so many mistakes and things said wrong, I knew I’d want him to search for me, because I wouldn’t stop seeking him either. I never had.
Everything between us had been reset. A downpour of rain on a hot day, we’d washed the dust of our past away.
“Seriously, Ronnie.” He broke his kiss and I almost wailed in despair. He should give warning when taking part in dangerous activities such as removing his lips from mine. I wanted them forever. Wanted to walk down the street, lip to lip. Walk into the office and hang my coat on its peg, also lip locked.
Never could life exist without a Matthew kiss.
“You have to stop crying,” his low Scottish rumble made my bones shake.
“These are good tears.” Speaking made saltwater flush down my face with the torrential speed of a waterfall under a deluge of rain.
“Maybe we should make a promise to make crying a thing of the past?” His long fingers smoothed at my hair that had stuck in knotted strands against my wet cheeks. Not just from the tears, but from my long run up the train carriage to find him.
The sleeper train to Edinburgh had far too many carriages.
“I’m so glad I found you.” I shivered as I spoke, every word I muttered chiselled away at my loose grip on my emotions.
“I’ve never not been with you.” His thumbs brushed again, the warmth of the rough skin distracting me from my heaving sobs.
I met his heaven and slate gaze. “I get that now.”
His smile turned me inside out and I whimpered a giggle.
“What happens now?” My cheek fit against his chest, his heartbeat singing its beautiful song against my ear. “I’m on a train to Scotland again.” I peeked around his shoulder at the whizzing countryside as the sleeper stole out of London.
“You could get off at Crewe?”
Oh.
“Uh. Sure. I could.” What had I been thinking? Stupid me. I mean he didn’t actually invite me on the train with him—I'd chased him like a demented stalker.
“Ronnie.” He pulled me up, lifting me like a little rag doll and pressing me into a space all women should want to be, between him and a hard surface. “I’ll get off the train too. With you. Where you go, I go.” He released an arm from its hold of my waist and tangled his fingers in mine. “That’s a promise.”
Another gush of tears spurted from my eyes with the zeal of unwanted rain on a celebratory picnic. “I’ve been waiting so long for you to say that. It doesn’t feel real.”
His lips curved. “What would make it feel real?”
I watched him through my lashes. “Another kiss.”
“Easy.”
I inhaled sharply as he dropped his mouth onto mine. Leisurely and slow, it started a gentle dance. He made friends with my mouth like they had all his life to become acquaintances. Firm lips and warmth brushed, secure and hard. My head rested back against the door and my bones puddled into sweet and sticky pools of honey.
“More.” I grabbed him tighter, anchoring my hands on either side of his face.
I couldn’t think outside the train carriage. Couldn’t think of what would happen when I got home, or the mess I’d left behind.
Could only want his kiss, endlessly.
“Another kiss?” Fuck. His Scottish minor chords rippled along my spine.
“Yes.” I nodded, my nose brushing his cheek. “Tongue this time.”
His responding smile curved against my lips. “Easy.”
I held in a low moan as his tongue slipped through the barricade of my mouth and darted with warm bold strokes against mine. It lasted forever, a slip and a dive, a deep slide and a gasp of breath. I shifted my body against his, needy, my skin electrified.
“And now?”
I grumbled as he pulled away to speak. “No talking.” I tugged him back in, my hands against his jumper, running over the curves of all the goodness he kept hidden underneath.
He shifted back, his dark and inky blues on my gaze. “Now that I can definitely do.”
Lifting up, anchoring my legs around his waist, I peeped at the bunks of the carriage.
“I don’t think we will fit.”
His eyes held mine. “You’re obsessed with size.”
I appraised his six-foot-four broad frame.
Without a word he reached under me and clicked the lock on the door.
Oh God.
The train rocked beneath us as he held me tight in his grip and turned us around, pacing the three steps to the small bed. Still holding me, he leant over slightly and turned the knob for the blinds to come down.
The carriage pitched into the shadows of a tunnel and I shivered uncontrollably, all desperate and achy. After another endless kiss, he slid me down his body. Mentally, I high-fived myself for the thick and hard ridge in the centre of his jeans.
This was no longer a dream.
Everything about us, this moment, was startlingly real. All my years of wanting were being reduced to ash on a long-distance train to the North.
His chest heaved slightly, and I glanced up to find a desperate look of wonder on his face. His bright and wide eyes, shining in the low light, looked at me like I was his goddess.
“Ronnie. I will never let you go again. That’s a promise from my heart.” He picked up my hand and pushed it into his chest where it rose with the ragged climb and fall of his breathing. “I’ll never be able to tell you how much I regret the things I’ve done.”
I reached a hand for his face, standing on my tiptoes, and cupped his cheek, my heart pounding as he closed his eyes and surrendered into my touch. “I know,” I whispered. “But now we get to start again.”
I smiled at the thought of our conversation a few minutes earlier. The conversation where we’d finally, after eighteen years, admitted our feelings.
He cracked open an eye. “What stalking do I need to know about?”
I snorted a laugh, but it turned to a squeal as he grabbed me and managed to push me off balance onto the small mattress. “All the stalking, everywhere.”
His lips grazed hot up my throat. “I feel violated.”
“And that’s not even acknowledging my porno dreams.”
He ducked his head back up. “Porno dreams?”
“All of them. Every night of the week. You and me, naked and—”
I sighed as his lips caught mine, our teeth chinking as the delicate kisses from the door delved into something soul lighting.
He pulled at my jumper. Cool fingers slipped underneath and brushed at my skin. “God, you feel so good.”
I arched my back pushing myself into his hardness. “More.”
His fingers skimmed up, running underneath my bra. A fractured thought that I had my crap M&S plain white set on filtered into my consciousness, but I swiftly pushed it back away. His thumb brushed my nipple and I made a noise I’d never created before.
Chuckling, he lowered his head, lifting up my jumper as his hot mouth brushed delicate kisses along the same path his hands took. I shivered as he pushed up my bra to release a nipple, capturing it in his mouth.
A knock landed against the door. “Tea trolley.”
“No thank you,” Matthew mumbled, his mouth drawing in the hardened bud, then swirling his tongue around the sensitive flesh. I thrashed against the mattress, not sure if I wanted him to stop or carry on.
Carry on, definitely.
“Last chance '
til Crewe,” the voice called again.
“No thanks,” I gasped as Matthew pushed his hands down to the edge of my jeans, levering his fingertips under the waistband, his smile against my lips slow and devilish.
I turned my face for the door, expecting the tea lady to come barging in, but when the rattle of the trolley picked up and moved on, I sighed long and low.
I wiggled free of my jeans as soon as he’d undone the buttons and then sat up and pulled my jumper over my head. I needed his skin against mine like I needed air between kisses.
Down to my underwear, he pushed me back with one big hand splaying against my stomach.
“It feels naughty doing this on a train.” My words lilted with a sharp edge.
“I should have done this the other night.” His expression clouded, lips straightening into a line I didn’t want to see right now.
I tried to pull him down to me, but he kept just out of the reach of my fingertips. “Why didn’t you?”
His face shadowed. “Because you were talking and in the moment that seemed just as important.”
His answer made my insides warm caramel. The fact that he got me on such a fundamental level after years of not seeing me, made me know deep in my heart that what we had was beyond exception.
Matthew and Ronnie. Two halves of the same being.
“Please don’t ever let me stop talking. I like it now I’ve started, but I know it won’t always be easy.”
He eased back, leaving me exposed. My skin puckered in the cool air. “Do you want to talk now?” A flicker crossed his face.
“Are you crazy? Talk to me in five minutes.”
“Five? Better make it ten.” His lips curved. “Maybe fifteen, but honestly, I think you’ve broken me. I feel like a teenager about to blow his load at every opportunity.”
“Now, porno Matthew would never—”
His lips crashed into mine again. No teasing, no playfulness. Hard and relentless. His hands smoothed along my skin, everywhere all at once against my frayed nerve endings.
The Matthew I found under his clothes carved the perfect specimen of man, so far from the boy I used to know. His jumper and jeans joined mine on the floor, and we both gasped as our bare skin touched. His arms came up around my back, rocking me close to his body and he rolled us over, somehow not knocking us out of the small bed.
On top, I squeezed my knees into his sides, leaning down to brush a kiss on his mouth. He unclasped my bra, chucking it to one side and then returning to brush butterfly soft caresses over my exposed skin.
Beneath me, his hard-on pulsed and I rocked back and forth, the natural lilt of the train easing me into a steady rhythm.
He groaned, his fingers pulling at the edge of my knickers. I lifted so he could push them down and then I settled back, a lick of scorching heat in the pit of my stomach.
“Have you got a condom?” I leant down close and closed my lips over his, trying to ignore the still of his hands which had been blissfully running up and down my back.
“I’m officially fifteen.” He sighed and closed his eyes.
I snorted and pecked kisses along his jaw. Each one an imprint of my feelings. Kiss—I love you. Kiss—I love you. Kiss—I love you. My kisses gave me time to think. Leaning back, I met his dark gaze. “Well, I’m good, if you’re good.”
With one hand he cradled my jaw and we watched one another for a long moment. “I feel like as the adult in the room, this is your choice. But please note from this point on I’ll be walking around with a bumper pack of Durex just on the off chance.” His brow furrowed and he groaned into my neck. “It’s like waiting for a guillotine to land on my knob.”
This wasn’t the first time we’d done this. Just days ago in his kitchen, before I’d left him and then chased after him, we’d given in to the moment without a thought.
I shuddered as I reached down and fit us together. Two pieces of the same tree, no other sensation in the world could compare.
I sighed so deep my bones ached.
“Fuck, Ronnie. I’m retracting my fifteen minutes and going with three.”
My laugh rocked us together. Everything in the moment seemed utterly perfect. Perfection. Matthew and me.
“Three would be unsatisfactory.” I rotated my hips, pushing him in deeper, taking more and more of him.
He screwed his eyes shut. “Fuck.”
With the barest of movements, he pulled out and rotated us, flipping me over, his knee pushing my legs apart.
Peppering kisses down my spine, he held both my hips in his grasp, lifting me up from the mattress.
“Ooh.” That’s all I had. And another, “Oooh.”
Matthew skimmed his lips across my core, flicking his tongue, testing and tasting. The bed sheets came apart with my grasp as he lifted me higher and delved deeper.
Matthew had party tricks I hadn’t even contemplated.
“Nope.” I shoved my face into the mattress to stop from whimpering between each word. “One minute.” Another thrust of his tongue and I pitched forwards. “Thirty seconds.”
He had me over and on my back and had buried himself deep inside me before I had a chance to give in to the dizzying high he'd dragged me to.
I shuddered back down and then his deep push took me straight back up again. His fingers lifted my chin, making me meet his gaze as his hips pushed slow and steady, then a bit quicker, and then quicker still. My heart raced with the wheels of the train. My toes pointed, while deep inside me, Matthew scored his initials under my skin.
Scots
Ronnie
“You know.” I stood against the purple of his front door pretty damn close to licking the paint now that I knew he’d chosen the colour scheme of his house based on a dress I'd worn way back when the world was younger in 2004.
Just the same as he'd done a few days ago, he bent over and picked up two pints of milk and handed them to me.
Never had someone handing glass bottles over been more satisfactory. It needed to become a new sport in the Olympics—who could look sexy while picking up bottles of milk?
Matthew could.
“I don’t have any stuff with me.”
He gave me a small smile and pushed through the front door. Unlike days ago, when we'd been met with an arctic blast, this time the house oozed warmth against our faces. It was like getting off the plane in the Bahamas and walking down the steps to the tarmac suddenly realising you were overdressed.
“And I really should have booked my returning train.” I scrunched my face, equally disgusted at leaving Matthew and this budding bloom of a romance we had unfolding, for the prospect of more hours on a train. “How long are the flights? Maybe I could do that instead? Angela always flies.”
My stomach dropped at the mention of Ange and I met his dark gaze.
Ange had let me down; let us down. I’d never expected that from my best friend and I had no idea what to say or how to act in response. His lips pressed into a firm line. I got it, I did. She’d meddled and stopped us being together over the years. I got it.
But she was Ange.
And reality, even while I stood in his purple hallway, told me that ninety-nine percent of the blame was ours.
He reached for my coat and undid the buttons. “Don’t think about it now. Ange, I mean…” He came closer and brushed a kiss on my mouth.
Mm. Kissing.
Instantly distracted, I reached my fingers for the back of his neck and pulled him in. Kissing Matthew was like taking a sip of a dangerously intoxicating drink and then loving the hit it fed into your veins.
“Sorry, were you saying something?” I breathed into his mouth, unable to push my body any closer to his.
“Not that I remember, no.” With a kick to the front door and an echoing slam, he grabbed me up in his arms and made for the stairs, me unable to break my kiss the whole way up.
London. I really needed to get back to London.
“You’re dangerous for me, I think.” I snuggled against
his warm chest, pretty damn close to exploding with happiness.
“Me, dangerous?” He kissed the top of my head. I don’t know how long we’d been in his lavender bedroom. Time didn’t exist anymore. The white curtains were pulled against the day, and only the slight shadow around the edge told me the day to end all days might be transitioning from morning to afternoon.
With a satisfied purr, I took in the room, familiarising myself with all things Matthew. The chest of drawers where I knew his unmatched socks lived. The cupboard with the suits that didn’t seem appropriate for the man holding me in his arms. The furniture, simple and built to be indestructible during wild and passionate sex.
I trailed my fingers through the light smattering of dark hair across his firm chest. “I’m not sure if this will ever get old.”
Another kiss. Another explosion in a chamber of my heart. “It won’t.”
“This isn’t reality though, is it? I do need to go home.”
His arms tightened around me, pressing me harder against his skin. “Aye, you do.”
“I’m not sure what I’m going to tell Hannah. I literally ran out the house and left her. What sort of parent am I?”
His fingers stroked my hair, skipping along my spine and then back up to the crown of my head. “How do you think she'll react?”
“To what? Us?”
He chuckled and I pulled back to look at him. My old friend Nagging Doubt raised her ugly head.
“This is an us, isn’t it, Matthew?”
He shook his head. “Ridiculous.” He kissed me softly. “I don’t just lay out the goods for everyone. I’d like to think this is special for both of us.”
He joked, but Nagging Doubt stepped up to the crease and batted a wide swing. “No?”
With a deep sigh, he cupped his hands around my elbows and hoisted me up so I dangled in his strong hold above him. “No.”
Cringing, I looked at him through one eye. “Sorry. It’s just… well…”
“Well what?” His lips curved though, playful and teasing; the boy I remembered always pushed me to say something out loud. The man in his place would do the same, I knew that.