“You told her you were gay?”
“Yup. Ironic, huh?”
“What did she say?”
“She laughed. I don’t think she believed me, so I’m hoping she hears about it when shit hits the fan so she knows I wasn’t just trying to get rid of her.”
I pictured the woman again, trying to recall anything about her that wasn’t her lips on Dom, but nothing came to me other than the vague notion that she’d been a knockout.
“Hey.” Dom touched my face. “Can we go back to talking about something real?”
“Like what?”
“Like, the fact that I helped on my uncle’s building site for a while before I turned pro and I loved it. I mean, I didn’t love pushing wheelbarrows of cement around, but I was fascinated by house building: the foundations, the brickwork, the plaster. I might do some more with property when this mess is done.”
“You’re not gonna be some cockhead landlord with sixty-five million houses while the rest of us can’t afford a microwave, are you?”
Dom snorted. “No.”
“Good. ’Cause you really would be a wanker then. Tell me something else about being Portuguese.”
“I don’t know much about being Portuguese. I’m English.”
“Yeah, but you must’ve grown up with dual cultures. Jamila’s grandparents are Grenadian. They cook the best chicken.”
“You’re obsessed with chicken.”
“Nah. Just hungry.”
“Already?”
“Sue me.”
Dom shuddered. “Don’t even joke about it. But staying on topic, you’ve had Peri Peri, right?”
“Like Nando’s?” I lifted my head a fraction. “I like that shit.”
“Yeah?” Dom was suddenly closer. Somehow he’d shifted while my mind had meandered to chilli-spiced chicken and lime mayonnaise. “What else do you like?”
We weren’t talking about food anymore. Being naked in bed with him abruptly became everything I’d vowed I didn’t need. I licked my lips. “You know what I like.”
“Remind me.”
Twenty-Six
Dom
My existence was a blur of everything and nothing, but the moment the prospect of being inside Lucky again hit my brain, it was all I could see.
I covered him with my body, pinning him down the way he seemed to like; my chest to his chest, our dicks rubbing together with a friction so hot I half-expected to see sparks when I dared to glance between us. “Jesus.”
Lucky laughed. “You’re feeling better then?”
“Shut up.” I kissed him roughly to make sure he did, and something I couldn’t describe sluiced through me, setting fire to every scrap of dry tinder I had left. I need him.
But it didn’t matter how hard I kissed him, how deep I took him down my throat, it wasn’t enough. I needed more.
Lucky rolled us over. His hands were everywhere, digging into my skin, fingers squeezing around my cock—his palm cupping my balls, and then sliding lower.
I arched against him, remembering with perfect clarity how his fingers had felt inside me that very first time. How I hadn’t known how deeply I craved it until it was happening. It was different now—so different—but the shot of pain-laced pleasure as he slid a slick finger home was just the same.
“Oh fuck, Lucky.”
He grinned evilly and scooted his knees closer to nudge my legs further apart. It felt natural to hook my hands beneath my thighs and hold them wide, granting him better access. Vulnerability was a distant memory and all I wanted was more.
Lucky finger-fucked me for what seemed like hours, edging me closer and closer to a precipice I didn’t want to come back from. He found my prostate and grazed it over and over, drawing louder, longer moans from me until I was shuddering, and drenched in sweat.
“Do you want me to fuck you?” he whispered. “It’s okay if you don’t…I can ride you.”
God, I wanted him to ride me, but the alternative was everything I’d dreamed of, and my soul screamed at me to make it reality. “Fuck me…please.”
The strangled sound I made as he slid his sheathed cock inside me was indescribable, and the stretching burn melted every nerve. Him on his knees, me on my back, still clutching my thighs as I held them open. My dick was rigid and weeping. He began to move inside me, easing in and out with growing purpose, and I was going to come without touching myself. The only question was how loud he could make me scream.
Lucky leaned forward and drove in and out of me, one hand on my chest, the other gripping the pillow beneath my head, fisting the fabric as he thrust harder. “Oh god, Dom. I’ve dreamed about this, I fucking swear. You’re so hot.”
I’d never felt that hot when I’d bottomed before. Despite the pleasure, I’d always felt scrappy and undignified, but this was nothing like that. Lucky was nothing like anyone I’d ever been with, and his every touch, every drive of his hips, injected me with liquid sex.
He dropped his torso down to press against me, and his taut abdomen slid along my sweat-damp skin. My legs found their way to his shoulders and there wasn’t an inch of space between us.
I buried my face in the silky hair that had escaped from the messy knot at the nape of his neck. His cool scent grounded me briefly, but then urgency stole over me, a frantic need I was almost afraid of. I was so full, and consumed by Lucky, I could hardly cope, and pressure built inside me until something snapped, and a crazed yell burst out of me. “I’m gonna come.”
Lucky growled and fucked me harder, any caution he’d started with all but gone. He pounded me against the headboard, moaning filthy words in my ear, but somehow, it wasn’t quite enough.
Out of my mind, I gripped his arse and pushed him deeper into me, and his cock scraped my prostate. I saw stars, and agonising pleasure broke me in half. Everything I had spilled out of me, spurred on by Lucky hardening and pulsing inside me.
“Dom—”
But I barely heard him, my mind fixated on one thought only: he’s coming inside me. He was wearing a condom, but the thought of him filling me up still sent a fresh jab of heat rocketing through me. “Fuck.”
Lucky dropped his head and groaned, his rhythm faltering, slowing, and then easing entirely before he pulled out of me. “You really do like that shit, huh?”
“What shit?” I slurred with my eyes closed.
“Getting fucked. It takes you somewhere.”
I cracked an eye open, and then two when I caught his smirk. “You take me somewhere. It wasn’t like that when—well, before. You know what I mean.”
“It’s okay to have fucked other people, Dom. We ain’t nuns.”
A rough laugh bubbled out of me. “You’re ridiculous.”
“So?”
I had no answer to that. His ability to challenge me in the simplest ways had built the foundations of my affection for him—affection and desire that had fast become an inability to live without him.
There’d been no doubt in my mind for a while now that I was head over heels in love with him, but as the minutes ticked by and we grinned daftly at each other, something changed between us. Like him fucking me—owning me—had reset a balance we needed to move forward. I didn’t understand it, and probably never would. All I knew was whatever happened next, there was no going back.
Isha paced my living room, tapping his fist against his lips as he processed what I was asking him to do. “This is insane.”
“Is it?” I said blandly, my gaze flitting to the closed bedroom door. Lucky was in there, pretending to be asleep after his crack of dawn awakening to go to work, but I knew he felt awkward as fuck about being around while I discussed setting a bomb under my career and blowing it to pieces. Like it was his fault it had come to this.
I wondered how many times I’d have to tell him it wasn’t before he believed me.
“Dom?”
I blinked at Isha. “What?”
Isha narrowed his eyes. “Come on, mate. I need you to focus if we’re going to pu
ll this together. This is huge. I can’t do it on my own.”
I was lucky he was considering doing it at all and not running for the hills, so I pulled my thoughts away from the beautiful boy in my bed, and gave Isha my full attention. “How soon can we sit down with Fernando?”
“As soon as we’ve figured out what you want to say to him.”
“You know what we have to say to him—the truth, man. I’m done hiding.”
“Hiding from who, though? When this gets out, the whole world will know, and they’ll all want a piece of you for a while. Are you ready for that?”
Of course I wasn’t, but I’d come to realise that I never would be, and I was done wasting my life pretending otherwise.
Isha came to a stop in front of me and sat on the coffee table. “This is so sudden. When did you decide this?”
I shrugged, as clueless as him. Clarity had come suddenly, but the path to it had been long and muddy. “Does it matter?”
“If it’s a knee-jerk reaction to something, then yes. You can’t take this back, Dom. It’s gonna change your life.”
“Fuck off,” I snapped. “Don’t you see? I have no fucking life like this. What do you want me to do? Stay closeted and celibate till I’m dead?”
“No—” Isha stopped, conflict marring his handsome features. “Of course I don’t want that. I never have. I want what’s best for you, and I’m worried this will hurt you just as much as staying quiet has.”
“You have no idea what’s best for me.”
“Then I’m sorry I’m a shit friend, okay? Just tell me what you need and I’ll see that you get it.”
But it wasn’t as simple as that. A sit-down with Fernando would do nothing but confirm my near certainty that he’d drop me like a stone, and doing it before the end of the season was a clusterfuck no one needed. Could I wait till the summer, though? With a target on my back from the tabloids, I doubted it.
Hours later, Isha left with a meeting with Fernando nailed down for the next day. Drained, I double locked the door behind him, messaged Constance to give her a few more paid days off, and let myself be drawn to the bedroom like a tired moth to a bright new flame.
Lucky was by the window, staring out over the city.
I came up behind him and slipped my arms around his waist. “Why are you peeping round the curtain like that?”
“I didn’t want anyone to spot me.”
“They’d be hard pushed to see up here.”
“Not if they were in that building over there.” He pointed to the bank headquarters opposite. “I can’t see through the windows, but that doesn’t mean they can’t see us.”
I’d never given much thought to whether anyone was spying on me from across the road. My apartment was far from homely, but despite being higher up than I could deal with elsewhere, I’d always felt safe.
I wanted Lucky to feel safe too. I drew him away from the window and turned him around. “It’s starting not to matter if someone sees us. I’m speaking to my manager tomorrow.”
“Fernando Rodriguez?”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s the one. Isha and me are meeting with him in the afternoon after training.”
“And telling him everything?”
“Telling him the truth,” I said, ignoring the echoes of my conversation with Isha. “I don’t know what will happen after that, but I’m going to tell him I’m gay and roll with it.”
Lucky grabbed blindly for the nearby dresser and leaned heavily on it. “Dom, that’s huge.”
“So people keep telling me.”
“You don’t think so?”
I knew so, but for some reason, I didn’t feel it. Forced apathy had become a numbness I couldn’t explain, and all I wanted—apart from Lucky—was to get it over with. “I need to talk to you about something else.”
Lucky’s expression didn’t change. He gestured for me to continue, but I didn’t want to have this conversation with him in my bedroom. Since I’d brought him home a few days ago, the space was sacred to me. I didn’t want it tainted by this ugliness.
I hustled him into the living room and sat him on the couch. “Even if I manage to take control of revealing my sexuality, Isha thinks the tabloid rat will run any information he has on you because it’s all he’ll have left. Best case scenario is that he doesn’t have much, but I honestly have no idea how far this is gonna go when it blows up.”
Lucky reached forward and claimed one of the bottles of water from the coffee table. “What’s the worst case scenario?”
“That he knows everything about you, prints it, and the paparazzi hound you for the rest of your life.”
“I meant for you, Dom. I don’t care about me.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “Habit.”
“Yeah, well, quit it.”
“I will if you will.”
“Anyway.” I grasped his shoulders and shook him slightly without meaning to. “Shit. Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
It wasn’t. I dropped my hands and chased my racing thoughts in search of a coherent sentence. “Listen, this is going to blow up in my face however it goes down, but I want you to know that I’m gonna do everything I can to keep you out of it…and, um…”
“Um? And?”
“And I don’t expect you to stick around through any of it, okay? If you want to bail, I totally get it.”
I wasn’t sure what reaction I was hoping for from him, but a burst of his infectious laughter caught me off guard, and then irritated me enough to lean away from him and narrow my eyes. “The fuck you laughing at?”
Lucky struggled to compose himself and slapped a hand over his mouth, sucking in deep breaths through his nose. When he was done, he reached for me again. “Don’t get pissy. I’m not laughing at you…I’m laughing because I’ve spent all night worrying that you’re gonna bail on me.”
“What?”
“You heard. I know you’re not doing any of this for me, Dom, but I heard that Isha guy say my name, and thinking that he was trying to talk you out of whatever foshizzle is going on between us had me kind of freaked.”
“Foshizzle?”
It was Lucky’s turn to glare. “I’ve told you before—I’m inarticulate when I’m hungry. You know it’s practically midnight, don’t you?”
It was barely eight, but I took his point. Food was the last thing on my mind, but I hadn’t hoofed it to Tottenham and back, or done a full day’s work.
Lucky had.
I confined him to the couch and retreated to the kitchen to make beans on toast. He seemed mollified when I delivered it, and I took my chance to bring the conversation back to my original point.
Lucky’s position remained unchanged. “They can hound me all they like. I’m a slippery fucker, they’d soon get bored.”
“It’s not funny.”
“I’m not laughing.” But he schooled his features all the same. “Seriously. Don’t fret, okay? If they find me, so be it, but you don’t have to worry about me giving you up, Dom. I’d never say a word. You know that, don’t you?”
I knew it like I knew water was wet. We had much to learn about each other, but our unspoken loyalty was absolute. “I’m hoping the rag hack will scrap anything he’s got on you in exchange for an exclusive interview or some shit.”
“You’d do that?”
I suppressed a shudder. “Not if I can help it, but if I had to…yeah.”
“What would you say?”
“Pure facts. That I’m gay, I’ve always been gay, and it ain’t gonna change.”
“You know they’ll push you harder than that.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Dom.”
“What?”
Lucky was suddenly in my face, his eyes wide, and his soft, pillowy lips twisted with concern. “It’s okay to be scared.”
“I’m not scared.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“So?”
He shook his head. Knocked it against
mine, and kissed my cheek. “Fine. Have it your way. But can I give you something?”
I expected another knock, or maybe one of the sweet kisses that bellied his sharp tongue, but Lucky rolled up his sleeve and unknotted one of the bazillion bracelets he wore around his slender wrist. It was plain dark brown and wonderfully weathered. He dropped it into my palm and I brought it to my face to smell leather, smoke, and Lucky.
“Wear it,” he said. “When you’re not playing, anyway. It’s an old one…it’s been with me from the start.”
“From the start of what?”
“From the start of being me.”
Fernando slow-blinked, his sleek white eyebrows coming together as he struggled to piece together what I’d just told him. “You’re gay?”
“Yup.”
“Since when?”
“Since forever. I told you, man. I’ve carried this all along.”
Fernando pushed his chair back and came around his desk. He stopped in front of me and stared down at me like he was trying to figure out if I was taking the piss. If Maldano was going to burst in at any moment wearing a tutu and screaming April Fool.
Except it wasn’t fucking April, and this was my life.
“You’re twenty-six,” Fernando said.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
He shrugged. “You have a few years left. Why do this now?”
“Are you asking for my benefit or yours?”
There was no guilt in his gaze as he scowled at me. “The Premiership found in our favour over the derby game and didn’t deduct points. If the season plays out as we expect it to, we’ll make Europe. Are you telling me we’ll be doing it without the lynchpin in our defence?”
It was my turn to shrug. “My contract is up.”
“You were about to be offered another three years.”
“So? That doesn’t change the fact that I’ve got an axe hanging over me. If things were different, I might’ve played on a bit longer, but this is going to come out one way or another—”
“Does it have to come out?” Fernando cut in. “Is there nothing we can do?”
“If you’re talking about a super injunction.” Isha spoke for the first time since I’d broken the news. “It’s a possibility, but the horse has bolted. Dom’s right—it will come out.”
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