“Feels good, doesn’t it?” he whispered, as my eyes rolled into the back of my head.
“Just a little.”
Wave after wave of pleasure rolled and spiked with the slow undulation of his hips. I floated on a tide of ecstasy as we found a rhythm, our movements growing in confidence.
“Does it always feel this amazing?” I gasped, looking up into a beautiful pair of dark eyes.
“Only when it’s us, Alex. Only when it’s us.”
“You were so beguiling when you were seventeen, Matt. You had eyelashes I could have turned you upside down and swept the floor with.”
We’d showered and were back in bed. Dusk hadn’t long fallen outside, but it was my first ever night in bed with Matt Leeson and I was planning on making it a long and busy one. I’d brought our bags in from the car, and we’d feasted like kings. Rummaging through my parents’ freezer reassured me they were prepared if ever we had a national food shortage. Cuddled into me once more, and with his head resting on my chest, Matt was in a rare, voluble mood. He traced the pad of his thumb lazily over my mouth and snorted. “‘Beguiling’? Your memory must be playing tricks on you. I was sweaty and spotty and had athlete’s foot.”
“You were beguiling,” I insisted, nibbling the tip of his thumb. “And you ruined me for anyone else.”
A sleepy, amused smile tugged at his lips. “What am I now?”
“Breathtaking.”
“And you’re deluded. I think your parents are home, by the way. I just heard a door bang downstairs. Either that or we’re being burgled.”
My head shot up off the pillow. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“Nope, ‘fraid not.” His laugh was muffled against my chest. I strained my ears; there were feet padding along the wooden floorboards in the hallway and my mum’s voice. “Jesus, Matt,” I breathed urgently, “They were choosing pastries in a bloody boulangerie ten hours ago! What the fuck are they doing here?”
My dad shouted from the bottom of the stairs. “Alex? Is that you?”
I sagged back onto the pillow. “Oh, for fucks sake.”
Matt giggled again. “Language, babe. You’re not on the rugby pitch now.”
No, I was in my boyhood home and my boyhood bed, in the arms of the man I would be spending all my nights with from now on. And, despite being a grown adult in my forties, I was riddled with the same panic I would have had as a teenage boy if they’d come home early from one of their nights out. My dad shouted again.
“What are you going to do?” whispered Matt.
With a despairing groan, I reluctantly slid out from underneath him and dragged my trousers up my legs. I threw a T-shirt over my head then turned back to where my lover watched, trying yet failing to hide his amusement. He’d rolled into the spot I’d occupied, his silky black hair fanned across the pillow, the mouth I’d been ravaging up until a few minutes ago, kiss-reddened and lax. My heart lurched. All mine. This beautiful, troubled creature was all mine and in every way he was perfect. I knew exactly what I was going to do.
“I’m heading downstairs, to tell them that Matt Leeson is spread out, naked, in my bed. And then I’m going to wish them goodnight, come back upstairs, put their olive oil to very good use, and fuck him all over again.”
For the sake of their ageing physiology, I skipped over a couple of the more explicit details. “Alex! There you are!” My mum beamed and, dwarfing her, I leaned in for a kiss. “Have you eaten already?”
“Um…yeah. I had something earlier out of the freezer. I didn’t know you were flying back tonight.”
“A last-minute change of plan.” My dad bustled into the kitchen. Affluent retirement suited him. Tanned and lean, he could have passed for ten years younger than seventy-five. My mum too. “Didn’t your sister tell you? We felt so bad missing Aunt Pauline’s eightieth that we got one of those cheap Ryanair flights—such good value, aren’t they?”
“Only twelve pounds each way,” my mum added. “So we decided to pop back for two days and then zip off again!”
“That’s…that’s nice.”
“Isn’t it? We’d forgotten until we saw your car in the drive that it coincided with your mysterious trip up here. Old age frying our brains, that’s what that is.”
I rolled my eyes. Both of them still outscored me onUniversity Challenge. My mum wandered over to the cupboards and began pulling out some mugs. “Tea?”
“Um…yeah. Sure.”
“We had a devil of a time at Bergerac airport, though. Those French customs officers are a nuisance. I much prefer the British border. There are more of them, for a start. And one of them looked at your father as if the wheel of Brie de Meaux he was bringing back for Pauline was a basic ingredient for nail bombs. Honestly, there was this one chap parading around in his smart—”
“Mum?”