But every time I thought about packing my suitcase, my stomach would drop to somewhere around my knees. When I’d signed up to be on Happily Ever After, I’d wanted nothing more than to find my person. Now, as I made my way back to my room, I wondered if I had—just not with who I’d expected.
But I was also a realist. Oliver owned a house in the small town in New Hampshire where he’d grown up while I rented a penthouse condo in the heart of Boston. Once we were back in the real world, it was a six-hour round trip drive to see one another. That was, of course, assuming he’d even want to. I hadn’t exactly asked.
It had been three days since he’d first kissed me, and we’d been sneaking in as many stolen moments together as we possibly could without risking being caught. With our mouths occupied, we hadn’t taken the time to talk about what any of this actually meant. Not that I had any intention of pressuring him into having a conversation he wasn’t ready for. I understood better than most that he was riding the high that came with discovering sex and intimacy didn’t have to be a chore. That the simple act of kissing someone could bring him the type of pleasure he’d long sought but been denied. That, in this particular case, the kissing happened to be with another man was something I didn’t know if he’d fully processed yet. That there was a chance our intimacy might not last beyond the pressure-cooker of being trapped in a gorgeous mansion together was something I was definitely not processing.
It was scary enough at twelve years old to realize that I was attracted to girls and boys both. I couldn’t imagine how terrified I’d have been to have woken up three days ago to find I wasn’t the person I’d always thought I was. Here in our bubble, Oliver could pretend to ignore the impact of that discovery, to keep his real life from intruding too much on the little pocket of joy we’d serendipitously stumbled into.
As if these thoughts had conjured him out of thin air, a hand shot out and latched onto my arm. It tugged me into the darkened alcove where we sometimes hid out during cocktail parties when the stress of the preening and jockeying got to be more than either of us wanted to deal with any longer. His lips were on mine before I could so much as muster a hello, and he was backing me toward the leather couch under the window.
He pushed me down onto the cushions and stared down at me with heat in his twinkling eyes.
“Well, hello to you, too.” I smiled warmly up at him. He looked so damn happy, and it thrilled me to think I was the one who’d put that light in his eyes.
He crossed one arm over his middle, propping the other up in his open palm. He tightened his fingers into a fist and pressed his mouth to it. The room was lit softly by sconces that gave off just enough light for me to make out color risen high on his cheekbones. He blew out a quick gust of air as he shook his head back and forth as if disappointed. “Do you have any idea how hard this is for me?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, mildly surprised that he was broaching the subject now. Even more surprised, if I were being honest, that he’d launched straight into it like this. Deep down, though, I hadn’t expected … whatever this was … to last.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping for a little more time to enjoy being with him—even if we were sneaking around to do it. Perhaps I’d been fooling myself into believing he was so caught up in the newfound pleasure of it all that he’d ignore the ramifications of his sexual exploration for a little while longer.
“Would it be easier if I went home?” I asked, my voice suddenly hoarse.
He dropped his arms as his face took on a look of pure panic. “What? No. Don’t do that.” He quickly folded himself into the space between my body and the arm of the sofa, his hand moving toward my thigh before pulling it back as if unsure his touch was welcome. “Why would you go home?”
I lifted my gaze to his and fought the instinct to reach for his hand. “Oliver, I don’t want to make this any more difficult for you than it already is. If my being here causes you to—”
My words were cut off when he slid his hand around my neck and pulled me toward him. In the split second before he pressed his lips to mine, he said, “The only thing difficult about any of this is not being able to do it all the time.”
The kiss started off slow and exploratory, but then he moaned, and I was done for. His long fingers spread out over the back of my skull, and he angled my head to take the kiss deeper. He growled against my lips, and with a strength born of years spent bench pressing his body weight and then some, he hefted me into his lap, my knees digging into the cushions on either side of his hips.
“Are you sure?” I asked against his lips.
He nodded. “So fucking sure.”
Up until now, things had remained relatively tame between us. Our hands never wandered, and even though our make-out sessions left me so hard I physically hurt, neither of us had tried to take things further. Honestly, the mere act of kissing Oliver was ten times better than any of the sex I’d had in the past year, so I was happy to continue on as we were. Which was why I squeaked in surprise when his other hand snaked down to cup me.
“Is this okay?” he asked, pressing lightly against the bulge that had grown significantly larger behind my zipper.
“More than okay,” I breathed, rocking gently into his touch, mindful not to overdo it with the thrusting. I didn’t want to scare him off.
“Can I touch you?” He leaned forward to suck the skin on my neck into his mouth. When he nipped the curve where my shoulder met my throat, a wave of pleasure shot straight to my balls.
I was on the verge of unbuckling my pants when I heard voices down the hall, pulling me out of the moment and reminding me where we actually were. For as private as our little hideaway could be, the reality was it was still part of the mansion’s public space. We could be interrupted at any minute.
“Damn it,” I muttered, lifting off Oliver’s lap and adjusting myself before flopping inelegantly down on the far end of the sofa.
“Come to my room,” he whispered hurriedly as he cast a furtive glance toward the heavy velvet drapes that shut us off from the rest of the house. “With Crosby gone, I don’t share a wall with anyone.”
I was certainly tempted, but there was a vast difference between fooling around here in this alcove where we could only take things so far and moving to his bedroom with a lock on the door.
While Oliver was nothing but enthusiastic when it came to kissing me, a small part of my subconscious worried he was pushing himself further than he was actually ready to. Later, if he decided this had all been a temporary brush with insanity, he could justify everything we’d done as idle curiosity. File it away in the same part of his brain where he’d kept his weekend with Rob and Calista neatly boxed away. But once our penises came out, plausible deniability flew right out the window. That wasn’t just a spur-of-the-moment, caught-up-in-the-heat-of-it-all type of thing. You had to decide to touch another man’s dick.
“Oliver.” I paused, unsure of what to say next. As much as I wanted to look out for him, I didn’t want to be patronizing about it either.
“Elijah,” he said, mimicking my tone and cadence.
I let my eyes take him in, the handsome scruff he’d grown out over the last couple of weeks, the way his eyes turned a shade darker when he was turned on. The long, tapered fingers that in another life had been instrumental in winning the most important football game in the world, and in this one were just as instrumental in rocking my world. I wanted him with every fiber of my being. More than that, I wanted him to want me just as badly, but I couldn’t be something, or someone, he’d look back on with shame.