Page 34 of Milo
The men and women I sleep with are all, without exception, assured and confident lovers experienced in having a good time with no regrets. I’ve always kept away from inexperience, thinking it would bore me and take too much of my time to overcome when easy pleasure beckoned within quick reaching distance.
Well, the joke’s on me because I’ve never felt this before. This swinging of emotions all the time. The horrible jealousy that had settled in my stomach like a rock while he was out with Simeon. The way I kept texting him during dinner was out of order, but I wanted to keep me in his thoughts front and centre and not focused on the perfectly nice and handsome man who I dislike with a passion because he was with someone who is mine.
I still at the thought.Mine. I test it, washing it around in my mouth and swallowing the word. It feels right somehow. Milo is mine. Maybe he’s always been that, in some funny way. Theonly man I’ve ever felt protective of. The only man who can walk into a room and have my whole attention no matter what I’m doing. I just don’t know what that means at the moment. It used to be that it was because I thought of him as family. Now, he’s something much more.
I look down at his sleeping face. He wouldn’t believe any of this anyway because he thinks I’m like Thomas. Bile rises in my throat. I am nothing like him. I know it. I’ve always treated my partners fairly and honestly, preferring to leave them with a smile on their faces and no tears.
I know I’m confident, but I never realised that Milo would see that as a threat. My heart hurts at the thought. I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know how to make him see me behind the picture of Thomas that stands between us. How to make him know that I would never treat him like that, ever.
I’m suddenly reminded of Dotty when she came to me. Dirty, unkempt, and half-starved, she’d turned up on my doorstep but refused to come into the house. It had taken weeks of leaving food and milk for her before she’d even venture inside, and even then she’d watched me carefully as if waiting for me to hit her at any moment.
I trod carefully around her at first, careful to always give her space so that even when she finally let me pet her it was with the tacit understanding between us that there was room for her to escape if she needed to. This had gone on for months until one night she jumped onto my lap, and as I stroked her I’d heard her purr for the first time. It sometimes seems as if she’s never left my lap and her purr is louder now than it’s ever been.
I smile slightly and stroke Milo’s hair, feeling the warm, damp strands curl around my finger and inhaling the scent of my shower gel on him. I like that he smells of me far too much. My hand pauses. Dotty has grown to love me more than anyone, so I’ll take that as a good sign. She’s also bitten me more than afew times and has a tendency to shit in my shoes if she’s cross with me. I laugh softly. I’m hoping Milo won’t do the latter, but I think without knowing it he could hurt me.
I straighten my spine. But I’m not a quitter. I want him, I realise with finality. I want his insecurities and his quiet strength. His warm laugh and his sometimes hesitant speech. I want the long, lithe, and graceful body. And I’m going to have him at some point. All of him, quirks and everything. But first he’s got to trust me. I wonder sadly how long that will take.
At this point he moves in his sleep and nuzzles into the palm I have cupping his head. “Niall,” he whispers.
I smile widely. Now, I have hope. That’s usually all I need to go forward with anything. I just wish I knew what that was.
Chapter
Seven
Oh my God, did you fuck me?
Milo
I come awake slowly the next morning as if my brain knows the scale of the imminent pain awaiting me and has decided to try and shield me. It doesn’t work because as I shift position, my head throbs sickeningly. I groan pitifully, and I realise belatedly that I’m incredibly warm at the same time as there’s a low chuckle from beside me.
I crack open one eye, slam it shut and wait a few seconds until the glaring light stops trying to incinerate my eyeballs. Eventually, after several false starts, I manage to crack open both eyes to a sort of slitted half-stare. And stare I do because lying next to me is Niall.
His tanned skin looks golden against the pale blue of the sheets and his hair is a tangled mess on the pillow. I moveslightly, and a woody smell mingled with a faint hint of lemon and rosemary drifts up from the tangled bedlinens. Both of our scents have combined and it’s strangely erotic. I bunch the sheets up over my body’s reaction. The force is strong with my cock, despite my brain’s opposition.
I look up and choke slightly when I find him watching me. His eyes are slumberous and sexy and way, way too amused.
“What are you doing here?” I ask hoarsely to forestall the piss taking. I can’t exactly remember the precise reason why he’d do that, but I know with a deep certainty that it exists.
He stretches, giving out a low, satisfied grunt which makes me swallow hard. He moves his head on the pillow and smiles at me. It’s a warm, intimate smile that hits me like a brick between the eyes because he’s never looked at me like this before. My eyes narrow.
“Oh my God, did you fuck me?”
He snorts and stretches his arms behind his head. “Milo, I have done and enjoyed many things in my sexual peak, but necrophilia has never been one of them.” He pauses as if considering something and then shakes his head. “No, I’m certain I’ve never done it.”
I glare at him. “Then why are you in bed with me?”
“Well, dearest.” My eyes narrow at the endearment and he snorts and bops me on the nose. “After you rather charmingly threw up in the sink, I showered you and put you to bed. I decided to sleep in with you because Cora is here and also because I wanted to make sure you didn’t choke on your own vomit.” He pauses. “That would have really set me back on my mud run schedule.”
I groan and fall back on the pillows, putting my hand over my eyes. “Oh myGod, I can’t believe I was sick in your sink. I’m so sorry.”
A warm hand pulls my fingers away from my eyes and I squint at him as he gives me a soft look. “Why be sorry? Better the sink than my crotch.”
“You should put that on a t-shirt,” I say sourly, and he laughs loudly. There’s a rustle and a soft coo from the Moses basket and he vaults up and paces over to it. Bending over Cora, he grins.
“Hello, baby girl. Ready for a nice day out?”
I blanch. “Oh myGod,have I still got to go?”
