I covered the scars with my palm, and with my pulse thudding against my neck, I asked, “Can you not talk to Duncan about this conversation?”
Tristan bumped his shoulder against mine and smiled. “Wouldn’t think of it.”
We got through another game before practice was over without any more tears, which Tristan and I always counted as a huge win. After the kids were all picked up, I always made Tristan go home, enjoying the time to pack up the equipment alone.
I was getting in my car when my ring tone went off, Micah’s name on my screen. A heady rush flooded my veins, leaving my skin tingling and head floaty as his deep tenor slipped through the line and said, “Hey, I sent you a text, but I realized you might’ve still been in practice. You busy?”
“Not anymore.”
“I’d still like to see you again,” Micah said, his tone dipping to a murmur so silky and sweet it rose the heat of my blood, awakening my cock without a wink of warning. “Can’t seem to get you off my mind.”
In the past, euphoria needed multiple steps. Steps that weren’t natural. It took brute force—literally punching into my veins—to achieve it, and I chased it until I couldn’t anymore. I nearly died because of it. I’d figured nothing would come close to touching that again.
Until now.
Normally, I’d go home, take a shower, and chill before going to bed and getting up before dawn. It would be another day ticked off, alive but not quite living—bored, but clean.
Now I had Micah’s voice humming in my ear with the option of a different evening before me, and there was no way I was gonna say no. He made me wanna take a chance, even if it freaked me out later.
Still, I needed to chill, or I’d be risking walking like I sat on a sharp rock all the way to my car. I wiped my hand over my mouth and, before I could lose courage, said, “I’m down.”
There was an awkward pause in the conversation before Micah cleared his throat. “Mind if I come to your place? Figured it’d even things out since you’ve already seen mine.”
“Sure, I’m already heading there,” I said, my heart rate kicking up as I pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward my neighborhood. “I’m a couple minutes away from my place. I’ll text you the address as soon as I park.”
“Good deal. See you soon, then,” Micah said, his smile radiating through the speakers of my car as the call ended.
By the time I parked in the driveway, I barely had a foot out the door as I shot the text off to Micah. Immediately, he texted back that he was ten minutes away. Well, better than nothing. I flicked up two fingers to the sky in gratitude and jogged into the house to get a quick shower in.
I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and stared at my reflection. Water dripped from my hair to my arms, to my elbows. The path slithered and curled, catching in the bend between my biceps and forearm.
Paths of destruction still marred my skin. They’d looked far worse in the beginning, but through work, the evidence had mostly faded. Like the memories, though, the scars never fully disappeared.
The edge of my mouth curled as I jerked the drawer open that held my new arsenal of equipment. Two pumps of liquid and a few precise pats with a sponge, and my history vanished from the naked eye.
I’d just finished my other arm when several sharp knocks rattled on my front door. With a small curse under my breath, I rushed into my bedroom to put on a pair of joggers and headed to the front door.
Whatever internal struggle I’d been feeling about myself in the bathroom vanished when Micah’s gaze took one slow drag down my body and up again, his eyebrow taking a quick lift up to his hairline. My pulse skipped a beat.
Taking a few steps back, I widened the door. “Um, sorry for a taking a minute to answer. I just got out of a shower.”
“All good,” Micah said as he stepped inside, his keys spinning around his finger as he did a quick visual sweep of my living room. It wasn’t much to look at, just a small TV that sat on a stand I’d snagged from a yard sale at the Collective. The rest of my furniture was a clash of colors next to each other, secondhand purchases I’d found through Facebook Marketplace.
They’d been with me through the years, and despite being able to afford a whole new setup, I couldn’t bring myself to do it, not with the nightmares of being back on the streets haunting me.
Micah stopped to check out the bookcase I kept in the corner. It’d been a birthday gift Chance made for me last year. The first two shelves were covered in pottery I’d made over the last few months. Some I was damn proud of, most were failures, and still others brought comedic relief.
The third shelf was for photos. Kickball teams Tristan and I coached, including the kickball tournament the Collective had a couple years before. A snapshot of me and Duncan at his wedding, laughing during the reception about something I couldn’t remember. A small trophy Duncan got me for when I celebrated being one year sober.
Micah took in each shelf, his fingertips running along the pointed side of the shelf with the pottery. It left a funny flutter in my throat that I couldn’t swallow.
I waited for a comment on the condition of the apartment, but all Micah did was point to the empty side table next to the couch. “Mind if I put my stuff here?”
He had on a skintight black shirt with bright green lettering for the Hard Knox Roller Derby. I didn’t have the slightest clue what the hell that was, but I appreciated how much it showed off the firmness of his chest and stomach. And his black skinny jeans clung to him like a second skin. Those pants were too distracting.
He cleared his throat and pointed to the side table with a questioning look on his face. I blinked, coming back to my senses. “No, yeah, it’s totally cool.”
Micah set down his wallet and phone and walked to me, his eyes roaming down my body to my toes and slowly roving back up, stopping at my lips. “I have a question.”
“Okay,” I said, my pulse jackhammering so hard in my throat the word felt numb on my tongue.
His eyes locked on to mine, a devil’s smile curling at the corner of his mouth. “If we fuck now, how long will it take for you to go again?”
Well, that was definitely not the question I was expecting to be asked. “Dunno. Haven’t tried it before.”
Micah brushed his thumb over my bottom lip, eyes assessing as he pulled it slightly downward. “Wanna find out tonight?”
I licked the tip of his thumb, then pushed out my tongue so that he could run the flat of his finger along the middle. My cock immediately hardened, my entire body already on fire. I tilted my head away so I could say, “Hell yeah, let’s do it.”
A smile played around Micah’s lips as he joined me in the middle for a kiss. By the way he’d been checking me out, I expected things to start off in a similar fashion as they did the first three times, but they didn’t.
Micah ran the tip of his tongue teasingly over the seam of my mouth, coaxing it open and dipping inside for a taste. His hands were just as busy as his mouth, one palm running over my chest and stomach, the fingers of the other tangling through my hair, nails scratching along my scalp.
With his wily tongue taking the lead in this slow dance of a kiss, I somehow activated the two functional brain cells I still had and pushed him against the wall with a little more force than I meant to. The impact pried our mouths apart, and I pawed at his shirt and said, “Get this off.”
Micah breathed a husky chuckle, crossed his arms in front of him, removed the T-shirt, and dropped it onto the floor. He canted his hips forward, accentuating the dark trail of hair on his long torso, a bulge straining in those low-rise jeans that clung to him more like a second skin than actual clothing.
There was a flush spread across his chest, and I leaned in to run the flat of my tongue along it, humming happily at the way he groaned. I licked toward his nipple, circling a path around the hardened bud before latching my mouth on to it.
