I reached out, but he stepped away, frowning, his hand going to it, wrapping around it. “No, Ty.”

“I want it,” I begged. “I want to touch it.”

“Not to be un-gentlemanlike, but I haven’t gone to bed in four years without jacking off to the thought of you. And it wasn’t you on your knees. I have to touch you, baby. I have to fucking drink you in. And there isn’t a thing that you can say to change that fact.”

I pulled my eyes from his hand, from his cock, and looked into his face. Saw pain there, his voice almost shaking on his last words, the need in his eyes so strong it screamed.

“On your back,” he repeated. “Pants off.”

I held his gaze, my sneakers kicked aside, my leggings peeled off. I left on the underwear, a white thong, and he let out a soft sigh, standing alongside the bed, my body stretched out beside him, his hand sliding down, from sternum to tummy, sliding over the white cotton, his eyes closing briefly. “If you only knew, Ty.”

I didn’t ask. I didn’t speak. I didn’t think, had he said something else at that moment in time, that I could have handled it. He pulled the panties slowly, carefully, over my hips and off, his fingers lingering on their path, his eyes on his work, face unreadable. When he pulled the thong off my legs, he tossed it aside, looking up to my face.

“Sit up.”

I did, propping up my body with my hands, my feet digging into the coverlet, knees raised. He knelt on the bed before me, the mattress sinking under his weight, his hands reaching for me, pulling me, until the backs of my thighs were against his, and we were face to face, my legs wrapping around his waist, my pussy against his cock. His eyes closed briefly, and he winced. “God, you have no idea how much you tempt me.”

“It’s not temptation if you can have it.” I wrapped my arm around his neck, one of his hands tightening on my ass, bringing me closer, the other knotted in my hair, his mouth coming down for a kiss.

“But I don’t have you, Ty. And once we do this…” His words fell into a groan, my free hand wrapping around his cock.

“Once we do this … what?”

“I can’t walk away.”

I didn’t want to have this talk. I wanted to forget life, forget obligations, forget everything but the two of us. I squeezed his hard length, looking down, at the look of us, everything on him hard against my soft, my hair wet with arousal against the ridges and lines of his shaft. I pulled back, away from him, and pushed his cock down, my name hissing from his lips in warning, everything going away the moment it was there, thick and perfect, my legs greedy in their pull closer, his hands tightening on my skin, hips thrusting. And then he pushed in. Deeper, deeper. My hands scrambled against his skin, clawing at it, my world bursting into light as he groaned my name and pushed the final inches home.

I gasped, he stilled, and there was a moment of pure fullness, his lips against mine, one sweet kiss that promised me everything, including heartbreak.

Then his hand tightened on my hair, he pulled from our kiss, lowering his head beside mine, his breath hot on my shoulder, fingertips biting into my ass, and he started to move.

I didn’t know what I was thinking, my vision of Chase as a lover. I had thought it would be crude. Quick and dirty, like our meeting in the bathroom. I had thought he would be selfish. Demanding. I had been, in a thousand orgasmic ways, wrong.

I was wrong when he started, like that, our souls face-to-face, impossible to escape.

I was wrong when we moved, on our sides, my back to his front, his whisper on my neck, kisses brushing my shoulder, his hands everywhere, thrusts never stopping, not until the moment that my orgasm came, long and brutal, my body seizing around his cock.

I was wrong when he came, inside of me, my hands gripping the edge of the desk, him standing before me, gasping into our kiss, his hands in my hair, his final push so deep and solid that I bucked against it.

I was wrong when he carried me to the bed, and cleaned me up, his mouth following the washcloth, his tongue gentle, then stronger, knowing everything, leaving nothing, my final orgasm one that broke the record books, his name screamed loud enough that Brooklyn must have heard.

I was wrong when he crawled under the sheets behind me and wrapped his arms around me.

I was wrong when he told me he loved me, and I repeated it back.

“The detectives hadn’t even considered an affair. That just wasn’t the direction they were looking. Tobey and Ty Grant had always been baseball’s golden couple, and the Yankee fans loved them. It was because of how iconic they were, of how much so many people believed in them—it was like if they didn’t succeed as a couple, then there was no hope for the rest of us. And that ideal, that hero worship of their relationship was, quite literally, their kiss of death.”

Dan Velacruz, New York Times

84

"Stay.”

“I can’t stay.” I sat up, sliding off the bed and eyeing my panties, damp and alone, on the floor. “I have to get back.” Before he wakes up. I didn’t want to turn and see the clock, was terrified of what it might say. It felt like we’d been in this room for decades. First the sex, then the spooning, then the conversation. Words about nothing, each of us trying to stretch out the time, a hopeless feat.

“What are you going to tell him?”

I gathered my clothes and sat at the desk, working on my panties, then my leggings. “I don’t know.”

He got off the bed, boxer briefs on, and walked over, picking up my shirt and helping me with it, the built-in sports bra a tight fit, his hands taking liberties in their pull of spandex over breasts. I smirked at him despite myself, taking the pullover from his hands and handling it myself.

He didn’t smile back. He looked worried. “Maybe I should come with you.”

“No.” I grabbed my Nikes and sat down in the chair. I didn’t know what he thought. That I was going to walk into my house, wake up my husband, and ask for a divorce? I couldn’t do that to Tobey. I needed to think, to plan, to figure out—

“This isn’t a fling, Ty.” His words were hard, and I looked up at him, momentarily pausing my shoe-tying. “You aren’t going to go back to him and occasionally fuck me when you are bored.”

I finished the knot and stood. “Don’t talk to me like that.” I glared at him. “Do you think that’s what I’m like? Seriously?”