I smiled just as he pulled a few inches out before shoving back, hard, forcing me to suck in a breath as the base of his dick hit my clit. “It doesn’t matter,” I whispered into his ear before taking the lobe between my lips for a second. “I’m real good at making myself come.”

He groaned as I slipped my hand between us, fingers brushing the wet root of his cock before I set the flats of my fingers right above where they were most needed and started a slow circle.

I watched as he pulled half of his dick out and then pounded it back in like it had never retreated in the first place. The sound wet and so fucking hot as he pulled a quarter out and then pushed it back. Jonah was slow and intense as he took my mouth, filling me up with that thick, thick length that was already throbbing. With my free hand, I grabbed his ass again, holding one cheek as his hips rolled and pushed and pulled, taking their time, making it intense as I rubbed at my clit slowly.

“You feel amazing. I missed you so much,” he whispered before taking my mouth for another deep kiss. “I love you.”

I wrapped my legs around his hips and moved my hand faster and faster. I had to tear my lips away from his when I came, burying my mouth against his neck as I pulsed around him, inner thighs shaking, wrapping my arms around his shoulders to hold him against me while I caught my breath. It was while I did that, that his forearms slipped under my shoulders and he did the same, holding me so close, his mouth against the column of my throat, dick throbbing and twitching as he impaled me with every inch, hugging me to him like he feared there was really somewhere else I would rather be while he shuddered through his orgasm.

He lay over me panting, my legs still around his waist but loose, my arms still over his shoulders. I swept my hand up and down the column of his damp spine. Jonah kissed my jaw and neck as his palm stroked my thigh from hip to knee and back up.

After a long time of him softening in me, kissing as much of my chest as he could as he tugged at the collar of my shirt, I couldn’t help but smile at him after he brushed his nose against mine some more.

“We don’t have to do this every night,” I told him, kissing his chin. “But we can if you want to.”

His white teeth flashed. “If you’re going to insist….”

I laughed, and he kissed me, his mouth hovering over my ear.

“Lenny?”

“Hmm?” I pecked his neck.

His breathing turned heavy. “I wasn’t going to ask you to come with me.”

That had me dropping my head against the pillow and blinking up at him.

His thumb moved over my eyebrow before his mouth descended and his lips brushed my temple, and he whispered, “Because of your life here. Because I don’t want to take you away from here. But….” Those lips trailed over my forehead, pausing right there in the middle. “But I want you to come with me. You and Mo. I want us to be together. I want my family with me.”

He… he wanted me to go with him? Us go with him?

“I don’t want to be without you.”

I lost every single one of my words.

“I don’t need an answer now, or any time soon. I don’t deserve an answer to begin with… but I’m leaving soon. And I have you to thank for it. You were right. If I can keep playing, I should. I want to. I missed it so much while I was out, but now… I’ll have to miss you and Mo if I do. But I’ve been thinking… even if you don’t come… I’ll come back as soon as I can. My contract could be for a year, after that, I could… I could retire. Come here, possibly. Or you could go with me to see home. You and Grandpa Gus and Peter. I’ve saved most of my income. I could build us a house big enough for all of us. I just want you with me, Len. And if I have to wait a year or two or three, I’ll do it, but I would always rather have you now than not.”

I hadn’t even….

Go with him? Mo and me?

I wanted to ask him if he was serious, but this was Jonah. Of course he was serious.

Go with him?

Go with him?

His mouth trailed over my forehead, dry and warm, until his nose was there too, and he was nuzzling me. Then both of his hands were there, under my shoulders, holding them tight. “I don’t make up for everything you would leave behind, but I would try my best, Lenny. I would try my best every day if you’d consider it.”

And that was what I did. Every chance I had. Even if it felt like a lead weight that had been dropped on top of my soul.

We did other things too.

I loved brushing my teeth with him beside me in the mornings. I loved seeing him greet Mo first thing, with cuddles and kisses and his lovely voice singing Māori lullabies into her ear. I loved his sleepy face and the way he smelled and how unafraid and open he was to touching me all the damn time. A hand on my hip. An arm over my shoulders. A chin against my head. Fingers threading through my own every chance they had.

If I hadn’t already been in love with him, it would have been over for me in those following weeks.

Regardless of what he was training, he would come and get on a bike with me any time I got on and we’d race.

If I was weight training, he’d come and spot me.

If I was working in the MMA building, he would sit and watch me like he had nothing better to do. When I’d do something he thought was impressive, he would clap, and later on tell me how amazing he thought it was. Then he’d ask me to do it to him to know.

My heart grew and grew with every day with him. And grew even more every night that we were together with Mo. Like a big family.

At night when it was just the two of us holed up in my room like horny teenagers… baby Jesus would have been traumatized. We might have even had an addiction problem. I sucked him off when my period hit, and he’d shoved my shirt up high to suck on my nipples and rub at my clit over my underwear at the end of my period. But mostly, it was the way I woke up with his arm thrown around my waist most mornings that was the best. Or waking up with my face in between his shoulder blades, my toes touching his calves.

And then when the day came that his agent called with news that he’d been signed and would have to leave….

That was the worst day I’d had in a long time.

Chapter 21

Subject: Email me back

Lenny DeMaio:

Wed 4/8/2019 1:29 p.m.

to Jonah Collins

I hate you. I really do.

My heart was heavy as fuck, and there was no use denying it or trying to hide it.

I was moping. Big fucking time. Massive fucking time.

So far, I’d been fortunate enough to never lose anyone really close to me, but I had a feeling that my body was going through the closest thing to grief it had ever known.

And Jonah hadn’t even left yet.

It had been three days since the call had come through confirming that he had been picked up by a team. That he’d signed another massive deal with more than a handful of zeroes behind it. That he had to leave.

Two years. That’s how long his deal was for. Two years with the Kobe Chargers.

The bittersweet smile on his face while he’d held the phone to his ear as he’d laid in bed beside me, bare-chested with Mo sprawled over him with her bottle, had been awesome and painful.