Page 55 of Read My Lips

“Good job you don’t have a bra strap to deal with, isn’t it?”

I risked a backstep to sign to him.

“I’m a lot worse with bra straps, actually.” So there. Suck on my bisexual incompetence.

Simon snorted a laugh – grumbly and thick at the back of his throat – and ten-thousand carpet moths crawled out of all the dark places they’d been hiding and took flight in my guts.

“How about you do you, and I’ll do me?”

Oh, sweet torture. He had a solution for everything, didn’t he?

Long slim fingers slipped his waistcoat open, button by button like taking his clothes off all slow and sexy was no big deal. It parachuted to the floor in a dramatic billow, and I watched him start in on his shirt, eyes locked to mine.

The little triangle of skin at his collar opened out broader as his hands worked down. My tongue gummed to the roof of my mouth. My fists balled so tight my blunt nails bit into my palms and my knuckles stung. Screw turn taking. I wanted to touch. Needed to, before he changed his mind.

“Let me help?” I unballed my fist on my other palm, reaching for permission with my fingers to my face, and Simon tracked my signs, nodding.

A cufflink plink-plunked off his shirt as I tugged at it, bouncing down the steps, disappearing into the cavernous hallway like a coin tossed into a well that did not grant wishes. The universe had to be waiting to Humpty Dumpty me right to the bottom to balance out the cosmic order of things.

Oh fuck.

Nothing flashy about Simon under his clothes. He didn’t spend hours on end on the weights at the gym, chasing definition. He didn’t have to, did he? Even the motion of his smallest finger commanded confidence. Real people did not get to look as good as he did.

I drank him up in hungry sweeps. Every millisecond date-stamped in my head. Black-boxed. Locked in. His chest. The curl of hair around his nipples. The warm smoothness of his arms. His slim, strong fingers on the silk of his tie, pulling the knot through.

When we were filming, I hadn’t looked at him properly. Health and Safety. It would have been too risky up close. But now I didn’t have to hold back.

Improbably, his eyes lit up when I tugged my t-shirt off over my head. He dipped his eyes, all smug and satisfied like he thought he’d won a prize.

That tracked. Apart from the danger of crisping up like an air-fried beetroot come the first rays of summer sun, the only thing me and Richard had in common were the swans and the six pack. People liked muscles. Maybe Simon had a thing about them. The look on his face in that moment alone made the gym subs worth it.

I mouthed at his collar bone, and he breathed out this murmur of a groan, lighting me up. It sounded so real. Then I was shoving my jeans and boxers down with embarrassing haste. Eyes and breath and hands everywhere, rough-dry and warm, on me like he had to touch me the way I had to touch him. I wanted it to be real. I wanted it all to be because of me. But it wasn’t, and I had to stop thinking.

Somehow we reached the top, littering clothing all the way up.

Naked. Both of us. Skin hot and giddy. He pulled me hard against him, smile broad and bright as full evidence of my obsession with him rammed into the flat of his stomach and I groaned at the skin on skin, already leaking against him.

“Bloody hell, you’re going to end me.” Simon stilled, breathless, his body heaving with the effort it must have taken him to stop. “Not right here.”

“Why the fuck not?” I’d have dropped to my knees on the landing, but Simon seized my hand, dragging us down a corridor, rattling every door knob. The second one twisted open and we stumbled in on an obnoxiously floral room, all wallpaper and chintz.

“This is better, is it?” I signed.

“Don’t be a wanker, Ben.”

He had a point. There was a bed. My shins were up against it.

The mattress creaked as I tumbled down. And Simon knelt over me, all intense and hot and laser-focused, with his cock bobbing in my eyeline – eager and ready, and yes bloody please.

Hungry for him, I licked my lips, and Simon snorted a laugh, pushing me back against the mattress.

“Not yet.”

Oh, fuck. He had plans.

Simon circled the root of my cock like it belonged to him, fisting smooth hard strokes, leaving me gasping. Chin tilted and lips parted, he scanned my face, reading my every reaction. I could breathe in his out breaths, drown in this grip, and my life would be fulfilled.

Pushing in against his mouth, I groaned into the wet heat of his tongue, grinding harder into the tunnel of his hand. His thumb brushed the pulsing tip of my dick, and I nearly whimpered. Language – all of it – dissolved out of the world. The lack of it wrapped us up, tangling us together in the whispered thrum of the universe.