Page 39

Seb

‘You’re kidding,’ she whined, her chest heaving. ‘I’m practically begging you to fuck me and you want to talk?’ She pushed past me, giving my shoulder a half-hearted shove.

‘Talk, then I’ll fuck you.’

She whirled to face me. ‘You didn’t imagine I might want to stop thinking about it?’

‘ I want to be the only one in your head when we get there.’

It was a tiny room, so all I had to do was reach out to snag her shirt and haul her to the single bed.

I settled next to her, my thigh pressing into hers, and leaned my elbows on my knees as I waited.

It took only a few unsteady breaths for her to soften, leaning into me, and I had to swallow around the tenderness that rose in my throat.

‘Is it your mum?’ I asked quietly.

‘No. Yes,’ she admitted with a groan. ‘I accused her of only loving me when I achieve something.’

I couldn’t quite stifle my amused huff. ‘Wow. That’s wisdom beyond your years. I bet you gave her something to think about.’

She slapped me on the arm. ‘She messes with my head. I don’t know if the problem is me or her. She keeps saying I have to reach my potential and I probably wouldn’t be here right now if she hadn’t been hard on me, but she makes me so scared I’m not good enough.’

Her tone took me back to last year, Lori talking to me in her cracked voice as she battled back to fitness.

‘After the season I’ve had—’

I shook my head to cut her off. ‘You showed your greatest strength this year. You kept going. They don’t call road cycling an endurance sport for nothing.’

‘Because I don’t have a choice,’ she said, her face curling up with an expression I’d never seen before. Unable to stop myself, I hauled her into my lap and pressed her cheek into my chest, grateful she let me. ‘I can’t just retire and eat cheese.’

‘And you don’t have to. You’ve got your best years ahead of you.’

‘It’s not that,’ she insisted. ‘If I give up – even when I lose – then she’s right. Mum’s right , I’m not good enough. If I stop trying… I don’t know what else there is. I always just fight. I don’t know what to do except fight.’

Leaning my head on hers, I clutched her and just breathed. ‘You don’t have to fight right now’ were the words that eventually tumbled out. ‘You can just hurt, if it hurts. Be happy, if I can make you. Regroup today and fight tomorrow.’

‘Mum had to quit competing when I came along,’ she said, her voice impassive. ‘It was a difficult birth – we both nearly died. I suppose she should be happy I only ended her career and not her life.’

Imagining something similar happening to Denise made me nauseous. Adding a spike of anger at Paola Gallagher for making Lori feel guilty for something that wasn’t her fault, I was swimming in feelings.

But I managed to speak the most urgent words. ‘I’m just… glad you survived.’

She was in my arms – unusually motionless for Lori – her forehead nestled against my neck, and I felt as though I’d come to Trieste for this moment. Not tomorrow, when some race was starting. This was bigger.

‘I survived to be your fake girlfriend,’ she joked, her tone gentle. ‘It fits, I suppose. I’m pretty sure my parents are separating. Gallaghers only know how to win and relationships have losers.’

Even those bleak words didn’t detract from the power of the moment. It was only a moment, after all. ‘I thought you’d started to doubt that?’

She drew back to study me and I regretted saying anything. She’d been drunk and I shouldn’t have held onto anything she’d said that night. ‘There’s no way that both of us can win, right?’

‘I suppose not.’

Licking her lips, she drifted closer and said, ‘Except in bed.’

Except in this room, right now. ‘We both win in bed,’ I agreed huskily, tipping up her chin.

Holding her still, I let the seconds stretch, waiting for my opportunity.

I sensed it coming. I would give her everything in me and then hopefully she’d see that she was worth all that and more.

It no longer mattered what would be left of me after it all ended.

Perhaps it was a family curse to fall hard – for the wrong person.

Lori

The air was too heavy in the room. I couldn’t catch my breath with the way Seb was regarding me so fiercely, his knuckle firm but gentle under my chin.

I’d wanted him to help me forget the turmoil of Mum’s arrival and the reopening of a season’s worth of wounds, but whatever this was, it was better.

I didn’t think I’d ever forget the way he’d said, ‘Talk, then I’ll fuck you.’ The memory of his voice, smooth and a little bit cocky, shivered up my spine and I had to get closer. I dipped my head, my mouth at the base of his throat.

‘Did you trim your beard for me?’ I mumbled as I kissed his skin.

‘Yes,’ he admitted through soughing breaths. ‘Do you like it?’

‘Mmm-hmm,’ I said, pressing a soft, teasing kiss to his throat, making him swallow heavily. ‘Are we up to the fucking yet?’

He plonked me onto the bed more roughly than I’d expected, settling his hands on either side of me and peering into my face. ‘Are we the only two people in the room now? I don’t want to share you.’

My hair stood on end. ‘Yes,’ I managed to answer, but it came out mostly breath.

‘You’re here with me now? Not the team or Instagram or the sponsors?’

‘I’m here with you.’

Nuzzling my ear, his voice low and inviting, he said, ‘Just one more thing.’

I grasped his shirt as I nodded, drunk on that cocky tone.

‘Your tits look spectacular in this shirt.’

Heat blossomed so suddenly I wanted to laugh, my breasts growing heavy. ‘Thank you,’ I said drily.

Dropping to his knees, he scrunched up my vest top, raking his hands up my sides as he tugged it off. Extricating me from my sports bra a moment later, he clutched me around the ribs and hesitated over my breasts with a lopsided smile.

‘I’ve never spent enough time here,’ he murmured, dropping his mouth to the inside curve of one breast. With his hair grazing one nipple and his breath teasing the other, my vision dimmed at the torture of anticipation.

He gave the soft flesh a little nip, sending a thrill over my skin, and then closed his mouth over the nipple – slowly, while peering up at me from under his lashes, as though he knew I would splinter.

His mouth over my nipple, his fingers digging into my skin, he wound me up so tight I was wriggling and whimpering, needy and demanding, pushing my breasts into his face, not caring if he knew I was desperate.

‘You’re so beautiful, Lore,’ he hummed. ‘You’re beautiful when you fight and even more when you let me see you.’

He groaned and took my breasts into his hands, working the nipples with his stiff tongue, and any thought of questioning his words flew from my mind. I had to accept them. My freckly, restless body drew satisfied rumbles and needy moans from deep in his chest.

Pushing me down onto the bed, he grasped the waistband of my pink sweatshorts and peered at me again. ‘These are cute. I really like you in summer.’ Here was sweet Seb, LoonieDunes, and even though cocky Seb could get straight into my undies any day, sweet Seb was welcome too.

‘I dream of this sometimes,’ he murmured, before leaning in to press a firm kiss right over my clit, drawing a keening moan from my lungs at the burst of sensation.

Slipping a finger inside my underwear to tease me first, he peeled it off, not even bothering to tug the fabric over my other ankle before coming back with a groan.

And then his mouth was there, nipping, sucking, his tongue nudging my clit gently and then swirling around it until I was losing my mind, shaking and throwing my head back. He teased me with one finger and I blurted out some gibberish.

‘I can’t take it!’ I panted. ‘I want you inside me.’ Next time we had two months apart, we were having phone sex.

He pressed kisses up the centre of my stomach and between my breasts, both blowing my mind with tenderness and mercifully giving me time to recover from the overstimulation.

Stripping off his shirt, quickly followed by his shorts and boxers, he came down on top of me, propped up on one elbow, and settled my leg firmly around his hips.

His feet were still on the floor, pressing the hard length of his cock tight between my legs, making my eyes cross and a gasp escape my lips. He soothed me, brushing the strands of hair out of my face as my heart pounded against my ribs.

‘I wish I could play more,’ he said with a small smile, pressing a kiss to my jaw. ‘But you’re so sensitive right now.’ A slow, drugging kiss to my mouth. ‘And I want to be inside you too,’ he whispered. ‘More than anything.’

Slowly, gently, with building pressure and an expression on his face that made me wonder if he was breaking a little as well, he pushed all the way in, locking his body to mine. We stilled for a moment, panting, staring at each other.

Then I reached for him, needing my fingers on his skin, more points of contact, and the friction broke over us as he gave a tight thrust. The sound that emerged from his lips was tortured with pleasure and would ring in my ears for weeks.

His eyes slammed shut and his mouth came down on mine, hungry and clumsy and breathless.

Fumbling for my hand, he tangled his fingers with mine and thrust – again and again.

‘There’s no one in the world like you, Lori,’ he mumbled. ‘No one I can fuck like I mean it.’

My skin prickled, adding another layer of sensation to the onslaught from his body over mine. I needed to hold onto something in his words, but my thoughts kept slipping into feelings. The frenzied pump of his body into mine, so hard I had to roll my hips to take it.

‘S-s-seb,’ I whimpered through the first cracks.

‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘I feel you. Let go, baby. I’m gonna come so fucking hard.’

Flailing an arm out for him, I found his hair and fisted my hand in it.

I had to squeeze my eyes shut as I went under, unable to breathe for a moment, buffeted and thrown and overrun, floating somewhere in sensation.

I was only aware of Seb gasping in my ear, his breath flowing out on a rush as his body spent itself with mine.

He was so close I heard him swallow as we tried to calm our breathing. He collapsed onto the bed next to me, our legs hanging over the edge, and rubbed his forehead. When he glanced at me, there was a hint of haunted dismay that he quickly blinked back.

I didn’t want to push him – not then. But I knew what he was feeling. We’d gone too far, blown this thing between us way out of proportion. I, for one, didn’t want to go back.