Page 52

“What is it, Edet?” the unexpected voice asked.

“Oga Alex, you na correct man, na why I dey tell you this,” Edet said. “E better make you go, come back tomorrow. I know say e don late, but…”

“Why?”

“All my life wey I don work for big big people for this Lagos, I never see this kain thing. And my last Madam don use vex throw her house girl from upstairs.”

“Your oga dey vex?”

“This one pass vex o,” Edet said, followed by a smack, possibly from his palms jammed together in his usual exaggerated theatrics.

“E remain small make he scatter ground with tyre. Na so he just dey drive round and round and rou–” he broke off, exclaiming.

“Oga Alex, this no be laugh matter. Oga dey vexxxx!”

“Thanks for warning me. Lock the gate, okay?”

“Hmmm. Okay o.”

As footsteps faded off, Timi slid underneath the blankets, heart beating erratically.

Alex was here. He'd come.

The footfalls picked up again in the hallway leading to his room. Soft, steady, sure. Confident that the man they approached would never again do anything to rob his cold floors of their warm weight.

His door opened, and he was sure his heartbeats could be heard from the mainland, across the highways, down to Abeokuta.

The footsteps stopped at the foot of his bed. “Timi?”

His stomach muscles tightened, but he remained motionless.

“Timi?” Alex called again.

He tried not to cough through the hotness flooding his chest. Alex had come. Maybe there was still a chance. But for what? What did any of this mean?

“I'm glad you got home safe,” Alex said. “I'll crash here tonight and leave first thing in the morning. Sleep well.” His footsteps began fading.

With every muscle protesting this outcome, Timi yanked down the blanket to chest level, only to find Alex still standing by his bedside, arms folded across his chest, staring calmly down at him.

He scowled. “Ain't you too old for this?”

“Says the thirty-year-old who drives in circles, and bites twenty-nine-year-old adults,” Alex said.

Timi sat up, sputtering. “I'm older than you?”

“Why? Do I look that wrinkled?”

“You're…you!”

How could he explain how he'd never met anyone adult the way Alex adulted? How he'd become the sort of man one could lay their head on and forget all worries? The man whose kindness apparently superseded his comfort and pride .

“So relieved I'm not anyone else,” Alex said dryly, then softened his voice. “Why are you angry?”

“Why were you angry?” Timi returned, and when Alex remained quiet, he murmured. “Where were you?”

Alex sighed. “A bar.”

Timi threw back some locks obstructing his vision. “You don't drink.”

“No, I don't.”

“So…?”

“My…partner wanted one.”

Timi's stomach plunged downwards. “Nejeere?”

Alex moved towards the head of the bed, where Timi was propped against, and sat, hands placed on his lap. “No. Someone else. Met her while I worked at the dialysis centre. A doctor, great conversationalist and very pretty.”

The bile in Timi's stomach churned faster.

Alex began moving closer, his voice dropping.

“But as we talked, laughed, said the appropriate things, confident in the rightness of our situation, all I could think of was a certain gremlin.

With his big hair, his black eyes, that face that had driven me out of my mind more times than I can count, his stubbornness, his kindness, his foolishness, and the fact that he'd awakened my first murdering instinct.”

By now, Alex had drifted so close, his breath furled around Timi's staccato ones. Heart threatening to explode, Timi licked his lips, protesting weakly. “I'm not a gremlin…”

“These things should be easy,” Alex whispered.

“You like someone, and that's it. You don't want to own them.

You don't want to kill anyone who comes close to them.

I've had love that easy and nice and warm.” He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, Timi sucked in a breath at the wild heat in them.

Alex reached up a hand and gripped the side of his neck Mojena had grabbed.

“When I saw his hands on you, I wanted to break his fingers one after the other.

Then, stuff his decapitated limbs into every of his orifice.

And even then, it wouldn't have been enough. Should this type of feeling exist? ”

Timi tried to swallow, but it was like sliding naked across a slab of glass shards. He'd assumed he'd been more destroyed by Alex's decision to be just friends. That he was the one whose mind had refused to recognise any reality absent of Alex. Whose brain constantly fed him images of his regrets.

The man before him, though, looked like he'd forged his own hell, and lived in its flames as recompense.

He stared at Alex, the words in his mind; a bizarre jumble of floating letters.

Alex's gaze dropped to his mouth. “Every reason I gave myself for staying away became as coherent as a mad man's thoughts. I said to myself, even if he has someone els—”

“There's no one!” The words burst out of him, hoarse and bleeding. He gripped the wrist of the hand on his neck. “How can there be anyone else when you’re right here? Alex, listen, nothing happened. Nothing can happen. Even if we're just friends, I'm sure now that nothing would ever happen.”

Alex crawled into the bed, laps caging Timi's. He closed the gap between their faces, till only a slither of space separated their lips. His warm breath caressed Timi's cold lips like fledgling flames building up an inferno, and Timi had never wanted so badly to be burnt to crisps.

“Does it matter if you're leaving in a month or in a year?” Alex spoke into his parted mouth. “Does it matter if we're still figuring out our lives? Should it matter if we can't hold hands in public, or I can't take you on dates, or the whole fucking world has a problem with this? Should it?”

Timi shook his head, the only part of his body weighty enough to move.

He could close the remaining space between their lips to show Alex he was down for anything, but some part of him enjoyed the torment of waiting.

Of allowing Alex take the lead and set the pace.

Of relinquishing control totally. With the women in his past, surrender had been involuntary.

With Alex, he experienced the exquisite juxtaposition of control and surrender.

Alex shifted impossibly closer, and Timi let out a whimper at the hardness digging into his stomach. “Should it matter if you'll leave me again?” He breathed into Timi's mouth. “There can't be anyone but me. Do you understand what I'm asking for?”

Fiery desire unfurled in his guts at Alex's raw possessiveness, turning him into a blubbering mess. “Yes. Yes. No one. Just you. Kiss me, please. Kiss m–”

Alex's lips came down hard. A punishment, a plea, a possession.

The gentleness of their first time plundered into nothingness by the strength of Alex's kiss.

And Timi gnawed at his lips with the same desperation Alex attacked his, years of abhorring the feel of another's lips disintegrating into immemorable dust. They kissed, unrestrained and dirty, tongues entangled around guttural moans, hands tearing at each other's clothes as though in their nakedness lay an immortality they'd combed deserts for.

Alex's hands were everywhere, clumsy in their desire to leave no skin untouched.

They gripped his throat, slid to his shoulders, then down to his nipples waiting hard and puckered.

Alex's lips refused to let go of the explosive sweetness of their kisses as he plucked at Timi's nipples, and Timi couldn't stop the messy groans crawling out of his throat.

Echoed by Alex, as though his body had become an extension of Timi's.

Alex only released his mouth when they could no longer draw breath, and latched onto his throat, sucking hard on the protrusion, his lemon scent flooding Timi's brain and jacking up his febrile need for him to a painful intensity.

It pushed his hands to roam too, and when they settled over hardened nubs, Alex's hands fell to his sides, harsh pants escaping his open mouth.

Timi had barely drawn out enough of those lethal sounds, before Alex pushed him into the pillows, a frantic rough hand wrapping around his painful hardness.

“Fuck,” Timi moaned, hips jerking up. “I've missed you. I've fucking missed you.”

“How much?” Alex whispered, smearing the wetness at the tip with his thumb.

“So fucked up much,” Timi groaned, as Alex dragged down his palm, coating Timi with his own slick .

Then, Alex lowered himself till their lengths brushed, sparking a fresh bolt of arousal through Timi, and dragging out a beautiful whimper from Alex. “You drive me so crazy. I could come from just looking at you.”

Timi spread his legs so they could fit snugly, then captured Alex's lips, swallowing his moans as he began to move. “Then, let me watch you come. Won't you come for me? Please?”

Alex's hips stuttered, then resumed thrusting at an increased, more brutal pace, his hands digging into Timi's dreads.

Nothing had ever felt this right. Their damp naked bodies merging, Alex grinding down on him, the sparks of electricity transforming his nerves into live wires at every rough brush of their lengths, his mouth aching as they ravaged each other's lips, the frictional heat burning up his thighs.

Nothing had ever felt more providential.

Timi wanted this. Needed all of Alex like air. On him. In him. Over him. Skins fusing. Sharing one breath. One soul. Obsession at its finest.

He clutched the generous curve of Alex's butt, pushing him further in, as though fearful to lose this bond his soul had found. Alex wasn't any less fervid, pressing him into the bed with his large body, increasing his grinds, his slack mouth, now simply on Timi's, their hot breaths mingling.

When the sliding of their dicks became a tad bit painful, Timi remembered the present he'd bought himself. He stayed Alex's rotating hips, stretched towards the nightstand drawer and pulled out a small bottle.