Page 51 of Dirty Rotten Love

I grunt as the full sensation unlocks, like a box opening deep inside me and exploding outwards.

Rory cries out as if he can feel it too. I watch in awe as he dances through an intense orgasm. His ass clenches and quivers around me, and I’m gone. Following Rory over the edge and roaring my way through my own orgasm.

When I can see and hear again, he’s beside me, and we are a delightful tangle of limbs. We are both breathing heavily. Sweat is beginning to cool.

I wrap my arms around him and hold him tight. I hate that this beautiful thing between us is a secret. I want this forever, there is no denying it now. I don’t want this to be a chapter of our lives, I want the full story.

I suck in a shaky breath. Reality is returning along with the oxygen in my lungs.

I can’t tell him how I feel. Not yet, not now. It’s too much. Too soon.

I’m not good at reading people, but I can read Rory. He doesn’t feel the same way.

He likes me, but that’s not the same. This bright sunshine man saw me and wanted me. He knocked on my door and chose me for his sexual discovery, and I should be content with that.

I should not be craving more than he is willing to give. I should be grateful for what has been offered. And I am grateful, deeply grateful, and I’m not going to do a thing to ruin it.

I will hold on to this, to him, for as long as I can.

He might come to love me back. It’s not an entirely foolish hope. We fit together, he must feel some of that, he did choose me after all.

And If Rory ever does fall for me, I will be his forever and ever. He is the other half of me. My one special person.

I can wait.

Chapter twenty-two

Rory

My mum loves to chat on a Wednesday.

She always calls people on a Wednesday, she has done so my entire life. Wednesday being the day she gets home from her shift at the supermarket early enough to have a proper conversation before she has to think about dinner. I know this the way I know all the rhythms of her, the way I know which mug she uses in the morning and which side of the sofa is hers and the specific sound of her key in the door. She is the most constant thing in my life, and I love her with a completeness that I have never quite managed to put into words, so I don’t try.

It hurts to be one of the people on the end of the phone, instead of at home, listening to her natter away to aunties and uncles and friends. But it is what it is, and I’ll be home soon.

I am in the small alcove off the main corridor, the one with the payphone that I can now operate without assistance, which feels like genuine personal growth, and the noticeboard that still hasn’t been updated, and I have been on the phone for twenty minutes and my face hurts from smiling.

She tells me about the neighbor’s cat, which has done something either terrible or magnificent, depending on whose account you believe. She tells me about her friend at work who is getting married for the third time, delivering this information with the specific brand of affectionate scepticism that is one of her great gifts. She asks about the food, I tell her about the gray beef thing, she makes a noise that suggests she would like to have words with whoever is responsible for it.

It is ordinary and warm and exactly what I needed without knowing I needed it.

“You sound different,” she says after a while.

“Do I?”

“Happy,” she says. “But a different kind of happy. Not your pretend happy. Your actual happy.”

I think about what to say to that. My mum has always been able to tell the difference between my performing happy and my actual happy, has been able to tell since I was seven years old, which is slightly alarming when I think about it too hard.

“I am happy,” I say. “I love it here.”

“I know you do.” A pause, the comfortable kind. “Are you eating enough?”

“I’m eating constantly. It’s one of the only things to do.”

“Good.” Another pause. “Is there anything else going on?”

I think about Mac. I think about the tender, sweet night that was different in ways I am still not looking at directly. I think about the way the world goes quiet when he kisses me and how that is, when I examine it, the most extraordinary thing anyone has ever done for me without trying.