The Wingman by A. Poland
Chapter Twenty-Four
Miles moved slowly.
That much Nathan had learned very quickly in their blossoming relationship. He wasn’t sure if it was because of what had happened with Lorcan that Miles seemed hesitant to do anything new with Nathan or whether it was something else.
A couple of months on, and Nathan still hadn’t heard anything from Lorcan.
Not that he’d stopped trying. Of course he hadn’t. Nathan still considered Lorcan his best friend. He wasn’t going to let that go without a fight. Ben even got involved (past baking apology treats) by going over to have a chat with Mrs. O and casually mentioning he hadn’t seen Lorcan around much, trying to get some insight into the situation.
But Mrs. O was clueless as to what was wrong.
So Nathan kept calling, showing up at Lorcan’s house some days, and throwing (pre-collected) pebbles at his window—until Brian came out one time and quietly informed Nathan that Lorcan was staying with Brian’s brother in San Jose for a while. He worked in a sports stadium and had an opening for a trainee, which Brian had put Lorcan up for.
It made sense Lorcan would grasp that opportunity with both hands. It just didn’t sit well that he’d neglected to tell Nathan about it.
Every couple of days, Nathan shot him a text. After meeting up in Starbucks with Miles, he sent a lengthy voice message to let Lorcan know they were going to give it a go. Nathan didn’t apologize for that, just for how it had come about.
But Lorcan had blacklisted him. He was still active on social media and seemed to be having a damn good time in San Jose, taking lots of selfies with famous athletes Nathan vaguely knew.
So he tried to be happy for him and this new venture. Even if a part of him was more than a little pissed about how they’d left things. How Lorcan hadn’t given Nathan an opportunity to speak to him face-to-face.
But as Nathan sat in Miles’s loft, his legs languidly stretched out over his boyfriend’s lap, the situation with Lorcan was the last thing on Nathan’s mind.
Why Miles wasn’t making a move was front and center.
They were watching a movie, Miles’s laptop propped up on a table in front of them in the absence of a TV. With his legs strewn across Miles, Nathan received an absentminded foot massage. It was something Miles just did if they found themselves in this position. Which, if Nathan were to be completely honest, was often. Miles liked to keep his hands busy, and while Nathan might have wanted his hands to be busy with something else, he wouldn’t complain about a free foot rub.
What he would complain about, however, was their movie of choice.
“Are you actually paying attention to this?” Nathan asked as the broody main character soulfully gazed off into the distance for the tenth time in the last forty minutes.
“Kinda,” Miles replied with a noncommittal shrug as his thumbs rubbed a particularly sensitive part of Nathan’s ankle. He let out a low moan, and Miles’s hands stilled.
“I don’t think kinda is a compelling enough argument to keep watching,” Nathan responded, leaning forward to close the laptop with a satisfying clip—trapping the main character in whatever moody angst he was feeling.
Miles’s lips quirked up to the side, a telltale sign he was amused by Nathan’s antics.
“Your turn to choose the activity, then,” Miles shot back at him. Miles was awful at deciding what movie to watch or what activity to try. Nathan had never considered himself a particularly decisive person before he met Miles, but he certainly did now.
“I have a couple of ideas,” Nathan replied, taking his legs from Miles’s knees—they’d resume that particular activity later. Feeling bold, he climbed into Miles’s lap, his legs straddling Miles’s thighs, arms looped lazily around his neck. “Like this one.”
They’d made out before. A lot. Miles was great at kissing. Passionate, intense, like he meant each and every movement. But his hands never strayed further than Nathan’s face, neck, or waist. Not even a sneaky touch up the shirt.
And Nathan definitely wanted a sneaky touch up the shirt.
But Miles moved slowly, and right now, Nathan could too. So he leaned in to kiss him, fingers threading through the dark-rooted blond hair at the back of his neck, hips rolling forward a little so Miles would get the picture.
Miles kissed back, but his hands remained on Nathan’s waist, even when Nathan pressed himself closer, making it obvious where his mind was right now.
Miles could walk out of the bathroom without a shirt on, and Nathan was instantly there. That’s how dire the situation was.
“You can touch me, y’know,” Nathan murmured as he trailed his lips along the sharp line of his jaw, taking Miles’s hands in his and leading them to a way better place than his waist.
“You want me to?” Miles asked, voice low and breathy.
“I want you to do a lot of things to me.” Nathan leaned back into his hands once they’d settled. “Touching my ass is very tame in comparison to the others.”
Miles didn’t say anything after that, but his hands didn’t move either. Nathan frowned, pulling away from his neck—hands resting on the breadth of Miles’s shoulders.
“You do want to do that stuff with me, right?” Nathan didn’t sound so sure. Shit, was Miles even into sex? He hadn’t even thought of asking.
“No, no, I do!” Miles was quick to reassure him, and Nathan breathed a sigh of relief. “I just don’t want to mess any of this up.”
Blinking down at him, Nathan tilted his head to the side ever so slightly. “I don’t know what your exes did to you,” he told Miles softly, “and you don’t have to tell me. But just know I’m not going to pull any shit like that. I want us to feel good together.”
Miles ran his tongue over his bottom lip, still pensive.
“But if you’re not ready, I’m going to go deal with my business in the bathroom,” Nathan informed him. Honesty really was the best policy when it came to this guy. “I had to do that last week. Y’know, after you wore those shorts on the roof and—”
Miles’s lips were back on Nathan, and suddenly, Nathan was no longer straddling his lap, pressed now to the couch with six foot plus of musician between his legs, kissing Nathan like his life depended on it.
“Upstairs,” Nathan gasped after an age of breathless kissing and touching. Oh man, Nathan could easily get addicted to the feeling of Miles’s hands on him. “Right now. Up!”
*
Nathan never really understood what “basking in the afterglow” meant until now. Miles lay against Nathan’s chest, long legs hooked between his, one hand clasping Nathan’s and the other tracing invisible designs on his skin. Idly, Nathan wondered what kind of tattoo Miles would pick out for him.
Probably an opossum, come to think of it.
Sentimental and cute, quite like a lot of Miles’s tattoos. Nathan had once spent an entire evening quizzing Miles about them, sitting cross-legged in front of each other—empty boxes of noodles surrounding them—as Nathan pointed to each design that caught his eye. Miles explained them with the same soft-spoken gentleness he approached everything with. Nathan had all of them committed to memory. Or at least he was trying to—the stars nestled low on Miles’s hips were a very recent discovery.
Some of Nathan’s favorites featured:
six multicolored roses on the inside of his left arm, symbolizing his sisters
a capybara with a butterfly perched on its nose along his forearm because he had a soft spot for how inherently nurturing they were (Plus, according to Miles, they looked like they’d be great to cuddle. Nathan couldn’t disagree.)
a watercolor tree over the expanse of his shoulder, branches reaching over his chest, designed by Simone as a part of her exhibit
an adorable swirl of multicolored lines that Miles’s nephew Shen drew on him along his wrist
“Anything on your mind?” Miles asked quietly after a while, lifting his head to look Nathan in the eye, his hair tousled in an extreme form of bedhead.
“That would mean I have any brain capacity after that,” Nathan countered with a shit-eating grin, and Miles snorted, swatting his chest. But he left the matter at that. In reality, Nathan was thinking about a lot of things. He thought about the guy in his arms right now and how lucky Nathan was to have him. And about how he never wanted to move again.
He was in no rush anyway.
Ria and Ben had another date scheduled tonight, and Nathan had zero intention of going home in case Ria decided to stay over again. As promised, Ria had extended an invitation for dinner to Nathan around a week after his disastrous attempt at baking. Ben, minutes before they were due to leave, complained of stomach cramps and that he’d have to miss dinner.
That’s when Nathan knew, without a shred of doubt, that Ben was really head over heels for this woman.
So Nathan had gone—driven himself, thank you very much—and had a damn good night with Ria. He hadn’t had to talk about his dad in a positive light in hopes of winning Ria over; she was already sufficiently won over. If anything, Ria had tried to win Nathan over.
And, wow, that had been a weird feeling.
But he’d quickly assured her that if she made Ben happy (which Nathan already knew was true, considering Ben always had this dopey smile for hours after he saw her) and if Ria was happy, then Nathan was absolutely gleeful. On the same page with each other, they’d split dessert and made plans to go for coffee soon.
According to Ben, Ria had called Nathan abright and charming young man afterward. And some might have said Nathan was still beaming about that praise to this day.
“Hey,” Nathan murmured a while later, just on the verge of dozing off but not quite. Miles was still half sprawled on top of him, fingers never stilling over Nathan’s skin, a sleepy and contented smile on his face. “You’re the best thing to walk this earth. Y’know that, right?”
Nathan expected Miles to do his thing where he gave a small smile and looked away, embarrassed by the compliment. But he didn’t.
Instead, he lifted his head and cupped the back of Nathan’s neck, looking him square in the eyes, and said, “Can’t be. I’m looking at that.”