Page 33 of Balance

And it wasn’t that I had a wide variety of experiences to draw from, but Matthew was unlike any man I’d ever met. He was sure in himself, in his place in life. Every decision he made, he did with purpose. He was driven too. The gym three mornings a week. A full-time job as a software developer. A part-time gig helping foster kids. And now he’d added me into his life.

Part of me worried that he wouldn’t have time for me, but he’d told me to come over and had lavished me with attention. The affection he so freely gave me was quickly becoming a drug I never wanted to get sober from.

Waking next to him was a novelty to me. It had been years since I’d had someone to share a bed with. Early on in my streaming career, I hadn’t had time for relationships. The grind was merciless, and it left no room for a partner. I left no room for a partner. When I did try to find someone, anyone I brought home made me feel wrong-footed, like I was wearing someone else’s shoes.

And sometimes it was hard to find someone who was interested in a streamer. There was a kind of reputation that streamers had online. We were all unwashed trolls living in our parents’ basements. Well, the joke was on them. My parents didn’t have a basement, and anything I achieved, I did in spite of them not because of them.

But now, somehow, I was in a bed that felt more like a cloud with a man who felt like a miracle. A fucking dream come true. I wondered what I did to deserve it.

Matthew was still sleeping, and I’d rolled over a few minutes ago to stare at him. Okay, not stare—because that’s creepy—but admire.

He was a beautiful man. Aged like a fine wine. At nearly forty, he didn’t look a day over thirty-five. There were smile lines etched into the corners of his eyes and laughter that lived on his face in the fine lines that happiness left behind. The scruff on his face was thicker this morning than it had been last night, and my fingers twitched with the need to touch him, but I held off. He was too beautiful to disturb.

Then the corner of his mouth twitched, and I held my breath.

“Good morning, sweetheart.”

Matthew’s morning voice was gravelly and thick with sleep and possibly the sexist thing I’d ever heard. Before he even opened his eyes, he snaked his arm out, wrapped it around me, and hauled me close, yanking me tight up against him, leaving no space for me to hide how fucking hard I was.

I’d been hard all morning and not just because that’s how my dick woke up. Being near him made me insatiable. Needy. I couldn’t get enough of him. Like I said, I was addicted. He was both my drug and my dealer. The sickness and the cure.

“That’s better,” he mumbled, still closer to sleep than wakefulness.

“Good morning.” The urge to call him daddy was there. Always there. Always just under the surface of my skin. On the tip of my tongue. On the top of my mind at all times. He was never far from my thoughts.

I burrowed closer to him and marveled at how light and loose I felt. With the exception of my ass. My ass ached. Not in a bad way. But in a way that made the rest of me—with one notable exception—light and soft.

“How do you feel?” he asked, plucking the question right out of my brain. I was glad he couldn’t see my face, that I was hidden against his chest, sheltered from everything, including his scrutiny. It was far too early to feel so seen.

But I owed him honesty. It seemed like it would be poor form to come over, crash his quiet evening for a nice, rousing spanking and then lie to him the next morning.

“Good? I think. Kind of in a weird way, though. It’s hard to describe.”

Matthew kissed my hair, which made my stomach flutter and made me want to wriggle even closer. But to get any closer, I’d have to crawl inside him. “Try.”

“I feel… light, but it’s making me feel weird. It’s like when you carry something heavy for a long time, and then you put it down. You’re lighter, and you feel better, but the parts of you that worked hard to carry it still ache and throb and even though you feel better to have set the weight down, you can still feel it.” A shiver tore through me, and Matthew pulled me closer. His fingers combed through my hair, and this time when he kissed me, he tilted my head up and kissed me on the mouth. Morning breath? Don’t know her. We were both as fresh as spring daisies.

And because I didn’t want all the attention to be on me—okay, that was probably untrue—I asked him the same thing. That’s what made him open his eyes, and when he looked at me, they were two deep wells full of emotion that I put there. That I filled them with. Somehow.

Because I wasn’t anything special. I was a gamer who lucked out and hit success and somehow maintained it. I’d never worked what other people called a real job. Not for lack of trying, but for lack of being hired. And yet Matthew looked at me like I was a prize. Like he wanted to keep looking at me. It reminded me of how I wanted to look at him. To memorize the slopes of his cheeks and the angles of his chin, the curves of his mouth, just to commit him to memory and prove to my brain that he was real.

“I feel remarkably lucky to wake up next to you,” Matthew said, his answer infinitely better than mine. Not that I was comparing. Much. “Did you sleep well?”

“Oh, God, I did. Don’t tell my bed I said so, but this was the best sleep I’ve had in… maybe forever, but definitely in recent history. I need the number of your mattress store. The make and model of this mattress, and a life-sized body pillow spritzed with your cologne. And then maybe my bed will start to feel as comfortable as this.”

Oh, God, Troye. Shut up. Shut up.

Matthew didn’t seem to think I was as ridiculous as I thought I sounded because his smile was unwavering in its softness.

“Let me take you to breakfast.”

“As sweet as that sounds, I wore pajamas here. I didn’t exactly think to bring clothes I could leave the house in.”

“Alright. We’ll go to your place first and then breakfast.” Matthew paused. “Or you could wear something of mine. You’re only a little smaller than me. I should have something that fits you.”

The idea of him dressing me up in his clothes did something to me that I didn’t anticipate. An unexpected want uncoiled inside me, filling all my empty spaces with this need to feel like I belonged to him. And nothing said “you’re mine” quite like wearing another man’s clothes.

“I guess that would be okay.” I tried to play it cool, but Matthew’s smile deepened like he saw right through me and chose not to call me on it.