“Not enough time then.” He hums and pulls away.
His retreat is slow, filled with feather-light kisses to my lips, chin and neck. I almost pull him back in, hungry for more of his feverish touches and taste, but my headphones ring with the team call. I mostly play solo, but now and then one of my game buddies will ask me to sub in or help.
“Behave and be quiet,” I warn Ben, adjust myself, and answer the call. “Hey. Sorry. I’m here. I was having some, uh, technical issues.”
My friend, Luna, laughs in her chiming voice. “Should we be worried, Nuke?”
“Nah, all good now.” I click on the confirmation as a dialogue box appears on the screen, telling me the load-out menu is about to pop up.
I forget all about Ben from then on, my focus on the game. It’s a 4v4 setup, best of three. The map we get thrown into is the abandoned mining space station with the nasty bridges. Everyone hates it, but I actually like the challenge which navigating it adds. I also know a few tricks that I haven’t shared with anyone.
My character spawns at the northern end, where the labs are. I switch to a shotgun and head toward the contented point. Two of the enemies are already there when I make it over, but I slip into stealth mode and run them down before they have time to react. My team takes care of the other two, and then we manage to keep them away, snatching the first round.
“Fuck, you are amazing!” Ben yells from behind when the five-minute break starts.
I spin in my chair. He’s pushed the armchair back a bit so he’s not too close and is munching on hard candy, his excited smile stretching from ear to ear.
“I don’t think I can use the same strategy again though. They’ll be ready for it,” I say, nodding in thanks when he walks over and hands me a can of coke.
“Mm, probably. You’ve got the paralyzing pulse sniper in your load-out, right? If you can get to the CP first, you can find a good vantage point and pop them when they try to approach?”
I blink at him. That could work. It’s one of my newest tricks and I don’t do it very often because not all maps are good for it, but the mining station one is perfect. Plus, I bet they won’t expect it.
“I can tell you like my idea,” he says, pride and contentment rolling off him. “Then again, I’m always full of good ones.”
I snort. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
Round two drags out a bit more, but we win, two-zeroing the enemy team.
“Nuke, you are a god!” Luna shouts in my headphones, hyped and livid. “Shit, we are going to the semi. Couldn’t have done it without you.”
“When’s the next game?”
“In two weeks. And the finals, if we make it, are the week after,” she explains, commotion audible around her. “You in?”
That’s three weeks in total. I do a quick calculation in my head to make sure it won’t interfere with the main tournament. It starts in a month. “Yeah, all good.”
“Sweet. I’ll send you our practice schedule in case you wanna join in. Catch you later!”
I lean back in my chair and stretch, the adrenaline from the game still coursing inside me. The period between play-ins and the main part of the championship is a little quiet, so this is actually great timing. Even if I am the loner type, playing with Luna and the rest is fun. The added challenges of team coordination push me to higher levels of creative improvisation, which helps me in my solo matches, too.
When I swivel around, I find Ben observing me from the armchair. It’s so intense it almost seems reverent.
Warmth touches the back of my neck, spreading to my cheeks and down to my chest. “What?”
“You’re really hot when you play.” He spreads his legs a little, biting on his bottom lip.
My eyes cut to the bulge there. It’s shamelessly tenting his pants. Swallowing, I shift in my chair, my dick taking immediate interest. “Did you get hard watching me?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure why exactly. Probably had something to do with you bossing your teammates around.”
I huff air out of my nose. But he’s not wrong. I get carried away sometimes without realizing it.
“You want me to boss you around, is that it?” I toss, meaning it as a half-joke.
His eyes darken and he palms himself through his clothes. “I—” He bites off a moan. “Fuck. I think so? I’ll do anything you tell me to, babe, just say it.”
Fire roars inside me, wild and unstoppable. The air in the room suddenly charges, crackling with tension as if it’s turned into the sky before a storm hits. My hole twitches, flooded with the feeling of emptiness I’ve been pretending I don’t notice since the night we hooked up.
