Match Point

An Exclusive Bonus Chapter from Practice Makes Perfectly Gay
by Aurora North

⚠️ This bonus chapter takes place after the epilogue. It contains spoilers and extremely explicit content. Read the novel first.

Match Point

The first time Romy invited me to Portland, she made one mistake: she showed me the private court.

Not the federation’s facility — the converted warehouse court three blocks from her apartment that a retired tech founder had built for personal use and then abandoned when he discovered that tennis required physical effort and emotional regulation, neither of which his money could buy. Romy had talked the building manager into giving her a key in exchange for a free training assessment. The court was indoor, climate-controlled, beautifully maintained, and completely private. No cameras. No spectators. No ball kids who might recognize a Grand Slam champion and sell the footage to the highest bidder.

“You have a secret tennis court,” I said, standing in the doorway with my bag over my shoulder and the specific, buzzing awareness that always arrived within ten minutes of being in the same room as Romy Calder. “And you didn’t tell me this when I was deciding whether to visit.”

“I told you I had a surprise.”

“I assumed the surprise was a restaurant. Or Pippin in a bow tie. Not an entire private tennis facility.”

“Pippin does look exceptional in a bow tie, but this seemed higher impact.” She tossed me a racket. The grip was slightly too small for my hand. She knew it. The competitive disadvantage was intentional. “Hit with me.”

“I’m not in match shape. I’m in visiting-my-girlfriend shape.”

“Visiting-your-girlfriend shape looks a lot like match shape from where I’m standing.” She was already on the baseline. Shorts, tank top, her hair clipped back, the gold hoops catching the overhead lights. Her arms were tan from the Portland summer and the muscles in her forearms shifted when she bounced the ball, and I was staring at her forearms like a woman who had not seen her girlfriend in eleven days.

“Fine,” I said. “But I’m not warming up.”

“You’ll warm up.”

She was right. Within ten minutes we were rallying with a focus that had nothing to do with recreation. She hit to my backhand. I hit to her forehand. She tried a drop shot. I sprinted for it. She put the overhead away with a grunt of satisfaction that I felt between my legs.

“Wager,” she said during a water break. Her tank top was dark with sweat. A drop of moisture ran down the side of her neck, traced her collarbone, and disappeared into the V of her neckline.

“First to seven points. Winner gets to decide what happens after.”

“First to seven,” I said. “Your serve.”

She won. 7-5. She played the way she coached: patient, adaptive, reading my patterns before I recognized them myself. She grinned — the real one, the crooked, devastating one — and I stood on the baseline thinking: I would lose every match for the rest of my career if it meant she’d look at me like that.

“So,” I said, walking to the net. “What happens after?”

She walked toward me. “Drop the racket.” I dropped it. “Now take off your shirt.”

“On the court?”

“It’s my court. My rules. My wager.” Her thumb pressed into my hip flexor. “Shirt off, Kavanagh.”

I pulled my shirt over my head. The sports bra was damp with sweat, and the court’s air conditioning hit my bare stomach and I shivered.

“Bra too,” she said. I unhooked the front clasp. Let it fall. Stood bare from the waist up, nipples hardening in the cool air, while Romy’s pupils blew wide.

“Now,” she said, her voice low and rough, “get on your knees.”

My stomach dropped. My cunt clenched. My knees bent before my brain gave the order.

I knelt on the hardcourt. She was standing above me, still fully dressed, and the disparity reversed every public dynamic we’d ever navigated. In the press, I was the famous one. Here, she was the center of everything.

She stripped off her tank top. Her sports bra. Her breasts were directly at my eye level and I reached for them and she stepped back. “I didn’t say touch.”

She removed everything. Stood naked on the baseline. “Put your mouth on me. Right here. On the court where you just lost.”

I gripped her hips. Pressed my mouth to her stomach first, then lower. She widened her stance and I could smell her — the clean, salt-sharp scent of arousal overlaid with sweat and exertion.

I pressed my mouth between her legs. She gasped — a sharp sound that echoed off the warehouse ceiling. She was soaked. The first long stroke through slick heat made her thighs shake.

I found her clit with the flat of my tongue. I knew what made her gasp (flat pressure, sustained). I knew what made her curse (the tip of my tongue, flickering). I knew what made her grip my hair so hard it bordered on painful (two fingers inside her, curling upward, while my mouth continued its steady, relentless work).

I gave her all of it.

“Blythe — fuck — right there, don’t you dare stop—”

I slid two fingers inside her. She was hot and tight and clenching around me, and the sound of my hand working between her legs was obscene in the empty warehouse. I curled my fingers and pressed my tongue hard against her clit and stayed there, steady, unyielding, while she shook above me.

She came with a cry that cracked through the warehouse. Her thighs clamped around my head. Her hips rolled against my mouth in waves, and I held her through every pulse, every aftershock, pulling every last tremor from her body.

I looked up. Wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Grinned. “Best of three?”

She pulled me to my feet. Kissed me hard, tasting herself on my lips. Her hands went to my waistband and she spun me until my back hit the net post. Cold metal against my shoulder blades. She dropped to her knees.

“My court,” she murmured against my stomach. “My rules.”

She pulled my shorts and underwear down. I stood naked against the net post and she knelt between my legs.

“Hold the post,” she said. “You’re going to need it.”

I gripped the metal. She leaned in — featherlight at first, lips brushing my inner thigh, making me wait.

“Romy, if you don’t—”

“Patience. I’m conducting a post-match analysis.”

She put her mouth on me and the threat dissolved into a moan so loud it bounced off three walls and came back as a chorus.

Her tongue was precise. Devastating. She licked me in long, slow strokes and then zeroed in on my clit with focused pressure that made my knees buckle. She added her fingers — two first, then a third, and the stretch was exquisite. Her fingers stroked the front wall while her tongue worked my clit in a counter-rhythm that built me in layers.

“Romy — fuck — harder, you can go harder—”

She went harder. Her fingers thrust deep, curling on every stroke, and her mouth sealed around my clit and she sucked with a steady, pulling pressure that made my thighs shake and a sound come out of my mouth that was somewhere between a scream and a prayer.

I came with my back arched against the cold metal post and both hands gripping it above my head and a sound that filled the empty warehouse and echoed back to me. She stayed on her knees, licking me through the aftershocks, and coherent thought was temporarily unavailable.

She stood. Kissed me. Her mouth was slick with me and I pulled her flush against me. “I want you again,” I said. I pulled her down.

We ended up on the court itself. I lay on my back. She straddled me, hands braced beside my shoulders. A drop of sweat fell from her collarbone onto my chest.

“I want to feel you,” I said. “All of you. Against me.”

She lowered herself. Full body contact. The heat of her cunt pressing against my hip bone. She rocked — a slow, grinding roll that slid her slick heat across my skin. I angled my thigh between hers and we found the rhythm together.

Grinding. Face to face. On a tennis court in Portland. Her eyes were open. Mine were open. I reached between us and found her clit with my thumb while she ground against my thigh.

“Blythe — I’m going to—”

“I know. Come for me.” She came with a full-body shudder that I felt from my chest to my toes.

She didn’t stop moving. She reached between us and found me with her fingers and stroked me while she was still coming down, her body trembling above mine, and the combination pushed me over the edge in thirty seconds.

She collapsed onto me. We lay on the tennis court. Breathing.

“I can’t believe we just had sex on a tennis court.”

“Private court. Private sex. No rules violated.”

“Hygiene.”

“I’ll mop.”

“Wear and tear on the surface.”

“Tennis courts are designed for impact.”

“We were not playing tennis.”

“We were playing something.” She kissed the spot between my breasts. “And I won.”

“Are we finished?”

She looked at me. “I have this court for another two hours.”

“Then we’re not finished. Not even close.”

I pushed her onto her back. Kissed her mouth, her throat, the mark I’d left on her neck. Kissed between her breasts — tasted the salt of her sweat and the faint sweetness underneath.

I spread her thighs and settled between them. I used my mouth slowly this time — long, savoring strokes. I slid two fingers inside her and fucked her slowly while my tongue traced circles on her clit. She came quietly — a deep, rolling orgasm that moved through her in waves, my name whispered rather than shouted.

I kissed my way back up her body. She wrapped her arms around me. We lay skin to skin on the warm hardcourt and our heartbeats synchronized, the way they always did.

“I love you,” I said. To the ceiling. To her. To the whole impossible story that had started with a hip stretch in Nice and brought us here.

“I know,” she said. “You show me every day. Even from three thousand miles away.”

“I’m going to show you from a lot closer soon. When we find the apartment.”

“The apartment with room for Pippin.”

“The apartment with room for everything.”

Pippin’s stolen tennis ball sat on the court three feet away. I reached for it. Held it up.

“Moon,” I said.

“Tennis ball.”

“Moon.”

“It has always been a tennis ball, Blythe.”

“Let me have my delusions. They’re romantic.”

She laughed. The sound filled the warehouse. I held the ball in one hand and held her with the other and lay on a private tennis court in Portland, Oregon, and the score was love-all, and the match was over, and we had both won.

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