Page 35 of Thin Ice

Elias held still and let me look. Most men would've said something. He just watched.

"You're staring," he said finally.

"I'm allowed."

He got my shirt off in one motion and then he was slower than I'd been, deliberately mapping me with his hands: chest, ribs, the and ridge of an old scar under my left arm. When his fingers reached my hip, he didn't skip past it, but he didn't make a thing of it either. He let his hand rest there for a moment.

I'd imagined the moment too many times to count, and every time I braced for complaints from my hip, loud enough to derail everything. It never happened.

I sat on the edge of the bed—hand down first, weight on the right—and Elias folded down with me like we'd rehearsed the choreography. When we shifted around on the mattress, he knew where to put his hands to stop pain from flaring in the joint. He slid a pillow under my left side, and his lips never left my throat.

He'd been reading my body since the day he shook my hand. Turned out he'd been taking notes.

I unbuckled his belt and shoved everything down and off. He did the same for me, and it was skin against skin. His cock was long, thick, and flushed dark against his stomach. When I wrapped my hand around it, he made a sound against my jaw I instantly wanted to hear again.

Elias breathed hard, as my fist worked him slow, thumb dragging over the head on every upstroke. He raised his hips to meet my hand and caught my wrist.

"Hey," he said quietly. "Come back."

"I'm right here."

"You're working." He rolled us over, easy and mindful of the left side. I landed on my back, and he was above me. "You're three moves ahead, working out the plan. I don't want the play design, Nolan. I want you right here and right now."

"This is me."

"No," he said. "This is you being good at it, following a blueprint."

Nobody had ever once complained that I was too good at what I did in bed. I opened my mouth to say something, and he kissed me, cutting off the words and taking his time. He took my hand off his body and pressed it flat against the mattress. Then he started at my collarbone and planted kisses down my body.

I stopped calling the plays.

Elias's mouth was on my chest. He blazed a trail down to my abs and the muscles jumped. When he exhaled, his breath was warm across my cock where it lay hard against my belly. He took my head between his lips.

The heat of his mouth wiped the whole day out of my head. He took his time, with one hand wrapped around the base, working with a rhythm he adjusted every time my breathing changed, like he was fine-tuning his technique. When my hips tried to rise, he laid his forearm across them, pinning me without an ounce of weight on the joint.

I moaned. My hands wanted a job. There was no job. I reached up to sweep my fingers into his hair, not steering, just holding on.

"Elias—"

He pulled off long enough to say, "I know," against the inside of my hip, and took me down again, deeper into his throat.

What finished me wasn't technique, though God knows he was an expert. It was how he watched. He looked at my face, not his hands, tracking every fine movement, not missing anything. When I came, my cock erupted first, and a split-second later the orgasm swept through my body with the sharpness of a goal horn. He worked me through it, swallowing and resting one hand over my heart.

Elias pushed back up my body and kissed me. I tasted myself on his tongue.

"Your turn," I said against his mouth.

"That's not why I—"

"Elias." I pushed him onto his back and gripped his cock. It was hot, heavy, and already slick at the tip. "Let me watch you for once."

I stroked him firmly and evenly, with a twist up over the head until his breath caught. A flush spread across his chest. His stomach tensed. When he came, he was loud, wordless shouting, while his hips drove up into my fist.

He completely lost his ever-present composure. He gripped my forearm for something to hold onto.

After, we lay wrecked in the lamplight, Elias's heartbeat slowing under my ear.

Sometime later the lamp was off and the rain had settled into a steady, patient tapping. Neither of us had moved except to clean up and arrange ourselves on the bed, with one arm under my neck and the other arm across my chest.