Page 89 of Home Ice

“I was apologizing to you.”

“That’s completely unnecessary.”

I laughed with my forehead against his hip and went back to sucking, slower.

I found a rhythm that worked, wrapping my fingers around the base and stroking with the same rhythm as my mouth. I listened to the grunts, moans, and held breath. My cock was fully hard, pushing against his leg.

“Rafe, close,” he warned me, giving me the opportunity to pull off. I didn’t. He came with a deep, almost bellowing sound, and one hand curled into a fist in the sheets. The other reached up for the headboard.

I kept my mouth in place through all of it. When I finally lifted my head, he was looking down at me.

Niko pulled me up the bed and kissed me, sharing the taste of him. He reached down and stroked me. It didn’t take long. My body shuddered against him, and I let out a long moan.

For a while, neither of us moved. The apartment was quiet around us.

“Niko.”

“Mm?”

“I love you too.”

His breathing stopped for a moment and then continued. He didn’t say anything. That was enough. He pulled me in, arranged my arm across his body, and kissed the top of my head.

I fell asleep with my hand over his heart.

When I woke the following morning, I stayed. It was an optional morning skate day.

Niko was already downstairs, working. I listened to the sound of sanding for a few minutes before I got up.

He had coffee ready in the kitchen and left a mug out, ready for me, next to the pot. I drank it standing at the counter, looking at the bookshelf he’d built at twenty-three and the chair that leaned. My socks lay folded on one arm of his sofa.

The sanding sounds stopped, then started again. I found my phone in my jacket.

It was loaded with new messages.

Hal: call me, good news for once.

The team chat was off the rails. I skipped it for the moment.

Mom: Dad’s watched it four times now. He says the man looks you in the eye. Marlene is beside herself. Call when you’re up, no rush, we’re just happy for you.

I was about to put the phone in my pocket when it buzzed in my hand.

Mark: Got a minute Friday? Nothing bad. Might even be fun.

Chapter twenty-two

Niko

The glue in Ruth Kowalski’s chair had cured overnight, and the joints held.

I took the clamps off one at a time, set the chair on the floor, and pressed down on the seat with both hands. Nothing moved. The wire was gone; the screws were in a coffee can, and underneath all of it the original mortise and tenon did the work it had been cut to do in a factory decades ago. I sat on it. It took my weight without comment.

The shop phone rang at four minutes past eight.

I let the machine get it. My answering machine was old, a real one with a tape in it, because clients liked leaving messages for a person instead of a menu. The phone rang again before the first caller finished. Then it rang several more times, and somewhere in the middle of the morning the tape ran out, and the machine started answering with a tone.

I opened my laptop on the workbench.