Page 99 of Home Ice

The morning light had moved while we stood there, off the weaving and out across the room, and I kissed him in the middle of it.

He led me down the hall by the hand. The bedroom was hotel-neat, bare dresser and hospital corners on the bed.

“I keep thinking I should turn a lamp on,” he said. “Which is stupid. It’s daytime.”

“It’s not stupid.” I came to stand in front of him. “We’ve never done this where we could see everything.”

He reached for the hem of my shirt, and I lifted my arms. We undressed each other slowly. We had the whole day ahead of us. Coach Markel had given the team a full day off.

I’d had Rafe’s body against mine twice in the dark, and I’d thought I knew it. I hadn’t known it at all. Daylight showed me everything the streetlamp only suggested: the map of a hockey season written on his flesh, with a bruise on his hip gone yellow-green at the edges, and a fresh one over his ribs from Minnesota. There was the flush that started at his cheekbones and went all the way down his chest. He watched me look and held still for it while his breathing turned shallow.

“You too,” he said.

Nobody had examined my body so closely in years. I’d forgotten what it asked of me. He reached up and patiently ran his fingers over me, missing nothing. He traced the line of an old chisel scar across the heel of my left hand, and then a burn on my forearm caused by a careless afternoon with a heat gun.

“Come here,” I said, and I pulled him down onto the bed with me without unmaking it.

We moved slowly at first, but being able to watch Rafe’s face changed everything. In the dark I had to read him by sound and grip. In the light, I caught the exact moment a touch landed, tracking when his eyes lost focus.

When I kissed my way down his chest, he was loud in a way he hadn’t let himself be at night. I dragged my mouth over his hip, avoiding the bruise, and he nearly shouted my name.

“The neighbors,” he said.

“Are at work.”

“What if they work from home?”

“Then they’ll know my name,” I said, and took him into my mouth.

It was the first time I had him in my mouth. He balled the comforter in his fists and pushed his head back hard against the pillow. It exposed his throat, Adam’s apple rising and falling. I took my time, easing off when his breathing told me he was close, until he was trembling and laughing at the same time.

“Niko, don’t stop,” he said.

“Tell me what you want.”

He opened his eyes and looked at me. “I want you inside me. I’ve thought about it. I want it to be now, while I can see you in the daylight.”

I took a breath and then kissed his chest.

“Nightstand,” Rafe said. “I bought what we need. I had to drive to a pharmacy in Skokie so it wouldn’t end up on a gossip site.”

The drawer held a box and a bottle.

I opened him with my lubed fingers and more patience than I knew I had, reading his face the whole time for the difference between new and wrong. He watched me back, taking long, deliberate breaths.

“That’s different,” he said. “Okay, that feels good. Oh!” When I crooked my fingers and found what I was hunting for, his body jerked, and he swore, and then he laughed.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, now. Before I think about it too hard.”

“You’re allowed to think about it.”

“I’ve thought about it for over a month, Niko. Now.”

The first push took work. He was tight and new at this, and my cock went in by half-inches with sweat popping out on my forehead while I watched his face.

It was too much at one point. I saw it in his face and stopped. He breathed through it with his eyes on the ceiling and one hand gripping my forearm.

“Talk,” he said. “About anything. Wood.”