Page 58 of Caught Offside

They crossed to it, and Asher pulled the comforter off in one motion and sent the decorative pillows after it. Patrick made the exhale through his nose that wasn’t quite a laugh. The one that meant Asher had done something chaotic that Patrick found endearing.

Asher fumbled with his belt. Patrick’s hands replaced his, unbuckling, pulling the leather free, undoing the button with the same efficient precision Asher remembered from the first time. But his hands weren’t steady. The tremor was fine, visible only because Asher was watching for it, because he’d spent months learning the difference between Patrick’s controlled and Patrick’s moved, and this was moved.

Asher caught Patrick’s hand and held it flat against his stomach.

“Hey,” he said. “We’re here.”

Patrick looked at him. The pale eyes, the scar on the cheekbone, the face that gave nothing away in public and was giving everything away now. He turned his hand under Asher’s and threaded their fingers together, and the motion was so simple and so unlike him that Asher’s throat constricted.

Then Patrick pushed him onto the bed.

The mattress caught him, and Patrick was on top of him before the bounce settled, straddling his hips, hands planted beside his head, looking down with an intensity stripped of its usual discipline. This was Patrick without the governor, and his body wanted. The desire was written across his face and in the clench of his thighs bracketing Asher’s sides.

Asher pulled Patrick’s cap off, tossed it, missed the nightstand. His fingers pushed into Patrick’s hair, dark, thick, longer than the last time he’d touched it. Patrick leaned into the contact, his eyes closing for a moment, and the unguarded tilt of his head hit Asher harder than any words.

They shed the rest of their clothes without finesse. Patrick’s jeans kicked off the end of the bed, Asher’s boxers somewhere near the laptop on the floor, and then they were bare together, the shock of skin against skin drawing a sound from both of them.

Asher rolled them. Put Patrick on his back and settled between his legs, and the position gave him access to the body he’d been missing: the planes of Patrick’s chest, the ridged muscle of his abdomen. He kissed down the center line, mouth open, tasting salt and the clean heat of skin, and Patrick’s hand found the back of his head and pressed.

“I thought about this,” Asher said into the crease of Patrick’s hip. “Every night.”

Patrick’s hips lifted, his body answering what his voice hadn’t. Asher took him into his mouth, and the sound Patrick made, low and startled, punched straight through to Asher’s own cock. His thigh tensed hard against Asher’s shoulder, fingers tightening in his hair, not steering, just holding on. Asher took him slowly at first, deeper on each pass, and Patrick’s breathing broke into something ragged and exposed, his hips rolling up to meet Asher’s mouth like he couldn’t stop them.

Asher worked him with his mouth and his hand together, one wrapped around the base while his mouth covered what was left, finding the rhythm he remembered and sharpening it, reading every twitch of Patrick’s hips. He found the pace that built Patrick toward the edge and held him there, backing off every time Patrick got close, until Patrick’s hand fisted hard enough in his hair to sting.

“Not yet.” Patrick pulled him up by the hair, not gently. “Come here.”

Asher went. He crawled up the length of Patrick’s body, mouth still tasting of him, and kissed him hard. Patrick’s hand wrapped around both of them at once, and the first drag of skin against skin punched the air out of Asher’s lungs—his cock flush against Patrick’s, both of them slick and hard in the tight heat of Patrick’s fist, and Asher’s peripheral vision whited out at the edges. Patrick’s hand moved with intent, twisting on the upstroke, and Asher braced himself on one arm and thrust into the friction, chasing it. His forehead dropped to Patrick’s, and they breathed the same air, jagged and desperate, the kiss breaking apart and remaking itself every few seconds.

Patrick’s free hand gripped the back of his neck, hard enough to bruise, and the rhythm between them turned rougher, more grind than rhythm now—the slick drag of skin on skin, precum easing the slide, Patrick’s fist tightening around them both and finding the exact pressure that made Asher’s vision narrow to a pinpoint. Asher’s hips stuttered against his, chasing it, the tension winding hot through his spine and his thighs until speech collapsed and the only sound left was Patrick’s name.

“Look at me,” Patrick said.

Asher opened his eyes. Patrick’s face was inches away, flushed and open, the pale eyes dark and fixed on his without analysis, without distance. Raw and present.

Asher came looking at him, and it went through him in a wave, his hips jerking, his cock pulsing hot between them, striping both their stomachs with every following shudder. The sound he made was rough and wrecked, torn out of him, and Patrick answered seconds later—his rhythm stuttering, his hand clenching hard around them both, his back arching as he followed Asher over, coming with a groan that broke apart against Asher’s mouth.

Asher collapsed against him, spent and shaking faintly, and pressed his face into the damp skin of Patrick’s neck, breathing him in.

Patrick’s thumb moved across his shoulder blade, slow and repetitive, the way he moved when he was working something out without words.

“I’d wear the hat again,” Patrick said. “Don’t tell anyone I said that.”

Asher laughed. It came out muffled in Patrick’s neck, unsteady, and it took him a second to realize he’d been holding his breath for a week and had just remembered how to stop. He laughed until his ribs ached, until Patrick’s arm tightened around him, until the laugh gave way to something wetter and shakier, a week’s worth of held tension finally leaving his body.

Patrick just held him, thumb moving over his shoulder blade, steady and sure.

Asher pressed his mouth to the pulse point on Patrick’s neck, where the heartbeat was rapid and slowing. He kept waiting for the panic to show up, the one that usually came right about now, when someone got this close and stayed. It didn’t come.

For now, there was just the weight of Patrick’s arm across his back, and he didn’t move.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Patrick woke up smiling before he’d figured out why. It took him a second: Asher’s arm slung heavy across his ribs, the rest of him warm and solid and still asleep, morning coming in gold around the edges of the sheers. Patrick lay there and let himself have it, the ridiculous fact of waking up happy, instead of doing what he usually did with mornings, which was get up and get moving before he had to feel anything about them.

Nobody was leaving this bed. He’d already decided that.

Asher stirred, blinked awake, and found Patrick watching him. Whatever crossed his face was slow, a little stupid, entirely undefended, and it made something in Patrick’s chest go warm and simple.