Chapter 15 Luca
THEN
The crab cakes are a six-nine. The breading is thick enough to notice and thin enough to forgive, and the crab ratio is honest, which is all I ask from a passed appetizer at a charity fundraiser in January.
"You're rating the crab cakes," Paulson says. He is holding two of them on a cocktail napkin like a man who has never encountered a plate.
"Everything gets rated. The band is a seven-three. The lighting is an eight. The napkin folds are ambitious."
"The napkin folds?"
"The napkins are trying to be swans. They are not swans. They are napkins that have been folded with conviction. I respect the effort."
"Berger, you are the only guy at this party having this much fun alone."
"I'm not alone. I'm with you and two crab cakes."
He laughs and reaches for his drink. "Hey, Mercy's got that balcony view, right? The one that faces the water? You lucked out with that guest room. I'd kill for that setup."
"It's convenient. Short commute to the fridge."
"Fridge commute. That's what you're going with."
"Proximity to food is a valid housing criterion, Paulson."
He shakes his head and moves toward the bar and I scan the room because I have been scanning the room since I walked in.
The guest room Paulson is picturing has a bed that holds our gear bags and hasn’t been slept in for months.
The closet in it holds my off-season jackets because Wes's closet ran out of space.
Nobody on this team has ever asked a follow-up question about that room and I have never had to tell a single lie about it.
Wes is near the silent auction table. Charcoal tux showing off his broad shoulders, his hand around a glass of red he has not sipped from.
He is listening to one of the sponsors explain a foundation initiative, and his head is tilted in the way he does when he is being patient with someone who is not interesting.
I eat the crab cake and I watch his hand on the wine glass and I think about what those hands did to me last night and what I want them to do to me later and thankfully nobody in this ballroom can hear any of it.
His eyes drift to me. Not a turn. A drift. Half a second, steady, his expression unchanged. I hold it without moving my face. The half second closes. He is back on the sponsor. I am back on the crab cakes.
Martinez finds me at the appetizer table and introduces me to his wife. We make small talk about my move to Miami, how things are going on the team. Wes crosses behind me, four feet away, close enough that I catch his cologne over the crab cakes. He does not slow down. I do not turn my head.
Twenty minutes later, Doyle corners Wes at the bar. I am six feet away, listening to a trainer explain a hamstring protocol I do not care about.
"Mercy, what was that place you took us in Coral Gables?" Doyle says. "The one with the brisket. The insane brisket."
The words land in my body before my brain catches up. The restaurant. The brisket. The night I kissed him on the couch and his wall came down and everything since.
"La Loma," Wes says. His voice is even. "On Galiano."
"That's the one. Melanie wants to go."
"Tell her to order the brisket and skip the bread. The bread is a five."
"How do you know the bread rating?"
"I have a reliable source."
His voice is steady. His eyes do not move toward me.
But I see the corner of his mouth shifts by a degree that nobody in this room can read except me.
From six feet away, with a champagne flute in my hand and a trainer explaining fascial planes, the laugh starts building in my chest and I hold it there. Tight, warm, mine.
Wes excuses himself from Doyle. He passes behind me on his way toward the restrooms, and his hand brushes my lower back, flat and fast, below the sightline of anyone who is not already looking. His palm is warm through the fabric. Then he is past me and the warmth stays on the fabric.
I count to ninety. I excuse myself from the trainer. I walk toward the back hallway past the restrooms. He is at the end of the hall, near a door that is closed but not locked.
He goes in and when I get close enough, his hand finds my wrist and pulls me through and the door clicks shut behind me and I am pressed against it with the full weight of his chest on mine.
His mouth is on me before my eyes adjust. He kisses me hard, his tongue already pushing past my lips, one hand gripping my jaw to hold me where he wants me.
"Hi," he says against my lips.
"Hi." I am grinning into the kiss. "You told Doyle the bread was a five."
"The bread is a five."
"You said it to his face and I almost died."
"I saw." His hands are on my hips. His thumbs press into the bone through the tux pants. He pulls back to look at me. The only light is the thin line under the door. "You have been across that room from me all night and I couldn't move."
He kisses me again and grinds his hips into mine and I can feel him already hard against my thigh through the wool of his tux. His thigh presses between my legs and the pressure lands right on my cock and I roll into it, greedy, wanting more of it.
"Wes. We have maybe fifteen minutes."
"I know."
"Then stop being slow."
He laughs, low and warm, his breath on my neck, and his hands go to my belt.
The buckle opens. His fingers are fast and sure and the zipper comes down and his hand shoves past the waistband.
His fingers wrap around my cock and the grip is firm and perfect and I exhale hard against his shoulder, press my teeth into the fabric of his jacket to keep from making any noise this hallway would hear.
"Look at me," I say.
He pulls back enough to see my face. His eyes are dark. His hair has come forward where he pushed it back.
"You watched me across that room for two hours," I say. "Watched me charm the sponsors and you couldn't put your hands on me."
"Felt like a lot longer than two hours."
"Your hands are on me now." I tighten around him, roll my hips into his fist. "Watch me now."
His grip tightens and he strokes me, slow and deliberate, his thumb dragging over the head on every upstroke and spreading the wet leaking out of me.
I reach for his belt and work it open. He holds still while I shove his zipper down and get my hand inside.
His cock is thick and hard and hot against my palm and I wrap my fingers around the shaft and pull once, root to tip, slow enough to feel him throb.
His jaw goes tight. His breath punches out through his nose.
We find a rhythm. His hand on my cock, mine on his, both of us pressed against the door, both of us breathing hard and trying to be quiet and failing.
His forehead is against mine. I can feel his cock pulse against my palm every time I twist at the head, feel him leaking over my knuckles, feel his hips pushing forward into my grip like he can't help it.
"Remember the crab cakes," I whisper.
He chokes. "Don't make me laugh right now."
"Six-nine. Honest ratio."
"Luca, I swear."
"The napkin swans."
"Stop." He is laughing and stroking my cock and the combination is the best thing I have ever felt, the joy and the heat in the same breath, his body shaking against mine with the laugh while his hand does not lose its rhythm.
His thumb catches the head again and my knees buckle for a half second and he pins me harder against the door with his hips.
I pull him closer and kiss him and the laugh becomes a groan, low, and his hips push forward into my grip and I feel him tighten, feel his cock swell in my fist.
"Like that," he says. Low and wrecked. "Right there."
I tighten my hand and stroke him faster.
He comes first, his cock jerking hard in my grip, come spilling hot over my fingers and across the front of his shirt.
His mouth falls open against my jaw, no sound, just heat and breath.
His hand grips me harder, his strokes turning rough and fast and sloppy, and I fuck into his fist and come with my back arched off the door, one hand fisted in his hair, my face buried in his neck to muffle the sound that tears out of me.
His other hand comes up and covers my mouth and I come against his palm and against his fingers and against the inside of his tux pants and I don't care, I don't care about any of it.
We stand there. His forehead on mine. Both of us breathing.
"I need a napkin," he says.
"There are napkin swans in the ballroom."
"I am not cleaning up with a napkin swan," he chuckles. He finds a stack of cocktail napkins on a shelf and we clean up fast. We fix each other's clothes in the dark. He straightens my lapels, runs his thumbs along the collar. I push his hair back into place and tuck the pocket square that shifted.
"Two minutes," I say. "I go first."
He kisses me once more. Quick and firm, his hand on the back of my neck. I open the door. The hallway is empty. I walk back to the ballroom with my jacket buttoned and my collar straight and my face arranged. I take a fresh champagne from a passing tray.
A few minutes later Wes comes through the ballroom from the far entrance. He crosses to the silent auction table and picks up a pen and writes a bid on a framed ocean photograph without looking at me. I watch his hand hold the pen from across the room. The hand that was on me just moments ago.
I find Paulson at the dessert table. Doyle is there, and a trainer, and one of the younger defensemen.
The waiter clears the empty trays. He is young, neat, his movements careful and precise in a way that reads as someone who takes the job seriously.
He adjusts a centerpiece on his way past and Doyle watches him go.
"Buddy's giving of a vibe, right?" Doyle says. Half a laugh. Already turning back to his drink.
The table absorbs it. Paulson doesn't react. The trainer is looking at his phone. The young defenseman smiles the way people smile when they don't want to be the one who didn't smile.
I take a bite of the tart. The underbaked center is on my tongue and the laughter from the supply closet is gone.
I am the same man who was pressed against a door three minutes ago and the room has told me, in passing, what it thinks of people like me.
Not with anger. Not with hatred. With half a laugh and a turn back to the drink.
We stay another hour. I stay with Paulson talking about the team. Wes talks to coaches, to donors. We do not look at each other for the rest of the evening and I feel him in every minute of it.
Neither of us says anything on the drive home, and we end up on the couch. Wes grabs us water while I take off my jacket and tie. The kitchen light is on and nothing else. Two glasses of water on the table and the laptop open beside them.
I drop my jacket over the chair and sit next to him. Not the far end. Next to him, my leg against his. His arm goes around my shoulders and I drop my head against his collarbone and close my eyes.
"The sliders were a six-nine," I say.
"I didn't have the sliders."
"You missed them?"
"I was busy being watched from across a room by a man in a tux who was rating the napkin folds."
He opens the spreadsheet. The screen glows between us in the dim room.
"We should rate the gala," he says.
"The gala is not a restaurant."
"The gala served food. That makes it ratable."
"Fine. Food was a six-eight. Ambiance was an eight-two. Company was a ten."
He looks at me. His hand stops on the keyboard. "A ten."
"The company was a ten."
He doesn't type the number. He closes the laptop and sets it on the table and pulls me into him, both arms, my face against his neck.
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