4. Dante
Dante
Elm House is dark after midnight, the common spaces empty and the house settled into a quiet so deep I can hear my own fucking pulse in my ears.
Maya left an hour ago. Her car was the one that turned onto the street while Cole and I stood on the porch, and a little after eleven, it pulled away from the curb, the headlights cutting once across the upstairs hallway through the front window before she turned at the corner.
She'd been here forty minutes, most of it downstairs with Cole pretending the Michigan-Denver game mattered.
Then she came up to the second floor when he offered, and she stood in my doorway without crossing it, framed in the light from the hall like a silhouette I couldn't look away from.
The recorder sat on my desk where I'd left it.
She glanced at it once, a flick of her eyes, and said, "I'd take it back now.
" Her voice was even, flat, a fucking challenge wrapped in calm.
She didn't reach. I didn't offer. She left without it, and the air in the doorway stayed charged for a full minute after she was gone, like the ghost of her was still watching me.
She'd stood in that doorway like she was clocking sightlines—where the bed sat against the wall, where the desk faced the window, the angle from my doorway down the hall to Cole's, the window, the corner of the desk where the recorder sat.
Her eyes passed too fast over each, but every glance landed like a touch.
She'd come without the notebook. The press badge was off her chest. It was her in a coat I hadn't seen before, standing where she could see the way out.
Cole watched from the bottom step, half in shadow, head angled up toward the second floor. He didn't come up, and the weight of his watching pressed against the back of my neck the whole time she was in my room.
I've been at my desk since she left, a scouting report open on my laptop, the blue-white light washing the walls until my eyes ache. The words slide past without sticking, and my phone sits dark beside the keyboard—Marco hasn't texted again.
The recorder sits on my desk. I've picked it up twice, both times letting the plastic warm in my hand for a few seconds before I set it back exactly where it was, like moving it would be some kind of admission.
I shove the chair back and stand, my muscles tight from sitting too long. The hallway between our rooms is hardwood I've walked hundreds of times, but tonight the boards sound louder under my bare feet, each step carrying down the narrow space until I stop outside Cole's door.
The silence on the other side has weight to it—Cole sounds different when he sleeps, and this quiet means he's awake, waiting, and the knowledge of it tightens the muscles across my shoulders.
I knock once, wait a beat, then ease the door open.
His room is dim except for the faint glow from his phone on the nightstand, screen angled down but still lighting the edge of the table.
Cole lies on his back on top of the covers with one arm folded behind his head, eyes open and tracking me the moment I cross the threshold.
He's been waiting. The door clicks shut behind me, and the look in his eyes hits me like a physical touch.
"Took you long enough," he says, his voice low and rough.
"I was reading."
"You were staring at her recorder."
I sit on the edge of his bed, the mattress sinking under my weight, and the heat from his body reaches me even through the covers.
"You were cruel to her today," he says. "The borrowed name thing."
"She was right about the turnovers."
"So you went for the throat."
My jaw shifts, and I keep my eyes on the window, on the dark glass.
"You went for the throat, Dante. There's a difference.
You know it." He holds my gaze, his eyes blue in the dim light, and the press of it sits in the muscle behind my ribs like a fist. "She's going to remember that," he says.
"The tourism line. The borrowed name. She'll file it. She files everything."
"I know."
"Do you? Because the woman you called a tourist with a borrowed name is the best hockey journalist on this campus. She's going to write about you for the next three months and you gave her a reason to sharpen every fucking word."
"She had reasons before tonight."
"You gave her a new one."
The room smells faintly of laundry soap and winter air from the cracked window, the chill seeping in and raising goosebumps along my arms despite the heat crawling under my skin. My body is already keyed up, the cold pulling everything tight, every nerve stripped raw.
"Come here," I say, my voice lower than I intended, rough with want.
"I'm right here." Cole's exhale mists in the cold air between us, and the inch of distance still there pulls hard behind my sternum.
"Closer."
He rises onto one elbow and leans in. The movement brings the heat of his body into my space before he touches me, a radiating warmth that tightens my nipples against my shirt and catches in my lungs.
My hand settles on the back of his neck, fingers closing around the same place they've closed for years: the solid muscle, the fine hairs at his hairline damp with sweat from practice.
The press of my thumb into the tendon along the side pulls a short, controlled exhale from him, and the sound rises in my own chest at the same time, making my cock stir.
His mouth meets mine, and the familiar pressure of it cuts straight through the noise in my head, a clean, brutal anchor that pulls my spine taut and locks my throat around a sound.
He tastes like toothpaste and the protein bar he eats before bed, a taste so known it feels like my own.
My tongue slides against his, and the wet heat of his mouth hardens my cock against my thigh until the pressure is a dull, persistent ache.
My hand stays at his neck, his hands stay at his sides, his fingers curling tight into the sheets where the strain gathers in his knuckles.
The rule is six years old, set in a parking lot in New Hampshire after a game. The engine ticked as it cooled, his hand on my thigh and my mouth on his before either of us said a word about what it meant. I kissed him first. I set the terms: his hands stay down until I say otherwise.
I pull back enough to break the kiss. The air between us is cold, biting at my wet lips.
"What?" I say.
"Nothing."
"Your hands are down."
"They're always down. That's the rule."
"You're making a point with it tonight."
"Maybe I'm following instructions." His mouth curves, a dark, knowing smile. "Isn't that what you like?"
I lean in and kiss him harder, and this time his hand lifts, fingers closing around my jaw, his thumb finding the cut from this morning and holding there for a beat before he digs into the hinge below my ear.
The grip isn't gentle, and the bite of it sends a shock through my teeth and jerks my hips forward.
He holds me there, adjusting the angle until he has the kiss the way he wants it, the pressure of his fingers against bone, the hot slide of his tongue deeper.
Then he releases my jaw, his fist closing in the front of my shirt as he falls back onto the mattress and pulls me down with him in the same motion.
The fabric tears a little at the collar, a ripping sound that seems loud in the quiet and sends a jolt straight to my cock.
Shirts come off, a frantic tangle of arms and cotton that ends up on the floor beside the bed.
The cold air hits my bare chest, pebbling my skin, but then his hands are on me, moving across my chest, tracing the ink that spreads from my sternum across my shoulders.
He follows lines he's memorized, calluses scraping lightly.
The drag over my nipples, rough and deliberate, makes my hips jerk forward before I can stop them, my cock now fully hard and pressing against the fly of my jeans like it's trying to break free.
I pin his shoulders to the mattress, holding his upper body down.
His lower back arches off the sheets, his hips lifting to meet mine until a low, rough sound escapes him, caught tight between his teeth but leaking out anyway.
The hard line of his erection presses against my stomach through his sweats, and the heat of it burns through the fabric.
"Let me hear it," I say, my mouth against his ear, my breath hot on his skin.
"Then make me."
I grip his jaw and tilt his head back, and the stretch of his throat under the dim blue light from the window shows the pulse beating hard beneath the skin.
My mouth closes over the tendon there, teeth pressing hard enough to leave a mark that will fade before morning: the salt taste of him, the vibration of his groan under my lips.
He rolls his hips against my thigh, a slow, deliberate grind that drags a groan from my own throat.
The friction is maddening, the heat of him through fabric making my own cock throb.
"Dante."
"Quiet."
"You told me to be loud. Pick a lane."
"My lane. My rules."
"Six years of your rules," he says, but his voice is rough and his hips drive up against mine, his torso sliding higher until his cock is hard against my stomach through the thin sweats.
Whatever argument his mouth is making, his hips disagree, rocking up in a needy rhythm that makes my control fray at the edges.
I let go of his jaw and reach between us. His sweats are thin, and when my hand closes around him through the fabric, the heat and weight of him in my palm makes my own cock twitch, pre-come dampening my boxers. His head drops back against the pillow, a hard exhale punching out of him.
"Still arguing?" I ask, squeezing gently, making him jump in my hand.
"Fuck. No."