33. Maya #3
I lift off Dante. The loss of him makes me gasp from the warmth leaving, from the piercings pulling free, from the specific fullness that is Dante and nobody else. I hold the absence for one breath. Then I push Cole onto his back and straddle him, already reaching for him.
Cole is angled across the bed, close enough for Dante to settle behind me near the headboard. I take Cole’s cock in my hand. Roll on the condom Dante passes me. Sink down.
No piercings. Thicker. The stretch fills me differently, and every nerve in me has to adjust. Cole’s hands fly to my hips. His jaw drops.
“Christ, Maya—”
“You watched the whole thing,” I say, rolling my hips, finding the angle. “You’ve been hard for twenty minutes watching me ride him. How close are you?”
“Embarrassingly,” Cole says.
“Be shameless. I want it fast.”
He grips my hips and thrusts up. Hard. All that watching, all that waiting, every second of his fingers on my clit while Dante was inside me have burned through the gentleness he usually leads with.
Dante settles against the headboard behind me. Watching. His hand traces my spine from the base of my neck to the small of my back. His touch moves slowly while Cole fucks up into me hard enough to shake my balance.
“Look at her,” Dante says to Cole, low.
“I know,” Cole manages.
His voice is gone. His hips drive up into me with the rhythm of a man who has thirty seconds left and knows it.
Dante’s hand slides into my hair and tilts my head back. His mouth finds my throat, teeth scraping while Cole thrusts into me. Two men, both of them touching me, one inside me and one against me, and the rest of the hotel room falls out of reach.
Cole comes. His body bows off the mattress, his hands pulling me down, his teeth sinking into the curve of my breast, gentle and desperate, his last bit of control buried against my skin. His sound muffles there. His hips stutter. His cock pulses. Then his arms lock around me and hold.
I press my forehead against his. His breathing is shattered. Mine is not much better.
Dante’s hand is still in my hair, his thumb tracing the curve of my ear.
I lift off Cole and roll onto my back between them. The hotel mattress gives in the wrong places. The sheets are too smooth, too cold, too hotel. There is no gray wool blanket. No worn cotton. No crack in the ceiling to count by lamplight.
“This bed is terrible,” I say.
“It’s a Marriott,” Cole says, still catching his breath.
“Our bed is better,” I say.
“Our house has a garlic clove under the fridge,” Dante says.
“Our bed has history,” Cole says.
Dante lies beside me with his hand on my stomach.
Cole is on the other side with his arm across my waist. The arrangement is the same, even with the wrong bed and the wrong city.
The sounds outside the window are Boston instead of Briarcliff, and the game tomorrow is the last game they will ever play as college athletes.
“Championship tomorrow,” Cole says into my shoulder.
“Championship tomorrow,” Dante confirms, his hand tracing circles on my stomach.
“You should sleep,” I say. “Both of you. Addison will kill you if you’re tired.”
“I’m wide awake,” Cole says.
“You played forty-one minutes tonight.”
“And I’ve never been more awake in my life,” he says.
Cole laughs against my skin, the vibration traveling through my ribs. Dante’s circles slow. His breathing steadies. His hand stills on my stomach, the weight of it warm and settled.
“Thank you,” I say.
Both of them go still before I know which one of them I mean.
“For what?” Cole murmurs.
“For coming to the fourteenth floor.”
“You had the room. We were always coming to the fourteenth floor,” Dante says.
“Still.”
Smooth sheets stay too cool against my skin. Through the window, someone else’s city looks back. The three of us are on one king bed in a Marriott in Boston, the semifinal win still buried in their muscles, the championship game twelve hours away.
Dante falls asleep first, hand on my stomach, face turned toward Cole. Three minutes on a hotel mattress, and the man who measures rooms finally goes still.
Cole lasts another minute. His arm tightens once before it goes heavy. His mouth falls slightly open. The quiet snore he swears is fictional brushes against my shoulder.
I lie between them, awake, with the habit that predates them, predates this room, predates the name I chose and the name I buried.
My breathing starts its count. Four in. Four hold. Four out. It starts in the dark. One cycle. The bed holds. Two bodies hold.
The count stops at one.
One.
The wiring hums beneath my skin. The cycle that used to run eight times now runs once. The perimeter is clear. The door is locked. The two men beside me are breathing.
The city lights press against the window.
Tomorrow Dante will lace his skates for the last time as a college player.
Cole will take the ice in a building where four NHL teams are writing his name on clipboards.
I will sit in the press section and write the story of two men I love playing the game that brought us together.