Chapter 15 #2
They drove back toward town. The sky was fading to deep blue over the tree line, and Leo’s hand landed on his on the bench seat between them.
The heater was finally pushing warm air, and Leo had stopped shivering.
His thumb was tracing slow circles on the inside of Dawson’s wrist. It was taking every bit of restraint Dawson had to keep his eyes on the road.
Neither of them talked. The cab was dark except for the dashboard glow and the headlights cutting through the trees, and Leo’s thumb kept moving, lazy and deliberate, like he knew exactly what he was doing.
Dawson swallowed hard. His pulse was in his throat.
Every nerve in his body was focused on that one small point of contact, and the fifteen minutes back to town felt like an hour.
When he pulled into Leo’s lot, he put the truck in park and sat there with the engine running. Leo looked at him.
“Come up,” Leo said. Not a question.
Dawson knew he should put the truck in drive and go home. But Leo was looking at him with that half-smile and his wrecked hair, and Dawson could still feel the way Leo’s fingers had curled around his belt at the lake. The smart decision didn’t stand a chance.
“Yeah,” Dawson said. “Okay.”
Leo’s apartment was warm. Dawson pulled his boots off at the door and shrugged out of his flannel, draping it over the arm of the couch.
When he looked up, Leo was standing by the kitchen counter with his phone halfway out of his back pocket, not moving.
His eyes were on Dawson’s arms and the Henley stretched across his shoulders, and he wasn’t even trying to hide his appreciation.
“What?” Dawson said.
Leo blinked and then pulled his phone the rest of the way out. “Nothing. Pizza?” He was already scrolling.
“Sure.”
“Full Pull again?”
“Full Pull’s fine.”
Leo called it in, pacing the small kitchen with the phone between his ear and his shoulder, gesturing at no one. His hair was still wrecked from the lake. He looked relaxed in a way Dawson hadn’t seen before, his guard all the way down, and Dawson couldn’t stop watching him.
Leo hung up. “Twenty minutes.” He set the phone on the counter and turned to Dawson, and the distance between them was three feet and closing.
“Twenty minutes,” Dawson said.
“Think we can behave ourselves for twenty minutes?”
“Probably not.”
Leo leaned against the opposite counter with his arms crossed, watching Dawson with an expression that was half dare, half invitation.
The kitchen was small. The apartment was warm.
And Dawson had spent the entire drive back thinking about what Leo’s skin felt like under his hands. He was done thinking about it.
He crossed the kitchen in two steps and kissed him. Leo’s hands came up to Dawson’s face, and he kissed him back just as hard, and the twenty minutes didn’t stand a chance.
Leo walked him backward out of the kitchen without breaking the kiss, one hand fisted in Dawson’s shirt, steering him toward the couch.
The back of Dawson’s knees hit the cushion and Leo pushed him down and climbed into his lap, knees on either side of Dawson’s hips, and the weight of him settled there.
Dawson’s hands gripped Leo’s waist tightly.
Leo broke the kiss long enough to pull his own shirt over his head. Then his hands were under Dawson’s shirt, pushing it up.
“Off.” Leo’s voice had dropped and gone rough, and when it sounded like that, Dawson would have done anything he asked. The shirt was over his head and gone before he’d finished thinking about it.
Leo’s eyes dropped to his chest, his stomach, and his breath came out slow. His hands followed his eyes, fingers tracing Dawson’s sternum, his ribs, the line of hair below his navel. Dawson’s muscles twitched under the touch, and Leo grinned, sharp and knowing.
“God, Dawson. You have no idea what you look like right now.”
Dawson didn’t have words for this. Leo always would, and Dawson was starting to understand that Leo’s voice in his ear would be the thing that wrecked him every single time. He answered the only way he knew how, by pulling Leo’s hips down against his and kissing his throat.
“Right there.” Leo tipped his head back. “Yeah, right—fuck.” His hand fisted in Dawson’s hair and he rolled his hips. Dawson could feel how hard he was, and his grip on Leo’s waist tightened until his knuckles ached.
“Tell me what you want.” It came out rough and low against Leo’s skin, and he didn’t know where it came from except that Leo’s body was asking and Dawson wanted to give him everything.
“Your hands. Everywhere. Don’t stop touching me.”
Leo’s hands went to Dawson’s belt, getting it open with a speed that made his head spin. Then Leo’s hand was on him. Dawson’s head dropped back against the couch and he stopped breathing.
“Look at me.” Dawson opened his eyes. Leo was watching his face, dark-eyed, one hand braced on the couch behind Dawson’s head, the other making it impossible to think. “There you go.”
Dawson reached for him, got Leo’s belt open, got his hand where Leo wanted it, and the sound Leo made against his throat was the best thing Dawson had ever heard.
They pressed into each other, foreheads together, breathing hard, Leo still talking, telling him exactly how good it felt.
Dawson gripped the back of Leo’s neck, held on, and made a sound he didn’t recognize as his own.
“Okay?” Leo’s voice was rough.
“Yeah.” It came out broken. “Yeah.”
They stayed like that, Leo in his lap, Dawson’s face pressed into Leo’s neck. He could feel Leo’s heart slamming against his own chest. After a while, Leo’s arms came around his shoulders and neither of them moved. The apartment was quiet.
“You’re shaking,” Leo said. Low. Careful.
Dawson didn’t trust his voice. He tightened his hold on Leo’s waist instead.
Leo’s hand settled on the back of his head. Held him there. Didn’t ask again.
The doorbell rang. Neither of them moved.
“That’s the pizza,” Leo said.
“I know.”
Leo laughed, quiet and warm against Dawson’s temple. “I have to get the door.”
Dawson let go. It took more effort than it should have. Leo climbed off his lap, grabbed cash off the coffee table, and went to the door as he struggled to fasten the button on his pants. Dawson sat there on the couch, shirtless, and ran both hands over his face.
They ate on the couch with the pizza box on the coffee table, Leo tucked against Dawson’s side with his feet up.
Some show was on that neither of them was watching.
Leo ate three slices while talking about the road trip to Duluth next week and whether the new rookie would survive his first game there, and Dawson listened and ate and kept his hand on Leo’s knee and let himself have this.
He stayed later than he should have. When he finally stood to leave, Leo walked him to the door and leaned against the frame.
“Dawson.”
“Yeah.”
“Today was good.”
Dawson looked at him. Leo in his doorway, hair wrecked, barefoot, pizza sauce on his shirt.
He hooked a finger through Leo’s belt loop, pulled him in, and kissed him slow, taking his time with it, just Dawson’s mouth on Leo’s and Leo’s hand coming up to rest on his jaw, and when he pulled back, Leo’s eyes were closed.
“Yeah,” Dawson said. “It was.”
He drove home in the dark with the heater on, the radio off, and the taste of Leo still on his mouth. Ethan was on the couch when he got in.
“Where’ve you been?”
“Out.”
Ethan looked at him. Looked at him again. “You good?”
“Great. Just tired. I think I’m going to hit the hay.”
He went to his room, sat on the edge of his bed, and pressed his palms against his eyes. He could still feel Leo’s hands on his neck, Leo’s heartbeat under his ear, Leo’s quiet laugh against his temple. He was in so far over his head that he couldn’t see the surface anymore. .
For the first time in his life, that didn’t scare him. He wasn’t being dragged under by something he hadn’t signed up for. He was choosing it. Leo, his apartment, his couch, the way he said Dawson’s name when he was half asleep. All of it.