Chapter 19 #2
Dawson settled between his legs and licked his palm before wrapping his hand around Leo’s cock. Leo’s hips arched off the bed. With his other hand, Dawson pressed one finger into him, still wet, and Leo bore down and took it to the knuckle with a groan that filled the room.
“You feel incredible,” Dawson said. He pressed deeper, and Leo’s breath shattered. “So tight. I keep thinking about what it’d feel like to get my cock inside you. Stretch you open.”
Leo made a sound like the air had been punched out of him. His hand found Dawson’s wrist and held on.
“More.” Leo’s voice had gone thin. “Give me more.”
Dawson worked a second finger in, slow, reading Leo’s body. Leo’s head tipped back on the pillow and his mouth fell open. Dawson curled his fingers and found the spot, and Leo’s back arched off the bed, a sound tearing out of him that Dawson felt in his own chest.
“Right there,” Leo managed. “Don’t stop. Dawson, fuck, right there—”
Dawson kept his fingers moving and stroked Leo’s cock in the same rhythm.
Leo was shaking, his hands hooked behind his own knees, holding himself open, and the sight of him spread out like that, trusting Dawson with every exposed inch of himself, made Dawson’s cock throb.
Leo was close. Dawson could feel it in the way his body tightened, the way his breath went ragged and thin.
“Come for me,” Dawson said, low, against Leo’s knee.
Leo came with a shout, clenching tight around Dawson’s fingers, his cock pulsing in Dawson’s fist, his body arching off the bed. Dawson stroked him through it, every pulse, every shudder, watching Leo’s face the entire time because he never wanted to forget what this looked like.
Leo lay there breathing. His hand found Dawson’s thigh, traced up, wrapped around Dawson’s cock where he was still hard and aching, and Dawson’s vision blurred.
“Come here,” Leo said. Rough. Wrecked. “I want you closer.”
Dawson moved up, and Leo pulled him in and stroked him with a grip that was sure and steady, even while the rest of him was still shaking.
Dawson braced one arm beside Leo’s head and fucked into his fist, and Leo watched his face with those blown-dark eyes.
When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper.
“Let go. I’ve got you.”
Dawson came hard, his forehead dropping against Leo’s, a groan pulled from somewhere deep, and Leo held him through it, hand slowing, mouth pressing against Dawson’s jaw, his temple, the corner of his eye.
Quiet.
They lay tangled in the sheets, Leo’s face pressed against Dawson’s neck, their breathing settling into the same rhythm. The room smelled like sweat and sex and Leo’s skin, and Dawson ran his palm down Leo’s spine and felt every rib expand under his hand.
Leo wasn’t talking. Dawson pressed his mouth to Leo’s temple and kept it there.
They cleaned up after a while with a towel Leo grabbed from the bathroom. Dawson lay on his back, and Leo settled against him, head on his chest.
Leo got up at some point and came back with two plates. Chicken, rice, peppers, reheated. They ate cross-legged on the bed, shoulders bumping, and for a while, neither of them said anything, and that was fine.
“Nobody’s ever come to a game for me like that,” Leo said.
He was looking at his plate, pushing rice around with his fork.
“My parents were at every game growing up. Scouts, teammates’ families, sure.
But nobody who was just there to watch me play, no matter the outcome.
” He paused. “Early on, I had to be careful about who I was seen with. Then I got busy, and it was easier not to have someone. Less to manage.”
He glanced at Dawson. “You’re the first boyfriend who’s sat in the stands and watched me play.”
Boyfriend. Leo said it like it was already true. Dawson wanted it to be. He also knew what that word looked like outside this room, in the parking lot of The Penalty Box, at the garage, at his brother’s kitchen table.
“Boyfriend, huh?”
Leo’s fork stilled. His eyes came up, careful, reading Dawson’s face. “Too much?”
“No.” Dawson’s voice was rough. “Just new.”
Leo set his plate on the nightstand and curled back against him. Dawson’s arm went around him without thinking about it.
“Dawson?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks for coming tonight. To the game.”
Dawson tightened his arm. “Go to sleep, Leo.”
Leo huffed a laugh into the pillow. Within minutes, his breathing evened out, his body heavy and slack, and Dawson lay behind him in the dark and listened to the building settle. A car passed outside. The fridge hummed in the kitchen. Leo’s heartbeat was steady under Dawson’s palm.
He closed his eyes and let himself believe, just for tonight, that he could have this.
Dawson opened his eyes to a room he didn’t recognize for half a second before the weight on his chest brought everything back.
Leo was on his stomach, one arm slung across Dawson’s ribs, his face pressed into the pillow, hair everywhere.
The bedroom was cold, the heat having cycled off sometime in the night, and the blanket had migrated to Leo’s side.
Dawson didn’t move. Leo was warm against him, and the window was pale with early light. His truck was in the lot. Anyone driving past would see it and know whose it was.
He should panic. He waited for it, the cold surge in his gut, the scramble for clothes and keys and a story for Ethan about how he needed to get to work. It didn’t come. What came instead was Leo shifting against him, mumbling something into the pillow, and pressing closer without waking up.
Dawson exhaled. He slid out from under Leo’s arm and went to the kitchen. He found the coffee in the cabinet above the stove, the filters, the old drip machine. Started a pot. He stood at the counter in his jeans and bare feet while the coffee brewed and the apartment woke up around him.
Leo appeared in the kitchen doorway, boxer briefs pulled on, a wrinkled T-shirt he must have grabbed from the floor. Eyes half-open, hair standing in three directions.
“You’re still here,” Leo said.
“I’m still here.”
Leo leaned against the doorframe and looked at him. Dawson poured two cups of coffee and held one out. Leo took it. Their fingers overlapped on the mug, and neither of them moved to fix it.
“You make coffee and I might not let you leave.”
Dawson drank his coffee. The light from the window over the table caught the steam from their cups. Leo’s foot pressed against his in front of the counter. Dawson pressed back.
Leo refilled his mug and leaned against the counter, close enough that their arms touched. Morning light on his face, pillow crease still pressed into his cheek, and he looked at Dawson like this was easy. Like Dawson standing barefoot in his kitchen was just how mornings worked now.
Dawson drank his coffee and let himself revel in the normalcy of it all. He’d have to leave this kitchen. Drive home. Look his brother in the eye and either lie or tell the truth, and for the first time in his life, he wasn’t sure which one he’d choose.