Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
As soon as Ethan closed the door behind him, Dawson had gone into frantic cleaning mode. Their house wasn’t filthy by any means, but Dawson wanted to make a good impression when Leo got here. He was just about to start working on dinner when Leo knocked on the front door.
What was supposed to be Dawson cooking for Leo had turned into the two of them cooking together. They moved around one another in the small kitchen easily, and Dawson let himself imagine a life where this was their normal.
“Your bookshelf is aggressive,” Leo said, not looking up from the cutting board.
Dawson took a pull from his beer. “How is a bookshelf aggressive?”
“Forty crime thrillers and nothing else. No cookbooks. No—what do people have? Coffee table books.”
“I don’t have a coffee table.”
“You do know they don’t have to go on a coffee table, right?” Leo glanced over his shoulder, grinning. “They’re just books with a lot of pictures. You could get one that’s all old cars or something.”
Dawson peeled the label on his beer and watched Leo’s back, the shift of his shoulder blades under the T-shirt, the strip of skin above his waistband where the shirt rode up when he reached for a cabinet.
He still couldn’t believe he was lucky enough to have this sexy man in his life.
He wanted Leo in his bed, but he was trying to be chill.
They ate at the kitchen table, Leo talking between bites about practice and the new guy who was staying with him for a little while.
Dawson listened, but his attention kept snagging on the wrong things—Leo’s tongue catching sauce at the corner of his mouth, the way his throat moved when he swallowed, the low hum of his voice filling a room that was used to silence.
Under the table, Dawson’s foot found Leo’s. Leo pushed back without missing a beat, his toes hooking Dawson’s ankle, and his eyes flickered up with a look that had nothing to do with hockey or Cole Englund or anything he was saying aloud.
Dawson held the look. Leo’s foot slid higher, calf against calf, and Leo kept talking about Jonesy’s latest pregame playlist like he wasn’t running his leg up Dawson’s under the table. Dawson gripped his fork and didn’t taste a single bite after that.
After dinner, Leo washed the dishes. Dawson dried.
Side by side at the sink, elbows bumping in the narrow space, and Dawson kept catching himself watching Leo’s forearms, the tendons shifting as he scrubbed the skillet.
The domesticity of it sat in Dawson’s chest like a fist. He wanted this.
He wanted it so badly that his hands weren’t steady on the plate he was drying, and when Leo set the last dish in the rack and turned to face him, leaning his hip against the counter with a towel in his hands and his hair curling past his ears, Dawson forgot what he’d been about to say.
“What?” Leo said.
Dawson kissed him. Leo’s back hit the counter.
His hands came up, towel still in one, and gripped Dawson’s shirt at the sides.
Dawson’s palms found the counter on either side of Leo’s hips, caging him.
The kiss was unhurried, the kind of kiss that only happened when there was nowhere else to be and no one coming home.
Dawson pulled back. Leo’s eyes were dark, his lips wet.
“Bedroom?” Dawson said.
Leo’s breath caught. He let the towel fall to the counter. “Yeah.”
Dawson took his hand and led him down the hallway. His bedroom was at the end, and when he pushed the door open, he saw it the way Leo would: the bare walls, the gray comforter pulled tight, a crime thriller face-down on the nightstand. Nothing in the room that wasn’t functional.
Leo stopped in the doorway. His eyes moved across the room and landed on Dawson, and Dawson felt the weight of being looked at in a space he’d never shared.
He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it on the chair. His skin prickled in the cool air, and Leo’s gaze tracked down his chest and stayed there, and Dawson’s hands were not steady.
“Come here,” Dawson said.
Leo crossed the room. Dawson pulled Leo’s shirt off and tossed it aside, laid his palms flat against Leo’s chest. The mole below his left collarbone that Dawson had put his mouth to a dozen times. The dip between his ribs, where Leo was ticklish and would never admit it. Familiar now. Known.
Leo kissed him and walked them both backward until Dawson’s legs hit the bed. Dawson sat. Leo stood between his knees, hands in Dawson’s hair, tilting his head back. The kiss deepened, and Dawson’s hands slid to Leo’s waist, his hips, the button of his jeans.
He got Leo’s jeans open and pushed them down. Leo kicked them off and climbed onto his lap, knees on either side of Dawson’s thighs, and the weight of him, solid and warm and wanting, pressed Dawson flat onto the mattress.
Leo ground down against him, slow, deliberate. Dawson was hard, had been since the kitchen, and the friction of Leo’s body through denim and cotton drew a sound out of him that he buried in Leo’s shoulder.
“Off,” Leo said, pulling at Dawson’s waistband. “Everything off.”
They stripped the rest in a tangle of hands and denim and kicked-free fabric.
Leo’s body against his, skin to skin, was the sharpest thing in the room.
Dawson rolled them, settling over Leo, and Leo let him, spread beneath him on the gray comforter, dark against the sheets, watching Dawson with eyes that held nothing back.
Dawson kissed down his throat. His sternum. The cut of his hip. Leo’s cock was hard against his stomach, flushed, and Dawson wrapped his hand around it and gave one long stroke, feeling Leo’s hips push up into his fist.
“Dawson.” Leo’s voice had dropped into the register that undid him. “I want you inside me.”
Dawson’s hand stilled. He pressed his forehead to Leo’s hip and breathed against his skin, and his whole body was shaking.
Not from fear, but with want so sharp it had teeth.
He’d been lying in this bed for weeks thinking about exactly this, and now Leo was asking, and Dawson’s throat was too tight to speak.
“Yeah,” Dawson said. “Okay.”
He reached for the nightstand. The drawer stuck, same as always, and he yanked it open and found a condom and lube. His hands were clumsy getting them out, and Leo watched him from the pillow with dark eyes and a patience that made Dawson’s skin burn.
Dawson settled between his legs and slicked his fingers.
He took his time. One finger first, circling, pressing, waiting for Leo’s body to open for him.
Leo’s breathing changed, going deeper, deliberate, his hand gripping Dawson’s forearm.
When Dawson pushed in, Leo’s eyes closed, his head tipped back, and the sound he made was quiet, contained, nothing like the noise Leo made in the rest of his life.
“Look at me,” Dawson said.
Leo opened his eyes. Dawson held them. He worked his finger deeper, reading Leo’s face like he read seized bolts and stripped threads. By feel, by pressure, by what gave and what held.
“More,” Leo said.
Two fingers. Leo’s body tensed, then released, his breath leaving him in a rush. Dawson curled, and Leo’s hips came off the bed, his cock leaking against his stomach.
“Right there. God, right there.”
Dawson kept going. He could have done this for an hour, watching Leo come apart under his hands, the mask gone, the polish gone, just sweat-slick skin and the broken sound Leo made every time Dawson pushed deeper telling him where and how and don’t stop.
But Leo’s hand found his wrist and stilled him.
“Now,” Leo said. “I’m ready.”
Dawson sat back on his heels. He rolled the condom on, slicked himself, and the mundane mechanics of it, the foil packet, the lube on his fingers, the adjustment of angle, grounded him in a way he needed. His hands were shaking. He set them flat on Leo’s thighs and felt the tremor transfer.
Leo noticed. He reached down and covered Dawson’s hands with his own, steadying them against his thighs. Didn’t say anything. Just held them there until the tremor slowed, his thumbs moving across Dawson’s knuckles. When Dawson looked up, Leo’s face was open and waiting, and just as wrecked as his.
He lined up. Pushed forward. Leo’s body resisted, then gave, and the heat and pressure of him was overwhelming: tight, slick, alive.
Dawson pushed in steady, inch by inch, watching Leo’s face for pain or hesitation and finding neither.
Leo’s jaw was set, his breathing controlled, his eyes locked on Dawson’s.
When Dawson was all the way in, he stopped.
Stayed still. His arms were braced on either side of Leo’s head and his forehead came to rest against Leo’s. They breathed together.
“Fuck,” Dawson whispered.
“Yeah.” Leo’s voice was wrecked. He shifted his hips, taking Dawson deeper, and the sound Dawson made was involuntary, rough and wrecked.
He started to move. Long, deep strokes, pulling almost out and pressing back in. Leo’s legs wrapped around his waist, heels digging into the small of his back. The angle changed, and Leo’s eyes went wide.
“There. Right there. Don’t stop.”
Dawson didn’t stop. He found the rhythm and held it, steady, controlled, everything he was, and with each thrust, Leo’s composure eroded further.
The sounds he made were small, broken things, punctuated by Dawson’s name and words that weren’t words anymore.
Dawson kissed him mid-stroke. Leo bit his lower lip, and the sharp, bright sting of it split him open.
Leo’s eyes were open. Dawson kept his open too. Every time before this, with every man whose name he’d already forgotten, he’d kept his eyes shut. Turned his head. Made sure nobody saw his face when he broke apart.
He couldn’t look away from Leo. Didn’t want to. And Leo was watching him with an expression that said he knew exactly what this was costing and wasn’t going to let Dawson hide from it.