Chapter 5 Nate - July 2017, Philadelphia #2
We stumbled. My back hit the edge of the bed and we went down hard, still locked together, still fighting for control of the kiss. His weight pinned me, hips grinding down in a rough, urgent roll that made the hard line of his cock press against my thigh through both our clothes.
I arched up into it, spreading my legs so he could settle between them, and the friction dragged a broken sound out of me that he swallowed greedily.
His hand shoved under the torn shirt, palm sliding over bare skin, rough fingertips finding a nipple and pinching until I gasped into his mouth.
He did it again, harder, twisting just enough to make my back bow, and I clawed at his shoulders.
He tore at my clothes like they were the argument itself.
The shirt was already ruined. He shoved it off my shoulders and down my arms, trapping them for a second so he could bite the side of my neck, open-mouthed and wet, sucking hard enough to leave a mark.
I bucked under him, freed one arm, and yanked his shirt up. Buttons popped.
I got my hands on the heat of his chest, dragging fingers down, and he hissed against my throat before surging back up to claim my mouth again.
The kiss was all tongue and teeth now, messy, spit-slick, neither of us bothering to breathe properly.
His hips kept rolling, the thick ridge of his cock rubbing the seam of my pants.
"Okay," he said, against my mouth, "hang on."
"What?"
"I've never." He pulled back about an inch. "With a guy. I've never."
I looked at him.
"Me neither," I said.
There was a beat of complete silence.
"Well, I'm not going to be bad at it," he said.
"Obviously not. Nobody said you were."
"You had a face on."
"That's just my face."
I got a hand around the back of his neck and he stopped talking for the first time in two days. His mouth opened under mine again, softer this time, almost careful, like he was testing the shape of the kiss now that the words were out. I could feel his pulse under my palm, fast and hard.
His hands settled on my waist, fingers flexing like he did not know where to put them yet. I pressed closer, letting him feel how hard I already was through the front of my suit trousers, and the small sound he made against my tongue went straight to my dick.
Then I put him against the desk and got on my knees on hotel carpet.
I did not know what I was doing. I am extremely coachable.
I have been told that my whole life by people who meant it about hockey.
I unfastened his trousers with hands that were steadier than they should have been, pushed the fabric and the briefs down just far enough, and his cock sprang free, thick and already wet at the tip.
I wrapped my fingers around the base and looked up. His head was tipped back, throat working, one hand braced on the edge of the desk so hard the knuckles had gone white.
I leaned in and licked a stripe from the base to the head, tasting salt and skin.
He jerked. I did it again, slower, then closed my mouth around the head and sucked.
The sound he made was punched out of him.
I took more, carefully, learning the weight of his dick on my tongue, the way the skin slid, the way his hips wanted to push forward even while he tried to hold still.
I used my hand on what I could not fit yet, stroking in time with the slide of my mouth. Spit slicked everything fast. I hollowed my cheeks and bobbed, taking him deeper each time until my lips brushed my own fist.
He was not quiet as I gave him a blowjob. He tried to be. About a minute in he said my name, low and rough, like it had been dragged out of him. His free hand settled in my hair, not pushing, just holding on. I kept going, learning what made his thighs tense, what made him curse under his breath.
When I pressed my tongue hard against the underside and sucked, his hips stuttered and he groaned my name again, louder.
I pulled off just long enough to spit into my palm, stroke him wetter, then take him back down.
My jaw ached. I did not care. I was hard enough that the front of my own pants was soaked through, and every time he made a noise I felt it in my gut.
He came with almost no warning, one sharp breath in and then he was pulsing on my tongue, thick and hot.
I swallowed what I could, the rest spilling over my lower lip.
I stayed there until he stopped shaking, then pulled off and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
When I looked up he was staring down at me like he had never seen me before.
And then he gave it back with the exact same attention he puts on a forecheck, which is total and slightly frightening and does not take breaks.
He hauled me up, turned us so my back hit the desk, and dropped to his knees so fast the carpet must have burned.
My pants and underwear were yanked down in one motion.
He did not tease. He took me into his mouth like he had been waiting for permission and was done waiting.
Wet heat closed around the head of my cock and then kept going, deeper than I expected, until I felt the back of his throat.
I had to put my own wrist in my mouth, hard, because the building was full of hockey players and one wall was all that was between us and a guy from their fourth line.
He sucked like he was trying to win something.
One hand wrapped the base, the other cupped my balls, rolling them while his mouth worked me with relentless, steady pressure.
Every time I twitched or made a muffled sound he adjusted, faster or slower or deeper, reading me the way he read a play developing.
I could not last. The orgasm hit hard and sudden, spilling down his throat while my free hand clenched in his hair. He stayed on me through it, swallowing, only pulling off when I was finished and shaking.
We went twice.
The second time we blew each other was slower, and slower was worse.
Slower meant we had both had a chance to think and had decided anyway.
We ended up on the bed this time, side by side, facing opposite directions so we could take each other at the same time.
I learned the exact angle that made him moan around my cock.
He learned that if he pressed two fingers behind my balls while he sucked I would push deeper into his mouth without meaning to.
There was a point somewhere in there when we were just breathing at each other in the dark, faces very close, not moving much, and I completely lost track of what I was doing.
His cock was heavy on my tongue, his mouth hot around mine, and the only thing that existed was the slow, wet slide and the sound of our breathing.
It was strange. I keep score at everything. Card games, drills, warmup shots, how many people in a room have said my name. There has never once in my life been a period of time when I was not keeping score of something.
I lost it for about twenty minutes and I did not notice it was gone until afterward.
He fell asleep somewhere around two.
I did not. I lay there in the dark on a hotel mattress and started writing the speech.
Draft one: That was a one-time thing. Simple. Clean. True in the sense that it had happened once.
Draft two: That was adrenaline. Opening night, a lot of emotion, it's an accident of the schedule. Better. Adrenaline is a real thing that real doctors have written about.
Draft three had the words never happen again in it and I said them silently in my head twice to check the delivery.
And then, because I am my father's son, I lay in the dark and went through the charges.
Our careers, which were eleven hours old. The sport, which has never once had a man do this and stay.
Every locker room either of us will ever sit in, and there are dozens, and there are twenty-two guys in each of them, and it takes one.
And my father, asleep somewhere in this same city, in a hotel a mile away, having spent the evening telling America what both of us meant.
I got the whole list done. It took about forty minutes and it was airtight and every single item on it was true. I could feel my heart going the entire time.
Then Riley shifted in his sleep and threw an arm across my chest.
Just threw it. The way you'd throw a coat on a chair. No care in it at all, no negotiation, the arm of a man who has never once in his life guarded a single thing. His hand ended up flat over my sternum and his breath was on my shoulder.
I have an exit strategy for every room I have ever walked into. I do it automatically, I have done it since I was a kid. Doors, timing, who I'd have to talk to on the way, how long it takes.
I lay there and composed three separate versions of getting out of that bed.
The first one was clean and fast. The second one involved the bathroom as cover. The third one was just standing up.
I sent none of them to my body.
I fell asleep in the middle of the third one with a division rival's arm across my chest, and woke up at 6:12 in the morning to a ceiling I didn't know, in a room that smelled like somebody else's shampoo.
And I lay there in the gray light and understood that twenty-one years of architecture had come down in the night and nobody had heard it.
I had a media answer for everything, but I did not have one for this.