Chapter 19 #2
"Please." The word scraped out of me. "Please, I can't—"
"You can." His hand shot up and grabbed the back of my neck, yanking me down so my face was inches from his. "You waited two hours for me. You can wait a little longer."
His hips snapped up, and I keened against his mouth, my whole body trembling with the effort of holding back.
Pride and need warred in my chest, pride losing ground with every thrust. I'd come here to prove something, to show him I wasn't just waiting around for scraps, and now I was begging him to let me come while I rode his cock.
"Say it," he said against my lips.
"Say what?"
"That you're mine."
My breath caught. His hips stilled beneath me, buried deep, and the sudden lack of movement was worse than everything else.
"Joel—"
"Say it and I'll let you come."
I could lie. I could say the words and not mean them, give him what he wanted just to get what I needed. He'd probably know, but he might let me have it anyway.
I didn't want to lie.
"I'm yours," I said. "I've been yours since you showed up at my truck after that first game."
His hand released my wrist and wrapped around my cock instead, stroking hard and fast while his hips started moving again.
“Then prove it.”
I came so hard my balls hurt, spilling over his fist and onto his chest, my whole body seizing up around him. He worked me through it, his hand relentless, his hips still thrusting, until I was shaking and oversensitive and making sounds that weren't words.
He buried himself deep and followed me over, a groan tearing out of him that he couldn't hold back. His whole body went rigid beneath me and I clenched around him, milking every pulse, watching his face as he fell apart.
I collapsed onto his chest. His arms came around me and held me there, his heart pounding against my cheek.
"Jesus Christ," I said when I could form words again.
"Mm." He pressed his face into my hair. "Worth the wait?"
"I hate you."
"No, you don't."
His hand found mine on the mattress, fingers lacing through. For a few seconds it was just that. His weight half under me, our hands tangled together, his mouth pressing a kiss to my temple that had nothing to do with sex.
Then he stiffened.
I tracked the shift the way I'd track a defenseman telegraphing a check. His fingers loosened around mine. His mouth pulled back from my skin. He started to roll away.
"Hey." I caught his wrist before he could put distance between us. "That thing you were just doing."
"What thing?"
"The soft thing. With your hand." I tugged until he looked at me. "I liked it."
His jaw tightened. A long moment passed where neither of us spoke.
"You hungry?" he asked.
I didn't let go of his wrist. He didn't pull away.
After a while, I pulled him back down beside me, and he let me.
We lay there long enough that my breathing slowed and the sweat cooled on my skin. Joel reached for the phone on the nightstand and ordered room service without asking what I wanted, then took the medal off and set it beside the lamp like it was just jewelry.
"We've never had time like this," I said. "Where we weren't fucking or fighting."
His mouth twitched. "There was the race. First week."
"You hated me that week."
"I didn't hate you." He turned his head on the pillow to look at me. "I hated that you distracted me."
I traced a crack in the ceiling with my attention. The texture up there was uneven, probably a patch job from some old water damage.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
"You're going to anyway."
"Why didn’t you come back to the rink? After that first week. When you ghosted me."
The silence went sharp. I was about to take it back when he spoke.
"My mother." Joel's voice had gone flat. "She’s an addict. Gambling."
I waited.
"I left to go deal with another one of her debts. Another one of her boyfriends." He was still staring at the ceiling. "She lets them hit her," he said. "Maybe that’s why… With Milo…"
I put my hand over his where it rested on his stomach. He didn't pull away.
We lay there for a while. The city hummed outside the window.
"My dad's got Lewy Body Dementia," I said eventually. "He's in a facility back in New Mexico. Some days he knows me. Some days I'm just a nice stranger who brings him breakfast."
His hand turned under mine, fingers lacing through.
"I put him there so I could play hockey," I said. "That's the trade I made."
Neither of us spoke for a long time.
Room service knocked. Joel threw on the robe and answered while I stayed out of sight. We ate on the bed, plates on our laps. He picked the tomato off his sandwich and held it out to me without asking if I wanted it.
I took it and added it to my own sandwich.
"How's your hip?" he asked.
"Fine. Better since I've been getting regular ice time with the trainers."
We finished eating. He stacked the plates on the nightstand and turned off the lamp, and the room went dark except for the glow of the city through the curtains.
He shifted closer, his chest against my back, his arm sliding over my waist. His nose pressed into the back of my neck.
"You smell like sex," he said.
"Whose fault is that?"
"Mine." His arm tightened around me. "I like it."
I waited for him to pull away. He didn't.
"I didn't think you did this," I said. "Stay after."
"It's my room. I'm not going anywhere."
"And what about me? Why aren't you making me leave?"
He was quiet for a moment. His breath was warm against my neck.
"I won tonight," he said finally. "I landed every jump. Twelve thousand people watched me do something no one else could do." His hand spread flat against my stomach. "I earned this."
"I'm not a medal, Joel. I'm not something you earn. I'm not a prize for landing your jumps." I squeezed his hand. "I'm here because I want to be. Not because you won."
His breath caught.
"I'd be here even if you fell on every jump," I said.
He didn't say anything for a long time. His fingers tightened around mine.
Then he kissed me slowly, like he was learning something new.
I kissed him back the same way, and it was terrifying how much I wanted this.
I wanted his hand in mine in the dark, his breath mixing with my breath, the quiet.
I wanted the ordinary thing more than the heat, and that scared me more than anything else we'd done.
He pulled back but stayed close, his forehead against mine.
"I want—" He stopped. Started again. "This. More of this."
"Joel—"
"I know you can't—" He stopped again. His jaw worked. "I'm not asking you to. I just."
He couldn't finish it. Joel, who always had words, who could cut someone apart with a sentence, couldn't finish telling me what he wanted.
His hand found my face in the dark, his thumb tracing my cheekbone. "I want to know you'll answer when I text. I want to see you more than once every few months. I want—" He stopped. Swallowed. "Whatever you can give me. I'll take whatever you've got."
My chest went tight. He wasn't asking me to come out. He wasn't asking me to choose between him and hockey. He was just asking me to be real about this, to stop treating it like something that would disappear if we didn't name it.
"There's something," I said. "There's a lot of something."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." I turned my head and kissed his palm. "I don't know what it looks like yet. But it's there."
We fell asleep tangled together. I woke up once around four with his arm still around my waist and his face pressed into my shoulder, and I lay there in the dark listening to him breathe.
My alarm went off at five-thirty. I reached for my phone to silence it, and Joel's arm tightened, pulling me back against him.
"Five more minutes," he mumbled into my neck.
"I'll miss my flight."
"Take a later one."
"I have practice tomorrow."
He groaned but let me go. I sat up and he rolled onto his back, watching me through half-closed lids. His hair was wrecked, sticking up on one side, and he looked younger like this. Less armored.
"Text me when you land," he said.
"I will." I leaned down and kissed him. He kissed me back like he was trying to memorize it.
I grabbed my clothes and got dressed while he watched from the bed. At the door, I looked back. He was still lying there, sheets pooled around his waist, the medal glinting on the nightstand beside him.
"Hey," he said.
"Yeah?"
"I'm glad you stayed."
"Me too."
I closed the door behind me and stood in the hallway for a moment, my hand still on the handle.
My phone buzzed. A text from Joel, sent thirty seconds ago.