Chapter Eighteen
Aubrey texted with the name of the restaurant at six, and Nate called it up on his phone after his shower and perused the menu as he deliberated what to wear.
The place looked nice without being stuffy and boasted a menu divided into sections by region as well as type.
So, similar to the type of place they usually frequented.
Which made perfect sense, because nothing had changed. Not really. They were just admitting that they had feelings for each other now.
He opened the door.
Nate had always known Aubrey was attractive. Hell, Nate’s first impression of him was how handsome he was. But tonight he looked like he’d stepped off the pages of GQ.
“Hey,” Nate said belatedly, which was better than Wow, which was his other thought.
Aubrey smiled, and the supermodel effect only increased. “Hey. Ready to go?”
Nate grabbed his coat from the hook and slid his wallet into his pocket. “Let’s go.”
Surprisingly, Aubrey didn’t push the button for the ground floor when they got into the elevator. Instead he selected a parking deck.
“We’re driving tonight?” Nate asked.
“What, you don’t think I can drive?”
“Honestly, I didn’t even know you had a car.” Aubrey glanced at him out of the corners of his eyes. Nate knew that look. He sighed. “How many cars do you have?”
“Here, or total?”
Nate groaned. “How many cars do you need? You can only drive one at a time.”
“You’re telling me that you, Mr. Hotshot NHL Star, only have one car?”
“What would I do with two cars?” Nate said innocently.
The doors opened on the parking level, but Aubrey didn’t get out yet, giving Nate the gimlet eye.
Nate relented. “Fine. I have an SUV and a sports car. The Corvette’s in storage until the last snowfall of the season.”
“Ha! Beat you.” Aubrey raised his car keys, and an engine started about halfway down the lot. “I have three, but only one’s in Chicago.”
Nate was going to regret asking this, but—“Where do you keep the other ones?”
“Vancouver. But it’s not what you think.” Aubrey’s car was a sleek black Audi S8, which was not at all what Nate expected. “My parents bought me a car to get to the rink when I turned sixteen. I still have it.”
Nate envisioned a car similar to this one, only older. “And the other one?”
“Uh, well, it’s in a box.”
“A box.” Nate reached for the door handle. This was a nice car. Nate had had nice cars since he’d made the NHL, but this was another level of luxury.
“Yeah, I don’t know. I got drunk when I was nineteen and ordered a kit car on the internet. Delusions of grandeur.”
Nate grinned. “So three cars, but only two you can drive. Here I thought you trust-fund types were supposed to be either frugal or splashy spenders. What’s this moderation about?”
Aubrey slid behind the wheel and shot him an uncharacteristically shy look. “What can I say? I have layers.”
Nate wasn’t exactly a car guy, but the purr of the S8’s engine was sexy. “I guess you do.”
The traffic was about as light as traffic got at this time in Chicago, and Aubrey pulled into a parking lot fifteen minutes later.
Inside the restaurant, Nate inhaled and immediately said, “Oh my God, I’m starving.”
“Gotta say, the reviews were not kidding about the smell in here.”
The host greeted them with a pleasant smile. “Mr. Chase! Your table is ready. Please follow me.”
The ambiance in the dining room matched the smell. Rich dark wood and red fabric with gold accents made the place feel luxurious. Paper screens had been strategically placed to provide privacy without impeding the flow of foot traffic.
Probably not the kind of place to serve fortune cookies, Nate thought, but he couldn’t wait to try everything else.
Their table was a corner booth with a pot of tea and a bottle of wine already waiting. The host handed them their menus and went over a list of specials that had Nate’s stomach growling, then let them know their server would be by shortly.
“They’ve covered every eventuality, I see,” Nate said, motioning to the tea and wine.
“I may have made a request when I called for a reservation.” Aubrey picked up the bottle. “Shall I?”
“Absolutely.” A glass of wine would help settle nerves he shouldn’t be having. He’d been out for dinner with Aubrey a dozen times. Besides—Aubrey loved him.
Even if they hadn’t had sex in the past week.
Maybe that was why Nate felt edgy.
“Any idea what you want to eat?”
“Everything?” Nate said helplessly. “Rice. Noodles. Soup. Meat.”
“Meat,” Aubrey agreed with feeling. He dropped the menu on the table. “Want to do the tasting menu?”
“You read my mind.”
It was probably stupid, how anxious Aubrey felt walking Nate to his apartment door. He could feel his pulse beating in his neck, just below his ear, and his palms were damp.
Well, he’d wanted the full first-date experience. Now he had it. Maybe it was weird to walk a grown man to his apartment when you lived in the same building? But what else was he supposed to do? The night didn’t feel like it should end yet.
They reached Nate’s door, and he took out his keys and turned them over in his hand. “Well. This is me.”
That was such a cliché that even Aubrey recognized it as his opening, but somehow he couldn’t get his mouth to make the words he needed. “Right,” his brain said instead, calling up some long-forgotten romantic comedy. “I had a nice time tonight.”
Oh my God, I am hopeless. Aubrey fought the urge to facepalm.
Nate gave him a look that said he’d seen the movie too. “Me too,” he said. “Good night, Aubrey.”
“Good night.”
In any movie worth its salt, this was where the hero would lean in and kiss the other hero, and Nate would fumble the door open, and they’d knock into things while taking their clothes off all the way to the bedroom.
But no one was writing Aubrey’s script for him, so instead of a kiss, all he got was the soft click of Nate’s door closing.
You utter coward, sneered the part of Aubrey’s brain that made him comment on Nate’s sex life within twenty minutes of meeting him. You chickenshit noodle-spined impotent pile of—Virgins on prom night seal the deal every spring, and you can’t even get a kiss from a man who’s in love with you?
Fuck. That.
Aubrey could deal with suddenly turning into a person who dated. That was character growth. But becoming a guy people would classify as someone who said, “Not on the first date”? That was a full-on identity crisis.
He crossed the space back to Nate’s door in three long strides. He didn’t have Nate’s key on him, but only thirty seconds had passed. Nate should still be able to hear him.
He knocked. Possibly too loudly and definitely too many times, but once his hand started doing something, he couldn’t get it to stop.
He had no idea how much time passed before Nate opened the door. It felt like minutes and half a second simultaneously. Time warped around him until the door moved inward and Nate looked at him, raising a brow.
“Did you f—”
Aubrey kissed him.
He could taste Nate’s smile under the hint of mochi from their dessert.
Nate brought his hands up to Aubrey’s neck and pulled him into the apartment, where Aubrey fumbled comically behind him to close the door.
“I really thought you were just going to go upstairs,” Nate gasped when Aubrey broke away from his mouth to lay a trail of kisses down his jaw to his neck.
“I really almost did.” Aubrey bit below his ear, rucking up the hem of Nate’s sweater. They were still moving, tearing at each other’s clothes, but he was pretty sure the bedroom was a pipe dream. They’d never make it.
The flow of time warped again. Aubrey got Nate’s sweater off and spent half a lifetime touching his chest, his abs, the cut of his hip. He lost years discovering the way Nate sucked in a breath when Aubrey thumbed his nipples or trailed his fingers into the V of his obliques.
But time seemed to be moving differently for Nate.
The heat of his mouth on Aubrey’s neck lasted only a heartbeat, and the sure, deft strokes of his fingers as he unbuttoned Aubrey’s shirt were over almost before they began.
Despite the discrepancy in time passage, they were both shirtless when they ran up against the back of the couch.
The First Date part of Aubrey’s brain said, Take him to the bedroom at least, you heathen.
The rest of Aubrey’s brain said, Fuck that. Bend him over the back of the couch like an animal.
Then Nate fumbled with Aubrey’s belt, and it didn’t much matter. The time for thinking had passed.
He got Nate’s jeans and boxers shoved down to his knees and curled a hand around his cock, earning a low moan and the scrape of Nate’s nails across the front of his thigh. A quick jerk of the fabric and Nate took him in hand, sliding his callused palm over the head of Aubrey’s dick.
Nate produced lube from somewhere. Had he hidden it in the couch? Grabbed it on the way to the door? Aubrey didn’t care. He pulled Nate’s leg up to his hip, lining their erections up to brush together, and opened the cap.
He ate Nate’s gasps of pleasure and pleas to hurry right out of his mouth, two fingers crooked inside him. Nate’s cock leaked against his stomach, and Aubrey’s throbbed in response.
Nate was hot and perfect around his fingers, body clenching as though trying to reel Aubrey in. Aubrey was happy to be caught, but when he drew his hand back for more lube and a third finger, Nate bit down on his lower lip, shocking him into opening his eyes.
“Now,” Nate said.
Here? Aubrey almost asked, but Nate shoved him back half a step and then turned around and bent over the back of the couch.
His ass—his perfectly round monument to a lifetime of athletic training, the kind of bubble that could make a man, or at least a man’s cock, weep for joy—stuck out obscenely, inviting Aubrey to look and touch his fill, but mostly to—
“Fuck me,” Nate said, as though he hadn’t already made himself perfectly clear.
“Yes,” Aubrey said intelligently, and applied himself to the task.
Nate pushed back into every thrust. The slap of flesh on flesh layered over the rough sounds of their breathing and the skid of the couch on the hardwood. Fuck, they still had their shoes on. This was not first-date sex. It definitely was not I-love-you sex.
Aubrey couldn’t bring himself to care.
He fitted his thumbs into the dimples of Nate’s lower back, curling his fingers around Nate’s hips.
“Just,” Nate panted, “a little—” He shifted his feet farther apart, deepened the bow of his back.
Aubrey’s eyes almost rolled back in his head at the visual, but that was nothing to how it felt to slide deep into Nate’s body. They couldn’t keep it up for long. Aubrey was already skirting the edge of orgasm. “Do you need—?”
Nate arched his back, and the sight of it almost sent Aubrey over the edge, but he was only reaching for the lube Aubrey had left on the back of the couch. “I got it,” Nate gasped.
Jesus, did he ever.
The air was thick with sex, and despite the chill of the apartment, sweat dripped down their backs.
Aubrey could feel it trickling between his shoulder blades, between his asscheeks.
He wanted to lean down and sink his teeth into Nate’s shoulder, but he couldn’t sacrifice his leverage. Next time, he promised himself.
“Close,” Aubrey gasped. “You with me?”
Nate made a strangled noise, jerking himself off frantically now. “Uh, fuck—”
That must have been a yes, because it only took a handful more thrusts before Nate’s ass tightened around him.
Aubrey pushed as deep as he could as Nate milked his orgasm out of him, pleasure coursing through his body.
With one last snap of his hips, Aubrey collapsed against Nate’s back and finally gave in to the urge to bite his deltoid.
The couch slid under their combined weight, far enough that Aubrey felt the pull in his hamstring.
The arm of the couch hit something. He raised his head as a hollow whoomp echoed throughout the room, and was just in time to see Nate’s stupid ugly vase wobble on the table as if in slow motion and then topple to the ground and shatter with a resounding crash.
Aubrey blinked, his mind comically blank.
For a moment the only sound was their own labored breathing.
Then Nate started to shake beneath him. Horrified, Aubrey drew back, scrambling for an apology (and the condom), but a moment later, the sound got louder and he realized Nate was laughing—silently, but it built into a very contagious belly laugh.
“Sorry,” Aubrey wheezed into the back of the couch.
He’d pulled out and managed to keep the condom from further despoiling Nate’s living room, but between the exertion and the lack of oxygen, his legs had given out, and he was sprawled next to Nate across the back of the couch.
“I didn’t—mean to—murder your ugly vase. ”
Nate hiccupped, red-faced with tears streaking down his cheeks. “Good fucking riddance,” he gasped. “I should’ve done that years ago.”
Aubrey managed a few deep breaths, enough to be able to string together a sentence without pausing. “Why did you keep it?”
Nate rolled over onto his back, starfished comically over the couch. “Marty said he wanted me to have it because he knew how much I liked it.”
“Nate.”
“Hm.”
“Do you think he was fucking with you?”
“I couldn’t tell.” He stood, a little awkwardly, between the lube and the come and the pants around his ankles, held on by his shoes. “I figured if I played along it was as good as fucking with him right back.”
Aubrey digested this as he pushed himself to his feet. “Sometimes that competitive drive really bites us in the ass.”
“Yeah.” Nate looked over at the floor and winced, then looked back at his feet. “But on the plus side, that drive is probably why we’re both wearing shoes right now and not in danger of cutting our feet.”
“True.” Aubrey pulled up his own jeans and buckled them. “All right. Here’s the play. We clean this up.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And then we reward our hard work by going up to mine and sitting in the Jacuzzi tub.”
“Sold.” Nate looked down at himself and grimaced again. “Just let me do a little personal cleanup first.”