Chapter Ten #3
“I can’t believe you’re so into me,” he said, as if it was no big deal that Luca was stupidly in love with him. “I mean, you’re so handsome, and I’m just…you know, normal.”
“Nothing about you is normal.”
“Okay, that sounds like an insult—”
“It is not.”
Chris kissed up Luca’s neck, and Luca sighed, relaxing into his hold.
“So, look,” Chris said between judicious applications of his mouth to every patch of nerves above Luca’s shoulders.
“One of the things I failed at in relationships was knowing how often stuff was supposed to happen. When Brittany dumped me, she said she got sick of initiating sex. So if I’m supposed to do it more, tell me. ”
“If I told you every time I wanted your mouth on me, we would never leave the apartment.” Oh good, Luca’s filter had completely abandoned him. Helpful. But Chris didn’t seem at all offput by Luca’s neediness. On the contrary, he made a pleased sound and kissed Luca on the mouth.
In the bathroom next door, Dmitriyev must have moved on to making it up to Cheryl with his mouth because now only her voice was audible.
Luca could have gone his whole life without hearing her breathy, girlish moans of “Oh, Vladi!” But on the bright side, he doubted she could hear him whimper against Chris’s lips.
“I’ve never done the party hookup thing,” Chris said between kisses, nowhere near as out of breath as Luca felt. “I guess I get why people are into it. It’s kind of exciting.”
Kind of exciting? Kind of? Luca’s cock strained against the stiff fabric of his Han Solo pants.
His skin tingled everywhere Chris touched it.
His heart raced. “Chris, I am a little drunk, and I am incredibly turned on, and if you don’t stop touching me, I am going to beg you for sex in about a minute. ”
Chris kissed him again, a long, lingering thing that had Luca panting after him the second he pulled away. He paused for a moment, head cocked toward the door at the distant sound of a baby fussing several rooms away. But then the bathroom door clicked, and footsteps shuffled down the hall.
“Are you okay drunk?” Chris asked. “Like, would it be bad if we did stuff now?”
Luca doubted he could get drunk enough to not want to “do stuff,” but he appreciated the question. “It would be wonderful if we ‘did stuff.’”
Chris beamed. “Oh great. What you said about wanting my mouth on you sounded pretty good.”
He dropped to his knees, still wearing nothing but his boxers.
Luca stuffed his fist into his mouth to keep from shouting. Or proposing. Both seemed equally likely.
Chris was careful as he unbuttoned Luca’s pants and unzipped his fly, but when he gripped Luca by the hips, his hands were firm. “Tell me if I do anything wrong,” he said, and then, oh God, his lips wrapped around the head of Luca’s cock.
Two summers ago in Italy, right after his twentieth birthday, Luca had a three-week fling with a man who believed he’d discovered the sole right way to give a blowjob.
It involved a lot of tongue to start, teasing licks to the head and the frenulum, and ended in a masterful three seconds of deep-throating.
At the time, Luca had been inclined to agree with Giovanni.
Now, with Chris bobbing his head up and down on Luca’s dick, Luca had zero brain cells left to think about technique. Who cared that Chris couldn’t get more than half into his mouth? Who cared that he went straight to sucking instead of licking first? It wasn’t as if Luca would last.
Chris sucked Luca off as slowly and steadily as he gave hand jobs.
He didn’t change his tempo, moving up and down leisurely on Luca’s cock.
It left Luca in a torturous build of arousal, his balls throbbing.
His nipples twinged under the cheap fabric of his costume shirt.
If they were in a bed, he would retaliate.
He would get Chris under him; he would— But no, Chris didn’t want him to.
He just wanted to give Luca pleasure.
Luca was convinced he gave it so gradually on purpose, teasing Luca to the brink but not letting him go over.
But then Chris pulled off to ask, “Is this okay?”
Luca whined.
“Am I hurting you?”
“You will hurt me if you don’t keep going, Gesù Cristo and Maria, Chris, please,” Luca whispered as fervently as he could, hoping Chris would understand the urgency without anyone overhearing Luca beg.
“Oh.” Chris’s eyes went wide. They had turned the lights on in the guest room, so Luca could see every inch of his broad, handsome face, could see how his pupils dilated.
“Please,” Luca repeated. “You’re driving me crazy, I want you so much, it hurts. I need—”
“I’ve got you,” Chris said hoarsely, and then he wrapped his lips around Luca again and sucked at the head, hard.
Luca doubled over as he came, shooting out in pulses over Chris’s tongue.
He bit his lips to keep from yelling. Bad coaching, he realized.
He should have warned Chris, shouldn’t have come in his mouth the first time.
Chris didn’t seem to mind. He swallowed, then pulled off and licked his lips.
Despite playing over twenty minutes of hockey every other night, Luca’s knees collapsed out from under him, and he was only saved from crashing to the floor by Chris’s arms wrapping around him.
He couldn’t stop himself from pressing messy, grateful kisses to every inch of Chris’s skin he could reach, couldn’t stop himself from burrowing into Chris’s arms to be held as he came down.
“Shh, it’s all right,” Chris murmured. “Was it good for you?”
Luca laughed deliriously. “I can’t feel my legs.”
“So yes?”
“Yes.”
Chris rumbled a pleased sound.
More than anything, Luca wanted to reach down and return the favor, but he didn’t dare. Not when Chris had asked one thing of him—for him to respect Chris not always wanting it the way Luca did.
It seemed so unfair that Chris gave him so much, and Luca couldn’t offer anything in return. He’d started this whole adventure to thank Chris for allowing him to live in his apartment rent-free, and now Luca had again taken more than he gave.
“I didn’t take you out in Buffalo,” Luca realized, feeling even more like a cockroach stuck to the bottom of someone’s shoe.
Chris leaned away to look at him, brow furrowed. “We spent less than twenty-four hours there.”
“And all we did in New York was eat shitty pizza.”
“It was great pizza!”
“You have no taste.”
A wide smile broke across Chris’s face. “There you are. I thought something was wrong; you were being too nice to me.”
Luca couldn’t keep looking at him. The guilt would make him physically ill. That, or the gin.
The bathroom remained silent, so Cheryl must have stayed with her child. Possibly still in the company of their goalie. Luca’s head hurt thinking about the possible consequences that indiscretion might have for the team.
Then he thought of the consequences of his own indiscretions.
In the sudden stillness, Luca’s palms began to sweat.
He needed an exit strategy now; he’d all but admitted his feelings, and Chris had said precisely nothing about them.
With the urgency of arousal past, nothing remained but the empty longing, and Luca couldn’t stand being here alone with Chris while it choked him.
“We should go downstairs again,” he said. “Before anyone gets suspicious.”
Pushing himself up from the floor slowly in a way that should not be the slightest bit sexy but was because everything he did was sexy, at least to Luca, Chris agreed. “You go first. I’ll get dressed and be right behind you.”
Luca slipped out the door without a backward glance. He didn’t deserve to keep ogling Chris, no matter how much he might want to. Besides, it would depress him to see how unaffected Chris remained by the experience.
He had to stop this. He would tell Chris he didn’t need any more coaching the next time Chris initiated. Which he might never do because he wasn’t into sex the same way Luca was, and he didn’t feel for Luca the way Luca felt for him.
Luca couldn’t keep doing this to himself.
It had been stupid to start; continuing would be reckless and painful.
He ought to stop doing it to Chris as well.
If Chris was asexual, as Luca suspected him to be, then he needed less pressure to perform sexually, not an idiot who’d fallen in love with him climbing all over him in a manner akin to a crazed monkey. Luca had to cut him loose for his sake.
For Luca’s own sake, he needed to claw himself back to normalcy.
He kept his feelings guarded for a reason.
Being around Chris had taught him that not everyone was as mean-spirited and bigoted as his Juniors team had been.
He would cherish his friendship with Chris forever, but it had been na?ve of Luca to believe, albeit briefly, that he could allow himself the vulnerability of being himself and still have hockey.
He had to find a middle ground, a way to be less of a closed-off asshole without getting hurt.
If he stayed his current course, he would walk straight into a rejection so bad it would return him to being as angry and bitter as he had been for years.
It would ruin his chance at making a place on this team.
Not everyone could be Jax and Tom.
He took a deep, steadying breath at the top of the stairs. It smelled of sugar and liquor, and the hum of voices below grew louder as he descended.
“Luca!” Howie greeted him with a broad grin and slightly unfocused eyes. He hadn’t stopped drinking, then. “Where’ve you been, man? How long can it take to get one man out of a Wookie suit?”
“The zipper was stuck.”
Thankfully, Howie didn’t care enough to question the lie. Instead, he dragged Luca in the direction of the den, where the remainder of the team had piled onto the massive gray sectional.
Vanderbilt, Cheryl, and Lily were saying goodbye in the doorway. Cheryl’s lipstick was smudged, and her hair was a mess, and Dmitriyev didn’t have the decency to pretend not to stare at her.