8. Cole #2
Then Gio turns back to Zoe and kisses her. It's unhurried, deep, his thumb tracing her cheekbone while her fingers curl into the front of his jacket. When he pulls back, she's looking at him like the whole fucking lobby just emptied and it's only the two of them left.
The kiss was too slow for a performance. Zoe's fingers pulled him closer instead of holding him at the polite, fake-girlfriend distance. The deal was supposed to be fake.
He falls into step beside us. Maya peels off to the right, toward the corridor that runs past the registrar and dead-ends at the Chronicle office, her bag swinging.
She passes Dante's shoulder close enough that the strap brushes his arm.
His hand closes into a fist at his side, the knuckles whitening, then opens with deliberate control.
She cuts past my side as she goes, and her fingers tap my arm twice, quick, casual. My hoodie on her body. Her fingers on my arm. I keep walking.
I watch her cross the lobby, her stride confident, her head high. Dante is watching too. He catches himself, turns his head away, and my chest tightens all over again.
Dante is on my line for practice. We run the drills the way we always do.
Pass. Receive. Shoot. His stick meets mine without looking.
The puck moves clean between us. My blade meets his tape before the defender can close the lane, the timing so perfect it feels like breathing.
Six years of learning where the other one will be.
After practice, the locker room drains slowly. The noise fades, the steam thins, and by the time the last guy leaves, the room is quiet, the only sound the drip of a showerhead and the hum of the ventilation. The door shuts with a soft click, and suddenly it's just us.
"You were late on the backcheck in the third drill," Dante says, pulling a clean shirt over his head. His voice is low.
"I was setting up the—"
"You were thinking."
"I was playing hockey."
"You were thinking about something that wasn't hockey." He smooths the shirt down, his eyes locked on mine, dark and unreadable. "It cost you a half-step."
He's right. He can read my half-steps the way he reads the ice. He doesn't know what he felt me give away.
"Won't happen again."
"It'll happen again." He turns back to his bag, zipping it with a quick, efficient motion. "You've been distracted all week."
"I'm fine."
"Sure." The word is flat, dismissive, and it lands like a slap.
Film review with Addison. Dinner. The house going quiet.
We sit in the living room with the lights off and the scouting reports open on our laptops, the blue glow of the screens the only illumination in the room.
We've been doing this since freshman year, the dark between practice and bed, the hours where the house belongs to us and the silence is comfortable.
I wait twenty minutes after the house goes quiet. His room. Midnight.
Usually I step inside and wait. Wait for his hand on the back of my neck, the grip that says mine. Wait for the command, the surrender.
Tonight, I step in, turn, shove the door closed with my heel, then move on him.
I cross the few feet between the door and where he's standing in the center of the room, and I slam my hand flat against his chest. The muscle under my palm coils instantly, and I drive him back until his shoulders hit the wall opposite the bed with a solid thud.
His eyes widen for a fraction of a second, surprise, then calculation.
"Cole—"
"Don't talk."
I kiss him before he can say another goddamn word. Hard. My teeth catch his lower lip, and I bite down just enough to make him suck in a sharp breath. My hand slides to the back of his neck and locks into the same possessive grip he always uses on me, claiming him right back.
His breath catches. He goes rigid against the wall, testing my hold.
Then his hand comes up fast, gripping my jaw, trying to turn my face, trying to reclaim the angle.
I press closer instead, my hips pinning his to the wall.
My free hand catches his wrist and drives it against the plaster above his shoulder, holding him there.
He tests the hold. Once. Twice. Measuring the strength, the intent. His mouth opens under mine. His jaw relaxes. His body gives.
"You're fighting me," I say against his mouth, my voice rough.
"I'm deciding."
"Decide faster."
"Make me."
I give him the angle, tilting his head just so, but everything else stays mine.
I let go of his wrist first. Then, a beat later, I release his neck.
In the same motion my hands go to the hem of his shirt and strip it off in one quick pull.
My mouth lands on his throat. Teeth. Tongue.
The scrape of stubble along his collarbone.
His head tips back against the wall, a low groan vibrating in his chest. His hand clamps onto the back of my neck.
He could stop this anytime he wants. He's choosing to let it run.
I trail my mouth down his chest, tracing the lines of his tattoos with my tongue. His breathing breaks rhythm, coming in ragged gusts. My teeth graze his ribs, and his hips jerk forward, a helpless thrust against mine.
"Careful," he says, the word rough, strained.
"Since when am I careful?"
"Since always. That's your whole fucking thing."
"Maybe I'm trying something new."
I grab his wrist and pull him off the wall, three steps across the room toward the bed. He resists. One second. Feet planted. Dante deciding whether to let me lead or to take back control. Then he moves, letting me guide him. My pulse goes hard.
I shove him down onto the mattress. I'm over him immediately, one hand pinning his wrist above his head. His other hand grips the back of my neck hard enough to sting, a reminder that he's still here, still in this.
"You're enjoying this," he says, his eyes dark, pupils blown wide.
"You're still talking. You're bad at following my instructions. You're damn good at following your own."
His eyes flash, a spark of something hot and dangerous.
I release his wrist and slide down his body, my hands skimming along the ridges of his ribs, the hard planes of his stomach. I drag my lips along the sharp jut of his hip bone, tasting salt and skin. He makes a strangled sound and cuts it off, swallowing the noise.
"Let me hear it," I say, my mouth against his hip.
"Earn it."
I hook my fingers in his waistband and pull his boxer briefs down.
The barbells catch the dim light from the window, six steel beads gleaming against his skin.
I know them by touch. I've traced each one in the dark for years, mapped the spacing with my tongue, learned which ones make his breath stutter and which ones make him grip the sheets until his knuckles go white.
The third from the base is the one that breaks him.
I've used that information since the first time I found it.
I lower my mouth. My tongue slides upward, catching the barbell just below the head, pressing it against the sensitive ridge underneath.
He swears. A bitten-off curse in Italian.
I take more. Deeper. Each barbell sliding past my lips, the steel warm from his skin.
I swallow around him, and his entire body goes rigid, a bowstring drawn taut.
His hand yanks my hair, a hard tug that makes my scalp tingle.
I pull back. Take him down again. Setting the rhythm, the pace, the depth.
The barbells dragging against the inside of my mouth with each pass, a sensation I know drives him out of his fucking mind.
He tries to thrust, to take more. I slam both hands onto his hips and hold him flat against the mattress.
"Cole." His voice is breaking, shattered. "Let me move."
"No."
His head hits the pillow. His body loosens beneath me, surrendering to the restraint. Then his hand tightens in my hair and his hips push against my grip, a slow, relentless pressure. Back and forth. Each wave heavier than the last.
I pull off. The sound that leaves him is raw, desperate, almost a sob.
"Ask nicely."
"Cole. I swear to God—"
"That's not nicely."
His eyes are dark, wild. His chest heaving. The flush spreading down his neck, across the tattoos, a map of his arousal. He's close. So close. Holding him there sends heat through me.
"Please." His voice cracks on it.