Chapter 35 #2
I slid two fingers into him and started fucking him slow, stretching him open, deliberately avoiding his prostate. He was grinding back against my hand, trying to change the angle, and I used my other hand to pin his hips down.
"Stay still," I said. "Take what I give you."
He whimpered and went still, and I rewarded him by pressing my mouth back to his hole.
I ate him out while I fingered him, tongue and fingers working together, and he was shaking so hard the whole bed was moving.
His moans had gone incoherent, just sounds now, and I could feel his hole clenching around my fingers every time I pressed against his prostate.
"Please," he sobbed. "Please, Sparkles, I can't—I need to come, please let me come—"
I pulled my mouth away but kept my fingers inside him, pressing hard against his prostate. "What’s my name again?"
"Fuck—Joel—I mean…Sparkles!"
"There you go." I twisted my fingers and rubbed hard against that spot.
He came with a shout, untouched, his whole body convulsing. I worked him through it, pressing against his prostate until he was whimpering from overstimulation, and then I pulled my fingers out and flipped him onto his back.
His face was wet with tears, his chest heaving, his cock still twitching against his stomach. He looked ruined. He looked perfect.
"I'm not done with you," I said.
His eyes went wide. "I can't—I just came—"
"You can." I reached for the lube on his nightstand and slicked myself up, then lined up against his hole. "You will."
I pushed into him slowly, watching his face as I did. He was still loose from my fingers, wet and open, and I slid in with almost no resistance. He gasped and his hands came up to grab my shoulders, nails digging in hard enough to hurt.
"Okay?" I asked when I was all the way in.
"More than okay." His voice was wrecked. "Move."
I started slow, letting him feel every inch of me, the drag and push of it. He was oversensitive from his orgasm, twitching every time I bottomed out, making small punched-out sounds.
"Look at you," I said. "Already getting hard again."
"I can't help it." He wrapped his legs around my waist, pulling me deeper. "You feel so good inside me."
I fucked into him harder, chasing my own pleasure now. He was finally here, finally mine, making sounds that I wanted to hear for the rest of my life. His cock was fully hard again, slapping against his stomach with every thrust, and I wrapped my hand around it and stroked in time with my hips.
"Come again," I said. "I want to feel you come on my cock."
"I don't know if I can—"
"You can." I twisted my wrist on the upstroke and angled my hips to hit his prostate. "Come for me, Red. Let go."
He came with a sob, clenching hard around me, and the feel of him pulsing was enough to pull me over the edge. I buried myself deep and groaned against his neck as I came inside him.
We lay there in the aftermath, sticky and panting.
"Holy shit," he said.
I laughed against his shoulder. "Yeah."
He turned his head and kissed me. "I love you."
"I love you too." I pulled out carefully and rolled onto my back beside him. "We should shower."
"In a minute." He pressed his face into my chest. "Just stay here for a minute."
I smiled and stayed.
We showered together because we couldn't stand to be apart. Red's shower was big enough for two, and I washed his hair while he leaned back into my hands, eyes closed.
This was absurd. This was domesticity. I was washing my boyfriend's hair in his shower in Las Vegas while the sun came up outside, and somewhere out there, the world was spinning on without us. Wonton would be judging me from Colorado, probably shredding my couch in protest.
"I didn't think we'd make it here," Red said quietly.
My hands stilled in his hair. "Neither did I."
"There were so many times I almost—" He stopped. "When you left. When I didn't come after you. When your dad showed up and I just let you walk out."
"I walked out," I said. "That was my choice. You don't get to take that one."
He turned to face me, water streaming down his back. "We almost didn't make it."
"I know." I cupped his face in my hands. "But we did."
"What do you want to do today?" I asked.
"I don't know. I didn't plan past you getting here."
"Breakfast?"
"There's a diner down the street. Good pancakes."
We dried off and got dressed in whatever was closest. Red in sweatpants and a t-shirt, me in my jeans from earlier.
"Hang on," Red said. He disappeared into the closet and came back with an old practice jersey, faded from washing, PIPER across the back. "Try this one on."
I pulled it over my head. It was snug in the shoulders but wearable, the hem riding up higher than it was meant to, and when I turned to check the mirror, I could see his name stretched across my back.
"Are you sure you're okay with me wearing your name in public?"
Red crossed the room and put his hands on my chest, smoothing the fabric over my ribs. His expression was soft in a way I was still getting used to seeing.
"Yeah," he said. "I'm sure."
The diner was a ten-minute walk. Red reached for my hand as we stepped outside, then hesitated.
"Is this okay?"
I laced my fingers through his. "It's okay."
We walked down the street holding hands in the morning light. A few cars passed. A woman jogged by with a dog. Nobody stared.
The diner was mostly empty at this hour. We slid into a booth by the window, and a waitress brought us coffee without being asked. Red ordered pancakes. I ordered an egg white omelet and dry toast.
"Qualifying season," I said at his raised eyebrow. "Nationals are in January."
"Right." He poured syrup on his pancakes. "And then?"
"Four Continents. Worlds." I shrugged. "Olympics if I make the team."
Red paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. "You're going for the Olympics?"
"That's the plan." I stole a bite of his pancake because I wasn't a saint. "You should come. Be my plus one."
He stared at me. "To the Olympics."
"If I make it. Which I will." I took another bite of his pancakes. "What do you say?"
"I—" He set his fork down. "Yeah. Yes. Of course I'll come."
"Good." I grinned at him. "You can hold my flowers at the kiss and cry."
"Your what?"
"The place where skaters wait for scores. With their coaches." I reached across the table and took his hand. "You'd have to clear it with the team, but just for the free skate. Two days, maybe three. I want you there. If you want to be."
"I want to be," he said. "I want to be everywhere you are."
His phone rang halfway through breakfast. He glanced at the screen, and his jaw tightened.
"Agent," he said, and answered it.
His face went flat while he listened, and he said, "I understand," and, "Yeah, I figured," and, "Thanks for letting me know," in a voice that didn't sound like him.
He hung up and set the phone face-down on the table.
"Vitalade's out," he said. "They're not renewing."
"I'm sorry."
"It's fine. I knew it was coming." He stabbed at his pancakes without eating them. "They were my biggest deal. By a lot."
I reached across the table and covered his hand with mine. He let me, but his shoulders were tight.
"How bad is it going to be?"
"I don't know. My agent thinks a few of the smaller ones will stick around. The rest—" He shrugged. "We'll see."
I thought about Ro, who'd lost everything. Red wasn't Ro. He was more established, had a Cup ring, and had a team that had publicly supported him. But the money people didn't care about Cup rings.
"We'll figure it out," I said.
Red looked at me. "We?"
"Yeah." I squeezed his hand. "We."
"Okay," he said finally. Some of the tension bled out of his shoulders. "Yeah. Okay."
We finished our breakfast in comfortable silence, his fingers still laced through mine.
"Do you want to go skating?" I asked.
Red blinked. "Skating?"
"There's a public rink about twenty minutes from here. Open skate until noon."
"You want to go to a public skate session."
"I want to skate with you." I shrugged. "Not for work. Not for training. Just for fun."
He stared at me like I'd suggested we fly to the moon. "I haven't skated for fun since I was a kid."
"Neither have I."
He smiled. "Okay. Yeah. Let's do it."
The rink was called Henderson Ice Arena, a squat building off the highway with a faded sign and a parking lot full of minivans.
"You sure about this?" Red asked.
"Are you?"
He looked at me in his too-small jersey, PIPER stretched across my back. "Yeah. I'm sure."
The rink was half-empty. A group of kids in hockey helmets wobbled along the boards while their parents watched from the bleachers. One of the dads did a double-take when we walked in. Red's face had been all over ESPN two days ago. In Vegas, at a hockey rink, he was never going to be anonymous.
Red noticed. His shoulders tightened for a second, and then he deliberately relaxed them.
The rental skates were terrible: too soft in the ankle, blades dull enough to slide rather than grip, the kind of equipment that made real skating impossible. I laced them up anyway and didn't complain.
We stepped onto the ice together, and it was different from every other time we'd shared a rink. No cameras. No coaches. No competition scores to chase. Just cold air and bad pop music crackling through the speakers and the familiar glide of blades on ice.
Six years ago, we'd shared a rink in Rio Rancho. Red had stood in sneakers on my ice, smirking at me before sunrise.
Now he was skating beside me, matching my pace. I reached over and took his hand.
"You look weird without all the death spirals," he said after a while.
"You look weird without pads."
"Show me something." He squeezed my hand. "Not a jump. I know you can't in those. But something."
I let go of his hand and skated a few feet ahead, then turned to face him, skating backward. The rental skates made everything harder, the edges unpredictable, but I'd been skating since I was four. I could make any blade behave.
I did a simple spin, nothing fancy, just a scratch spin that any beginner could do. But I pulled it tight and centered it perfectly, arms overhead, and when I came out of it I was facing him again.
"Show-off," he said.
"You asked."
He skated closer and kissed me, right there at center ice, in front of the hockey kids and their parents and whoever else was watching.
Someone's phone was out. A mom in the bleachers had her camera aimed at the ice.
Red pulled back and saw her too. "That's going to be online in about thirty seconds."
"Probably."
"You okay with that?"
"Yeah," I said. "I'm okay with that."
He kissed me again, slower this time. When he pulled back, he was smiling.
"Good. Me too."
In the parking lot, the desert heat was already building. Red leaned against his truck and looked at me, really looked, the way he had that first morning in Rio Rancho when I'd told him he was on my ice.
"I'm glad you came," he said.
"You already made that joke."
"Not a joke this time." He reached out and pulled me closer by the hem of the jersey. "I'm glad you're here. I'm glad we're doing this."
I stepped into his space. The sun was warm on my back, his name warm across my shoulders.
"Me too," I said, and kissed him.