Chapter 15 #3
“Don’t call me baby in bed. Call me Chip. Or Russell. Russell is okay in bed.”
“Russell.”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Do you want to go to the bedroom?”
“Yes.”
He took my hand. Sable did not get up because Sable knew, the way she knew everything about my regulation states, this was a regulated state, and she was off duty in his apartment anyway. She sighed again and rolled onto her side on the rug.
His bedroom was warm, and the neat covers made me smile. “What now?”
“Now we go slow,” he said. “And you tell me everything. Out loud. Always.”
“Yes.”
“Can I take your sweater off?”
“Yes.”
He took my sweater off. He folded it. He put it on the chair by the window.
“Can I take your T-shirt off?”
“Yes.”
He took my T-shirt off. I was not, by team standards, big. I’m a hockey player, not a bodybuilder. My chest is the chest of a man who skates for a living.
He hadn’t touched me yet, which was his way of asking if it was okay.
“Yes,” I said before he could ask out loud. “Yes.”
He put one hand flat over my heart. “There you are.”
“I’ve been here the whole time.”
“I know.”
“Take your shirt off too.”
He took his shirt off and put it on the chair on top of mine.
They looked good together. I reached out and put my hand on his chest the way he had put his on mine.
He moved us to the bed. I sat on the edge first. He knelt between my knees and put his hands on my thighs, over my jeans, and he waited.
“Pants,” I said.
“Yours or mine.”
“Both. In whatever order makes sense to you.”
He did mine first because mine had a button and a zipper, and he could undo them with one hand without me having to stand.
I had not realized I would appreciate that until I appreciated it.
Then he stood up and did his own, put them on the chair too, and came back.
We were both in our underwear. He was beautiful.
Lines and a stomach and a soft trail of dark hair below his navel.
“Tell me you’re with me,” he said.
“I’m with you.”
“Russell.”
“Dane.”
“Pulse?”
“Don’t know. Haven’t checked.”
“Want to?”
“No. I want you.”
He put his hands flat on my chest and pressed me back onto the pillow. His mouth moved to my collarbone. He kissed me there, slowly, then my sternum, and then my stomach. I made a sound, and his hand at my hip stilled.
“Good?”
“Yes. Don’t stop. Yes.”
He didn’t stop.
He took my underwear off, slowly, and waited again.
I said yes. He took his off and waited again.
I said yes. He covered me, and his weight came down over me.
I was… I’d imagined it in the privacy of my own bedroom with Sable on the other side of the door asleep, and the imagining had never been like this.
I loved the smell of his neck, the rasp of his stubble against the side of my jaw, his hand under my back lifting me half an inch to settle me lower into his pillow, and his breath was unsteady when I moved my knee up his side.
“Russell.”
“Yes.”
“I have… give me one second… ”
He reached for the drawer of his nightstand, took out lube and a strip of condoms, and put them within reach without making a thing of it.
“Tell me everything,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Tell me to slow down.”
“I will.”
“Tell me to stop.”
“I will.”
“Tell me to keep going.”
“Keep going.”
He kept going.
He was patient, and this was Dane Rourke, my boyfriend, on top of me, inside me, because I’d said yes, and I was safe, and he was going to keep his promise to me about every single part of this, because he hadn’t yet, in any hour of the months we had known each other, broken a single one.
“Russell.”
“I’m here.”
“I love you.”
I’d been waiting to say it. I had it filed for nineteen days.
“I love you too, Dane.”
He laughed, half a sob, then pressed his forehead harder against mine and moved.
My hands went to his back and held on. He moved slowly because he had been told to move slowly and because moving slowly was, I think, the only way he had it in him to do this with me.
I rolled my hips up to meet him, and we moved together, gently.
“Russell, with me, please… ” he whispered against my skin. I went over the edge with his name on my lips, and he followed me a beat after with mine on his.
He held still on top of me until he had to move to clean us both up.
He came back to bed, gave me a damp towel and a dry one, and turned his back so I could put myself together.
Then he lay down on his side, held up his arm, and I went under it, resting my head on his chest. His hand came up into my hair and stayed.
I listened to his heartbeat instead of mine. “I love you so much, Dane,” I said.
“I love you more,” he murmured, but I know he didn’t mean it for real because love wasn’t ever bigger or smaller in size; it was just there.
I tucked the blanket up over my hip, and he folded his arm tighter around me.
“Dane?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to need to say I love you again. Probably a lot. I have a backlog of nineteen days.”
“Say it as much as you want.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, Russell. Christ, I love you.”
I closed my eyes.
I was happy.