He turned his head and reached out. Two fingers touched my jaw.
I leaned into his hand.
The fingers moved to the back of my neck. Our kiss differed from every other time. In the elevator, we'd been desperate. In my apartment, I'd led because Kieran's body didn't have a map yet. This time, he knew where he was going. He kissed me like he'd been thinking about it through all five cities.
I let him lead. It wasn't easy to hold back. I wanted to peel off his shirt and touch his ribs, his chest, but I followed instead of taking charge. That was important.
His grip tightened on the back of my neck. The tablet slid off the bed and hit the carpet with a dull thunk that neither of us acknowledged.
He pulled his shirt over his head. I pulled off mine.
He spread the fingers of his free hand over my chest, measuring my heartbeat.
"Fast," he said.
"Been fast since you walked through that door."
"Half-truth there. I know it sped up during the Winnipeg footage."
"I was reliving trauma."
He laughed. The laughter traveled through his palm and into my ribs.
I put my hand over his. "Tell me what feels good."
"This," he said. "Being the one who starts."
I understood what he was telling me. Every version of Kieran that existed in the world was a version someone else had initiated. He had been started by other people his entire life.
Not tonight.
I kissed a spot below his jaw, feeling his pulse against my lips. I let him decide what came next.
He tugged at the waistband of my jeans.
We dealt with the logistics of two large bodies on a hotel bed that was generous by civilian standards and geometrically challenging by hockey player standards. His knee caught in the duvet. My elbow cracked against the headboard.
"Your hotel is also trying to kill me."
"It's a pattern. Furniture hates us."
He kissed me harder, and the joke dissolved. His body pressed against mine, full length, skin on skin. We were in motion, the two of us, rearranging ourselves around each other without a plan as we shed the rest of our clothes.
He learned fast. Once Kieran mapped something, he memorized it. He knew what I responded to. He was using it. Teeth on my collarbone. Precise.
I changed our position. It wasn't a takeover. It was a play cycling from his side to mine.
Kieran ended up on his back, and I ended up braced above him.
"Don't stop," he whispered.
I reached between us. I wrapped my fingers around his cock, a firm grip and a slow start.
"Look at me," I said.
He did.
I read him instinctively. Adjusted when his breathing hitched. Went slower when his jaw clenched, faster when it released. Thumbed across the head of his cock on an upstroke and watched his whole body react, stomach tensing, thighs tightening, and a sound caught low in his throat.
