“I’m right here.” I pulled him closer, closer, until there was nothing between us. “Right here.”
We moved together with the raw desperation that came from finally being allowed to have what we’d been aching for. Every touch felt urgent and necessary, like we were making up for lost time, reclaiming what we’d been forced to give up. He moved between my legs and teased my taint and balls with his tongue until I was writhing. When his mouth closed around my cock—hot and slick and eager—I came apart completely. My back arched off the couch, my hands flew to his hair and gripped hard, and I couldn’t stop the sounds tearing from my throat. The vulnerability of it, of letting him see me like this, should have terrified me. Instead, it felt like freedom.
And when I returned the favor—pulling him up, rolling us over, settling between his thighs with shaking hands—I circled his rim with a spit-slick finger as I eased his foreskinback and took him into my mouth, savoring the weight of him on my tongue. His breath caught and broke, and he alternately begged and cursed in French. Fragmented pleas in a language I barely understood—“S’il te plaît…oui…putain, Marco…ne t’arrête pas.” Don’t stop. His fingers threaded through my hair, his thighs trembled on either side of my shoulders, and his voice cracked on my name. Hearing him lose his English, hearing him unravel in his mother tongue because of me almost made the week apart worth it.
With both of us gasping as if we’d just skated sprints, I collapsed on top of him, bare skin to skin. He took my weight, unwilling to move apart.
“The bed was wrong without you,” he said.
“Tell me about it.”
He shifted to look into my eyes, and his hand came up to trace my face. “What were you doing all week? Besides working out and going to the grocery store with Alyssa?”
“Thinking too much. Spiraling. The usual.”
His expression softened. “About Boucher?”
“About everything. Boucher. Us. That conversation we had about Kinnunen.” I made myself meet his eyes. “I’m sorry I?—”
“Don’t.” He cut me off gently. “You don’t have to apologize for being scared. I get it.”
“But you need?—”
“What I need is for you to feel safe. That’s more important than anything else.” He kissed me softly. “I’m not going to do anything that makes you uncomfortable. Not without talking to you first.”
The certainty in his voice made my throat tight. “You’re too good to me.”
“Impossible. There’s no such thing as too good for you.”
We eventually made it upstairs to the shower, then, afterdinner, to bed properly. The urgency was gone now, replaced by something slower, more thorough.
After we were both spent and sated, we lay wrapped around each other. I felt more settled than I had all week.
“So,” Étienne said, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on my back. “Kinnunen invited us to Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday.”
My stomach clenched. “What?”
“Yeah. He and Alyssa are hosting. A few other teammates are going. He asked if we wanted to come. Both of us.”
I could already feel the anxiety building. Being social. Having to hide in front of people. Acting like “just friends” when all I wanted was to be close to him.
“Do you want to go?” I asked carefully.
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“I asked you first.”
He laughed quietly. “It might be nice. Better than sitting here alone on Thanksgiving. And Alyssa’s supposed to be an amazing cook.”
“She is.”
He was quiet for a moment. “We don’t have to go. We can stay here. Make our own dinner. Just us.”
It was tempting. The safety of staying in our bubble.
“Let’s go,” I said. “We can’t hide in the house forever. I’m going to start light skating drills soon, and then I’ll be back with the team full-time. We have to navigate being around people eventually.”
“You sure?”
