“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know,” I say. And I do. “Let’s just skate.”
We skate a bit in silence.
“Show me the transition again. The weight shift into the turn.”
“Sure.”
I position myself and demonstrate it slowly, talking through it, and he watches with the focused attention he has when he’s stopped performing and is actually learning. Then he tries it, and it’s close but not quite, and I move beside him.
“Here,” I say. I put my hand on his hip.
He adjusts, and I leave my hand where it is for longer than necessary, and we’re both very still and very aware.
“Better.”
“Like this?” he asks.
He turns toward me and puts his hand on my hip. His other hand finds my waist. Slow and deliberate. Like he’s making sure I have time to step back if I want to.
I don’t step back.
He starts to move backwards, slowly, drawing me with him across the ice, and it’s the strangest thing, this slow glide, controlled and deliberate, both of us moving together. I’ve skated with plenty of skating partners before - none of them hockey players, none of them were this solid. None of them felt like this.
“Russo,” I say.
“Eriksson,” he says back, the same tone, the same weight.
“This isn’t-”
“I know. I know it isn’t.”
His eyes are on mine, and suddenly my back meets the boards.
He’s close. Both hands on my waist. And he looks at me for one long moment in which everything that’s been unsaid between us since I arrived is completely audible.
Then he kisses me.
Not like outside the bar. Not brief and questioning. This is slower but more certain - his hands on my waist and the rink empty around us. I kiss him back because I have no defenses left and I’m not sure I want any.
I feel the cold of the boards seeping through my jacket, but it doesn’t matter because his mouth is on mine and everything else has gone quiet. The hum of the rink lights, the distant creak of the old building, my own heartbeat - all of it fades into the space where he’s touching me.
His hands don’t move from my waist, but his mouth does. Down my jaw, slow and deliberate, the way he moved us across the ice. I gasp against his cheek and my fingers find the back of his neck and curl into the short hair there.
“Russo-”
“Yeah?” He says it against my throat, and then his tongue traces the tendon there and I make a sound I’ve never heard myself make before. My head falls back against the boards. He takes the invitation.
His mouth is hot. Everything about him is solid andthere, anchoring me while my own body starts to feel like it’s coming apart at the seams. He kisses up to the soft place beneath my ear and I feel it behind my ribs, between my legs, everywhere.
I scrape my nails lightly over his shoulders and he makes a low sound, says ‘fuck’, and his hands finally move - sliding from my waist down to my hips, then lower, thumbs pressing into the hollow where my thighs meet my body.
He drops to his knees on the ice.
I stare down at him. “What are you-”
He doesn’t answer. His hands find the waistband of my leggings, the thin layer of thermals underneath. His expression makes my stomach flip.Questioning. Waiting.
