I took another drink of wine and told myself to think about something else.
My brain ignored me and went directly to the part where he'd turned around. The part where he'd pressed his back against my chest and moved against me and I'd felt the full length of him like a fever I couldn't sweat out. The part where my body had responded like it was seventeen again and I had exactly zero control over what happened to it, going hard so fast it was almost embarrassing.
I hadn't been prepared for any of it. That was the problem. I'd walked into that club ready to collect a drunk person and get them home safe and instead I'd ended up on a dance floor with Soren grinding against me while I tried to remember how breathing worked.
I set the wine bottle down on the floor beside me and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes.
The kiss. I hadn't even gotten to the kiss yet and already I was sitting here in the dark in my underwear with a problem that had not gone away, not when I'd driven him home, not when I'd walked back to my own car alone afterward, not through the entire hour I'd spent lying in bed pretending sleep was coming.
His mouth had tasted like whiskey and lime and something underneath that was just Soren. Nothing like anything I'd tasted before, and I'd kissed him back. Hadn't thought about it, hadn'tdecided to, just felt his mouth against mine and opened for it like it was the most natural thing I'd ever done.
That was the part I couldn't get past.
Not that he'd kissed me. He was drunk. People did things when they were drunk that they didn't mean. But I hadn't been drunk. I'd been stone cold sober with my hands on his waist and his mouth on mine and every single rational thought I'd had about what I was and who I wanted had just stopped. Quietly. Without making any announcement about it.
I picked up the wine again.
The ocean moved outside the glass, indifferent and continuous, and I watched it and tried to figure out what the fuck was happening to me. I had never once looked at a man and felt the specific current of want that I was apparently feeling right now about a drunk drummer who'd kissed me to get rid of someone else.
I needed to think about something else. Something that made sense. Something that fit the version of myself I understood.
There'd been a woman maybe eight months ago. Lawyer. We'd lasted about six weeks, which was about four weeks longer than most things lasted with me because hockey and relationships were a bad combination and I'd never been good at giving enough of my attention to both simultaneously. But the sex had been good. She'd been very clear about what she wanted and equally clear about the fact that she expected the same information from me, and I'd appreciated the directness.
I tried to pull up the memory of her. The shape of her in the dark. The sounds she'd made.
My body responded, lukewarm and distant.
But my gut was pointing at Soren's mouth.
“For fuck's sake,” I said, to the empty living room.
The living room did not help.
I felt the heat that had been sitting low in my body since the club start to win the argument I'd been having with it. My cock was already half-hard in my boxer briefs and getting less patient about being ignored, and the cold floor and the wine and the rational side of my brain were all losing ground fast.
I spread my palm flat against my stomach. Felt my own warmth, the trail of dark hair running down from my navel, the steady rise and fall of my own breathing. The window glass caught my reflection in the moonlight — bare chest, broad through the shoulders, the boxer briefs doing increasingly less work at the front.
I pressed my hand lower.
I palmed myself through the cotton and felt my own heat come back against my palm and bit down on the inside of my cheek at the pressure of it. I was already half-hard and getting less patient about being ignored, and the friction of my own hand through the fabric was not helping and not hurting and was doing exactly what I'd needed it not to do, which was confirm that this was not going away on its own.
I'd do this and it would be about nobody in particular. Just the mechanics of the thing, just relief, just getting my body to calm down enough to sleep. That was all this was.
I pushed the boxer briefs down my thighs.
The cool air of the room hit my cock and I wrapped my hand around the base of it, just holding, adjusting to the weight of my own want. My cock was thick and already flushed and heavier than it had any right to be given I'd been trying to talk myself out of this for the past hour. One slow stroke, base to tip, and the sound that came out of my chest was quiet and rough and not something I would have let anyone hear.
I did it again. Slower this time. Dragged my fist from the base all the way up, let my thumb press into the ridge just below thehead where the sensation always concentrated, and held there for a second while my breath went uneven.
My free hand moved up my stomach without any real decision from me. Dragged across the muscle underneath and kept going until my thumb brushed across my own nipple. I pressed into it, and the sensation that moved through me was immediate and low and made my hips tilt forward into my own grip.
I did it again. Rolled it between my thumb and forefinger, a little harder this time, and felt the sharp intake of my own breath before I'd registered the urge to breathe. My cock pulsed in my fist. My body had been a professional machine for so long that I'd half-forgotten it was also capable of this — the specific mess of wanting, the way pleasure moved from one point and radiated outward without asking permission, the way the body made its own decisions once you stopped arguing with it.
I worked the nipple steadily and stroked myself slow and felt the dual sensation of it building in the base of my spine.
I lifted my hand off my cock — not because I wanted to stop, but because I wanted it to last — and raised my fingers to my mouth. Brought them in, got them wet, drew them back out slick and warm. Then I pressed them back to my nipple, slick now, and the sensation was different enough to pull a sound out of me that hit the walls and came back quieter. I rolled it again, wetter this time, and my hips canted up off the cold floor with nothing to push into, which was its own specific frustration.
I worked both at once, the slick friction against my nipple and my fist moving on my cock, and my head dropped back against the couch and my eyes went half-closed and the ceiling held nothing worth looking at so I brought my gaze back to the window.
