I pulled back half an inch so I could see his face. He was being careful with me, the way he usually was. He was also smiling at me, that smile of his, mostly with his eyes and one corner of his mouth.
“I want to do more than we have done,” I said. “Tonight. With you. I want to be… I want to be naked with you. If that’s okay. I have been thinking about it for a while.”
His eyebrows went up then settled. He took a breath in and let it out.
“How long is a while?” he said carefully.
“Eleven days. Possibly twelve. Since Tuesday before last, which was the night after we… ” I gestured at the couch since we both knew which Tuesday I meant. “I have a list of things I’m okay with and a list of things I am not yet okay with. Would you like to listen to the lists?”
“Chip.” He laughed, low. “You’re killing me. Yes, I would like to listen to them.”
“Okay. List one. Things I am okay with. Naked. You. Me. Hands. Mouth—you on me, me on you, both—yes. I want… ” I stopped because the thing I wanted was a thing I did not yet have the word for that did not feel clinical in my mouth. I disliked the clinical version, but it was the one I had access to. “I want you inside me, eventually. I have read about it. I have… ” I felt my face heat. “I have practiced, by myself, with the right equipment. So, my body knows what to expect. I would like to do that with you tonight if you want to because you make me feel so good, and I want more of that.”
He breathed out—hard—and pressed his forehead to mine for a count of two.
“Yeah,” he said against my forehead. “Yeah. I would like to do that with you tonight.”
“Good. List two. Things I am not yet okay with. Anything that happens to me if I have not said “yes” out loud first. Anythingin the dark. Anything in a hurry. Anything that requires me to be quiet. Anything that requires you to be quiet because I would like to know it’s you the entire time.”
“Yeah, baby.”
“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.”
