I pull back to look at him.
He looks back. Doesn’t perform anything. Doesn’t try to be smooth or charming or careful.
Just lets me look.
He’s flushed a little at the throat, his eyes dark, his hands on my body, and for once there’s nothing between what he feels and what he lets me see.
Scarred knuckles at the small of my back.
The man who tapes his blocker thirteen times, who hasn’t missed a save in three games, who walks into rooms like he’salready decided he can handle whatever’s waiting there — and he’s sitting on his couch letting me see him undone.
I’m in trouble.
That’s not new. What’s new is I’m not trying to climb out of it.
I push him back into the couch instead — flat palm to his chest, the way he’s done to me a dozen times — and watch his eyebrows go up half an inch at the role reversal. He goes. Lets me. That’s the part that gets me every time: a man that solid, that hard to move, and he just... lets me move him.
“Nova.”
“Don’t talk yet.”
His mouth shuts. Something in his eyes goes molten.
I work his belt open with both hands. He’s already breathing harder, already straining the front of his boxers, and when I take my time with the button he makes a low sound in his throat — the controlled man losing the thread, one inch at a time. He lifts his hips when I reach for the waistband. Doesn’t rush me. Just gives me room and grips the couch like that’s the only thing keeping his hands off me.
I free him — hard, thick, already leaking — and wrap my hand around the base, feel the heavy pulse of him against my palm, and look up.
He’s looking at me.
“Tell me,” I say.
“Tell you what.”
“How you like it”
“Christ, Nova.”
“I want to hear it,” I say. “All of it.”.”
He breathes out. Once. Then his hand comes down to my hair — fingers spreading, the weight of his palm against my scalp.
“You’re killing me,” he says.
I lean in and run my tongue from the base of him to the tip. Slow. Swirl once around the head, tasting the bead of moisture there.
His abs contract.
“Fuck.”
I take him into my mouth.
Hot. Heavy. The thickness of him stretching my lips, the velvet skin against my tongue. I sink down slowly and feel him hit the back of my throat and I hum around him and his hand fists in my hair without his permission.
“Nova — fuck —”
I pull back to the tip. Pop off. Squeeze the base in my fist.
“Tell me,” I say again.
