Page 57 of Hard Check
Leo opened his eyes. Dawson was watching him, dark-eyed, jaw set, his hand moving in a slow stroke that made Leo’s thighs shake. The calluses on his palm dragged against sensitive skin, and Leo’s breath fractured.
“Harder,” Leo managed.
Dawson gave him exactly what he wanted. Leo dropped his forehead against Dawson’s neck and rolled his hips into Dawson’s fist, and Dawson’s free hand came up to grip the back of his head and hold him there. Leo could feel Dawson’s cock pressed against his wrist, hot and hard, and he adjusted his grip. Dawson’s breath caught and his hips stuttered up.
They found a rhythm. Not coordinated, not graceful. Leo’s knees kept slipping on the corduroy. The angle was wrong for both of them, and neither of them cared.
“Right there,” Leo said against his ear. “Just like that, don’t change anything.”
Dawson made a sound against his throat, raw and low, and his grip tightened. Leo’s whole body shuddered.
“Fuck, Dawson. I’m close.”
Dawson’s mouth found the spot below his ear and his thumb did something on the upstroke that whited out Leo’s vision. Leo gripped the back of the couch with his free hand, pressed into Dawson’s fist, and stopped being able to form sentences.
Dawson came first. His whole body went rigid under Leo, his hand stilling, his cock pulsing in Leo’s grip. The sound he made was wrecked, barely a breath, and his forehead dropped against Leo’s shoulder. Leo stroked him through it, felt every shudder, and the sight of Dawson coming apart under his hands was enough. He pressed into Dawson’s grip and followed, Dawson’s name broken apart in his mouth.
Quiet.
Leo stayed where he was. Dawson’s hand moved slowly from his waist to shoulder blade and then back down again. The couch cushion was wrecked. Neither of them moved.
“Okay?” Leo asked.
Dawson pressed his mouth to Leo’s shoulder. Held it there. Then: “Yeah.”
Leo eased back enough to see him. Dawson’s eyes were open, soft in a way that was new. Leo touched his jaw, and Dawson turned into it, and that one gesture, the lean, the trust of it, hit Leo harder than anything that had come before.
He climbed off Dawson’s lap and went down the hall for a towel. When he came back, Dawson was still on the couch, head tipped back, one arm along the backrest, looking at the ceiling with an expression Leo couldn’t read. Not regret. Closer to disbelief, processed through a man who didn’t let himself be surprised.
They cleaned up. Leo pulled his shirt back on and sat next to Dawson, their shoulders touching. Dawson’s hand found his knee.
“You hungry?” Leo asked.
“I could eat.”
“I’ll cook.”
He went to the kitchen and started pulling containers from the fridge. Chicken, peppers, the rice he’d made yesterday. Behind him, Dawson stretched out on the couch and picked up the crime thriller Leo had borrowed from the library because Dawson had mentioned it two weeks ago. He didn’t comment on it. He opened it to where the receipt Leo had used as a bookmark held his place and started reading.
He hadn’t called Phil in over a week. It hadn’t been a conscious decision, he’d just stopped pestering his agent. One morning after practice, he’d scrolled past Phil’s number, and the next morning, he’d done it again, and the daily check-in he’d kept up since August had gone quiet without him noticing. He noticed now, standing in his kitchen with peppers in the pan and Dawson turning pages behind him.
His phone lit up on the counter. Mom.
Leo looked at the screen. Looked at Dawson on his couch with his boots off and a book in his hands. Looked back at the screen.
He let it ring out. Whatever his mother wanted, it could wait. Right now, he was savoring the first bit of real normalcy he’d ever felt. This was the life he wanted, one where his boyfriend was relaxed in his space while Leo cooked for them.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Dawson could still feel Leo’s hands on him. Two days later, standing at a Silverado’s front hub with brake dust on his knuckles and Ethan’s radio bleeding through the shop wall. The heel of Leo’s palm pressing into his hip bone. Leo’s mouth on the side of his neck, unhurried, like he had nowhere else to be. The sound Leo made when Dawson pulled him closer, low and caught, not for anyone’s benefit but his own.
He worked the bracket bolt loose and stared at the rotor. Brake calipers. He was supposed to be thinking about brake calipers.
The pins were seized. He hit them with penetrating oil and let them soak. Work was good, requiring the kind of focus that blanked his head and gave his hands something to do. It lasted about forty seconds before their afternoon together crept back in. Leo’s hand bumping his, then staying. Dawson’s fingers closing around it without checking the street first, without scanning for someone who might know his truck or recognize his face. An entire afternoon in a city where he didn’t have to worry about his actions getting back to his family, and the relief of it had been so sharp it almost hurt.
He couldn’t do that in Port Haven. He knew that. But the memory kept surfacing at bad times: behind the counter when a customer was talking, elbow-deep in an engine while Ethan handed him tools, alone in his bedroom at night while Ethan watched TV down the hall.
His phone was in his back pocket. He hadn’t texted Leo since this morning, a nothing exchange, Leo complaining about a bag-skate, Dawson telling him to drink water like he was somebody’s mother. Easy. The sort of thing that used to make his stomach drop and now just made him reach for his phone between jobs.
