Page 41 of Cross Ice

“I want to be inside you.” I held his gaze. “If that’s okay.”

Something moved across his expression. Not surprise exactly, but an openness I hadn’t seen before. He exhaled slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay. It’s been a while, though.” A pause. “A long while.”

“I’ll go slow.”

Ryan had never let me. In a relationship that had started when we were sixteen, Ryan had never once let me take that from him. I hadn’t let myself think about what that meant until right now, looking down at Nico, who was watching me with complete and open trust.

I took my time with him. Kissed my way down his chest, his stomach, learning him the way he’d always learned me. When I reached for the nightstand and found the lube, his breath caught. I slicked my fingers and pressed the first one into him, carefully. He made a sound that was quieter than anything I’d heard from him before.

“Okay?” I asked.

“More than.” His voice was lower than usual. “Keep going.”

I worked him open slowly, adding a second finger when he relaxed around the first, watching his face the whole time. He kept his eyes on mine—that sustained attention he had, the kind that made me feel seen—and what I saw in his expression wasn’t the confident control he usually wore. It was something stripped of that. Something that trusted me with the stripped version.

I’d never had this. Not once, with anyone.

By the time I rolled the condom on and added more lube, his chest was rising and falling faster. When I pressed against him and started to push inside slowly, his eyes closed for just a moment before finding mine again.

“Still okay?” I managed.

“God, yes.” Rough and low. “Don’t stop.”

I went slowly, giving him time, watching for any sign that I needed to stop or pull back. He was tight and hot, and I had to concentrate very hard on not rushing, on taking care of him the way he’d always taken care of me. When I was fully seated, I stilled completely, one hand braced beside his head, the other resting on his hip.

“Nico.”

He opened his eyes.

“Hi,” I said.

His whole face relaxed when he saw me. “Hi.”

I started to move.

It took a few minutes to find the right angle—small adjustments, his hands guiding my hips, both of us quiet and focused. And then I shifted, and his whole body tightened. The sound he made was completely unguarded in a way that went straight through me.

“There,” he breathed. “Right there.”

I kept the angle. Kept it slow and deliberate, watching his face, building it carefully. My free hand was already slick with lube, and I wrapped it around him, stroking in time with my thrusts, and his head fell back against the pillow.

Something hit me then that had nothing to do with how good it felt. He was giving me something Ryan had never given me. Not just the physical act, but the trust underneath it. The willingness to be the one who needed taking care of. Nico, who was careful and controlled and had spent fourteen years keeping himself protected, was lying here completely open, letting me see all of him.

Ryan had never trusted me like this. I understood, right now, in this bed, that he never would have.

I leaned down and kissed him, still moving, and he kissed me back with a kind of desperate warmth that undid me completely.

He came first, his whole body going taut, my name rough in his throat, his hand gripping my forearm hard enough to leave a mark. I felt him pulse against my palm and kept stroking, drawing it out, and when I followed him, it was with my face pressed to his shoulder and the overwhelming feeling of having been trusted with something irreplaceable.

We stayed still for a long moment. His hand moved to my hair. Neither of us spoke.

Eventually, I carefully eased out of him and disposed of the condom. Then I went to the bathroom, ran the tap until the water was warm, and came back with a washcloth. He watched me with heavy-lidded eyes while I cleaned him up, thoroughly and gently, and when I was done, I crossed to the closet and dropped the cloth in the hamper where it belonged.

When I came back to bed, he opened his arms for me without a word.

Afterward, we lay tangled together, my head on his chest, his hand in my hair. His breathing slowed. The city did its quiet nighttime thing outside the window.

“Evan Hunter,” he said eventually, into the dark.