Page 36 of Caught Offside

So Asher did. He took his time about it, one slick finger and then two, working Patrick open in no hurry at all, watching every shift in his face in the low light. Patrick’s breath caught. His jaw went slack. His hips started moving against Asher’s hand, and the second he caught himself doing it, he went still, like he could think his way back to control if he concentrated hard enough.

“Nope,” Asher said, crooking his fingers until Patrick’s whole body jerked and a broken sound punched out of him. “None of that. You don’t get to manage this one. Stay with me.”

He found the place that made Patrick stop being careful and worked it slow and relentless until the tension Patrick carried everywhere, his shoulders, his jaw, his hands, started bleeding out of him. Asher kept him right at the edge, building him up and backing off every time his breath went sharp, not letting him tip over until Patrick was loose and shaking, past pretending he wasn’t.

“There you go,” Asher murmured, pressing a kiss to the inside of his knee, fingers still moving deep and slow. “That’s it. That’s all you have to do. Just feel it. I’ve got you.”

Patrick’s head went back. There was no control left in him to lose, nothing held back, just Asher’s hands, Asher’s voice, the helpless roll of his own hips chasing more. The sounds coming out of him were broken, half of them Asher’s name. Asher had never wanted anything in his life the way he wanted him right then.

“Asher.” Patrick’s hand found his wrist, not stopping him, just holding on, his voice wrecked clean through. “Please. I’m ready. I want you. Now.”

Asher got the condom from the nightstand and rolled it on, hands still not steady. He slicked himself, lined up, and pushed in slowly, watching Patrick’s face the whole way for anything that meant stop. Nothing did. What came instead was the long unsteady rush of Patrick’s breath leaving him, his hands gripping Asher’s back, his body taking him in by degrees until Asher was all the way home and they were both shaking with it.

For a second neither of them moved. Asher held there, braced over him, their foreheads nearly touching, both of them breathing the same air. Whatever was on Asher’s face, the same thing was on Patrick’s, right out in the open with nothing pulled over it.

“Patrick,” Asher breathed because it was the only word he had left.

Patrick huffed something close to a laugh, strained, and his hips shifted under him. “Move. Please.”

Asher started slow, drawing nearly all the way out and pressing back in, long and deep, watching Patrick’s face break open on every stroke. Patrick had stopped trying to be quiet. The sounds came out of him raw, and his hands moved restless over Asher’s back and shoulders, gripping like he needed something to hold on to.

“There you go,” Asher breathed against his mouth. “I’ve got you. God, you feel so good, you have no idea.” He rolled his hips, and Patrick’s whole body answered, his head dropping back against the pillow. “Look at me. Stay right here with me.”

Patrick’s eyes found his, dark and wide open, nothing pulled across them. He hooked a leg higher around Asher’s hip, the angle shifted, and the sound he made came apart in the middle. “There. Right there. Don’t stop⁠—”

“Not going anywhere.” Asher found a rhythm and held it, deep and steady, and Patrick started meeting him, the two of them moving together. Asher kept up the filthy low murmur he never could hold back. “That’s it. You’re taking me so well. This is all I’ve wanted. You have no idea how long—” He lost the words when Patrick clenched around him. “God, the sounds you make. Give me all of them.”

Patrick gave him everything, the words breaking out of him without his permission, please, Asher, there, begging from the most controlled man Asher had ever met. Asher dropped his forehead to Patrick’s, both of them breathing the same ragged air, and for a second it was all right there between them, plain on Patrick’s face and heavy in Asher’s chest, the thing neither of them had said aloud yet and both of them already meant.

“Come for me,” Asher said, low, and reached between them, closing his hand around Patrick’s cock, slick and hard, stroking him in time with every thrust. “Let me feel it. I want to watch you go.”

Patrick crashed over the edge. He came with a shout, clenching tight around Asher, spilling hot over Asher’s fist and both their stomachs, his whole body arching up off the bed and his eyes never once leaving Asher’s face. That look, that sound, the grip of him, was the end of Asher. He buried himself deep and came hard, shaking apart with his mouth at Patrick’s jaw, on his name, on whatever pieces of words made it out.

After, he held there a moment, both of them wrung out and slick, barely breathing, foreheads together. He eased out as gently as he could, dealt with the condom, and came right back because Patrick was already reaching for him. Asher went down onto his chest, and Patrick’s arms came up around his back and held him there like he had no intention of letting go.

The room was still. The hall light cut its diagonal across the bed. They breathed in tandem, slowing.

After, they lay tangled until they caught their breath and the twisted sheets became annoying. Asher got up, came back with a warm cloth, cleaned them both up, and dropped it on the floor.

“You’re leaving that there?” Patrick said.

“I can’t move. You saw to that.” Asher didn’t even open his eyes. “It’s fine where it is.”

“On the floor.”

“Where floors are, traditionally.”

Patrick looked at the cloth, then at Asher, and made a sound closer to a laugh than the exhale Asher usually got out of him. That was progress.

They settled, Asher on his back with an arm behind his head, Patrick on his side facing him, closer than sleeping required.

“I fly out tomorrow,” Patrick said.

“Toronto, right?”

“Toronto. First two games there, then home to Chicago for three and four.” He was quiet a second. “And however far we go after that. Could be a week, could be a month.”

“And I’ve got a game tomorrow night, and seven more after it within nine days.” Asher turned his head on the pillow. Patrick’s face in the half-light was stripped of its public composure, open, the sharp features gone soft with proximity. “We are extremely bad at being in the same place.”