Page 154 of Full Contact

“Let me,” I said, and handed the lube and a condom over my shoulder.

He opened me slowly, two fingers, his mouth against my shoulder. When he slid into me, he was still once he was all the way in. Then he moved slowly, with his hand wrapped around my cock.

Then he stopped.

“Tell me what you’d do next,” he said against my ear.

“Do you need instructions?”

“I want to hear what you’d say.”

I laughed, and he pressed in harder at the same moment. “Slower,” I said. “Then longer. Then your hand, faster, but not until I say—“

He did exactly that. He drew back almost all the way and sank in again. I felt every inch of it. He kept his fist loose around my cock, barely moving, while his hips set the pace I’d asked for. After a minute of it, I was shaking. After two, my mind blanked.

“Trier.”

“You said not until you say.”

“I’m saying.”

He tightened his grip and stroked me fast. Then he drove into me harder with the same rhythm. I came into his fist with my face pushed into the pillow. He followed seconds later, groaning against my shoulder, his arm locked across my chest.

I shook from the intensity.

Trier pulled me back against him. I could see my clothes folded over the chair.

I wanted to stay. “Trier. I want more of an ordinary life with you than this lets us have.”

His hand stayed where it was on my stomach.

“I want to hear about a bad afternoon while you’re still having it,” I said. “Not two days later, when you’ve made it funny. I want evenings when we haven’t both shown up rested and ready to enjoy ourselves. I’d like some of the boring ones.”

“Cutting back helped,” he said. “You’ve been sleeping.”

“It did help.” I rolled over to see his face. “I still want Tuesdays with Dana and Felix. I want an hour with a book sometimes with nobody in the room. I don’t want either of us to give up what we had before. I want us to start treating the future as something we’re going to sort out together, not working around separate schedules.”

He looked into my eyes. “I want more too.”

I waited.

“I don’t know what I can promise you.” His voice was flat and careful. “It’s the second round of the playoffs. We’ve been here before, and I know I’ll come home some nights with nothing left. I don’t want to tell you yes and then leave you at the other end of the couch, waiting for me to show up.”

“Okay,” I said.

I kissed him and got dressed. He pulled on his sweatpants to walk me to the door.

At the door, with my coat on, I said, “I have a second conversation scheduled with New York.”

“When?”

“Two days from now. Ten in the morning.”

Chapter twenty-three

Trier

The playoffs were going well. Everything off the ice wasn’t.