Page 68 of The Grumpy Defenseman

“You are not going to hurt me.”

His eyes held mine.

“I know that in my head.”

“Good.” I kissed him once, slow enough that he felt every word I did not say. “Let the rest catch up.”

That did it.

Not all at once. Evan did not fall apart in one motion. He came undone the way he did everything else: with effort, with attention, with the last of his discipline spent on making sure I was with him at every step.

His hand slid up the inside of my thigh and stopped there, palm warm, thumb moving in one slow stroke that made my whole body tense.

“Sam.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“Yes.”

His fingers found me, and the sound that left me was not a word. He watched my face the entire time, face intent, breathing unsteady, his free hand braced on the desk beside my hip like he needed the wood to hold him in place. He learned what made me move. He stayed there until my hands fisted in his hair. Then he stayed there longer.

“Evan.”

“I’ve got you.”

“I need—”

“I know.”

When he finally moved, it was with the same precision he used everywhere else, the same control, except the control was for me now and not against the want. He pressed his forehead to mine and let me feel him slow.

“Look at me.”

I did.

“Still yes?”

“Yes. God, yes.”

He pushed into me, and the sound he made was rough enough to scrape. My hands found his shoulders. His found my hips, lifting, adjusting, settling me against him until there was no space left to disappear into.

“Fuck,” he breathed against my temple. “Sam.”

The word landed differently in his mouth than it would have in anyone else’s. From a man who never swore, it sounded like something coming out from under pressure that had been building for weeks.

He moved.

Slow at first, the same way he did everything: testing the angle, reading what I gave back, adjusting. Then less slow. The desk shifted beneath us. His mouth found my throat, my collarbone, the soft place below my ear that made my back arch every time he hit it. I did not know I had a place that did that until he found it.

“There,” he said, low. “Right there.”

I lost track of language.

What I remembered after, in pieces: the heat of his chest under my palm. The way his hand slid into my hair and held. The sound he made when I tightened around him, like the discipline he had spent his whole life building had finally found something it could not contain. My name in his mouth in three different registers—careful, then urgent, then wrecked.

When he came, he buried his face in my neck and held on like the room would tilt if he let go.