Page 48 of Payback On The Ice

"Come here."

I go. I stop in front of him. Close. Close enough to smell him, soap and the cold coming in off the window. He's looking at my face the way he does in the crease, reading me.

"The rules," he says.

"I remember the rules."

"Say your word."

"Whistle."

"If anything hurts⁠—"

"I'll say it. I'm not stupid, Dane."

"If anything hurts," he says again, slower, "your ribs, anything—you say it."

"Yes."

"Good." His hand comes up. He touches the hem of my shirt. Just the hem. "Can I?"

He's asking. I didn't know he'd ask. Something in my chest goes hot and tight and I nod, and he pulls my shirt up over my head, carefully, lifting my left arm for me so I don't have to reach.

Then he looks at my side.

The bruise is almost gone. Yellow, a little green at the edges, the size of a playing card now instead of his hand. He puts his palm flat over it, very lightly, the way he did with the cold towel that first night.

"Does that hurt?"

"No."

He keeps his hand there a second longer. Then he takes it away.

"Take off the rest."

I do. Sweats. Boxers. I step out of them and kick them aside and I'm standing in front of him naked in his freezing room, and I'm already hard. I've been half hard since the stairs.

He doesn't touch me. He just looks. His eyes go down my body, slow, all the way down and back up.

"Get on the bed. On your back."

I get on the bed. On my back. His sheets are cold. They smell like him.

"Arms up. Hands on the headboard."

I reach up and wrap my hands around the wooden slats of his headboard.

"Don't move them," he says. "Don't move at all. You move, you'll hurt your side, and then we stop. Understand?"

"Yes."

He pulls his T-shirt off.

I've seen him without his shirt before. In the room, in the hotel. I've never seen him do it for me. He drops it on the floor and stands there in his gray sweats in the lamplight, and he lets me look at him. His chest is pale and wide and there's dark hair going down the middle of his stomach into the waistband. I can see the shape of his cock through the sweats, thick and heavy, hard. He pushes them down and steps out of them.

Oh.

I knew he was big. I'd felt him, through his gear, against the boards. I didn't know.