Page 79 of Delay of Game

Before he could even think about it, they were kissing, and it was like the months they’d been apart melted away under the heat of Nate’s mouth, the way he completely fell apart when he was touching Zach. He had his hands on either side of Zach’s face, holding him in place, but his mouth was soft and giving. It was a hungry kiss but a sweet one, all of the frustrated longing he’d felt evaporating like fog on a window with the sun.

Zach nipped at Nate’s lower lip when he pulled away. “You’re not out of my league.”

“Okay,” Nate said, flushing, as Zach walked him back toward the bed.

“You’renot.”

“Okay,” Nate said, again, when Zach pushed him down into a sitting position on it. His thighs fell apart obligingly to let Zach into his space, to grip the muscle there and squeeze it as he knelt on the floor in front of him. He wasn’t really agreeing, he was just saying it so Zach would stop talking.

But he kept throwing these little glances up from the corner of his eyes and Zach knew. Zach knewhim. “How can I convince you that you’re—just, just, everything to me?”

“I don’t...” Nate started, then stopped when Zach leaned up to press another kiss against his mouth.

“I think,” Zach said, hands twisted in the hem of Nate’s T-shirt, “maybe you don’t do any talking during this one. I think maybe, actually, you’re not allowed to talk at all. You just have to listen to me, okay?”

“Uh,” Nate started, the words muffled when Zach pressed one hand over Nate’s mouth. “Okay,” he finished, his voice distorted by Zach’s palm.

He’d had dreams like this, during the time they were apart, of Nate in his bed again, of Nate letting him strip away his clothes. He took his time, pulling the shirt up first, exposing Nate’s broad shoulders and chest and thick torso. He ran his hands down Nate’s body, his pectoral first, fingers scraping against the soft hair of his chest, his abs, his hips. Nate already felt hot and feverish. All of that emotion and energy bottled up inside of him at all times exploding outward.

“Baby,” he said, “you really don’t know how fucking hot you are?” Nate looked like he was about to protest and Zach, a little bit of a smirk he wasn’t quite able to bite back down, said, “We agreed you weren’t gonna say anything.”

“Youtoldme I had to listen to you.” He shot a look up at Zach through his eyelashes, almost sly.

Zach couldn’t help it; he laughed. “I think I remember you sayingokay, actually. So you don’t want me to—because I can stop, any time, you just have to say the words, eh?”

Nate looked up at him again and Zach thought about the first time he had comforted Nate after a bad loss, making him laugh until he was smiling, easy and open, and how heady it had felt to have the force of his attention turned on you. Three years later and nothing had changed, nothing at all. Nate looked at him like the sun was revolving around his stupid head and Zach was fucking putty in his hands.

“Okay,” Nate said, very quietly.

Zach knew he wasn’t the smartest guy in the world, and he knew that he wasn’t very good with words. But this wasn’t about smarts or about words—this was about Nate, and how Zach had spent the last three years desperately trying not to fall in love with him and somehow doing it anyway. When he thought about it that way, it was easy to tell Nate everything. The words came out of his mouth without any thought, about the way he dreamed about the feeling of Nate’s muscles under his hands when he was holding himself back, about the way Nate’s mouth looked when it was open and gasping, the way his eyes were like all kinds of ocean depths and—

Nate, shifting restlessly under Zach’s hands, stopped. He was still flushed pink, the prettiest blush Zach had ever seen, but his mouth was tilted up in that smile that made everything easier. “Wow, Zach, missed your calling with poetry, huh?”

Zach wrapped his hand around Nate’s dick and got a gasping little whine for his trouble. “I can ask Jammer’s girlfriend for advice. But that’s—you’re not meant to be talking right now, baby.”

“I’m not talking,” Nate mumbled, but he shut his mouth when Zach pressed two fingers against his lips, eyebrows raised. Almost like he couldn’t believe he was doing it, he flicked his tongue against the pads of Zach’s fingers, and Zach could feel his heart jumping in his chest like a jackhammer, like it was going to try, at any second, to burst its way through.

“Just let me tell you how fucking hot you are,” Zach said. It took him a while, because he was trying to suck Nate’s dick while he did it. He had to dip his mouth down, work his lips along the length of it. Pull back. “I had dreams about your fucking thighs, baby, even before I could ever think about touching you.” Back down again, while Nate twisted under the ministrations, while he gasped and panted and desperately tried not to talk. “Your torso. The way it feels under me. It’s fucking insane, the things your bodydoesto me.”

Nate stared at the ceiling, like he couldn’t bear to look at Zach at all. He probably couldn’t. He was sweating, with the intensity of the moment, with the way Zach was touching him, blond hair damp and messy where Zach had pulled his head around. His eyes were huge and dark, the blue lost in the pupil, like Zach was already transporting him to some other fucking universe.

“It’s not just your body,” Zach gasped. His voice was a little wrecked already, not that Nate had been pushing it. Zach had, too eager to suck him down. “Your fucking face, Nate. I could stare into your eyes for fucking hours.”

Nate closed them, just then, too embarrassed to even risk it. His face was so fucking red, the blush all the way down his throat and chest. Zach stopped sucking him off, shifted up his body so he could press kisses along the edges of it, against his pecs, the hollow of his throat while he slipped his hand around Nate’s dick instead. When Zach licked him there, he could taste the salt of sweat against Nate’s clean skin, a salt like the tears that had pricked at the corners of his eyes, still screwed shut.

“Look at me,” Zach mumbled, “come on, please.”

Nate did what he asked, but it was a slow opening, eyes heavy-lidded. For a second, Zach thought he was going to say something, but he didn’t: he just reached one hand up, fingers gentle against Zach’s cheek. And somehow that gesture said everything that words never could. Zach turned his hand into Nate’s palm and for a second, he felt likehewas going to cry.

Afterward, he could never be quite sure how he managed it, keeping up that constant narrative about all of the things he loved about Nate and touching him at the same time. Nate’s drive to succeed. The way Nate took care of the team, the way he did the little things for all of them because he loved the boys so fucking much. The way he never wanted the attention or glory for himself, the way he only wanted to make everyone else around him better. It was a weird kind of feedback loop, telling Nate those things, touching him, watching him falling apart underneath it, and losing control of himself at the same time. Like saying everything he’d been holding back for three seasons had unleashed something inside of him, a waterfall of words that would keep falling and falling and falling.

He looked down at Nate, spread out under him, and was seized by such an intense feeling he almost got choked up, everything he wanted to say caught in his throat. Instead of trying to get it out, he pressed his tongue against the bottom of Nate’s dick instead, slid his mouth down around it. The noisethatgot him was worth it. He looked up at Nate, his hands twisted in the sheets, sweat beading his forehead. He was trying desperately not to say anything, but instead he was just making noises, muffled and inhuman. It was almost too much.

By the time Zach had clambered on top of him and sank down, they were both almost beyond words, but somehow, he kept managing to gasp out ragged sentence fragments, how good Nate felt inside of him, how perfect he was, how they fit together, on the ice, off the ice, in bed, all of it, like Nate was made especially for him—

Nate made a pained noise and came, eyes screwed shut, fingers digging into the muscle of Zach’s back. Zach sat, frozen on top of him, staring down. He was trembling on the edge of an orgasm himself, just wasn’t quite there. Reached down to take himself in hand, stroking faster and faster as he gasped, “Do you believe me now? Do you?”

“Yes,” Nate said, “yes, yes—” He closed his eyes when Zach came in streaks all over his chest. While Zach was still shuddering through it, he opened them again. His pupils were huge and his eyes were dark and he looked up at Zach like he was the only thing in the entire world that Nate cared about right in that moment.

---