Page 217 of The Fall
That’s where we lived.
I’ve… I’ve heard him say this before, felt the trust in those four words. His breath catching when he pointed, the way our fingers?—
No. That never happened. We’ve never flown into Calgary side by side before.
“Me and Cody.” Blair stays close, our arms still touching. “Our billet family was good people. They came to every home game.”
I make the right sounds, ask the right questions, but my head is full of static, like trying to tune into a radio station that keeps slipping out of range. I feel like an intruder on a memory, all this white noise rattling around inside me.
We land, collect our bags, and file onto the bus to the hotel. It’s the normal travel routine, nothing special, except for the itch under my skin that won’t quit.
My hotel room is too small at midnight. I’ve kicked the sheets off twice, pulled them back up, and turned the pillow over searching for a cool spot that might let me sink into sleep.
That’s where we lived.
I stare at the ceiling, counting shadowed grooves in the drywall. There’s a charge under my skin, every nerve ending tuned to the wrong frequency.
I grab my phone before I can think better of it.
You up?
Three dots appear immediately.
Unfortunately. You?
Can’t sleep. Mind if I come by?
Door’s open.
Most of the team is on this floor, but at this hour, it’s only me and the ice machine’s distant hum. Blair’s room is six doors down, held open by the swing lock.
He meets me inside, hair mussed and eyes soft. Gray sweats ride low on his hips, and he’s shirtless. He looks warm and rumpled and delicious.
“Hey. You okay?”
No, I’m not okay, and I don’t know why. I’m wound tighter than I was going into Vancouver, every nerve firing in every direction, while he looks like he could drift off any second. I need?—
I cross the room and drop in front of him. The lamp casts him in amber and shadow, highlighting his muscles that taper down to where my fingers rest against the elastic of his sweats.
Blair’s breath catches, his pupils dilating, suddenly awake. “What are you?—”
I hook my fingers in the waistband of his sweats. “Can I? Please.”
His answer is a shuddering exhale, and he nods, so slight it’s barely there.
I tug his sweats down, revealing him inch by inch, and drink in every detail: the tense set of his abs, the way his thighs bracket me on either side. All that edge from earlier, the wildness he brought onto the ice, is here too.
“Fuck,” he whispers.
My hands slide up the backs of his thighs, muscles flexing under my grip, and I look up until our eyes lock. When I lean forward, his breath catches, and when my lips brush the inside of his thigh, he curses.
I nuzzle into the heat of his groin and breathe him in—clean soap under sweat, the faint tang that means Blair and only Blair. My tongue follows the crease where thigh meets hip, tasting salt and skin. I kiss the soft dip below his bellybutton, feel the twitch in his stomach under my mouth.
His eyes are heavy, pupils blown, blue turned almost black in this lamp glow, and I drag my tongue lower, inch by inch, and hover over the thick length of him, flushed and hard, curved toward me. His precome beads at the tip of his cock.
My lips graze his shaft, barely there, a tease that pulls a curse out of him. I want to hear every sound he makes, drawthem out until he’s wild for me. I drag my mouth lower, tongue flicking against the thick vein along the underside of his cock. The tension in his thighs ratchets tighter.
I open for him and take him in slow, letting the head of his cock glide over my tongue, then easing down until my lips meet my fist where I’m holding him at the base. He fills my mouth; my jaw aches and I welcome it. The heat of him in my mouth is maddening. I could stay here forever on my knees for him, giving and taking until we’re both undone.
