Page 27

TWENTY-FIVE

SANTA

Instead of dropping like a stone on top of Charlie, I manage—barely—to roll to the side.

I lie beside him and stare at the blank ceiling of his bedroom. It’s totally white, and it’s all my mind can focus on for some reason.

“Why are ceilings white and boring?” I ask, willing myself to stop saying useless shit. But there’s no taking the words back.

There’s a long moment of silence where I fear Charlie’s going to kick me out of bed, but then a soft snort comes from my left.

A chuckle follows it, and then a beautiful belly laugh that has me smiling as if I just won the lottery.

“Sadly for you,” Charlie says, laughter spilling out between every word. “I have an Italian grandmother who’s obsessed with the Renaissance, so I can tell you all about the times when people painted their ceilings so elaborately it would take years to finish each room.”

“I think I want to do that,” I say, obviously speaking out of my ass.

Somehow already knowing I’m not talking seriously, he snorts again, but what I like the most is how he rolls, once more facing me like he did only a while ago, and lays a palm over my chest, then pats me there two times.

“Sure you do, Nikolay.”

I chuckle weakly, somehow unable to meet his eyes right then.

His hand resting on my T-shirt reminds me that we didn’t even take our clothes off. We’re just two dudes, almost fully dressed with our spent dicks out, and Charlie’s lower belly is covered in come.

Frozen, I hear his sharp intake of air, and the sudden tremble in his hand.

“Nikolay,” he whispers. The distress he packs into one word is all that’s needed to unfreeze me. I reach up to take his hand in mine, kiss his knuckles with closed eyes, and then I tell myself I have to face the music.

I twist around and see his pinched look as he stares at the windows behind me.

He’s freaking out too, I realize.

And I don’t want him to feel bad about what we just did. I don’t want him to pull away or doubt me. Doubt us.

So I get real close to him, until I can touch my forehead to his, then kiss his lips so gently I barely feel it. It does the trick, though.

“We should take a shower,” I whisper. “Clean you up.”

His eyes move quickly across my face, as if searching for something, but I don’t want him to think too much about anything while we’re both so... fragile? Yes, that’s exactly how I feel right now. And I don’t want to think too much either.

“Come on,” I tell him and sit up, pulling him up as well and taking his hand in mine when we’re standing by the bed. “If you don’t want me to go with you?—”

“I do,” he interrupts me, and he’s the one pulling me that time.

When I see his bathroom for the first time, I wince at the size of the tub, but then remember that Charlie told me this was a rental when I first came here. It makes sense, then, why he’d have a tub so small there’s no way he could ever fit comfortably.

“I miss my baths,” he says glumly, noticing where my gaze is.

“We can stay at my place some days if you want. There’s no kitchen like yours, but I have a huge bath that’s more like a hot tub in my bathroom there.”

I mentally pat myself on the back at the suggestion because his eyes light up. I still keep it vague, though, because I haven’t told him about my suite—not the specifics anyway—and I might be putting that off for as long as I can .

“Really?”

All the tension and trepidation is gone, and I feel like I just won something that means something .

“Whenever you want,” I say like a vow. That’s weird, but I decide not to dwell on it and close the space between us. Reach for the bottom seam of his shirt and ask, “Can I?”

His only response to my soft words is a nod, so I pull the fabric over his head and he helps me by raising his arms.

There’s a hint of redness on his cheeks when I step back, and I don’t even have to ask as he shifts from foot to foot.

“I, uh—” he clears his throat, looks away. “I thought about this before.”

“Did you now?” I can’t help the satisfied smirk on my face.

“Shut up,” he mumbles.

“Okay,” I whisper and kiss his warm cheek, then reach back and pull off my own shirt, and push down my jeans and my black briefs in one go. “Shower time,” I tell him, trying not to feel self-conscious about him seeing me naked for the first time.

Well, maybe not the first time, but the first time outside the locker room. It feels like more . It is more.

I don’t look back when I hear rustling. Somehow I know I want my first time looking at him like this to be when he’s in the shower, droplets covering him.

It’s the horny teenager that’s never left my brain; he can’t help but want that visual .

I turn on the shower and I’m grateful the water heats up pretty quickly. I soak my hair, and when I feel the air shift behind me, I step aside and let him pass.

There it is.

It’s the best live porno I’ve ever seen in my life.

The big expanse of his back getting wet inch by inch, and I follow a trail of water making its way down to his ass.

“Jesus,” I mumble.

I have always been an ass man .

“You have?” he asks, and turns.

I’m speechless. His chest, his abs, those V-like things by his hips, and that dick...

“What?” I ask, remembering he said something.

“You said you’ve always been an ass man,” he reminds me, looking like a cocky little shit once more.

“Yeah, so?” I ask brazenly, doing my best to hide how flustered he has me. I think it’s safe to say I’m very attracted to this male body. And I can’t find it in me to care about the why. He’s naked and wet and gorgeous in front of me after all.

“I’ve always been an ass man too,” he says at last.

I look up, not really minding giving up the show that is his body when I’m able to get lost in those dark eyes full of want.

“Good thing,” I murmur as I move in.

I circle my arms around his waist and lean down to seal it all with a kiss .

The hot, hard body against mine is new—everything is new—but it doesn’t feel daunting all of a sudden. It feels familiar, inevitable.

We kiss for an eternity, knowing that we’re going to have to face everything head on as soon as we’re out of the shower. I take my time. I don’t let my new hard-on deter me from discovering every kiss he gives me, or from enjoying the new exploration of his body.

The water turns lukewarm, and it’s like a warning to get moving. We do, washing ourselves quickly—even though when suds are covering his chest and abs I regret that it’s not my hands touching him—and sure enough, about a minute later, the water is ice cold. We hurry our asses out of there and he passes me a towel.

The silence between us feels safe, like nothing bad can happen in this cocoon we’ve made of his bathroom.

But soon enough, Charlie opens the door to his room and the cold air rushes in. I watch him, towel tied off at his hips, saunter away from me, and it’s in that moment that I know I might love the view, but I don’t want to see him walking away.

I need a moment to process that... monumental shift.

It feels big at least. Very fucking big.

I go to my own bedroom to get a change of clothes and put what I was wearing in the basket that sits in the corner of the room, then I go downstairs.

I left the door open so I heard when Charlie’s soft footsteps passed by and down the stairs. I want to be next to him again, yes, but I also know we need to talk about what it means. It was a test of sorts—before. Now we know how fucking electric we are together, at least that’s how it felt to me.

It’s time to find out if it was the same for him.

I find Charlie putting the lasagna back into the oven, and as though he knew I was coming all along, he speaks without looking over at me.

“It only needs to heat up for a few minutes, then we can eat,” he explains.

I watch him close the oven door and then he stands there, motionless. I decide it won’t do us any good to keep stalling.

I go over, grab him by the waist, and hoist him over my shoulder.

“What the fuck, Nik?” he shouts and instinctively latches on to my hips to keep his balance—he shouldn’t worry, there’s no way I’m dropping him—while I walk to the living toom. I drop him on the couch and move in before he can try to escape, lying down next to him then pulling him on top of me with my hands locked at his back.

He can’t escape my hold even though he wiggles to try and get away.

“Stop it,” I tell him gently. “Just talk to me. ”

His body goes completely taut, and then seems to dissolve on me. He buries his face in the crook of my neck, and feeling his breaths in the sensitive skin there, I relax my hands and softly stroke his back. I’m going to give him all the time he needs. Although I would hate for him to take longer than the oven...

If he does, then I’ll figure something out.

“What happens now?” He whispers the question so quietly that if it weren’t for the fact he was talking right by my ear, I wouldn’t have heard him.

I understand that he’s not asking about having dinner or when we need to go to sleep so we’re well rested for our early practice tomorrow.

I release a breath because what I want to say will put me in a very difficult position if he doesn’t... if he can’t... Fuck.

I close my eyes tightly and breathe, telling myself I need to tell him the truth, put it all out there, be— ew —vulnerable.

But before I can, Charlie leans up.

Quick as a flash, I imprison him with my arms around him again, and I know he’s well and truly trapped when he groans a bit.

I don’t open my eyes, though. I... can’t.

Fucking feelings. They’re the worst.

“Nikolay,” he says, voice strained. “I’m just asking, because if we keep doing what we just did then shit’s gonna get complicated with the team. ”

“Oh.” The relief is pretty awesome, I have to admit.

Maybe feelings don’t suck as much. At least not when they’re reciprocated.

I open my eyes and loosen my hold on him.

“Yeah, oh .” He mocks me with an eye roll and then flops down to the non-existent space between me and the backrest of the couch. “We just got our places on the team back and now we’re having sex?”

Every word is louder than the last, and though I’m trying to keep my cool so at least one of us has some semblance of rationality left, I’m not too successful at it. Especially when he just keeps going.

“What if our teammates find out? What if Laney does?” he cries.

I can actually feel all the blood drain from my face as I whisper, “What if Gab does?”

My stomach chooses that moment to let out a mighty roar, and the oven beeps just after.

Charlie grumbles something I can’t make out and climbs out of his spot to go back to the kitchen. I think I hear something about a caveman, though. It makes me chuckle. I’ve never been that type, but then again, I’ve never wanted anyone like I want Charlie.

With that in mind, I hurry over to be close to him again.

That’s all I want, I realize.

“You’re always hungry,” Charlie tells me when I walk around him to get plates.

“Well,” I start, back to my usual ways. “When you have someone around who cooks so damn well, you want to eat all the time.”

In response, I get a tiny, barely there smile, and I consider it a win—a big one—so I tell him so.

“I consider that tiny smile a win, sweetheart.” I leave the plates and cutlery where they are and wrap my arms around him—which is where I want to be anyway—and when he turns to me, I give him a lingering kiss.

With that kiss I try to tell him that we’ll figure it out, that everything’s going to work out. Somehow.

“I don’t have the answers to all those questions,” I whisper against his cheek, not letting go of his waist. “One of the only things I do know is that we haven’t even thought of all the questions we should be asking, and that what we just did in your bedroom is something I never thought I’d do until we got benched. It was fucking spectacular, sweetheart.”

It takes him a couple of seconds, but when he tilts his head back and his eyes are on me, I can see he approves of everything I just said.

He twists around and wraps his arms around me too, squeezes tight and rests his head on my shoulder.

“I think you’re the only man who’s not part of my family who I’ve hugged,” he tells me.

“Good,” I say simply.

“Such a caveman,” he says with a laugh and shakes his head as much as he can without lifting it off me .

“We’ll figure it out,” I say, with conviction I’m pulling out of thin air.

“Let’s eat,” he says after another squeeze of his arms.

“Finally,” I groan playfully, and the smile I get from him then has me vowing to myself that I’m going to make him smile more than he ever has in his entire life.