Page 108 of Breaking the Ice

Who’d always gazed at Gavin like he was someone worth following.

“I can see that, actually,” he said, chuckling under his breath.

“Noelle . . .” Zach hesitated, like he suddenly wasn’t sure he if should say her name or not, “she knew. She told me I was cute. Ruffled my hair about it more than once.”

Gavin froze. She’d never mentioned it to him, and even though she hadn’t, he knew her silence hadn’t been the disapproving sort. No, she’d probably been hoping not to embarrass Zach even more than he already was.

Still, something unwound inside Gavin. More of his guilt losing its tenacious grip on his heart. “Yeah, sounds like something she’d do.”

Zach’s whole face relaxed. “You’re not upset?”

“No. Never. It’s . . .” Gavin tried to pinpoint exactly how he felt about Zach’s youthful crush. “It’s sweet.”

“I thought it had faded, honestly, then I went to Michigan, and it was like we were meeting for the first time, even though we weren’t. Like our relationship was fundamentally different.”

“You’d grown up,” Gavin said, thinking but not saying howwellZach had grown up, and how he’d noticed from the first moment he’d spotted him. The attraction that had blossomed so naturally.

“And you’d changed. I didn’t realize it at first, or I dismissed it ’cause I thought you wouldn’t take the job, but then you did, and it was obvious how good this could be, between us.”

It was hard to admit, even though it shouldn’t have been. “I saw it too, immediately. I almost didn’t take the job, because I thought I couldn’t keep my hands off you.”

Zach’s squawk of outrage was adorable. “Are you freaking kidding me?”

Gavin laughed. “No.”

“Oh my God, and here I was freaking out when you showed up because you kept talking about how you’d been my coach.” Zach groaned under his breath. “Hayes was right, you kept trying to put me back into that box.”

“And it never worked,” Gavin added. “No matter what I tried.”

Zach made a satisfied noise as he tugged Gavin closer. Gavin was leaning half on Zach’s chest now, and it made perfect sense to rise up and kiss him again.

It only took a minute or two of making out for Gavin to end up in Zach’s lap, naked skin pressed to naked skin, grinding their increasingly interested cocks together.

“Fuck, you’re so hot like this,” Zach groaned, his mouth gliding down Gavin’s neck.

Personally, Gavin thought that wasZach, with his messed-up hair, half sticking straight up, and the beard burn on his neck and his red swollen lips.

If he’d known it could be like this, could feel this fucking good to touch and be touched again, he wasn’t sure he ever could have resisted it.

“Though maybe nothing will ever be as hot as you walking into my apartment and going straight to your knees,” Zach mumbled against Gavin’s neck.

“Yeah, you liked that?”

Gavin was out of practice with sex in general and inexperienced with men, specifically, but even he’d noticed that Zach haddefinitelyliked it.

It had been sort of tough to miss, considering what had been right at his eye level.

Zach pulled back and shot him a knowing look. “I keep telling myself the innocent look isn’t doing it for me, but it totally is.”

“Noted,” Gavin said, laughing. He leaned in and kissed Zach firmly, then realized what he wanted. What he should have asked for, before. “Would you . . .uh . . .be interested in doing that again?”

Zach’s eyes widened. “Yeah?”

“I want that.” Gavin decided that if they were doing this, if they were going there, he was going to need to use his words. “I want to get on my knees for you and suck your cock.”

Not just because the words were important and necessary, but because of how they worked Zach up so easy.

Zach’s jaw dropped. And a second later, he was hustling them both off the bed, his cock fully hard now, Gavin getting a front seat view of it as Zach gently pushed him down to his knees at the side of the bed.