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Zach sighed. “Don’t freak out. But I had like an enormous fucking crush on you before, when I was in college. I wouldn’t have done a thing about it. Was more embarrassed about it than anything else, if I was being honest, but I don’t want to pretend. Not anymore.”

Gavin deliberately didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the past, for obvious reasons.

But he still cast his mind back now, remembering how Zach had been during the two years he’d coached him in college.

Zach, an eager and sweet eighteen-year-old puppy of a guy, who worked hard, who never told Gavin that he couldn’t do something.

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 how well Zach 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 was Zach , 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 had definitely liked 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.

“Goddamn it,” Zach hissed as Gavin inched closer, sticking his tongue out. “This is way too hot.”

“Do you want to stop?” Gavin asked quietly. He didn’t want to stop. It was amazing how much this was doing it for him, too. His whole body felt lit up, with just the weight of Zach’s hands on his shoulders as Zach leaned forward, briefly touching his dick to Gavin’s outstretched tongue.

“Hell no,” Zach said, exhaling hard as he finished closing the distance between them. “But if you want to stop, all you have to do is say the word.”

Gavin nodded, brain fizzing as Zach slid his cock an inch at a time into his mouth.

He’d thought about this occasionally, back when he’d been married.

He’d always liked something in his mouth.

Noelle had teased him about his oral fixation, and how much she’d enjoyed that.

But it felt so different. Then after Michigan, he’d thought about this more than he should’ve.

Fantasized about it, even, as he touched himself at night.

How it would feel for Gavin. If he’d enjoy having a cock in his mouth. If he could do a good enough job for Zach to enjoy it.

Zach looked like he was enjoying it now, face creased with pleasure, bottom lip bitten between his white teeth, aborted groans barely making it out of his mouth as Gavin sucked him deeper.

There was a weight and a purpose to this that he discovered very quickly that he loved. A power, too. He’d heard people talk, of course, of the power you could find on your knees, but he’d never imagined he’d experience it.

Or that it would feel so fucking amazing.

He wasn’t doing anything particularly special.

Just suction and relishing the weight of Zach’s cock in his mouth, trying to take him in deeper.

He had a gag reflex so he imagined he couldn’t go much farther, but Zach was shuddering above him, hands a solid weight on his shoulders, grounding and reassuring him.

Then one of Zach’s hands slipped up and cradled his head, and that blew the top of his skull right off.

Gavin pulled off for a second, groaning. “That, that , please,” he begged.

Zach blinked slowly, like this whole thing had pulled him right under, until he was drowning with it.

“This?” he asked, tangling his fingers more insistently into Gavin’s hair.

Gavin nodded, leaning forward, tongue out, and letting Zach’s hand on his head guide him right back where he was meant to be.

He thought Zach mumbled something about going to hell, but how could this be hell, when it felt so goddamn good?

When Gavin felt like he was going to come just from Zach’s cock in his mouth and the pleasurable bite of pain on his scalp from Zach holding his hair just a little too tight ?

But Zach was into it, just as into it as Gavin was, if the way his cock was twitching and blurting precome was any indication. It probably wasn’t the world’s best blowjob, but he was trying, and that clearly meant something to Zach, who kept pushing him harder and faster.

Then he accidentally went a bit too deep, and Gavin choked.

He expected panic, but all he felt was satisfaction, and even as Zach backed himself out, murmuring sweet apologies, he wanted Zach to do it again. And again. Until Zach came down his throat.

It was unclear if Zach would allow him to touch himself, to give his cock a taste of the pleasure he was giving to Zach.

He didn’t doubt Zach would rock his world after, but his cock was aching so badly, his whole body burning and shaking with how aroused he was, and so he took a chance and took a palm and just pressed down.

Anything to relieve the nearly unbearable pressure.

Zach swore and said, “God, yes, touch yourself. Make yourself come as you’re sucking me.”

It was total fucking end game after that. Gavin sucked harder, pawing at himself, already feeling his orgasm sizzling in his balls, and a second later, Zach was pulling back, even as Gavin tried to keep him close.

But Zach batted him away, but it was a near enough thing that a stripe of come landed on his tongue, then the rest hit his face, hot and insistent.

“Oh God,” Zach groaned, and that was all it took for Gavin’s orgasm to hit him hard and strong, leaving him trembling and gasping as he shot into his fist .

He slumped down on the ground and tried to catch his breath.

Zach leaned in and used a finger to swipe through the stripes of come on Gavin’s face, half-cleaning him up and half-rubbing it in.

“So good like this,” Zach murmured. “So gorgeous. So perfect.”

“Thought you didn’t care if I was perfect,” Gavin gasped.

“Turns out you are, anyway.” Zach’s touch was reverent. A second later, Gavin was sort of, mostly clean, and Zach tugged him back onto the bed.

They didn’t move for a long time after that, and that was perfect, too.