Page 100 of The Fall

Forty-Nine

The hotel hallway is quiet save for the distant sounds of our teammates behind their closed doors, and it’s so easy to slip down to Blair’s room after everyone has settled in for their pre-game naps.

What does he think about, waiting for me? A low murmur from a TV filters through the wall, and I slow down before his door.

My heart kicks up as I raise my hand to knock. My fingers skim the brass numbers; the four stands out as if it’s daring me.

Footsteps draw close on the other side. The lock clicks, hinges whisper, and there he is. “Hey.”

His eyes do that thing where they warm at the edges, the corners crinkling. He’s barefoot, loose jeans hanging low on his hips, a Mutineers T-shirt stretched across his chest.

He moves aside to let me in, and as I pass, his hand ghosts over my lower back.

His room mirrors mine: standard hotel fare with a king bed dominating the space.

His sneakers rest by the closet, his gear against the wall.

A half-empty bottle of Gatorade sits on the bedside table next to his earbuds.

His suit hangs in the closet, ready for the game.

Blair settles against the headboard, and I join him.

“Game tonight,” he says.

“We’re going to crush them.”

He tips his head, chuckling. “You mean you’re going to crush them.”

“You say that like it’s a foregone conclusion.”

“It is.” He nudges my knee, playful. “With you on my line? We’re unstoppable.”

The conversation flows between us like water finding its level.

We talk about the team, about Coach’s pre-game speeches, about how Axel demolished three plates at the buffet this morning before anyone else had finished their first. Blair does an impression of Coach’s gravelly voice that has me stifling laughter against his shoulder. This is us at our simplest.

But then Blair goes quiet. When I glance up, he’s watching me.

The light streaming through the gap in the curtains catches in his eyes, transforming them from their usual deep blue to a brighter blaze, ocean water where the sun hits.

His gaze moves from my eyes to my lips and back again before his knee bumps mine.

“Torey.” His voice is a quiet caress. “What are you thinking about?”

There’s never a different answer: “You.”

He lifts my palm to his lips, kissing each knuckle and faded bruise. This hand has taken cross-checks, blocked slap-shots, and curled around a hundred cold Gatorade bottles, and now he treats it like treasure pulled from deep water. I feel rebuilt under his attention.

His hand moves to my neck, fingers gliding into my hair. “Tell me,” he breathes. “Tell me what you want.”

I close the distance between us and capture his lips in a soft and tender kiss.

Blair sighs into the kiss like he’s been waiting for this as desperately as I have. His lips are softer than they have any right to be after years of split lips and ice burns.

The kiss stays slow, unhurried, each brush of his lips against mine thorough.

We have nowhere else to be but here, wrapped up in each other.

His hair slips through my fingers like silk, and I hold on as if letting go would send me drifting.

Blair tastes like possibility, like every good thing.

The taste of him, bright salt and lime, vital as summer, spreads across my tongue.

His thumb strokes along my jaw, mapping the curve of it while I lose myself in the warm slide of his mouth against mine.

We are two halves of one whole, on the ice and off.

When we finally part, we’re both breathing hard. Blair’s eyes have gone dark, pupils blown wide, and mine must mirror his.

“Blair…”

A blush paints the high arcs of his cheekbones. “Every time,” he breathes. “Every single time, you rock my entire world.” He’s so close his lips move over mine as his words spill out.

This love is a fire in my veins. He holds my heart so completely that sometimes I forget where I end and he begins.

Our mouths meet again, and everything else—hockey, time, existence itself—recedes.

His fingers knot deeper in my hair, dragging my mouth harder against his.

The mattress dips and groans as he pushes me flat, my shoulders hitting sheets that smell like hotel starch and him.

My hands scramble under his shirt, finding the sweat-damp heat of his back, the hard ridges of muscle shifting as he moves over me.

Heat gathers low in my belly, building until my skin feels too tight.

I bite his bottom lip, and he groans into my mouth. His forearms brace on either side of my head, caging me in, and when our hips slot together, he’s hard against me through too many layers of fabric. I arch up shamelessly, grinding against the line of his cock trapped in his jeans.

His mouth leaves mine, teeth scraping down my throat and painting a path down my skin as he pushes under my shirt.

“So beautiful.” His lips shape the words against me in a moan.

I yank at his shirt, dragging it up. He lifts his arms, and I pull it off. He does the same, and then we’re skin-to-skin, kissing again, desperately, devouring each other.

His palms glide down my chest, my stomach, until he seizes my hips as his mouth lands on my sternum. His tongue traces the groove between my pecs and down the tense plane of my abdomen. He licks into my navel, and my abs jerk.

“Tell me what you need.”

“I need…” I swallow. “I need you.”

His eyes flare, molten-blue fire. He surges up, his mouth claiming mine in a kiss that scorches through me. “You have me,” he vows. “All of me, always.”

His fingers hook into my waistband; the button pops.

He drags my zipper down, teeth catching briefly on my cotton-covered cock.

Cool air hits my overheated skin as he peels both denim and briefs down my thighs.

He leans down, dropping kisses to the sharp cut of my hip, the sensitive skin where thigh meets groin.

His breath ghosts over my cock, and my hips lift off the bed.

“Blair, please…”

The first flick of his tongue on my cock shoots a shockwave through me. Heat races from my toes to my scalp as he takes me in, the wet warmth of his mouth surrounding me in one smooth glide.

One of his hands braces against my hip, holding me down as I thrash.

The other strokes my cock where his lips don’t reach, twisting in time with his sucks.

His tongue does something devastating to the sensitive bundle of nerves under the head, and my whole body seizes.

I’m coming apart at the seams, reduced to pure sensation.

His name spills from my lips in broken syllables.

When he hollows his cheeks and sucks hard while his hand twists just right, my ankles lock around his shoulders, trying to pull him impossibly closer.

I gasp, hands tearing at the sheets as he takes me deeper. He is relentless, and I’m a mess, lost to the perfection of him. Christ. My hands fist in his hair as the heat of his mouth, the scrape of his teeth, the rhythm?—

“Blair,” I gasp, voice wrecked. “Please, please…”

He doubles down, taking me so deep his throat works around me.

His free hand slides between my legs to cup my balls, rolling them gently, and that’s it—I’m done.

My orgasm rips through me, and my back arches completely off the bed, every muscle locked tight as I spill down his throat in waves that seem endless.

He takes everything I give him, lapping at me as I twitch and gasp through the aftershocks.

Then he crawls up my body, his grin wicked, his lips swollen, and he kisses me slowly, letting me taste myself on his tongue. “Back with me?”

I surge up and flip us in one smooth motion. He lands on his back with a surprised laugh that I swallow with my mouth. I kiss him, chasing every drop of me from his mouth before charting my own path down his body.

His skin tastes like summer. I suck a bruise into the muscle of his pec, over his left nipple.

By the time I reach where he really wants me, he’s writhing, and from the waistband of his jeans, my gaze travels up to his. He’s watching me with eyes gone black, chest heaving, bottom lip caught between his teeth. I smile slowly, then pop the button of his jeans with my teeth.

I drag his zipper down. His cock springs free; he’d gone commando.

He’s gorgeous, flushed from chest to cock, precome beading at the tip.

His cock strains against his stomach, and I breathe over the slick head, watching him squirm, watching his abs clench.

He whimpers, hips lifting off the sheets. I shove them back down.

“Torey,” he breathes.

I hold his hips down firmly and finally, finally wrap my hand around him. He’s velvet-soft skin over iron hardness, hot enough to burn. I lick the bead of precome from his tip, savoring the salt-bitter tang, and his whole body tenses.

I take him into my mouth inch by inch. He’s thick enough to stretch my lips, long enough that I have to concentrate to take him all the way.

But the sounds he makes—desperate, wrecked, completely undone—make it worth it.

I hollow my cheeks and suck hard as I pull back, tongue swirling before sinking down again.

He fucks my mouth with shallow thrusts and chants my name.

I lose myself in the taste and feel of him, the way his hips rock up short and sharp, the way he moans my name as he tugs my hair.

When Blair unravels, it’s art. I know the signs—the hitch in his breath, the tightening in his balls. He’s close. I take him to the root and focus on just the head, my tongue working the slit until his thighs shake.

“Fuck, Torey, I’m—I can’t?—”

I take him as deep as I can, and he comes with a shout that probably carries through the wall. His release floods my mouth, pulse after pulse that I swallow greedily, working him through it until he curls around me with a whimper.

When I finally release him and crawl back up his body, he looks devastated in the best way. Hair wild, lips bitten red, a flush painting his chest.

We lie tangled in the aftermath, my head on his chest, his lips dropping lazy kisses to my hair.

“God, Torey,” he whispers.

I turn my face into his chest, breathing in, and his arm wraps tighter around me, pulling me against his side. His breathing slows, deepens.

How is it possible for everything inside me to go quiet all at once? For every jagged edge to smooth out under the hush of his heartbeat and the heat of his skin?

The bed creaks as he shifts, but he doesn’t let me go. His thumb drifts along my jaw, gentle and aimless, and I close my eyes. The world goes dark and soft.

Let everything else fall away except for Blair’s heartbeat, steady beneath my ear.