Page 17 of Rookie Mistake
The kiss is all the restraint stripped raw.
His mouth on mine, his hands on my waist, the counter against my lower back and the force of him pushing me into it. This is not the elevator kiss. The elevator kiss was the control failing. This is the control gone. This is Nikolai Sokolov without the architecture, without the management, without the three years of walls, and the without is the most overwhelming physical experience of my life.
I grab at his hair, his shoulders, his back. The grabbing is not graceful. The grabbing is a man who has been waiting for five days (for twenty-two years, if I'm being honest about the timeline) to touch someone he wants and who is now touching with the full commitment of a body that has stopped asking permission.
He hauls me closer. The hauling is the strength of a man who has spent a decade physically dominating other men on ice and who is now applying that physical vocabulary to a different context. The counter presses into my spine and I do not care about the counter because his mouth is on my neck and the sound I make is involuntary and indecent and I file it under "we'll deal with that later."
"Bedroom," I say against his mouth.
He hesitates. The hesitation is one second. The one second is the control's last outpost, the final checkpoint between the kitchen and the hallway and the room at the end of the hallway where the bed is and where the bed means something different from the counter because the counter can be rationalized and the bed cannot.
"Tell me yes," he says, voice wrecked.
"Yes," I say. "And if we need to stop, we stop."
"Yes."
The outpost falls.
He takes my hand. He leads me down the hall. The leading is the permission and the permission is the most intimate thing he has given me because Nikolai Sokolov does not let himself be led. Nikolai stands his ground. The fact that he is walking down a hallway holding my hand, ahead of me, pulling me toward his bedroom, is the fact that rewrites the architecture.
The bedroom. The dark. The bed that is made with the precision of a military inspection because Nikolai's bed is always made because the bed is the control and the control extends to the thread count.
I push him. Not hard. My hands on his chest, pressing backward, and he goes. He goes onto the bed. The going is the giving. The going is a man who has not been given to in three years allowing a twenty-two-year-old to put hands on his chest and push and the pushing produces the falling and the falling is the beginning of the trust.
I pull his shirt over his head.
His body is the body of a man who has spent a decade in professional hockey. Broad through the chest and shoulders. Dark brown skin, smooth across the pectorals, scarred at the ribs (a slash from a skate blade, healed white against the dark), scarred at the left shoulder (surgery, the raised ridge of tissuethat says this body has been opened and repaired). The body is beautiful in the specific way that damaged things are beautiful: the beauty is inseparable from the evidence of what the beauty has survived.
"You're staring," he says.
"I'm appreciating."
"You are staring."
"I'm appreciating loudly. With my eyes."
His mouth does the thing. The fraction. The geological event. The smile that is not a smile, in his bed, while I kneel over him with his shirt in my hand and his chest bare and the dark and the city light through the window turning his skin into a landscape I want to memorize with my hands.
I pull my own shirt off. His eyes move over me. The movement is comprehensive and systematic and entirely unlike the way anyone has ever looked at my body, because the looking is not casual. The looking is the Nikolai looking, the analytical attention that reads shooters and film and faces, applied to my chest, my stomach, the line of muscle above my hip, the light brown skin that is not as dark as his and not as fair as most of the men in the locker room and that is mine, specifically mine, and the looking makes me feel seen in a way that the grin has been preventing for years.
"You are beautiful," he says. The sentence is delivered with the calm of a technical assessment. The calm makes it devastating because the calm is not performance. The calm is accuracy.
I lean down. I kiss the scar at his ribs. His breath catches. The catching is the sound of a body that has been touched at the point of its damage and that did not expect the touching to be gentle. I kiss the scar at his shoulder. His hand comes to the back of my head, fingers in my hair, and the fingers are not gripping. The fingers are resting. The resting is the trust.
We undress each other. The undressing is not coordinated. The undressing is two men whose bodies are athletic and eager and not yet calibrated to each other, and the not-yet is the newness and the newness produces moments that are awkward (his belt buckle, which defeats me for three seconds, my jeans, which are too tight for the angle I'm attempting) and moments that are perfect (his hands finding my hips with the precision he brings to everything, my mouth finding his neck and the sound he produces, which is low and Russian and the most honest syllable he has made in my presence).
The sex is the conversation. The sex is the most honest conversation we have had.
His hands are on my body and his hands say things his mouth has not said. His hands are not controlled. His hands are free. The freedom is the first evidence I have that the fortress has a warm room inside it, and the room has been empty for three years, and it is not empty now.
I am loud. This surprises me. I have been quiet during sex with every other person. The two men, discreet, outside hockey. The women, public, performing. The quiet was the hiding. The hiding was the wall's physical extension: even in bed, the performance continued. I am here but I am not fully here. You are getting the body but not the person.
With Nikolai, the person shows up.
The person is loud and unfiltered and makes sounds that the checkpoint does not approve and that the checkpoint cannot stop because the checkpoint has been demolished by a man whose hands are precise and whose mouth is warm and whose body is heavy and present and real in a way that no body has been real to me before.
"Eli." My name. In his voice. In his accent. During. The name is the crack in the last wall because the name is the personand the person is what the control has been preventing and the control just said my name.
