Page 31 of Empty Net
I kiss him again so I do not have to answer belief with anything. He takes the kiss and gives it back with interest. Thereis nothing hesitant in him now except the restraint he keeps for me, and the restraint is a kind of strength I can feel under my hands.
We make it to the bedroom without discussing it.
The bed is made. Of course it is. Gray comforter, two pillows, phone charger wound neatly on the nightstand. Caleb's life in right angles. I put my hand on his chest and push him back onto it, and the right angles break.
He looks up at me.
I look at his mouth. His throat. The open shirt twisted beneath him. Anywhere but his eyes.
The room narrows. Clothes come off in pieces, not gracefully. My shirt catches at one shoulder and Caleb laughs once against my mouth before the sound turns into a breath when I get my hand under his waistband. His body answers mine immediately. Heat. Pressure. The shock of him hard against my palm, real enough to strip the last useful thought out of my head.
He says my name again, but this time he does not make it a question.
I push my mouth to his throat so I do not have to answer. His pulse is fast there. Faster when my hand moves. Faster when I find the rhythm that makes his hips lift off the bed and his carefulness break into something rougher, more honest.
"Nolan," he says, and this time there is warning in it. Not stop. The other kind.
I drag my mouth back to his. He kisses me hard enough to bruise. Good. Better. A mark is easier to understand than mercy.
Caleb asks before he touches me in ways that matter. Not with a speech. With his hand paused at my hip, his mouth against mine, the question in the stillness. I answer with yes, or a nod, or by putting his hand where I want it. He gets the drawer open without looking away from me. Condom. Lube. Practical things, shockingly intimate in his careful hands.
The wanting is not the hard part. The wanting is easy, immediate, almost violent in its clarity.
The hard part is his face.
He wants to see me. I can feel it in the way he keeps giving me chances to lift my head. In the way his hand settles against my jaw once and does not turn me, just rests there. An invitation. No force.
I cannot take it.
I turn my mouth to his wrist instead. Kiss there. Safer. Skin over pulse. Not eyes.
His breath catches. His hand opens against my cheek and then falls away.
The mercy again.
When we finally move together, it is not quiet, but it is controlled. My control. His. The bed beneath us, the wall near my shoulder, the slick heat between us, his hands on my back and then my hips and then, careful again, bracing instead of grasping when the right side tightens.
He checks once. I say yes before he can finish the question. The yes comes out rough, almost angry, because needing the question and wanting him past it are both true. He listens anyway. Slows when my breath catches wrong. Moves when I pull him closer. The first hard slide of us together empties my head so completely that for one second I almost look at him by accident.
I hate the hip for entering. I hate my body for having conditions. Caleb does not mention it. He adjusts. He gives me leverage without making it charity. He makes room for the failing part of me and does not look at it like failure.
I almost look at him then.
Almost.
Instead I bury my face against his neck and let the body finish what the rest of me cannot survive naming. Heat crests.Breath breaks. The rhythm goes jagged, then inevitable. His hands tighten on my back. Mine grip the sheet beside his shoulder hard enough to make my knuckles ache. He comes apart under me with my name caught in his mouth, and the sound goes straight through every locked room I have left.
For a few seconds, there is no file. No glass. No depth chart. No trade deadline. No fourteen seasons of silence.
There is only his body under mine and the sound he makes when he comes apart and the terrible, perfect relief of being wanted by someone who knows my name.
After, the room is too quiet.
This is the part I know less well.
The anonymous rooms had procedure. Bathroom. Clothes. Door. Sometimes a nod. Sometimes a text never answered. The leaving was built into the arrangement before anyone touched anyone. Nobody misunderstood.
Caleb's apartment has no procedure for this.
