Page 34 of Victory Lap

“Tikh.”

“Quiet.” I say it low, next to his ear. “Today I did the listening. Tonight you do it. Here is the schedule.”

His whole body goes still under my hand. He loves a schedule. He has never once followed one, but he loves knowing it exists.

“First,” I tell him, in the voice I use for line changes, “I am going to suck your cock until you forget the English word for please. You will not come. You will want to. You will beg. The answer will be no.” His breath goes ragged against my palm. “Second. My fingers, with the lube, until you are open and swearing at me and pushing back on my hand like it insulted your family. Third. I am going to fuck you on your back in our bed, slow, until you beg again, and then exactly as hard as you beg for, for as long as I decide. Fourth. You will come with my hand on your throat and my name in your mouth, and I will tell you which name when we get there.” I let go of his throat. Sit back. Look at him. “Questions?”

His cock jumps against his stomach at nothing. At words. I have not touched it, and I tell him so, because accuracy matters.

“One question,” he says, hoarse. “Can the schedule start now?”

Item one. I go down on him without preamble, all the way, and he shouts something in French that no priest in Louisiana would recognize, and his hand flies to my hair and grips hard, and I let him have that. He needs one thing to hold. I am the thing. I suck him slow and deep and merciless, his cock heavy on my tongue, salt and clean skin and the sounds pouring out of him getting less like language by the minute. When his thighs start to shake and his hips start to chase, I pull off him with deliberate slowness and he says please four times in a row.

“There it is,” I tell him. “You remembered the English after all.”

“I hate the schedule.”

“You love the schedule.”

“I love the schedule,” he agrees, wrecked, and pulls me up into a kiss that tastes like himself.

Item two. The lube is in the drawer. I slick my fingers and open him up the way I do everything, patiently and to specification, one finger and then two, curling until I find the spot that makes his back come off the bed, and then avoiding it, and then finding it again, until he is swearing at me in two languages and grinding down onto my hand with zero shame and total honesty.

“Tikhon. Cher. More.”

“When I decide.”

“You are a war criminal.”

“You are begging beautifully. Continue.” Bastian Fontenot has never once been embarrassed about wanting. It is the bravest thing about him. I add a third finger and tell him how he looks, in detail, in the precise voice, because nothing takes this man apart faster than hearing exactly what I see.

“Tikh.” He has stopped using his radio voice. This one is raw and low and only mine. “Tishka, cher, please, item three, I am begging you, this is me begging now.”

“I know what you need.” I slick myself with the lube, line up, and hold his jaw so he is looking at me. “Say it anyway.”

“Fuck me. Please. Yours. Whatever order you want the words in.”

That order is acceptable.

I push into him slowly, one long unhurried press, all the way, and hold there, seated deep. “Good?” I ask, because at this point I ask every time.

“Move. Please. Tishka. Move.”

I hold there one second longer, seated deep, his body hot and tight around my cock and his mouth open on a sound with no consonants in it. And I watch it happen. The thing I will never say out loud in English, because English is for the team and the cameras. All the tracks. All the tabs. The five lanes of him, the pinball architecture, the beautiful loud machine that runs this man day and night, and it goes quiet around me one system at a time. His eyes come back to mine and stay. Nothing left running but his breath and his heartbeat, which I can feel from the inside.

Item three. I fuck him the way the day deserves. Slow first, long deep strokes that drag a groan out of him on every push, until he begs, and he begs beautifully, filthy and specific and grinning while he does it. Then hard, my hand back at his throat, his heels in my back, his cock sliding slick between our stomachs, the headboard of the bed he moved into keeping time against the wall. He is loud. He is always loud. And under the loud, he starts murmuring the Russian, the little fragments he has been stealing from me all year, words I say to the cats when I think no one is listening. Kotik. Ya zdes. Wrong contexts. Terrible grammar. It takes me apart every single time, my language coming back to me out of his mouth, filthy and homesick and mine, and my rhythm stops being controlled.

“Tishka.” He gets his hand in my hair. “Tishka, look at me, I’m…”

“Item four,” I manage, and tighten my hand on his throat, and give him the name. “Come for me, Tian.”

He comes between us on the second stroke, untouched, his whole body pulling tight around my cock, and the sight of him, wrecked and grinning and mine, in our bed, takes me over the edge half a breath behind him. I come inside him. Tian, and then Tian again, in the voice I use for nothing else on this earth.

“Ya zdes,” I tell him, after, still inside him. I’m here. He does not need the translation. He learned this one from the cats. The little traitor. He smiles against my skin, and I hold his jaw and tell him he is good, he is so good.

In the dark, before I move, I tell him the thing I have been holding.

“My mother says hello to you.”