Page 53 of About to Fall

I held his gaze and undid the first button.

He didn't stop me.

Second button. Third. My knuckles grazing warm skin as I worked downward and each inch of contact produced another one of those bitten off sounds—not quite a gasp, not quite a moan, something in between that he was clearly trying to suppress and failing. The shirt fell open and I spread my hands flat against his chest and felt his heart hammering under my palms, rapid and unsteady.

“Nicky,” I said. Low. Against his mouth.

His eyes slid closed. His hands were still in my shirt but looser now, less angry, more—

“Don't talk,” he whispered. “If you talk, I'll start thinking and if I start thinking, I'll stop.”

So I didn't talk.

I kissed him again—slower this time, deeper, with intent—and felt him soften against me in increments. The tension leaving his body the way it left him on the ice during an Ina Bauer, that controlled surrender that was somehow more devastating than any resistance.

I'd been trying to crack him open for weeks. Poking, provoking, testing every edge of his composure with everything I had.

But this—his hands sliding up my chest, his mouth opening under mine, the quiet sound he made when my thumb traced the line of his collarbone—this wasn't cracking.

This was him choosing to let me in.

Different thing entirely.

I walked him backward until his knees hit the edge of the bed and then we were tumbling onto the mattress. The impact knocked his glasses sideways on his face and I reached down to take them off. Carefully—more carefully than I'd done anything in the last ten minutes—and set them on the nightstand.

Without them he looked younger. Softer. More like the boy I'd seen at Juniors. And for a second, I was sixteen again, standing at the boards in Mississauga, watching a kid with golden hair step onto the ice and feeling something hot and complicated twist in my chest.

He'd been beautiful then. Untouchable. A prince in a fairy tale I wasn't part of.

He was beautiful now. Flushed and breathing hard beneath me, hair wrecked against the white sheets, looking up at me with those blue eyes that had nothing left to hide behind. Not untouchable anymore. Just a person. Just Nicky.

And somehow that was so much worse. Because a beautiful stranger you could admire from a distance. A beautiful person lying underneath you, trusting you with the version of themselves they never showed anyone—that was the kind of thing that ruined you.

He cleared his throat, voice raspy as he said firmly, “This doesn't change anything.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it.” His jaw set in that way I'd been studying for weeks. Another tell. The sign that he was feeling something enormous and trying to contain it through sheer force of will. “I still can't stand you.”

“That's fine.” I lowered my mouth to the hinge of his jaw, pressed my lips just below his ear, felt his pulse hammering against my mouth. “I'm a big fan of hate fucking.”

His whole body went rigid beneath me.

“In fact—” I kissed down the line of his throat, slow, letting my lip rings drag against his skin, savouring the shudder it produced—”if you want to use me to piss off your ex, I'm fully on board. Consider it a public service.”

“You are such an—”

“Did you see his face at dinner? The man wanted to gut me with his chopsticks.” I nipped at his collarbone. “Imagine what he'd do if he knew I was—”

“Adrian.” His hand came up and gripped my jaw—hard, fingers pressing into my cheeks, forcing me to look at him. His eyes were blazing. Not the controlled flicker I'd been pulling out of him in increments. “Please. Shut. Up.”

“Make me.”

Something snapped behind his eyes.

He pulled my face down to his and kissed me with a ferocity that had nothing to do with sweetness and everything to do with a person who'd been told his entire life to be quiet and gracious finally deciding to take something with both hands and not apologize for it.

His teeth caught my lower lip. I made a sound—low and rough—and he swallowed it and kissed me harder. His hands were in my hair, pulling, not gently, and his hips shifted beneath me in a way that made my vision go white.