Page 75 of About to Fall

“Good.” I sat back, pulling my shirt over my head in one motion. His eyes went dark, tracking down my chest, and the naked hunger in his expression made something hot coil tight low in my stomach. “Because I have plans.”

“Plans,” he repeated, voice strained. “What kind of plans?”

I leaned down, mouth brushing his ear. “The kind where I’m inside you.”

His whole body went rigid. I felt the breath punch out of him—the stutter in his chest, his fingers digging into my hips hard enough to leave marks.

“Nicky.” His voice was wrecked. “You want to—”

“I want to top you.” I said it plainly, the way I’d never said anything in my life. No hedging. No politeness. Just the truth, delivered against the shell of his ear. “I’ve been thinking about it since Osaka.”

He groaned.

“Are you sure?” His hands were shaking where they gripped me.

“I'm sure.” I pulled back enough to meet his eyes. “Unless you don't want—”

“I want.” He said it fast, almost tripping over the words. “I very much want. Should we—should we talk about it first?”

“About what?”

“The—what this is. The situation. Whatever we're—” He gestured vaguely between us with one hand, which was difficult given that I was sitting on him. “This.”

“Right this second?” I punctuated the question with a slow, deliberate grind that made his head fall back against the pillow and his eyes flutter shut.

“I mean—fuck—it can wait.” His hands tightened on my hips, pulling me harder against him. “I'm not going to last very long anyway.”

Then he reached up, fisted a hand in my hair, and dragged me down to him.

The kiss was filthy from the first second. No hesitation, no careful testing. Just his mouth opening under mine, hot and demanding, his tongue sliding against mine like he was trying to memorize every part of my mouth.

I braced one hand beside his head. He made a sound into my mouth when I bit his bottom lip—not hard, just enough to make his grip tighten in my hair. We kissed until my head was swimming, all thoughts of taking things slowly abandoned.

“Condoms,” he said against my lips, breath wrecked. “Front pocket of my suitcase.”

I kissed him again because I could. His mouth was swollen and greedy and still chasing mine when I pulled back.

“Nicky, stop teasing me,” he whined.

I laughed—surprised by how easy this felt, how right—and climbed off him to find his giant box of condoms. My hands were shaking when I unzipped the pocket. Not from nerves—from want.

When I came back, he'd stripped off his tank top and was watching me with an expression I'd never seen on him before. Open. Vulnerable. Wanting. No smirk. No bravado. Just Adrian, bare chested and covered in ink and looking at me like I was the only thing in the room that mattered.

“Come here,” he said.

I crawled on top of him, settling between his spread legs. Ran my fingers through his pink hair—freshly touched up for the competition, vibrant under the low hotel lighting—and when I reached his nape, I yanked it back to expose the long line of his throat.

He gasped. Arched into me.

I licked a slow line down his neck, pausing to suck on his Adam's apple, feeling it bob beneath my tongue when he swallowed. Then I traced the script along his collarbone with my mouth—the tattoo I'd been staring at for months, the one that peeked out from his training shirts and his competition costumes, the one I'd traced with my fingers in Osaka in the dark. Fall seven times, get up eight.

This time I traced it with my tongue and the sound he made went straight to my already leaking and aching cock.

“Nicky—”

“Shh.”

I took my time. Teased his nipples until he squirmed, then moved lower—mapping the ridges of his abdomen, dipping my tongue into his navel just to feel him twitch. His breathing had gone ragged, hands fisting in the sheets.