Page 55 of Rookie Rules

Rowan's eyes opened.

Luca waited.

The waiting changed something. Rowan was accustomed to being obeyed before he had to reveal the need beneath an instruction. On the ice, Luca challenged him for sport. Here, he refused to guess because guessing could become another place for Rowan to hide.

Rowan touched Luca's mouth with his thumb.

"Bedroom," he said.

A pause long enough to remain a choice.

"Yes," Luca answered.

They made it halfway down the hall before Rowan pulled Luca back into another kiss.

The bedroom was dim, lit by the city beyond uncovered windows. Luca stopped beside the bed and touched the first button of Rowan's shirt.

"Tell me if you want me to stop."

"I know how consent works."

"I know. I want you to know I do too."

Something in Rowan's face eased. Not much. Enough.

"Don't stop," he said.

Luca opened the shirt slowly.

Rowan was not fragile. He was strong through the chest and shoulders, his body marked by years of contact: pale scars, old bruising, the accumulated history of professional ice. Luca's gaze paused near the right side where heat and careful movement had already taught him to look.

He did not ask whether it hurt. Not tonight. Rowan would hear diagnosis in the question and close around it.

Luca pressed a kiss above the old scar at his ribs instead.

Rowan's hand settled in his hair.

"You notice too much," Rowan said.

"Occupational hazard."

"Your occupation is scoring."

"I contain multitudes."

The humor loosened the next breath between them without breaking it. Rowan drew Luca up and kissed him again.

Clothes reached the floor in stages. Every new touch carried a question answered by movement, a hand guiding rather than enduring. Rowan's control did not disappear when he let Luca direct the pace. It changed shape. A palm at Luca's hip. A quiet correction. Luca listening because Rowan had asked, not because authority followed him into this room.

When Luca pressed him back onto the mattress, Rowan went because he chose to.

The yielding was not surrender of authority. Rowan caught Luca by the hip and positioned him closer. Told him, quietly, what he wanted. Luca listened.

That was the intimacy of it. Not simply skin or heat. Rowan asking directly after days of translating every need into instruction. Rowan trusting Luca with an answer that could not be made professional later.

Luca gave him what he asked for.

Afterward, the city continued beyond the glass as if nothing had happened. A bus sighed at the curb below. Light moved across the ceiling when a car turned into the next street.