Page 113 of Two for Charging

“So you went home to Italy before the draft.”

Luca nodded. “My agent thought I should stick it out, but I had finished high school, and my parents told me to come home.”

“Was it any better in Italy?”

Rolling onto his back, Luca sighed at the ceiling. “I don’t know. Maybe it would have been, but I was not ready to give anyone a chance. I thought, better to go home and get a degree while I play since there is probably no future in hockey anyway, and I treated my team like people I would not see again.”

“Can’t believe I’m dating a college boy,” Chris teased. “Will your parents be disappointed I’m so dumb?”

Luca slapped his chest hard enough to sting. “You are not dumb.”

“Uh-huh, sure. But then you went in the second round of the draft, and you still decided to stay in Italy?”

Luca shrugged, loose and easy. “I thought I had better finish the degree I started. There was no way I would make the NHL out of training camp.”

“AHL pays well too.”

“Yes. But I think it is good I went home. If I had been here right after, I would have been so angry and so…how do you say…self-righteous? I would not have been good for the team. I needed to grow up.”

Chris made a face. “The guys on the Winnipeg Windmills needed to grow the fuck up.”

“Well, yes. But so did I. I thought I liked who I was, you know, before this year. I thought other hockey players might not respect my sexuality, but I knew, and that made me superior.” Luca smiled, but it looked a little sad. “But I was angry and ashamed of myself for hiding, and I couldn’t see it yet.”

The silent implication that he could see it now, that he didn’t feel the same way because of Chris, warmed Chris from the tips of his toes to the tops of his ears. “I wish you’d been drafted to Montreal in Juniors. Then we would have met earlier.”

Luca rolled over again, straight into Chris, nestling against him. “I don’t think I would have been ready for you then.”

“I would have waited.”

Aghast, Luca stared at him. “You cannot say these things.”

“Why not?”

“I…” Luca opened his mouth and then closed it again, at a loss for words. “You…”

“Does it make you feel things again?” Chris tickled down Luca’s sides, making him squirm.

“Yes, damn it.” Luca poked at Chris. “It’s too early for emotions.”

Instead of pointing out Luca was the one who had started a drawn-out discussion of his tragic past, Chris kissed him. Then, he said, “It’s noon.”

“Hm.” Luca kissed Chris again, a little longer. “Are you hungry?”

Chris took stock. They’d gotten breakfast on the plane, and the idea of leaving the bedroom wasn’t appealing. “Not really. You?”

In one smooth move, Luca pushed Chris over and climbed onto his hips. “Not at all. How are you feeling?”

“Um. Good?”

“I mean,” Luca said, kissing down the side of Chris’s neck, “are you interested in me riding your cock?”

“Right now?”

“Well, I would need some stretching first. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but it is rather large.”

“You might have said something.”

Luca groped behind himself to give Chris’s cock a squeeze. “So? Are you in the mood? Or rather not?”