Page 107 of Two for Roughing

Being with Damir, committing to Damir, meant committing to more secrecy. It meant a threat to Damir’s career and public image should they get caught. But more than that, it meant actual physical danger to his life and well-being. To his family’s lives and well-beings. He’d gotten death threats for being Muslim. Kilian wasn’t naïve enough to think he wouldn’t get more of the same for being queer.

In the elevator up to their floor, he had to break the silence. “Damir—”

Damir placed a finger on his lips. “Not now,” he said.

“But—”

“Shh. Can we…can we enjoy tonight before we have to talk about the rest?”

Kilian softened. No way was he strong enough to turn down the offer, not when he knew Damir felt the same way for him. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Yeah, we can do that.”

“Good. Because I was thinking…well…”

“You were thinking?” Kilian echoed eagerly, wanting to know everything Damir was thinking at all times, especially about sex. Was it time for whatever checklist of kinky shit Damir wanted to go through with him? The concept sounded too clinical for Kilian’s taste, but the thought of Damir reading aloud a bunch of depraved things he wanted to do to Kilian did appeal.

The elevator doors slid open, and Damir fell silent.

Someday, Kilian would probably get tired of the way all hotels looked the same past the lobby—carpet-lined corridors and endless doors and ice machines whirring away in the stuffy silence. When he played for San Francisco, he enjoyed getting away from his shitty apartment. Living with Damir, who cooked and cleaned and loved his home, Kilian could already tell the sterility of hotel rooms and the repetitive taste of hotel food would get to him sooner rather than later.

Damir led them to his room. Inside, his suitcase lay open on the floor, clothing thrown around inside it as though he’d been rooting for the right thing to wear.

It was so unlike Damir it made Kilian smile.

“What?”

“Nothing. I just thought you’d be one of those guys who puts all their clothes in the closet in every hotel stay, you know?”

Damir kicked the suitcase aside slightly, clearing more floor space. “I’m not very fastidious on the road,” he admitted.

“Makes sense you’d need a break sometimes.”

“Yes.”

Drawing to a halt beside the bed, Damir turned to look at Kilian. His nervous energy had returned, the same restlessness that had caused his knee to bounce in the cab.

“Do you not want—”

“I want you to fuck me.”

Kilian’s brain blanked. Full blue screen of death, no thoughts, head empty, nothing.

Damir’s eyes remained firmly fixed on the wall beside Kilian’s head as he continued. “You’ve given me a lot of firsts, you said, and I didn’t know to appreciate it at the time. But I can give you one of mine.”

Kilian hadn’t finished processing the notion of Damir spread out on the bed…underneath him? Bent over for him? It seemed incongruous, but in a hot way—the same way Kilian thought it was hot to wear lace panties. Not something he expected to see, but when he did…

Then Damir’s words snagged in his mind, and he frowned. “Wait, no. You don’t owe me anything, Damir. I liked all of our…everything. I’m not going to do something you don’t want so you can atone for it or some shit.”

“I’m saying it all wrong.” Damir ran a hand through his hair, forcing it into disarray. He had such thick, dark hair. Kilian wanted to sit on the couch with Damir’s head in his lap and stroke it over and over while they watched the stupid darts championship. “You said…you said sometimes you want to take care of me too—”

“Yes.” The word fell out of Kilian’s lips so fast he interrupted the end of Damir’s sentence.

Finally, Damir met his gaze head-on. “So, tonight can be the first ‘sometimes.’”

Kilian released a long breath. “Okay.”

With a plan agreed on, Kilian found he didn’t know how to progress to action. He remained still, staring at Damir for a long moment.

“Would you come here?”