Page 37 of Man Advantage

Ford didn’t keep quiet. He let every sound out of his chest the second it got there, and it broke Cole’s rhythm twice.

“God.” Cole’s voice was in pieces. “Keep doing that.”

Ford got a hand into Cole’s hair, held on, and made noise for him.

Cole came down onto his forearms, chest to chest, close enough that Ford could feel every breath he took. The angle changed, and Ford’s whole body lit up with it.

“There.” Ford’s hand fisted in the sheet. “Right there. Don’t you dare stop.”

“Not stopping.” Cole’s forehead came down against his. “Look at me.”

Ford looked at him. Cole held it and kept moving and did not look away once. There was a lamp on and nowhere left for either of them to hide.

Then Cole got a hand between them and wrapped it around Ford’s cock, stroking him in time, thumb dragging over the head on the way up.

“I’ve got you,” he said. “Let me hear it.”

Ford came like that. Cole inside him, Cole’s hand on his cock, Cole’s mouth at his jaw. Cole’s name tore out of him, and he let it.

He didn’t say the other words. Some part of him held that line even then.

Cole made it three more strokes. He came with his face in Ford’s neck, buried deep, a sound punched out of him that Ford felt in his own chest. Then he stopped moving entirely and came down onto him, and Ford got both arms around him and held on.

Afterward, Cole got up to get a warm washcloth to clean them both. He turned the lamp off and got back in on the left side.

Ford lay there and waited for the panic to arrive.

It didn’t.

“You changed the sheets,” Cole said into his shoulder.

“Yeah.”

“I watched you carry them down. Thought about that the whole game.”

Ford closed his eyes.

Cole put a leg over him and was asleep four minutes later.

Ford spread a hand flat on Cole’s back and felt it go up and down. He did not sleep for a long time.

New Year’s Eve, they were home from the skate before noon.

Ford came through the door with his legs still humming from the drill. Cole was a step behind him, close enough that Ford felt the cold coming off his coat. He’d been thinking about this afternoon since Deluca blew the last whistle. He was fairly sure Cole had too.

Upstairs he pulled the blinds, stripped to his shorts, and got under the flannel. Cole came in a minute later with two glasses of water, set them on the nightstand, climbed in on the other side, and hooked a cold foot behind Ford’s calf.

“Your feet could be considered cruel and unusual punishment. How did I never realize you have a chronic case of popsicle toes?”

“You’ll live.”

Ford turned onto his side. Cole was already looking at him from six inches away, hair still damp from the showers at the rink, one arm folded under the pillow.

Ford kissed him.

He took it slow enough to feel Cole’s mouth go soft under his, the heat of it, the long breath Cole let out through his nose. Cole’s hand came up and settled flat on Ford’s chest, over his heart, and stayed. Ford covered it with his own.

They kissed like that for a long time, Ford’s thumb moving over the back of Cole’s hand. Nobody pushed it anywhere. That was new.