Page 48 of Offensive Edge
“This is the good though, boys. Don’t forget how this feels. Top seed. We didn’t win the President’s Trophy, but that’s a curse, anyway. That’s not the one we’re after.”
Vic couldn’t even call it by name. Like invoking its name would make it less likely for them to win it. Any wrong move in the Stanley Cup playoffs could easily mean elimination.
And if Rowan was going down, he would go down swinging.
* * *
Vic and Julia stayed long enough to have another drink, but Julia was a person who liked to be in her own space—and apparently she had a cat she needed to tend to. It left Rowan and Theo alone together in this house for the first time since whatever had been building between them had boiled over.
They heard Vic’s garage door close and his car slip out of the driveway, and the moment the coast was clear, Theo reeled him in at the waist for a kiss.
In a hotel, it had felt surreal. Like at any moment one of them could say, “lol jk, wasn’t that funny,” and they would go back to, well, not normal. They would go back to awkward. At home together, though, it felt undeniable.
They stood in the kitchen where they had brought their empties in to line up next to the sink and kissed, letting a slow hunger build between them. Gently, Theo pressed him up against the counter, and Rowan squeaked.
“Bad?”
“Uh,” Rowan said, guiding one of Theo’s hands to feel the bulge forming in his pants.
“Oh,” Theo said with a playful quirk of his eyebrow. He dipped to press a line of kisses to Rowan’s neck, so he was right next to his ear when he asked, “You wanna do something about that?”
“Yeah.” Rowan’s voice was just a breath. Kissing while standing up was a reminder of how much bigger Theo was now, and it was overwhelming. The abstract idea of a bigger guy was hot, but the reality of it made Rowan’s entire body feel lit ablaze.
Theo picked him up under his butt and deposited him on the counter behind them, then got to work pulling his shirt off. He shivered when he was bare chested, the air-conditioning making his nipples pebble. He got one hungry look from Theo before Theo had closed his lips around one of them, using his fingers to tease the other.
“We are in the middle of the house,” Rowan said, feeling exposed and anxious. He knew Vic and Julia weren’t there and weren’t coming back, but it wasn’t an impossibility, and he wouldn’t be able to think about anything other than getting walked in on unless they had a door closed behind them.
Theo pulled back and leaned in close enough to nudge his nose against Rowan’s. “Is public sex out of the question, too?”
Rowan blanched, and Theo’s hands came up to cradle his face. “I’m sorry, that was mean. I’m not trying to kill your boner here.”
“The idea of being walked in on would probably make me too anxious to come, if you wanted me to last longer than last time,” Rowan said, and Theo’s worried expression relaxed.
“Do you want to go to my room or yours?”
“Yours has the bigger bed.” He hadn’t spent much time in Theo’s room, since it was out of the way of the rest of the house, and Rowan normally had little reason to go up there. He wanted a better look.
“Alright, then, we’re heading up.”
Rowan took the stairs two at a time, and when Theo closed—and locked—the door behind him, he felt something inside of himself unknot. He had lived so much of his life under a microscope that it had made him fiercely protective of the more personal parts of himself. Not always in the healthiest ways.
Theo’s bedroom was a little plain and a little messy. He had the wonky snake jar he had painted on their not-date on his dresser next to what looked like the result of emptying his pockets before bed every night. Crumpled receipts, change, a tube of ChapStick. The painting over his headboard was bland and impersonal, a walking bridge over a creek. Rowan knew Theo hadn’t picked that out.
“Feel better?” Theo asked, pulling Rowan in for a hug and letting Rowan relax into it. He thought Theo would throw him on the bed immediately, but he was letting Rowan take the time to acclimate back into the horny mindset of just a few minutes ago.
“Do you want to fuck me?” Rowan’s question was muffled by Theo’s shoulder, but Theo heard it perfectly clear.
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I want to fuck you. I’ve wanted to fuck you for ten fucking years. Are you kidding?”
“Now?”
Theo kissed his forehead, which did not feel like an “I am about to fuck you” move to Rowan. “Well, based on yesterday, what just happened in the kitchen, and the fact that you’re a virgin—”
“I’m not a virgin,” Rowan said. He hadn’t thought of himself as a virgin since the first handjobs he and Theo had exchanged on a roadie in Niagara.
“Okay, how much dick have you taken before, then?”
Rowan looked up at him and blinked.
