Page 57 of Delay of Game
Natetrustedhim.
Zach wasn’t sure if anyone had ever trusted him like that before and he had to swallow hard to get control of himself, had to force himself to focus. This wasn’t about him; this was about sweeping Nate off his feet.
When Nate was completely naked and Zach was still wearing everything, Zach stood back to admire his handiwork: Nate, blushing and clearly kind of excited by it despite his own tendency toward nerves. Zach very carefully didn’t touch him again when he said, “Go lie down on the bed.”
Nate looked at him again, teeth worrying his lower lip. “Are you going to fuck me?”
“Soon, bud. No need to rush things, huh?”
“Well, we do have an early flight...” Nate started to say, but the words died in his mouth when Zach stepped forward and took Nate’s dick in his hand.
“I’m not gonna do that again if you keep talking,” Zach whispered in Nate’s ear.
Nate swallowed, hard, and said, “What’s—” but stopped immediately when Zach took his hand away.
“Get on the bed, eh?”
Nate went, and Zach admired the view. He thought about making a teasing remark, the kind of gentle shit-talking that usually made Nate laugh and forget to be self-conscious, but this wasn’t that kind of night. He watched his best friend push the comforter and sheets back and lie down on the bed, his body a beacon in the middle of all that white sheet.
When he was feeling sentimental, Zach thought of all of the people who never knew what Nate looked like like this. And all of the people who would never know. It was something onlyhegot to see now, and he felt the weird, fierce possessiveness that always gripped him when that thought flitted its way through his head. Jesus, he had to focus, or this was gonna go about as well as the last of the multiple times Zach had tried to take him out. Which had been a success as a dinner, but a failure as, like, anything romantic. The dosa restaurant had been small and crowded and they’d ended up having to eat standing at the counter, all of the food dripping out of the edges of the dosa and into the sambar. By the end of it, Nate, laughing, had given up and asked for a fork. The food and the company were good, but it hadn’t felt like when Nate had done it.
He had to stop distracting himself.
Zach didn’t go to him right away, but instead fished through his bags until he found his game-day tie. Nate watched him with a combination of apprehension and what was clearly arousal against his own better judgment, and he started to lean up toward Zach when Zach straddled his thighs. The thighs that Zach had obsessed over since his first few weeks in Philly, strong and muscular and so fucking solid underneath him.
“Nuh-uh, dude. You hold still.”
Nate’s whole body flinched when Zach wound the tie around his eyes and knotted it in the back. He was gonna ruin it, but its sacrifice would be worth it. Nate’s temples felt hot under his fingers, but he was silent, except for his breathing, really loud all of a sudden.
“Put your hands on the headboard?” Zach asked, and admired the way the muscles in Nate’s arms shifted as he did it.
“Are you—”
“I’m not asking you to do anything else, okay? I just want you to let me do this. For you.”
Something shivered across Nate’s body and Zach could feel him, hard against Zach’s thigh. Could see his fingers tighten. “Uh...okay.”
The rest of it he just made up as he went along because he didn’t really know what the hell he was doing anymore. Nate made it easy, though. Nate made it easy when he tried so hard not to move, to leave his hands where he’d said he’d leave them, when he was clearly anxious as fuck not to know where Zach’s mouth and hands would touch him next, and he both flinched away and arched into each touch. After a while he stopped asking questions and Zach could just listen to his ragged breath, the low whine he made when Zach stopped touching him for too long, moved too slowly.
It wasn’t any easier for Zach, hyperaware of the barrier of his clothes between them, the way he had to keep himself under careful control, to focus on touching Nate and Nate only, to make him feel the way he made Zach feel inside all of the fucking time. He felt a little crazy, when it came down to it, like if he didn’t get this right he was maybe going to die.
When Zach rolled off of him, finally, to undress himself, Nate made a noise that cut right through him. Half protest, half cry, half groan.
Okay, maybe he was shit at math. It was just, it was a lot.
Nate felt so warm under him, and Zach had meant to keep quiet, to keep things kinda mysterious, but he couldn’t shut the fuck up, actually, so he ended up telling Nate exactly what he was thinking, which was, “You’re so fucking hot, I mean, you feel like a furnace, fuck, that’s not what I meant, I’m just—Nate, fuck, fuck, you feel fucking good like this.”
Nate didn’t say anything in response, because Zach had asked him not to, but his teeth dug into his lip and every single muscle in his arm was outlined in sharp relief, and Zach thought,hell yeah.
When Zach went down on him, Nate made a noise that sounded like he was trying not to cry.
“Are you—fuck, Zach—how long are you going to do this?”
“I dunno,” Zach said, pulling away from Nate’s dick far enough to talk but not far enough that his beard wasn’t tickling it, “I figured I’d just see how much you could take and go from there?”
“Oh, god,” Nate groaned, but from the way he twitched in Zach’s hand, he thought he was definitely on the right track.
“You’re doing really fucking good, dude,” Zach said, and half patted, half stroked his fingers along the inside of Nate’s thigh, rewarded by another full-body shiver and groan. “You’re fucking good.”