"Yeah," he says, raw and stripped.
"Say it back."
"Yours. Always yours. Now fuck me."
I lean over him, chest against his back, my mouth close to his ear. "That's new."
"It's always been true. You never asked."
I rise off his back, shifting onto one knee beside him so I can reach across, and open the nightstand drawer. The foil packet crinkles in the quiet room. I tear it open with my teeth and roll the condom down over my cock. The latex is cool and tight, but the sensation is secondary to the familiar, heavy presence of my Jacob's ladder beneath it. As I smooth the condom down, my fingers trace each ridge through the thin latex, hard and unyielding under the skin. I remember the low, punched-out sound Cole made the first time he felt them with his tongue, the way his eyes had gone dark with want.
Lube on my fingers, I press one against him, circling, then working in slowly. His body tightens around my finger, a clenching heat that makes my own cock jump, then relaxes with a low groan. I add another, stretching him, the intimate grip of his ass tight around my fingers. When I line myself up and ease into him, the first barbell catches at his rim. His entire body clamps down, a brutal heat that whites out my vision for a second, from the tightness and from that first steel ridge pressing into him. He lets out a shaky, bitten-off moan, his hips moving back minutely, asking for it.
I sink deeper, slowly, and each barbell drags against his inner walls in a deliberate progression. Each barbell catches through the condom, then slides in, the drag of each one pulling a sound from both of us. His breath hitches with each, a quick inhale as the next stretches him slightly wider, a different texture from the smooth shaft. By the time I'm buried to the hilt, his body is trembling around me, each ridge marked by a fresh clench around my cock. He's so quiet the ragged pull of air through his throat is the only sound.
"Feel them?" I murmur against his shoulder blade, my own voice strained.
He nods, his face pressed into the pillow. "All of them."
I hold still, forehead resting at the back of his neck, letting him adjust to the full, studded length of me. His hand reaches back along his side and finds my hip where it presses close against his, fingers digging in, pulling me closer.
"Move," he says, voice low and wrecked. "Now."
I move slow at first, then harder because Cole asks for harder by pressing back. With each withdrawal, the barbells drag backwards along his sensitive channel; with each thrust, they drive forward again, a slow, relentless slide of metal and flesh. The steel dragging through him curls his toes against the sheets and pulls a continuous, rough sound from my own throat. He's the only person who's ever felt them, and he's traced them in the dark since the first night he found them, mapping each one until I'm shaking. My hand leaves his hip and slides around to stroke him in time, and each inward drive makes his cock jump in my hand, his pre-come slicking my palm in pulses.
His breathing fractures, his face presses into the pillow, and my mouth finds his neck again, teeth grazing skin that will be hidden beneath a jersey by morning. The room fills with the slap of my hips against his, the wet slide of sweat between us, the creak of the bedframe, his choked-off swears, my own ragged sounds. Sweat drips down my back. Heat builds between us. His body clenches tight around my cock with every thrust. My balls draw tight, slapping against him with every drive.
"Dante. I'm—"
"Come."
His body breaks apart, shuddering as my name splits in his throat when he comes, hot stripes painting my hand and the sheets beneath him. The clench of him around my cock pulls me over a second later, a white-hot rush that blots out everything except the press of his back under my chest, the bite of my teeth in his shoulder. A low, animal sound tears out of me as I emptyinto him, pulses of release wracking my body until I'm fucking shaking.
For a while we stay there, connected and breathing, the air cold on my sweat-slick back. Eventually I pull out. I tie off the condom and drop it in the wastebasket Cole keeps tucked beside the nightstand, then lie down on my back beside him. The ceiling is dark, light off the snow painting the room faint blue. Cole rolls onto his right side facing me and settles his hand on my chest, palm flat over my sternum, fingers spread. His skin is still fever-warm against mine.
We lie there listening to the faint scrape of snow against the window: the hallway outside the door, the rest of the house beyond that, the campus beyond the house, all of it stopped at the window glass.
His thumb moves once across my chest, a slow, deliberate stroke. Then his hand trembles, once, a faint vibration against my skin, before he lifts it entirely and sets it on the mattress between us, palm down. The withdrawal is quiet and precise, and my chest cools fast where his palm was, the absence cutting.
"You still have her recorder," he says, his voice quiet in the dark.
"She knows where I am."
"You called her a tourist with a borrowed name and then you took her equipment. That's two power plays in one interaction."
"It was one interaction."
"It was a performance. And she clocked every second of it. She's smarter than you think she is."
"I know exactly how smart she is."
His hand stays flat on the mattress. He rolls away from me onto his left side, back toward me, and this time he curls in on himself slightly, shoulders hunched. The curl isn't one I've ever seen on him in daylight, and something in my chest pulls toward it before I lock it down, a painful tug that catches in my throat.
"You handed her a weapon tonight," he says to the wall. "And you're keeping her recorder like a trophy. Pick one."
The sentence sits in the dark between us, heavy and fucking true.
My hand lifts an inch off the mattress toward the ridge of his spine before I flatten it back down, my fingers curling into the sheet.
