Page 34 of Two for Roughing

“Guess you’ll have to get good at waiting.”

“Please?” His bottom lip jutted out. “Please, Damir?”

He was so pretty when he begged, second only to how pretty he’d looked boneless and replete in the sheets after Damir had made him come. The desire to see that again tempted Damir, but he resisted. If Kilian wanted to use kink to distract himself from his problems, Damir would show him how much better it felt to work through them.

“I’m being very generous,” Damir told him. “If I were there, I would spank your ass until it matched your hair.”

Kilian sputtered something incredulous, but Damir wasn’t listening. He tracked the red stain spreading down Kilian’s cheeks and neck and across his chest. Had he always been into blotchy redheads? Was this a latent kink he’d been unaware of? Or, more dangerously, was it just Kilian? Damir’s situation in the league was difficult enough as a minority player on a losing team without adding an emotional attachment to a rival.

Then again, Kilian played for another division. They saw each other three times a season, and Damir spent his summers in Russia. Nothing could come of it. He was as safe as he could be.

“Just so you know, I respect women.”

The sentence only a twenty-year-old dumbass could utter drew Damir out of his musings. He was definitely safe. “Excuse me?”

“It’s, like, a kink thing, I guess? All the ‘good girl’ stuff. I don’t actually think of women that way.”

“I didn’t think you did,” Damir said, bemused.

Kilian sighed. The sheets rustled again. Now that he was no longer getting off, Kilian curled to his side and propped his cheek up on one hand, not in faux seduction but as if he needed to get comfy for a proper conversation. The whole effect was unfortunately very cute. “I wish I knew why I’m so into it. Why does it get me so horny when you tell me not to come? What wire did I get crossed there?”

Damir shrugged. “Not every kink has a deep psychological foundation. Sometimes things just get you off.”

“Is that how it is for you? You just happen to get off on bossing me around?” A teasing smile curved Kilian’s lips.

Damir wished he would make a less attractive expression. Talking about kink with a gorgeous man when he hadn’t gotten off yet did not help keep things casual.

“I hate to contradict myself, but I have a good idea why I enjoy dominance.” Damir turned to the fridge and pulled the green beans out of the crisper. He got out the kitchen scissors next and began snipping off the ends, preemptively busying his hands for Kilian’s next question.

“Oh?” One of Kilian’s eyebrows arched. “Tell me more.”

“Why so curious?”

“I haven’t done anything else kinky. Call it healthy interest about what I’ve gotten myself into.”

Right. Though Kilian clearly had expertise when it came to getting fucked, he probably hadn’t had the time or opportunity to get very far into kink dynamics. Damir kept momentarily forgetting his age. Kilian was lightyears more mature than the Firecrackers’ rookies.

“I don’t enjoy being out of control,” he said, “and there are a lot of aspects about life in the NHL I can’t influence.”

Kilian’s expression darkened. “Like dumbass fans saying racist shit about you online.”

Damir laughed. “Yes, for example. But also normal hockey things. Injuries are down to chance and luck. I can only take so many precautions. I don’t decide who plays on my line; I don’t decide who the team trades; I don’t even decide if they trade me. There are so many things I can’t change, and sometimes, being in control of someone else sexually helps me feel grounded.”

“Oh. That…makes sense.”

Damir set aside the scissors and dumped the green beans in a sieve for rinsing. “Awaken any realizations in you?”

“Nothing deep. I think I’m the other way around. It’s exhausting, trying to play my best and coming up short over and over. And everyone on my team keeps going on about how young I am and how I’ll get it when I’m older or whatever, and I hate it so much. But sometimes it is nice when someone else makes all the decisions.”

“Your team is full of assholes,” Damir grumbled. He’d never liked Crowler. He spent every All-Star Game Damir had gone to hiding in some corner, acting as if he was too good for the rest of them. Which would be fine except Damir wanted to do the same thing but forced himself not to at big public occasions like the ASG. Hearing that Crowler kept his own teammates at arm’s length as well… Damir wasn’t surprised, but he did hate to think of Kilian being looked down on for something he couldn’t help, let alone something as inconsequential as his age. He would get older. Until then, he ought to be allowed to enjoy being young.

Kilian shook his head. “They mean well. I guess they’re just not who I thought they would be. It’s not their fault I had different expectations.”

Damir hummed. He couldn’t keep on cooking without making more noise than he should on a video call, and he didn’t want to hang up yet. Maybe he should have let Kilian come; maybe then the call would have petered out naturally. But he enjoyed the thought of Kilian being desperate for him for longer than this one conversation.

He busied himself wiping down the counters and the fronts of the cabinets. Dust always settled there in a near-invisible fuzz he could never quite get rid of. He scrubbed a bit too hard at the dishwasher front, and it shifted under his hands.

Next time he planned a kitchen, Damir was getting dark-colored cabinets.