Chapter 4: The Door, the Wall, the Bed
The door barely clicked shut before his mouth was on hers.
Not gentle. Not tentative. All the restraint from the rink—the careful distance, the measured words, the I'll-be-right-back bullshit—evaporated the second they crossed the threshold into the dark of his apartment. Lucy's back hit the wall beside the coat rack, and she didn't care. His hands were in her hair, tipping her head back, and his tongue was in her mouth, and somewhere behind her a hook dug into her shoulder blade but she couldn't bring herself to give a damn.
She dropped her jacket. Heard it hit the floor. Her fingers found the hem of his shirt and yanked, and he broke the kiss just long enough to pull it over his head and toss it somewhere into the shadows.
"You have no idea," he said, voice rough, "how long I've been thinking about this."
"Since when?"
"Since you told me to shut up and spot your triple lutz."
"That was six months ago."
"I know."
He kissed her again before she could respond, and she decided the response could wait. His hands slid down her sides, over the borrowed shirt she was still wearing—his shirt, she realized, she'd never taken it off—and gripped her thighs.
"Up," he said.
She jumped. He caught her, hoisted her like she weighed nothing, and her legs wrapped around his waist on instinct. His palms were hot through the thin fabric of her leggings, and she could feel him hard against her, and the hallway spun as he carried her through the dark.
She didn't see much. A flash of a kitchen counter. The pale glow of streetlight through half-closed blinds. The shape of a couch, a coffee table, a laptop left open with its screen gone black. Then a doorway, and the smell of him—leather and something sweet, vanilla maybe, and underneath it all the faint chemical tang of rink ice.
He dropped her onto the bed.
The mattress caught her with a soft bounce, and she barely had time to register the sheets were cool against her bare legs before he was over her, knees bracketing her hips, that crooked smile barely visible in the dim light.
"This okay?" he asked.
"You're asking now?"
"I'm a gentleman."
"You're a pain in the ass."
"Yeah." He dipped his head, pressed his mouth to the hollow of her throat. "But you like it."
She did. God help her, she did.
His lips traced down her neck, slow and deliberate, and she arched into him, fingers digging into the muscles of his back. The shirt—his shirt—was rucked up around her waist, and his hands found the waistband of her leggings.
"These," he said against her collarbone, "are a crime."
"They're practical."
"They're in my way."
He peeled them down her legs, and she helped where she could, kicking them off into the dark. Her sports bra followed. Then his boxers. And then there was nothing between them but heat and breath and the faint hum of the city filtering through the blinds.
She reached for him, guided him, and he sank into her in one slow, deep stroke.
Her head fell back. A sound escaped her throat—broken, breathless, nothing like the composed, disciplined skater who'd walked out of this rink an hour ago. She didn't recognize her own voice.
Tim's mouth closed over her breast, hot and wet, and her back bowed off the mattress. Her fingers fisted in the sheets. He dragged his tongue across her nipple, then sucked, and the pull of it shot straight down her spine.
"Tim—"
He didn't answer. Just moved inside her, steady and deep, and the pace was agonizing in the best possible way. Every thrust pushed a new sound out of her, and she stopped trying to hold them back.
The apartment was dark and quiet and endless around them. Somewhere beyond the blinds, sirens wailed. A car alarm whooped twice and went silent. The city didn't care what they were doing. The city had seen worse.
He lifted his head, found her mouth again, and kissed her through it. His hips never stopped moving, and she wrapped her legs around him, pulled him closer, deeper, until there was nothing left between them but sweat and friction and the slow-building pressure at the base of her spine.
"I'm close," she gasped against his lips.
"Good."
He shifted his angle. Just slightly. And the pressure snapped.
She came with a sharp cry muffled by his mouth, her nails raking down his back, her whole body clenching around him. He followed a few strokes later, burying his face in her neck, his breath hot and ragged against her skin.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Then Tim rolled off her, landed on his back beside her, and stared at the ceiling. His chest was heaving. So was hers.
"Holy shit," he said.
Lucy laughed. It came out shaky and a little wild, and she didn't know why she was laughing except that everything felt absurd and wonderful and terrifying all at once.
"Yeah," she said. "That."
He turned his head to look at her. In the dim light from the blinds, she could see the edges of his face—the strong jaw, the sandy hair sticking up in every direction, the crooked smile that had gone soft around the edges.
"You're still wearing my shirt."
She looked down. She was. The collar was rucked up, the hem twisted, but it was definitely still on.
"It's comfortable."
"Keep it."
She didn't know what to say to that. So she didn't say anything. Just turned on her side, grimacing as her ribs protested, and pressed her face into the pillow.
Tim noticed. Of course he noticed.
"Your ribs."
"I'm fine."
"Lucy."
"I said I'm fine."
He was quiet for a moment. Then the mattress shifted, and his hand found her waist, gentle this time. His fingers traced the curve of her ribcage through the fabric of the shirt, feather-light.
"Tomorrow," he said, "you're going to let me look at that."
"Tomorrow I have practice at six."
"Practice at six, and then you're going to let me look at that."
She should argue. She should push back, remind him that she didn't need a babysitter, that she'd been skating on worse injuries for years. But her body was heavy and warm, and his hand was gentle, and she didn't want to fight.
"Fine," she said.
"Fine?"
"Don't push it."
He laughed, low and warm, and pulled her closer. His arm wrapped around her waist, careful to avoid her ribs, and she let herself sink into the heat of him.
The blinds cast pale stripes across the ceiling. Outside, the city kept humming. Inside, the sheets smelled like both of them now, and the pillow was starting to go flat, and Lucy's eyes were drifting closed before she could stop them.
She thought, right before sleep pulled her under, about her training journal sitting in her locker back at the rink. About the poem she'd written in the margins last week—something about ice and edges and falling, something that hadn't made sense to her at the time.
It made sense now.
She'd figure out what to do with that tomorrow.