Nico's weight pins me into the couch cushions, his hips settled between my spread thighs in a way that presses our bodies together from groin to sternum.
I can feel him—hard, unmistakable—against my inner thigh, and my cock responds with a traitorous pulse that makes my breath stutter.
"You're shaking," he observes, like he's noting tire degradation data during a stint review. Clinical.
His knee shifts higher between my legs, grinding slow pressure against my probably just drunk and frustrated erection, and the friction through two layers of fabric rips a sound from me that I will deny to my grave.
"I'm not shaking. The air conditioning—"
"You are shaking." His grip tightens on my wrists, thumb pressing into the pulse point where my heart is broadcasting its treason at approximately one hundred and sixty beats per minute. "How interesting."
This is a catastrophic lapse in judgment fueled by whiskey and proximity. I'll be disgusted with myself tomorrow. Any second now, the revulsion will kick in and I'll shove him off.
Right. Any. Second.
Nico releases one wrist to pull at my collar, and his knuckles graze my throat—light enough that it shouldn't register, except my entire nervous system has apparently defected.
I use the freed hand immediately, grabbing his shoulder, trying to lever myself upright, to flip us, to find the position where I'm on top and this starts making sense.
He catches my hand and slams it back against the armrest. "No."
"I wasn't—"
"You were." His voice drops, rough at the edges. "This isn't one of your hookups, Lindqvist. You don't get to run the playbook."
He starts on my shirt buttons. One at a time, peeling the fabric apart with deliberate slowness, watching my face with each inch of exposed skin like he's documenting evidence.
When the shirt falls open, his palm flattens against my bare chest—warm and calloused—and drags downward over my sternum, my ribs, the tensed plane of my stomach.
My muscles contract violently under his touch, skin prickling with goosebumps despite the heat pouring off both of us.
"Are you cataloguing?" I manage, because talking feels safer than the sounds building in my throat. "I'm not a car setup you're reading."
"Maybe you are."
He pushes the shirt off my shoulders, trapping my arms briefly behind me, and his eyes track down my body with open, unashamed hunger—my chest, the cut of muscle along my hips, the obvious strain against my zipper.
"Maybe I'm looking for the optimal line."
"That's the worst metaphor I've—"
The rest dies because his mouth finds the hollow of my collarbone and his teeth scrape skin, tongue following hot and wet over the mark. The sound I suddenly make is guttural and involuntary and absolutely not something I'll ever admit to.
He moves lower—lips dragging down my sternum, tongue tracing the ridge of my pectoral, teeth closing around my nipple with a precise pressure that makes my spine arch off the cushions and my hips buck up hard against his stomach.
Herregud.
My body has been running a completely separate program from my brain and the output is unmistakable—every nerve ending oriented toward Nico like he's magnetic north.
I grab the front of his shirt with both hands, hauling him up, trying to kiss him on my terms, leading, directing, controlling.
For half a second it works—my mouth finds his and I pour everything into it, every ounce of dominance that's kept me safe for twenty-eight years.
Nico lets me have the kiss. Then his hand closes around my jaw, tilting my head back with firm authority, and he takes it from me entirely. Remakes it slower, deeper, his tongue stroking against mine with a rhythm that's obscenely deliberate until I'm the one making sounds I can't swallow.
His free hand finds my belt, works the buckle open with practiced efficiency, and when his fingers hook into my waistband and drag downward—knuckles brushing the trail of hair below my navel, grazing the swollen head of my cock through cotton—I arch toward his touch so hard my shoulders lift off the couch.
"If you want to test a theory," he murmurs against my jaw, pulling my trousers down to my thighs with infuriating patience, "you commit to the methodology. My terms."
His palm presses flat against my lower stomach, fingers splayed wide, thumb resting in the groove of my hip—an inch from where I need him and he knows it.
"My pace. Or you walk away."
My cock strains against my boxers, the wet spot at the tip darkening the grey fabric, and Nico looks down at it with an expression that's half satisfaction, half something darker—desire stripped of all pretense.
He drags one finger along the rigid outline, base to tip, barely any pressure, and my whole body jolts like I've been electrocuted. A groan tears out of me, raw and wrecked.
"I'm not…"
I try one more time, rolling my hips, hooking my leg around his waist to flip us.
The movement is strong, coordinated, exactly how I'd maneuver in any other context. Nico absorbs it, adjusts his weight, and I end up exactly where I started—pinned, panting, my erection grinding helplessly against the hard muscle of his thigh.
His own arousal presses against my hip, thick and insistent through his trousers, and feeling it sends a dark thrill cascading through my gut that obliterates every remaining shred of the heterosexual narrative I've been clutching like a lifeline.
Then he stops. Completely.
Hands leave my skin. Weight lifts. He sits back on his heels on the other end across the couch, watching me. The sudden absence of contact is so jarring it feels like freefall.
My body straining toward his, every exposed inch of skin screaming at the loss.
"Do you want to stop?"
Quiet. Calm. Genuinely asking. No mockery, no pressure, just Nico giving me an exit with the same devastating composure he brings to every qualifying lap.
The suite settles around us—distant traffic from the harbor, the hum of the air conditioning, my own breathing ragged and pathetic.
I'm lying here with my shirt gone, belt undone, my cock visibly hard and leaking through my underwear. My skin flushed from throat to navel with marks his mouth left, and every line of my body answering the question my mouth refuses to form.
I should say yes. Should stand up, pour a drink, construct the narrative.
I was hammered. He misread the situation. Nothing happened.
I stay exactly where I am—wrecked, trembling, exposed in every way a person can be—and let the silence speak.
Nico reads the answer with the precision of someone who's been reading me for sixteen years. His hand extends, gripping the back of my neck, pulling me upright until our foreheads nearly touch.
His breath is warm against my lips as his thumb strokes once behind my ear—brief, almost tender—and the gentleness in it cracks something I don't have a name for.
"Get up."
His voice is rough, commanding, sending heat flooding to every extremity. He pulls me to my feet, steadies me when I stumble, and pushes me toward the darkened bedroom doorway with a firm hand against my bare chest.
"We're not doing this on a couch like teenagers."