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I cross the kitchen.

I don’t run at him. I walk the eight feet between the chair and the doorway. He stops talking somewhere around the fourth foot. I put my hand flat on his chest.

That’s all. Flat, over the coat, over the sternum, and his heart is going hard under it.

Eleven weeks of standing four feet away from this man in garages, kitchens, airplanes, a hotel corridor in Buffalo. Never closing the distance. That distance takes about a second and a half to disappear.

He doesn’t move. He doesn’t step back. He doesn’t take my hand off him. He doesn’t finish the sentence about the rule he has.

Under my palm, his heart is going like a man who’s run up eight flights of stairs.

I look at him. He’s four inches shorter than me, so I have to look down. His eyes are brown. For once, he’s not hiding anything. His face is asking me a question I’m not going to answer in words.

I get the coat open. He lets me push it off his shoulders. It slides down his arms, hangs from one wrist because he’s still holding the bag. The bag hits the floor. The coat follows.

His breathing has changed. Mine hasn’t. My hands are level, because that’s what my hands do.

I get his belt open.

“Kieran.”

I get the button, then the zip. I push my hand past the waistband of his shorts and take his cock out. He’s already hard, thick and hot against my palm, wet at the tip. The sound he makes when I close my fist around him is the first uncontrolled one I’ve ever heard from him.

Then I go down onto my knees on the kitchen floor.

The tile is cold through my jeans. The only light is over the stove. At this height, his shirt hangs above a strip of skin at his waistband, where there’s a scar I’ve never seen. His cock is flushed dark in my hand, a vein standing out along the underside. He’s bigger than I expected. I don’t know why I expected anything.

I lick the slit once, get the taste of him, and take him in my mouth.

The sound that comes out of him isn’t a word. His head goes back against the wall hard enough that I hear it hit, and one hand goes flat on the wall beside him.

Then the other one comes down into my hair. Not pulling. Just resting there, fingers open, holding on to the only thing available.

I do it properly. I’m not gentle or slow. I don’t tease him; that’s not what this is. I take him down until the head hits the back of my throat and my eyes water, hold there, and pull off with spit running down my chin. Then I do it again. I keep a fist at the base and twist it on the upstroke. On the way up, I drag my tongue hard along the underside and suck at the head until his stomach jumps. He says a word in a language that’s not English.

Salt, skin, clean laundry. Under that, the smell of a man who’s been in a car all day. My jaw aches. My knees are on cold tile. It’s loud and wet and obscene, and I don’t care. A December statement lies two feet from my left hand, still on the floor.

I’m hard in my jeans. I ignore it. That isn’t what this is for.

His hips go once and push his cock an inch deeper than I’m ready for. I choke on it. He stops hard, with everything he has. His thigh shakes against my shoulder.

I put my free hand flat on his hip and don’t hold him down. I just leave it there so he knows I can.

His hand comes down and hooks under my arm. He’s trying to pull me up. A sound catches high in his throat, maybe a word. He wants me off the floor, up at his level.

I pull off him long enough to take his wrist and put it back against the doorframe. My palm covers the crooked knuckle, pinning his hand flat to the wood at hip level. Then I take him back in, all the way.

He could break my grip. He’s heavier through the shoulders, not weak. I’m on my knees, with no leverage at all.

He doesn’t try.

He goes still under my hand. I don’t stop or look up. The sound that comes out of him is raw, almost pained.

He says my name twice, both times in pieces.

He comes about forty seconds later with that hand fisted in my hair, fucking into my mouth in short broken jerks, no control left in him anywhere.

I take all of it. He pulses hot and bitter over my tongue, and I swallow and keep my mouth on him a little longer, forehead against his hip. His hand still shakes in my hair. Behind me, the fridge cycles on.