Gloves Off by Chase Power - MM Hockey Romance book cover

The Loft

A Gloves Off Bonus Chapter
by Chase Power

Reader Exclusive · The Wedding Night · Too Hot for Amazon

⚠️ 18+ Reader Exclusive Content Warning: Explicit MM sex (penetration, creampie, rimming, first-time bottoming, gear/mask kink, praise kink, orgasm denial, marriage-night consummation). Open-hearted grief reference to a deceased character. Intended for readers 18+ and for fans of the main novel. You have been warmly, filthily warned.

You thought we were done.

We weren’t done.

My husband went up the loft ladder first. I went up second. I watched his ass in his wedding pants the whole way up. He knew I was watching. That’s why he went first.

What you are about to read is not the version they printed. It is the version that happened. This is what Amazon would not let me tell you. This is the part my husband and I talked about and then decided, together, over coffee in the kitchen of our cabin on the third morning of our marriage, that we were going to share with you — because you stayed with us through fifteen chapters, because you walked up this mountain with me in October and again in June, and because you deserve the whole thing.

This is the whole thing.

Come in.

Take your shoes off.

Close the door.

The loft was warm.

I had not expected the loft to be warm. I had been standing on the edge of a frozen pond forty minutes ago in my dress pants and my skate blades with my bare chest goose-pimpling in the mountain air, and I had climbed up the ladder of our cabin two minutes ago behind my husband’s ass in his charcoal suit pants, and I had not expected the loft to be warm.

It was warm because Brant — who had been up at six this morning to shower and make coffee and read his three-page vows and hide in the guest room until Ma released him for the ceremony — had apparently, at some point in his five a.m. puttering, also turned on the loft’s small electric space heater.

Because Brant Maddox is a man who prepares.

Because Brant Maddox, thirty-four, formerly closeted, now married, number seventeen of the Denver Avalanche, was not going to have his husband’s ass cold on the first night of his marriage.

I stood at the top of the ladder in the warm yellow light of the single Edison bulb that hung over the bed, and I watched him pull up the ladder behind me. He did it slow. He did it careful. He lifted the ladder up through the loft opening and set it across the floor of the loft and the opening in the floor was now just a square of shadow going down into the dark cabin below.

We were locked in.

He turned around.

He was still in his wedding shirt — dark charcoal dress shirt, unbuttoned four buttons down, the collar open on his throat, his tie long gone, the shirt untucked from his suit pants. His hair was still damp from the mist off the pond. His beard had a faint white crust at the jaw where the cold air had dried his breath. The rosary — my grandmother’s — was wound three times around his left wrist, which was where he had moved it at the altar when he had unwound it from his ring finger and slid a platinum band onto it instead.

The platinum band caught the Edison bulb.

So did mine.

He looked at me.

I looked at him.

He said, in a voice that was rough from five hours of talking and laughing and crying and singing along to Axe’s Swedish-house playlist on the lawn: “Hi, husband.”

I said: “Hi, husband.”

“Come here.”

I came.

Three steps across the loft floor. My feet were cold through my socks. His were bare. I came to the edge of the bed, where he sat down and pulled me between his knees, and he looked up at me — Brant Maddox, looking up at me, from the edge of our marital bed, on our wedding night, with the lights of a June dawn still five hours away and his wife’s rosary on his wrist — and he put his huge warm hands on the backs of my bare thighs under the hem of my dress pants, and he slid them up.

I shivered.

Not from cold.

“Zane.”

“Yeah, Brick.”

“Take off your ring.”

“What—”

“I want to put it back on you after.”

“Brant—”

“I want to marry you again in this bed.”

I looked at him.

He looked at me. His eyes were the gray I had known since I was fifteen years old looking at a poster on the back of a closet door in Fresno, California, and they were also, somehow, softer than I had ever seen them.

“…Okay,” I whispered.

I slid the platinum band off my finger.

He slid his off his own.

He set both of them on the nightstand beside the bed, next to the rosary I had unwound from his wrist and set there three minutes earlier, and the two rings sat in the amber lamp light, and his left hand and my left hand were naked for the first time since one p.m.

He took my hand.

He brought it to his mouth.

He kissed the pale ring-line on my finger.

He said, against my skin: “I’m going to fuck you now, Zane Ellis-Maddox. I’m going to fuck you slow and I’m going to fuck you mean and I’m going to put my come inside you and then I am going to let you put yours inside me. And then I am going to put your ring back on you. And then we are going to do it again. How does that sound, pretty boy.”

My knees almost went.

I did not drop to my knees. I did not drop to my knees because my new husband had asked me a question and I was going to answer it like a man, and I took a breath, and I said:

“Yes, Brick.”

“Yes what.”

“Yes please, Brick.”

“Good boy.”

He pulled me down onto him.

He undressed me the way he had undressed me every time, which is to say: slow, and reverent, and in an order that had clearly been decided on five years before I was born.

Shirt first — but I was already bare-chested, my shirt was still folded on the lawn blanket by the pond, so he started at the buckle of my belt.

He worked the belt open. Pulled it through the loops. Set it on the floor beside the bed. He worked the button of my suit pants. The zipper. He pushed the pants down off my hips and they pooled at my ankles, and I stepped out of them, and he folded them — folded them, on our wedding night, the biggest sap in professional hockey, my husband — and laid them over the arm of the rocking chair in the corner of the loft.

I was in my boxer briefs and nothing else.

He slid them off me.

He pulled them down slow, his palms flat to my hips, and he leaned forward as he did it and pressed his mouth to the crease of my groin where my thigh met my stomach, and I made a small helpless sound, and he hummed, and he kept going, down, down, and I stepped out of the briefs too, and I was naked in the middle of our loft at two in the morning on our wedding night with my husband still fully dressed on the edge of the bed in front of me.

He looked up at me.

He did not touch me.

He said, quietly: “Let me look at you for a second.”

“Brick—”

“Shh, pretty boy. Just a second.”

He looked.

He looked at me the way a man looks at something he has waited nine months to look at without hurry. He looked at my thighs, at the cut of my stomach, at the barbell in my left nipple catching the Edison bulb, at the ring line on my finger, at my hair still damp from the mist, at my mouth.

He said, hoarse: “Husband.”

I said, “Husband.”

He said, “Come here. Lie down. Middle of the bed. On your back.”

I lay down.

I lay down on the Pendleton blanket in the middle of our loft bed with the triangular window above me showing a panel of black sky and a scatter of stars and the Edison bulb throwing a soft yellow light across my skin, and Brant stood up at the foot of the bed and he unbuttoned the rest of his shirt and he pulled it off his shoulders and he folded it — folded it — and laid it on the rocking chair on top of my pants, and he unbuckled his own belt, and his pants, and he stepped out of them, and he was in nothing but his boxer briefs.

He was hard.

He was so hard the front of his briefs was tented and the head of his cock was peeking up above the waistband, flushed dark, already wet at the tip, the silver crescent of precum pooling on the band.

I made a sound.

He laughed. Soft. Wet. Dark.

“See something you like, Ellis-Maddox.”

“Oh my God, Brick—”

He crawled up the bed.

He crawled up the bed on his hands and knees in his boxer briefs, slow, predatory, huge, and he came up my body, and he lowered himself onto me — forearms on either side of my head, hips settling between my spread thighs — and his weight pressed me down into the Pendleton blanket, and I was pinned, and I was warm, and I was home.

He kissed me.

He kissed me slow.

He kissed me for — I don’t know how long. Five minutes. Ten. He kissed me until my mouth was bruised and my throat was open for him and my hips were rolling up helplessly against his and my cock was dripping onto my own stomach, and he had not touched my cock yet, and he had not touched my nipples yet, and he had not done anything but kiss me, and I was already gone.

He pulled back.

He looked at me.

His pupils were huge.

He said: “I am going to kiss every inch of you, pretty boy. I am going to take my time. You are going to lie there and you are going to let me. You are going to let me worship my husband on the first night of our marriage. You understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what.”

“Yes, Brick. Please.”

“Good boy.”

He started at my jaw.

He kissed my jaw. He kissed the hinge of it, where the beard scratch lands on the soft skin below my ear. He kissed the spot under my ear. He sucked a small careful mark into the side of my neck, low, where a collar would cover it, and then he laughed against my skin and said “I don’t have to hide them anymore, do I,” and he sucked a second mark two inches higher, right where my turtleneck would not reach, and then he worked down.

Collarbone. The hollow at the base of my throat. The line of my sternum.

Then the barbell.

Oh, God, the barbell.

He took it in his teeth.

He pulled — gentle, firm, the exact pull that made my whole body lift off the mattress — and my hands flew up into his hair and my back arched, and he held me down with one forearm across my chest, and he sucked the whole nipple into his mouth, and he tongued the barbell from underneath, the tip of his tongue dragging across the silver bar and the warm wet weight of his mouth pulling, and I started crying, not from pain, from the sheer lit-up nerve-end helplessness of it.

“Brick — Brick, I can’t—”

“Yes you can.”

“I’m going to come.”

“No you’re not.”

“Brick—“

“You are not going to come, Zane, not yet, not without my permission, not on our wedding night. You are going to hold it. You are going to hold it because I am going to ruin you for three more hours and you are not coming until I tell you to come. Are we clear.”

“Yes, Brick.“

“Good boy.”

He kept going.

He worked the other nipple — the unpierced one, always jealous, always the second one he got to — and he made it flush and hard and pink between his teeth, and then he kissed down my sternum, and he kissed the line of my ribs, and he sucked a mark below my rib cage, and he kissed my stomach, and he kissed my hipbone, and he kissed the crease of my thigh, and he kissed the dark blond hair at the base of my cock, and he did not touch my cock.

He kissed past it.

He went down my thigh. The soft skin on the inside. He bit it. He sucked a mark high on my inner thigh. He kissed my knee. He kissed the bone of my ankle. He kissed the arch of my foot. He worked back up the other leg — outside calf, back of knee, hamstring, the crease where my ass meets my thigh — and he nipped at that crease, and I jerked, and he laughed into my skin, and he said, “Turn over for me, pretty boy.”

I turned over.

I turned over onto my stomach with my cock trapped hot and aching between my hips and the Pendleton blanket and my face in the pillow, and his hands spread my thighs apart, and he kissed the back of my neck, and he kissed down my spine — vertebra by vertebra, his mouth slow and hot, his beard scraping, his tongue flicking out every few inches — and he reached the small of my back, and he paused there, and he breathed against my skin, and he said, against the base of my spine:

“I’ve never done this to you.”

“…Done what?”

“This.”

He spread my cheeks apart with both of his huge hands.

He buried his face.

I screamed.

Not loud. Not very loud. Loud enough that if we had not been forty miles from the nearest neighbor, it would have been a problem. His mouth on me — on that place — was not something I had let another human being do to me since I was twenty, and even then it had been hurried and ugly and over, and my husband was doing it now, slow and wet and full-tongue, his beard scraping my cheeks, his big hands holding me open, and I was not going to survive my wedding night.

“Brick — Brick, oh my God, Brick—“

He did not stop.

He did not stop for a long, long time.

He worked me open with his mouth. Just his mouth. He did not bring out the lube yet. He just used his tongue, slow and hot and patient, and he got me wet and open and keening into the pillow with my fists clenched in the Pendleton blanket and my hips bucking back against his face, and he held me down with a hand flat on my lower back, and he worked me until I was making sounds I did not know I could make.

When he finally pulled back, I was sobbing.

He sat back on his heels.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist.

He said, rough: “Good, pretty boy?”

“I didn’t know.”

“Didn’t know what.”

“I didn’t know that was — that you — Brick.“

“That’s for our wedding night only, Ellis-Maddox. Do you understand? That’s the one I saved.”

“…What?“

“I’ve never — I’ve never done that. To anyone.”

I rolled over.

I rolled over onto my back and I looked up at him — my 6’5″ 250-pound husband kneeling between my spread thighs with his mouth wet and his eyes dark and his boxer briefs still on and his cock straining against the fabric — and I said, helpless:

“Brant Maddox.”

“Yeah.”

“You saved rimming for our wedding night.”

“…Yes, pretty boy.”

“You are insane.“

“Yes.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Zane.”

“Get in me.”

“Okay, pretty boy.”

He reached into the drawer of the nightstand — because, of course, he had stocked the nightstand of the cabin loft that neither of us had been to since October, because he is who he is — and he pulled out a brand-new bottle of lube with the seal still on it, and he broke the seal, and he slicked his fingers.

He worked one into me.

Then two.

He took his time with the preparation even though I was already loose from his mouth. He slid his fingers in deep and curled them and found the place inside me that made my whole body light up, and he pressed on it, steady, patient, and my hips were rolling up into his hand, and my cock was dripping onto my stomach, puddled in my navel, and I was whimpering, and he was murmuring — low, into my thigh, into my hip, into the barbell in my left nipple which he kept coming back to between kisses — “good, pretty boy. Good. That’s it. Open up for me. My good boy. My husband. My husband. My husband.”

He pulled out of me.

He shoved his boxer briefs down his hips.

His cock was flushed the deepest dark red I had ever seen it. Wet, thick, the vein on the underside pulsing. He slicked himself. He lined up. He put one of my knees up over his shoulder, and he pressed the other flat to the bed with his palm, opening me wide, and he looked at me.

“I am going to fuck you now, husband.”

“Yes, Brick.“

“I am going to come inside you.”

“Yes.”

“I am not going to pull out.”

“No.”

“You are going to wear my come all night.”

“Yes, Brick.“

“Good boy.”

He pushed in.

He pushed in slow, slower than he ever had with me, and I felt every inch. The flared head pressing in and stretching me open. The thick vein dragging along that place inside me. The slow hot slide, inch by inch, his eyes locked on mine the whole time, his forearms shaking from holding himself up, his jaw tight with the effort of not just slamming home.

He bottomed out.

He stopped.

His hips flush to mine. His cock buried to the root. His forehead dropped to mine, and he breathed, hot and ragged, and he whispered into my mouth: “Husband.“

“Husband.”

“I love you.”

“You feel—”

“I know.”

“You feel like—”

“I know, Brick.“

He started to move.

He fucked me slow.

He fucked me slow and deep and in long rolling strokes that pushed me up the bed a half-inch at a time, and he kept his eyes on mine the whole time, and he kept his mouth on mine between strokes, and he talked.

Oh, he talked.

I am going to tell you what he said because this is not the Amazon version and you deserve it.

He said, into my mouth, into my throat, into the curve of my jaw: “My husband. My fucking husband. Look at you. Look at you taking me. You were made for this. You were made for me. Do you hear me? I mean it. I knew it in October. I knew it when I put my forearm on your chest in the MSG shower, I knew then, I knew it was you, I knew you were mine. Look at you. Look at my good boy. Look at my pretty fucking boy. You’re going to take my come. You’re going to take my come inside you every night of our lives and you’re going to like it. Aren’t you, husband? Aren’t you? Say it.“

“Yes.“

“Say it all.“

“I’m — I’m going to take your come every night of our lives, Brick, oh my God—“

“And you’re going to give me yours.“

“Yes.“

“Every night.“

“Yes — yes, Brick—“

“Good boy.“

His hips snapped harder.

The slow burn broke.

He fucked me harder, pinning my shoulders down, the knee on his shoulder jammed up to my chest now, my cock trapped between our stomachs, dragging against his abs every stroke, the friction unbearable, my eyes rolling back —

“Brick — Brick, please, I need to—”

“Hold it.”

“Brick—“

“Hold it, pretty boy. Hold it. Hold it. Hold—“

He stopped.

He bottomed out and stopped, his cock buried in me, and he leaned down, and he kissed the corner of my mouth. Soft. A tear slid out of my left eye and ran down my temple into my hair.

He said, quiet, against my mouth: “Hey.”

“Brick—“

“Hey. I want to say something.”

“Okay.“

“Tyler would have loved this.”

I went still.

I went still in the middle of being fucked by my husband on my wedding night, and I looked up at him, and his eyes were wet, and he was smiling — a small, wrecked, whole smile — and I nodded.

“I know, Brick.”

“He would have loved you.“

“I know.”

“Thank you for letting him be here.”

“He’s always going to be here, Brick.”

“Yeah.”

“Keep going.”

“Yes, husband.”

He kissed me.

He started moving again. He fucked me slow for another minute, and then faster, and then he got his hand between us and wrapped it around my cock, and he stroked me in time with his hips — one long slow pull, root to tip, on every thrust — and I was gone, I was gone, I had been holding for ten minutes and I was gone.

“Brick — Brick, I can’t—”

“Come for me, husband.”

“Brick—“

“Come for me, Zane Ellis-Maddox.“

I came.

I came with my husband’s cock buried deep inside me and his hand wrapped around mine and my knee jammed up against my own chest and my eyes locked on his gray eyes and tears running into my hair, and I came in long hot white pulses across my own stomach and his hand and the lower edge of his chest hair, and my whole body seized up and clamped around him and he growled, one low long growl I had never heard before from him, and he fucked me through it, slow, gentler now, working me down through the aftershocks.

Then he followed.

He came inside me.

He came with his forehead pressed to mine and his hips flush to mine and his cock pulsing hot and deep, and he was saying — he was saying a word, and I realized after a beat what it was, it was the wrong word, he was saying wife, and he caught himself mid-pulse and he laughed, helpless, wet, into my mouth, and he said:

“Husband. My husband. My husband. Oh God, Zane, husband — husband — husband—“

“I love you.”

“I love you too, pretty boy.”

He stayed inside me.

He stayed inside me for a long time. He kissed me through it. His cock softening slowly inside me but staying. His forehead on mine. His arms shaking from holding himself up. I reached up and I pulled him down onto me. He collapsed. His full weight settled on my chest. I wrapped my arms and legs around him, and I held my husband inside my body and on top of it, and I felt his heartbeat slow against my ribs, and I felt his come seep slow and hot out of me around his softening cock, and I felt tears — his — drop onto my neck.

I held him.

I held him for five minutes.

Maybe more.

Finally he lifted his head.

He looked at me.

His eyes were red.

He said, quiet: “Hi.”

I said, quiet: “Hi.”

“You okay.”

“I’m great, Brick.”

“That was—”

“Yeah.”

“Should I—”

“Stay a second.”

“Okay.”

He stayed a second.

Then he eased out of me, slow, gentle, and I felt the warm thick rush of his come follow him out, and he lowered me back onto the Pendleton blanket carefully, and he kissed my forehead, and he said: “Your turn, old man.”

I laughed.

It cracked open my whole chest.

I said, hoarse: “Your turn, old man.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“Are you sure.”

“Yes.”

“Brant—”

“Zane.”

“You’ve never done this.”

“No.”

“Not even with — not even with Tyler?”

He looked at me.

He took a breath.

He said: “No, Zane. I never — we never got to. He was the one who bottomed. Always. I never — I’ve never been fucked. Ever. By anyone.”

“…Brick.”

“I know.”

“Your first time—”

“Is on my wedding night. Yes. With my husband. Yes. I’ve been thinking about it for five months. Yes. I want it. Yes.”

“Brant Maddox.“

“Zane.”

“I love you so much.“

“I love you too. Fuck me, pretty boy.”

I took my time.

I sat up.

He was lying back on the Pendleton blanket now, his head on the pillow, his cock soft against his thigh, his chest flushed and still heaving, his hair damp at the temples, his forearms bruising already from where I’d gripped them, and my come drying on his stomach in long silver streaks.

I straddled his thighs.

I leaned down and I kissed him.

I kissed him slow. I kissed him the way he had kissed me. I took my time. I let my mouth wander. I moved down his throat and I sucked a mark onto the side of his neck — low, where a dress shirt would cover it, because old habits — and then I laughed and I moved up two inches and I sucked a second mark where no collar would reach, because old habits were dying, and he made a low pleased rumble in his chest and his hand came up to cup the back of my head.

I moved down.

I worked the dense dark hair of his chest. I sucked a nipple. I bit it, light, because he liked that — he did, I had learned it, he did — and then I worked down his stomach. His abs were still flushed from the fucking. I kissed every scar. The one on his hip. The surgical scar under his ribs. The line of his sternum. I kissed the memorial band on his left wrist — three times, slow, because Tyler was in the room and I was going to acknowledge him — and then I kissed the platinum ring line on his finger.

I worked down.

His cock was half-hard again already.

I took him in my mouth.

He groaned.

I worked him slow. I brought him back up fully. I took him deep. I let his cockhead push against the soft place at the back of my throat and I held it there and swallowed around him and he cursed, hoarse, and his hand tightened in my hair.

“Zane—”

“Mm.”

“I’m — don’t, I’m going to—”

I pulled off.

I grinned.

I said: “Not yet, old man.“

His eyes went dark.

His voice dropped three registers.

He said: “You are going to pay for that.“

“Maybe. Later.”

I kissed back up his body. I reached to the nightstand. I grabbed the lube. I slicked three fingers. I put my mouth back on his — kissing him, deep, slow, soft — and I reached down between his legs, and I brushed my slick finger against him.

He gasped into my mouth.

I stopped.

I pulled back.

“Brick.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay.”

“Yeah.“

“You sure.”

“Zane. Go.“

“Say it.”

“I’m sure. Go. I want this. Go. Now.”

“Yes, old man.”

I circled him with my finger.

Slow. Patient. Warm. The way he had done with me a hundred times. I did not penetrate right away. I just circled, let his body figure out what it was feeling, let him relax, let my husband — who had never been touched there in his life, who was thirty-four years old and was about to be — let him get used to the feel of a hand that was for him.

He relaxed.

I felt him relax under me. His thighs fell open wider. His breathing evened out. He looked up at me with wide soft pupils and a mouth that was slack and a little open, and I slid my finger in, just the tip, just to the first knuckle.

He made a sound.

It was a sound I had never heard him make.

It was a small, startled, gasping sound — not pain, not quite pleasure, just the sound of a body being opened for the first time in its life at thirty-four years old, and I froze, and I looked at his face, and he looked back at me, and his eyes were wet, and he whispered:

“Keep going.“

I kept going.

I worked the finger deeper. Slow. Patient. I was talking the whole time. I was talking low and soft and using the exact words he had used on me for seven months, every single one, every praise and every promise.

“Good boy,” I said.

He gasped.

“Good boy, Brick. My good boy. Breathe. Breathe for me. That’s it. Look at you. Look at my good boy. Look at you taking it. Look at my husband. Look at my husband letting me in. I’ve got you. I’ve got you, old man.“

His eyes closed.

Tears rolled out.

I kept going.

I worked the finger deeper. I found the spot inside him — carefully, slowly, by feel, I had never been in this part of his body — and when I pressed it his whole body jolted, and his cock, which had been half-hard, surged up against his stomach, and he said, hoarse and shocked, “Oh.“

“Found it.”

“Zane — Zane, oh my God—“

“I know, old man. I know. I’m going to make you see stars. I promise.”

I added a second finger.

Slow. Careful. I took my time. I let him adjust to every single thing. I pressed that spot again, and again, and again, and he was whining, which was a thing Brant Maddox did not do, and his hands were fisted in the Pendleton blanket on either side of his hips, and he was shaking, and he was crying, openly now, tears running down into his beard, and I kept going, I kept whispering to him, I kept praising him.

“Good boy. My good boy. Oh, you’re so pretty, Brick. You’re so pretty for me. Look at you. Look at you opening up for me. Look at my husband. I’m going to take such good care of you. I’m going to take such good care of you tonight and every night. Every night. Every night of our lives.“

Third finger.

He was ready.

He was ready and I was hard as iron and I could not wait any longer.

I pulled my fingers out.

I slicked my cock.

I lined up.

I looked at him.

He was lying on his back with his knees up and his face wet and his eyes on mine and his cock fully hard and dripping on his stomach and his hair a mess and his mouth open and his platinum ring-line gleaming on the hand fisted in the blanket, and I said, soft: “Face to face?”

“Yeah.”

“Look at me.”

“I’m looking.”

“Okay, husband. I’m coming in.”

I pushed in.

I pushed in slow. Slower than he had pushed into me. An inch. I watched his face. He closed his eyes. He opened them. He breathed out. I pushed another inch. His mouth fell open. Another inch. His hand came up and gripped my bicep. Another. He whimpered — Brant Maddox, 6’5″, 250 pounds, three-time All-Star, enforcer of the Denver Avalanche, whimpered under me — and I stopped.

“Brick?”

“Don’t stop.”

“I—”

“Don’t stop, Zane, don’t you dare stop, keep going—“

I pushed the rest of the way in.

I bottomed out.

My hips flush to his ass. My cock buried deep in my husband’s body. My forehead dropped to his. His arms wrapped around my back. His legs wrapped around my hips. He was shaking.

He was sobbing.

“Brick — Brick, baby, are you okay—”

“Yes.“

“Are you sure—”

“Yes, Zane, yes, it’s not — I’m fine — I’m — it’s just—“

“What.”

“I never knew.”

“…Oh, Brick.”

“I never knew it was like this.”

“I know, old man. I know. I’ve got you.”

“Move. Please. Please, Zane. Move.“

I moved.

I moved slow and deep and face-to-face and I kept my eyes on his and I talked, I talked the whole time, every word I had ever wanted to give back to him:

“Good boy. Good boy, Brick. That’s my husband. Taking me so well. Look at you. Look at you. You’re so good. You’re so good for me. I love you. I love you. Oh, you feel so good, husband. You feel so good inside. So tight. So hot. So mine. You’re mine, aren’t you, Brick? Say it. Say you’re mine.“

“Yours.“

“Say it again.“

“Yours, Zane. I’m yours. I’m yours. I’m yours.“

“Good boy.“

I rolled my hips in long slow strokes. I watched his face. His mouth kept opening on silent shapes. His eyes kept watering. His hand kept gripping my bicep harder and harder. He had gone somewhere he had never been, and I was there with him, and I was going to stay.

After a while he whispered: “Zane — Zane, can I — can I hide—”

“What?”

“Roll me — roll me over — I need — I need to—”

“Hide your face?”

“Yes.“

“Okay, old man. Okay.”

I pulled out — slow, careful — and he made a small bereft sound I will think about until the day I die, and I rolled him gently onto his side. I curled up behind him. I pushed his top leg up and forward. I lined up. I pushed back in.

He buried his face in the pillow.

I kissed the back of his neck.

I wrapped one arm around his chest. I wrapped my other arm down around his hips. I took his cock in my hand.

He cried out.

“Zane.“

“I know.”

“Zane, I — I’m going to come, I — just — just—“

“Come, old man.”

“Zane, you’re not even — you’re barely — I’m — I’m—“

“Come for me, Brick.”

“Zane—“

“Come for me, husband. Come on my cock. Come on just having me inside you. Come for me. Good boy. Good boy.“

He came.

He came with his face in the pillow and his whole body shaking and my cock buried inside him and my hand loosely wrapped around his cock — barely moving, barely stroking, just there — and he came harder than I had ever seen another person come in my life. His cock pulsed, long and hot, come spurting across his own stomach and my hand and the Pendleton blanket in long white ropes. He was sobbing into the pillow. His whole body spasming. I fucked him through it, slow, gentle, whispering into the back of his neck: “Good boy. Good boy. Good boy. I’ve got you. I love you. I love you. I love you. Good boy. My husband.“

I came a minute later.

I came inside him.

I came with my face pressed to the back of his neck and my arm tight around his chest and my cock pulsing deep inside the man I had married nine hours ago, and I was crying too, I realized, I had been crying the whole time, and I came hard and long and hot, and I stayed, I held, I did not pull out.

He was shaking.

He was not making a sound now. His face was still in the pillow. His chest was heaving. I was pressed against his back and I could feel his heartbeat racing against my forearm, and I could feel, under it, a deeper shaking — a shaking that was not from sex — and I realized my husband was crying, still, silently, face in the pillow, shoulders heaving.

I wrapped him tighter.

I kissed the back of his neck.

I whispered: “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I’ve got you, Brick. I’ve got you. I’m right here.”

He nodded against the pillow.

I held him.

I held him for a long time.

Eventually he rolled onto his back.

His face was wrecked. Red-eyed. Tear-tracked. Beard wet. Mouth swollen from where he had bitten through his own lower lip at some point. He looked up at me, and his eyes were the softest I had ever seen them, and he whispered:

“Hi.”

“Okay?”

“Very okay, old man. You?”

“…Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, Zane. I’m — I’m great.”

“Best thing you’ve ever done?”

He laughed. Small. Wet.

He said: “Best thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

“Me too, Brick.”

“Me too.”

He reached for the nightstand.

He picked up my ring.

He slid it back onto my finger.

I picked up his.

I slid it back onto his.

He kissed me.

He kissed me with the platinum bands on both of our hands back where they belonged, and he said, into my mouth, soft:

“Hi, Mr. Ellis-Maddox.”

“You sure about the hyphen.”

“I’m sure.”

“Brant Ellis-Maddox.”

“Zane Ellis-Maddox.”

“…Okay.”

“Okay.”

He got out of bed.

I watched him go. He climbed down the loft ladder naked. He came back up two minutes later with two glasses of water and a warm washcloth and a clean towel from the bathroom, and he climbed back up the ladder with all of it balanced in his huge careful hands, and he cleaned me first. He cleaned me slow, the way he had cleaned me the first night he had stayed at my condo in November. He cleaned between my thighs. He kissed the soft skin. He cleaned my stomach. He cleaned his own come off me with the damp cloth, and then he cleaned himself, and then he dropped the cloth in the bathroom hamper at the base of the ladder, and he came back up, and he got in bed.

He pulled me against his chest.

He pulled the Pendleton blanket up over both of us.

He kissed the top of my hair.

He said: “Sleep, husband.”

I said: “In a minute.”

“Zane.”

“Brick.”

“I want to try something.”

He groaned.

“Ellis-Maddox, it is three in the morning, I am thirty-four years old—”

“Listen to me.”

“Ellis-Maddox—“

“Brick.”

“…Yeah.”

“The mask.”

A long pause.

“…My mask?”

“Your mask. Yes.”

“Ellis-Maddox.“

“I brought it up with me, Brick.”

“To our wedding.“

“Yes.”

“You brought your NHL goalie mask to our wedding cabin.“

“Yes.”

“Why, Zane.“

“Because we talked about it in April.”

“We did not talk about this.”

“We did. At breakfast. I said I wanted to try it one day.”

“And you decided the day was our wedding night.“

“I decided the day was our wedding night.”

He was laughing.

He was laughing into my hair. The deep rumbled laugh I had heard about thirty times in seven months and which did things to my central nervous system every single time.

He said: “You absolute menace.“

“You don’t have to.”

“Bring it up.”

“…What?”

“Bring it up, Ellis-Maddox. Get out of the bed. Go down the ladder. Bring me my husband’s goalie mask. Now.“

I went down the ladder.

I went down the ladder naked with my husband’s come on my thighs and the Edison bulb throwing my shadow on the wall of the cabin below, and I got my mask out of the hockey bag I had packed for the honeymoon because Coach Petrov had insisted — “Ellis. On vacation you still shoot pucks. Take gear,” he had said, and I had — and I carried the mask up the ladder in one hand, and I came back into the loft, and Brant was propped up on one elbow watching me climb up, and when I stood in front of him with the mask in my hand his pupils blew.

He said, very quietly: “Jesus Christ, Ellis-Maddox.“

I grinned.

I put the mask on.

I clipped it. I settled it. I felt the familiar weight and the familiar angle of the cage and the familiar dim framing of the world through the bars, and I looked at my husband through the cage, and I watched him look at me — his husband, the face he watched in a crease twice a week for four months of the year, the face that had just been under him and on top of him for three hours — and I was naked except for the mask, and my cock was hard again, already, fully, dripping, because I am twenty-four and I have recovery time that my husband does not have and will not.

He sat up.

He looked at me.

He said, hoarse: “Come here, goalie.“

I went.

I climbed onto the bed on my hands and knees. I crawled up the Pendleton blanket to him. The mask was heavy on my face and cold against my cheeks where the interior gel had gone cool. He looked at me through the bars. His gray eyes went over my face, and then down my body, and then back up, and he said:

“Turn around.“

I turned around.

I got on all fours. Knees spread. Back arched. My ass up. The mask tipped forward on my face, the chin-guard pressing into the pillow. My cock hanging heavy between my spread thighs, dripping onto the blanket.

He got behind me.

He palmed my ass with one hand. Hard. A possessive squeeze.

“Look at this,” he growled. “My goalie. My goalie on his hands and knees for me in his mask on our wedding night.“

“Brick—“

“My goalie wants to be fucked in his mask.“

“Yes.“

“Yes what.“

“Yes, Brick. Please.“

“Good goalie.“

He slicked himself.

He did not prep me this time. He did not need to. I was still loose and wet from the last round, still messy with his come, and he lined up, and he pushed in, and he bottomed out in one slow long glide, and his chest settled against my back, and his mouth found the edge of my mask cage, right by my ear.

He started to fuck me.

He fucked me slower than I wanted but deeper than I knew was possible. Long, deep, grinding strokes that I felt in my stomach, that I felt under my ribs, that made me gasp, mask rattling faintly every time his hips slammed home.

He talked through the cage.

His mouth right at the bars.

“My goalie. Look at you. Look at you in your mask for me. I watch this mask every home game. I watch it under the lights. I watch it during faceoffs. I watch this face from the bench and the box and the crease and I think about this. About this exact thing. Every home game. Every road trip. Every practice. Every morning skate. I have been looking at this mask for eight months and thinking about fucking my husband in it and I am doing it. I am doing it right now.“

“Brick—“

“Good goalie.“

“Brick, I’m—“

“Don’t you dare.“

“I — I can’t—“

“Hold it, goalie.“

“Brick, please—“

“Hold it. Hold it. Hold it—“

He stopped.

He bottomed out and held still, his cock buried to the root, and he reached around me and he closed his hand around my cock.

He squeezed. Tight. Right at the base.

Orgasm denial.

“Breathe, goalie.“

“Brick—“

“Breathe. Count to ten.“

I counted to ten.

Out loud. Into the mask.

He held me there, squeezed at the base of my cock, his cock buried deep inside me, his mouth against the cage of my mask, for the full ten count. When I hit ten he released me. He rolled his hips, slow, one deep stroke. He said, in my ear: “Again.”

“Brick—“

“Count again.“

I counted again.

One.

Two.

Three.

He was rolling his hips, tiny, impossible movements, each one grinding against that spot inside me, each one dragging a shudder out of my body. My cock was leaking onto his hand. My whole back was soaked with sweat. The mask was sliding on my face. My breath was fogging the inside of the cage.

Four.

Five.

Six.

He kept going. He kept going. He kept grinding against that spot, slow, mean, patient. I was sobbing into the pillow under the mask. I was not going to survive.

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

Ten.

“Come, goalie.“

He released my cock.

He slammed his hips forward in one hard full-length thrust.

I came.

I came into the Pendleton blanket in long hot pulses with my face in the mask and my cock untouched and my husband’s cock buried to the root inside me and his hand splayed flat across my stomach holding me up, and I came harder than I had come in any of the first two rounds, which I had not thought was possible, and I was sobbing and shaking and my whole body gave out, and he held me up, and he fucked me through it, still slow, grinding, wringing the last of it out of me.

He came thirty seconds later.

He came inside me with his teeth on the back of my neck through the mask strap, with his arms around my ribs, with his cock pulsing deep in my body for the third time in one night, and he growled, low and long, into the back of the cage:

“Mine, goalie. Mine. Mine. Mine.“

“Yours.“

“My husband.“

“Your husband.“

“My goalie.“

“Your goalie, Brick. Always. Forever. Yours.“

He pulled out, slow.

He rolled me onto my back — careful of the mask — and he unclipped the chin strap and he lifted the mask off my head and he set it on the Pendleton blanket at the foot of the bed, and he looked at my face — wet, wrecked, red-eyed, grinning — and he laughed, low and full, and he said:

“There’s come on your mask, goalie.“

“I know.”

“You want me to clean it.”

“No.”

“…No?”

“I want the next save to be in gear you came on.”

He stared at me.

Then he threw his head back and laughed, real, full, loud, the way he had not laughed in twelve months, and he collapsed next to me on the bed, and he pulled me against his chest, and he said, into the top of my hair:

“Jesus Christ, Ellis-Maddox.“

The Edison bulb flickered.

He reached up without moving his body and pulled the chain. The bulb went off.

The loft went dark except for the square of black sky in the triangular window with its scatter of Rocky Mountain stars.

I lay on his chest.

He stroked my hair.

The Pendleton blanket came up over both of us.

His heartbeat slowed against my ear.

My breath slowed against his chest.

Outside, down the hill, the pond had finally melted. The ice had been on for eleven hours and had cut off at two a.m. and had been softening since, and somewhere at about 5:11 a.m. the last of the surface would go back to water, and the two rocking chairs on the porch would still be there, empty, waiting for morning. Mr. Howe was already back in Toronto with the Cup. My mother and his mother were in a hotel in Silverthorne, probably still awake, probably on their third margarita, probably already planning their next dinner together. Axe was on a plane to Stockholm. Cap and Nora and Emmy were somewhere on I-70 East. Dutch was asleep on a friend’s couch in Denver. Coach Petrov was, I hoped, already in bed.

We were alone.

We were alone and married and sticky and exhausted and sore and wearing platinum bands on both our hands and the ring lines underneath them were starting to heal already, and I thought — drifting now, my cheek on his chest, my eyes closing — I thought: this is what it’s like.

This is what it’s like to have this.

This is what it’s like to have had it all along and not known it.

Nana. Thank you for praying for him. He came.

I was almost asleep.

Brant’s hand in my hair slowed.

He said, into my hair, quiet: “Zane.”

“Mm.”

“I want kids.”

I opened my eyes.

I went still.

“…Now?”

“No. Not now. Not right now. In a few years. When the playoffs are not in the way. When my shoulder is done with the league. When we have a house in Denver that isn’t a condo. When we can be home all summer. When — in a few years. But I want them. I wanted to tell you.”

“…Brant Ellis-Maddox.”

“Yeah.”

“You asked me to marry you in my living room. You asked for kids at 5 a.m. on our wedding night. You are the fastest and the slowest man I have ever met in my life.”

“…Yeah.”

“I love you.”

“You haven’t answered.”

“You haven’t asked.”

“I’m asking.”

I lifted my head.

I looked at him in the dark loft. I could see the shape of his face and the wet shine of his eyes and the silver at his temples and the rosary on the nightstand behind him catching the very first gray of dawn through the triangular window.

I said: “Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, Brick. Yes. As many as you want. We’ll have them in this loft. We’ll bring them up this ladder. We’ll put them in the second rocking chair.”

“…Zane.”

“Yes.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

He kissed the top of my head.

He said, into my hair, the last thing I heard before I went out: “I got us home, Ty.“

I heard it.

I did not say anything back.

I did not need to.

I closed my eyes against my husband’s chest, in a loft bed under a triangular window in a cabin in the Rockies on the first morning of our marriage, at 5:14 a.m., with the Pendleton blanket warm over both of us and the rings gleaming on both our hands and the goalie mask on the floor with our come on it and the rosary on the nightstand and a wolf, somewhere out across the water, starting to howl again as the sun came up over the pines.

I slept.

Brant slept.

The pond melted.

The day began.

We were married.

That’s the part they didn’t print in the Amazon version.

That’s yours.

Thank you for coming up the ladder.

— Z.

If this is your first time at fractalenigma.com, welcome. My name is Chase Power. I write high-heat MM sports romance with hockey, heart, and the occasional lube-on-a-stick-rack incident. If you want to know when the next Avalanche Ice book drops, drop your email in the box below. Book Two is Axe’s. I think you’re going to like Henrik.

Haven’t read Gloves Off yet? Grab it on Kindle Unlimited. It’s the one that got us here.

Love,

Chase

Haven’t read Gloves Off yet?

This bonus scene picks up ninety minutes after the final chapter of the main novel. If you haven’t met Brant and Zane yet — start there. Grab Gloves Off here — it’s available now, free with Kindle Unlimited.

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