Illegal Contact by Chase Power bonus chapter

Illegal Contact — Bonus Chapter

Five-Twelve AM — An Exclusive Scene
by Chase Power

This bonus chapter takes place during Chapter 20 of Illegal Contact — the morning Derek wakes up and doesn’t leave. Derek’s POV of the hours Tyler slept through, and the ones he didn’t.

Five-Twelve AM

I’d been awake for eleven minutes before I understood what was different.

Not the room — my room, my bed, the ceiling I’d stared at for three years in the dark. Not the hour — five-twelve, the time my body had been waking since I was twenty and couldn’t be reprogrammed by any amount of sleep debt or emotional upheaval. Not the temperature, not the silence, not the gray-pink light bleeding through the blinds I’d forgotten to close.

Tyler’s arm was across my chest.

Heavy. Warm. The specific dead weight of a man who was deeply, comprehensively asleep — the arm of someone whose nervous system had decided this body, this bed, this person was safe enough to surrender to unconsciousness without reservation. His forearm lay diagonally across my sternum. His hand was curled loosely near my shoulder. The geometric lines of his tattoo were visible in the pre-dawn light — the timeline, the record of every year he’d been honest, resting on my chest like a claim.

I didn’t move.

For eleven minutes, I’d been lying in the dark with Tyler Knox’s arm across my chest, and I hadn’t moved. Hadn’t reached for my phone. Hadn’t calculated the optimal departure time. Hadn’t engaged the machinery of retreat that had driven every previous morning-after in every previous encounter — the silent extraction, the careful restoration of distance, the performance of a man who hadn’t spent the night doing exactly what he’d done.

The machinery was off.

I loved him. The fact sat in my chest like a new organ — unfamiliar in its placement, undeniable in its function. I loved Tyler Knox. I loved his patience and his courage and his laugh and his body and the way he saw through every wall I’d ever built and waited on the other side.

His arm tightened across my chest. A sleep-reflex — the unconscious grip of a body that sensed movement and responded with stay.

I shifted closer. Pressed my lips against his forehead. He made a sound — a low, contented hum that vibrated against my collarbone — and his body curled tighter against mine. Seeking warmth. Seeking me.

At five-forty, I couldn’t stay still anymore. Not because of the old impulse — not the flee, the retreat, the need to restore the performance before daylight made honesty unavoidable. Because of the new one. The impulse that said: make him coffee. Be here when he wakes up. Be the thing he opens his eyes to.

I went downstairs. Made coffee. Two mugs. His was the one on the left — the plain white one with the chip on the handle that I should have thrown away months ago but hadn’t because Tyler Knox had drunk from it and that made it irreplaceable.

I brought the mugs upstairs. Got back in bed. The covers had slipped to his waist, and the expanse of his back was bare in the morning light — lean muscle, smooth skin, the tattoo sleeve vivid against the white sheets.

He was beautiful. Beautiful in the specific, devastating way of a person you love: not just the body, but the person inside it.

He stirred. His eyes found the coffee on the nightstand, then me. The smile deepened — from ghost to real.

“Morning.”

“You’ve been awake since five-twelve,” he said. “And you’re still here. That’s the hottest thing you’ve ever done.”

I kissed him. Because I could. Because it was morning and he was in my bed and the sun was filling the room and I didn’t have to steal this.

“Coffee first?” he asked against my lips.

“After.”

“After what?”

I answered with my body. Rolled toward him. Over him. My weight settling onto his — chest to back, hips to hips. Tyler hummed. He shifted under me. Arched. His ass pressed back against my hips and the friction sent a pulse of heat through my pelvis that made my cock thicken against the small of his back.

I kissed the back of his neck. Down his spine. Vertebra by vertebra. His hips shifted. Pushing back against me. An invitation encoded in the language of bodies that knew each other’s rhythms.

“Take these off,” I said, hooking his waistband. He lifted his hips. I pulled them down. My own followed. Naked in the morning light, his back against my chest, my cock nestled between his cheeks, the heat of skin on skin completing a circuit that made everything else irrelevant.

I reached for the lube. Tyler’s hand intercepted mine before I reached the condoms.

“Just you,” he said. “No barrier. I want to feel you.”

The trust of it made my hand shake. We’d talked about this. Both clean. Both tested. Both committed. But the reality — of being inside Tyler with nothing between us — was the last wall. The last barrier.

“Yeah,” I said. My voice rough. “Just us.”

I slicked my fingers. He was still loose from last night — my finger slid in easily, his body opening with the muscle memory of recent intimacy. He groaned into the pillow. Two fingers. He pushed back onto them, his body taking what it wanted with the easy confidence of a man who’d stopped being tentative about desire a long time ago.

“Now,” he breathed. “I want you now.”

I slicked myself. Pressed in — slowly, the head breaching him — and the sensation of entering Tyler without a barrier for the first time was so overwhelming that I had to stop. Just stop. Stay still. Feel it. The heat of him — impossibly hot, impossibly tight, the direct, unmediated contact of his body around mine — was the most intimate physical sensation I had ever experienced.

“Oh fuck —” Tyler’s voice muffled by the pillow. “Oh God, that’s — Derek, you feel —”

I sank in. All the way. Slowly. Feeling every inch. When my hips were flush against him I pressed my forehead between his shoulder blades. Breathed.

“Move,” he managed.

I moved. Slow. The morning pace. No janitor’s cart, no teammate in the hallway, no game clock, no performance waiting on the other side. Just the bed and the sheets and the sunlight and the devastating friction of sliding in and out of the man I loved with nothing between us.

I could feel his pulse around me. Every micro-contraction. Every shift in pressure. The information was overwhelming. Intimate beyond measure.

I wrapped my arm around his chest. Pulled him up — his back against my chest, both of us on our knees, the position changing the angle to something deeper. He gasped. His head fell back against my shoulder. My mouth found his neck.

“Derek — right there — don’t you dare stop —”

My hand slid down his chest. His stomach. Found his cock — hard, leaking, untouched until now — and wrapped around it. The dual sensation made him cry out. His hand came back and gripped my hip — pulling me deeper, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.

“I love you,” I said against his ear. Steady. Unhesitating. “I love you, Tyler.”

“I — God — I love you — Derek, I’m —”

He came in my hand. Hard, pulsing, his body clenching around me with a force that sent shockwaves from the base of my cock to the back of my skull. The feeling of him coming around me — bare, unmediated, the rhythmic contraction gripping me — pushed me over the edge.

I came inside him. No barrier. No separation. The most intimate possible version of the most intimate possible act — spilling into the body of the man I loved, the last wall falling, the last distance eliminated completely.

We collapsed together. Side by side. His back to my chest, my arm around him. Both shaking.

“Stay there,” he murmured. Meaning: stay inside. Don’t pull away.

I stayed.

The coffee went cold. We made a new pot later — standing in the kitchen, Tyler on the counter, eggs on the stove. The morning happened the way mornings happen when two people are building a life: messily, warmly, with burnt toast and laughter and a purple toothbrush finally taken out of its package.

“You know that’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for me,” he said, stealing egg from the pan.

“It’s coffee, Tyler.”

“It’s not coffee. It’s evidence. Evidence that someone lives in this house. That’s not coffee. That’s a life.”

I pressed my face into his hair. “I’m going to make you coffee every morning. Every morning you’re here. Which I’m hoping is every morning.”

“Every morning,” he said.

It was the first morning. The first of all of them. And I was here for every single one that followed.

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