Victory Lap by Chase Power bonus chapter

Victory Lap — Bonus Chapter

Tuesday Night — An Exclusive Scene
by Chase Power

This bonus chapter takes place between Chapters 19 and 20 of Victory Lap. Nate and Mason’s first official Tuesday cooking lesson — the one where the risotto gets abandoned and the kitchen gets christened.

Tuesday Night

The grocery bags hit the counter like a declaration of war.

“Arborio rice,” Nate announces, pulling items from the bags with the enthusiasm of a man who has never been inside a grocery store unsupervised. “Parmesan. Mushrooms. Thyme — the fresh kind, not the powdered stuff, because you said the powdered stuff was, and I quote, ‘a hate crime against Italian cuisine.'”

I lean against the counter and watch him unpack. He drove to Whole Foods after practice. By himself. In a baseball cap and sunglasses that fooled exactly no one, based on the fan photo that’s already circulating on Twitter with the caption Is that Nate Carter buying CHEESE?

“You bought heavy cream,” I say.

“You said risotto needs cream.”

“I said risotto needs stock. Cream is for alfredo.”

He looks at the cream. Looks at me. “So I’m already failing.”

“You’re already learning. There’s a difference.”

He puts on the apron. It’s navy blue with a small whisk embroidered on the chest — a gift from my mother, who sent it last week with a card that said For the new student. Don’t let him burn down your kitchen. Love, Mom.

“Okay,” I say. “Dice the shallots.”

“What’s a shallot?”

“The small onion.”

“They’re all small onions.”

“The purple small onion.”

“Like this,” I say. I step behind him. Reach around. Place my hand over his on the knife — adjusting the grip, angling the blade, my chest against his back and my chin near his shoulder. He goes very still.

“You’re teaching me to chop,” he says.

“From behind me.”

“Best angle for knife work.”

“Shut up and dice.”

We get the shallots in the pan. Butter, sizzling. I hand him the wooden spoon. Our fingers brush. We’ve been together for three weeks. Official. Out to the team. And the accidental touch of his fingers still lights me up like a circuit completing.

He stirs. I add the rice. He stirs more. I add the wine — a splash, watching it hit the hot pan and evaporate in a fragrant cloud.

“You’re staring,” he says without looking up.

“I’m supervising.”

“You’re staring at my ass.”

“Your ass is in my kitchen. It’s going to get supervised.”

“Come supervise closer.”

I cross the kitchen. Stand behind him again. My hands find his waist, sliding under the apron. He leans back into me. My hands slide lower. Fingertips tracing the crease of his hip, the waistband of his jeans.

“You’re sabotaging my risotto,” he says.

“Your risotto can wait.”

I undo his button. His breath catches. The spoon stops.

“Turn off the stove,” I say against his ear.

He turns off the stove.

I spin him around. He’s leaning against the counter — my counter, in my kitchen, in the apron my mother sent — and I kiss him. Deep. “We’re never going to finish the risotto,” he murmurs against my mouth.

I pull the apron over his head. Then his henley. We’re bare-chested in the kitchen, and his hands are on my chest and my hands are on his belt and the risotto sits abandoned on the burner.

I drop to my knees on my kitchen floor. Look up at him. He’s leaning against the counter, chest heaving, and his expression — the mix of want and wonder and the disbelief that still hasn’t fully faded — is worth every minute of the seventeen weeks it took to get here.

I take him in my mouth. Slow. The way he likes it at first — unhurried, thorough. His head tips back. His hand finds my hair. “God — Mason—”

I pull off before he finishes. Stand. Turn him around. His palms land flat on the counter and his back arches. “Here?” he asks. Breathless.

“Here. We started in a kitchen. Seems right.”

I prep him slowly. My fingers work him open while my mouth travels his back — kissing each vertebra, tasting the salt of his skin, feeling him relax into my hand with the trust that still amazes me.

“Now,” he says. “I’m ready — please—”

I push inside him. Slow. Both of us groaning. His hands press flat against the counter, and I watch them — those quarterback’s hands, worth a hundred and eighty million dollars, spread on my twelve-dollar cutting board beside a pot of half-finished risotto — and the domesticity of it, the absurd and sacred normalcy, makes something in my chest expand.

I set a rhythm. Deep, steady, unhurried. The same pace as the risotto — slow, attentive, impossible to rush. He pushes back to meet me, and we find the sync that’s become our language.

“Harder,” he breathes. I give him harder. My hand reaches around to wrap around his cock, and the dual sensation makes him drop his forehead to the counter.

“Because it’s us,” I say. Because we earned this. Because seventeen weeks of rules and denial has turned every touch into a completed circuit, every orgasm into a homecoming.

“Don’t stop — right there — Mason, right there—”

“Come for me.”

He comes against the counter with a shudder that I feel in my spine. The sight of him — undone, broken open, my name the only word in his vocabulary — pushes me over. I bury myself deep, pressing my forehead between his shoulder blades, breathing his name into his skin.

We clean the counter. Again.

“We need to stop having sex in the kitchen,” Nate says, wiping granite with a paper towel while wearing an apron and nothing else.

We reheat the risotto. It’s overcooked. We eat it anyway, sitting on the counter, passing the pot, one fork between us because the tradition has become sacred.

He steals the fork from my hand. Takes a bite. Hands it back. The gesture — small, domestic, ours — settles into the kitchen like a permanent fixture.

He’s family. He’s mine. The risotto is terrible, and the kitchen needs cleaning, and his apron is on the floor, and I have never been this happy in my life.

Thank you for reading! If you loved Nate and Mason’s story, please consider leaving a review.

← Back to Victory Lap