By the time Mark and I made our way back inside, Jan and Anissa had left and Rocko was lying in bed with his laptop resting on his chest. He was raptly watching something with his headphones in and he gave us each a wink and a silent wave goodbye as we traded the sanctuary of his room for the still raging party.

“You ready to get out of here?” Mark whispered in my ear once we made it to the bottom of the stairs.

I nodded gratefully and followed him outside.

All that was playing on the radio on the drive back to campus was Auld Lang Syne, which apparently Mark was very passionate about. He started enthusiastically teaching me the lyrics to the parts that most people just hummed their way through. Then, like always, he walked me back to my dorm. My body was still reeling from the picture-perfect fairytale nonsense that was our first kiss and I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to him or this beautiful night just yet.

“Do you want to come up to my room for a little while?” I asked.

Mark licked his lips ever so slightly and nodded. I threaded my fingers through his and led the way upstairs.

In my room, I flipped the light switch and shed my hoodie and shoes before sitting down on the edge of my bed. Mark came and joined me, but he was moving very slowly, a bit more hesitant than usual. He kept glancing at my lips and then looking away. It was incredibly endearing.

I leaned in and kissed him until we were both gasping for breath and Mark was starting to go red in the face. I couldn’t get over how good this felt. Really the only thing I had to compare it to was Peter, but even that didn’t seem fair. Kissing Peter was easy and familiar, like falling back onto an old perfectly memorized melody; one that had overstayed its welcome and now was little more than a guilty pleasure. Kissing Mark was new and full of pulsing electricity that spindled all throughout my body, making my hair stand on end and my chest quake. I never wanted this intoxicating feeling to come to an end.

I went back in for another kiss before either of us had fully recovered and this time I slipped the tips of my fingers underneath the hem of Mark’s T-shirt, making him gasp.

I pulled back a fraction of an inch.

“Is this okay?”

Mark nodded and pulled me back to him. I ran my fingers slowly along the pronounced notches of his spine.

“Have you, uh,” he said between kisses. “Have you done this before?”

“Yes,” I said, raising my brows. “Have you?”

Mark laughed.

“Yeah, once or twice.”

“And do you have any preferences?” I asked, breath hot against his throat. I grazed my lips against the corner of his jaw, making him shiver. His hands settled on the curves of my hips.

“I usually top,” he said a bit self-consciously. “But we don’t have to go that far if you don’t want to. We can just talk about…”

I shut up his reservations with a kiss.

“I want to,” I said evenly. “I really do. Just...maybe…” I bit my lip, searching for the right words to say that I hadn’t been penetrated in years.

“Be patient with me,” I finished lamely.

Mark seemed to catch my meaning and nodded. He helped me out of my shirt and stared hungrily down at my abs. I reached over intending to take his shirt off too, but he stopped me by crossing his arms over his chest.

“Just for the record,” he said. “I don’t have any of that going on under here.”

I laughed and gently moved his hands aside. He was right. His torso was smaller and much less defined than mine was, but he still had muscle definition in his arms and shoulders and his slightly rounded stomach was nothing to scoff at. I delicately ran my fingers across the latter. I found that I actually liked that Mark was softer in some places. It made touching him feel more intimate somehow. More real. I’d seen plenty of exquisite masculine bodies in my day, but sometimes it was hard to view them as objects of desire and not in terms of what they could do. For instance, huge thighs meant great speed on the ice, beefy arms meant a more powerful shot, and rippling abs meant that you had great core strength and balance. With Mark, I didn’t have to analyze like that and there was no pressure to compare and contrast my body to his. I felt like I could just enjoy him for what he was.

I was the first to step out of my pants and underwear. Mark exhaled shakily and looked at me with his pupils blown wide.

“Oh my God,” he said.

“What?” I asked, forehead creased.

“You look like a fucking fitness model.”

I let my eyes fall closed and savored the spike of arousal the words sent shooting through my body.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” I said huskily, hooking my fingers under the waistband of his jeans. Mark made a longing sound low in his throat.

“What do you want me to do?” he whispered.

I thought about it and decided I wasn’t quite sure. I wanted everything all at once.

“I want you to do whatever you feel like,” I said.

Mark gave me a rough kiss and then pulled back.

“Are you sure?”

I nodded, heart racing.

“I want to fuck you,” Mark said into my ear.

My dick throbbed at the suggestion.

“Okay,” I said. “Get your fucking clothes off, please.”

Mark grinned, extracted my hands from his waistband and got to work giving me the world’s slowest strip tease. He started with the button of his jeans and then rolled them down an inch at a time. Once he was standing there in nothing but his black boxers he paused to cup his hard cock over the fabric a few times. I wanted to touch him so badly that the vein in my neck was pulsating with the effort of keeping myself still.

As soon as Mark’s underwear was down around his ankles and his erection springing free, I was pushing him back onto my bed and kissing him into the mattress. He hummed against my mouth and kissed me back like he was claiming me for his own. I rocked my hips against his, savoring the brief friction of our dicks brushing together.

“Do you have lube?” he asked, hand on my chest just over my racing heart.

I shook my head.

“I wasn’t really planning on getting busy anytime soon.”

Mark laughed and kissed the corner of my mouth.

“I guess we’ll have to improvise then.”

Though I didn’t want to leave him, I rolled out of bed and dug around in my desk drawer until I came up with a travel-sized container of aloe vera gel that I’d taken from a hotel room in California during one of our road games. It wasn’t like I was at a super high risk of getting a sunburn or anything, but I thought one of the other guys might need it.

I tossed it over to Mark and raised my brows.

“Good enough?”

He caught it in his hands and gave the label a quick once over.

“Works for me. Get over here.”

Mark had me lie down flat on my back with a pillow under my hips as he worked on me, carefully spreading my cheeks and slipping his slick fingers inside. I tensed up at first and then relaxed into the sensation, eyes falling shut and a wanton moan slipping from my lips.

Mark exhaled loudly and quickened his pace. I let the heat coil up in my belly until I couldn’t take it anymore.

“That’s enough,” I said through tight lips.

Mark smirked and pressed against my prostate one more time before pulling out. The gesture had me practically wailing. Mark was kissing his way up my torso and neck and I dug my fingers into his baby soft hair. The build-up was killing me. When I finally couldn’t take it anymore, I wrapped my arms around his torso and used all of my strength to flip him over onto his back, reversing our positions. He was looking at me with wide hungry eyes.

Without breaking eye contact, I straddled his hips, took his dick in my hand and slowly sank down onto it. I bit down on the inside of my cheek and held my breath, getting used to the pressure. Mark’s mouth fell open and his head dropped back.

“Fuck,” he whispered. Then he sat up very carefully and placed his hands over my ribs. The small movement sent his dick further inside of me, making me cry out, thus releasing my held breath and all of my remaining tension. I pulled off of him a little bit and then started rocking my hips. I was riding him like a porn star and judging from the sounds coming from his mouth, Mark was enjoying every second of it. He mostly kept his head buried in the crook of my neck, kissing and nibbling occasionally. I was sure he could feel my skyrocketing pulse against his lips and it made me want to go all out and put on a show for him. I wanted to rip open my brain and show him just how much I was enjoying this.

Then his hands were on me, the hands that I’d dreamt about with the thick boyish knuckles. He was carefully timing his strokes so that they lined up with every time he bucked up into me. The flurry of sensations was too much. I knew I wasn’t going to last very much longer. I tried to tell Mark that, but all that came out was a rough and desperate, “Stay.”

Mark inhaled and held me tighter. The half-moons of his nails were digging into my sides, probably leaving marks, but I couldn’t have cared less. He was breathing really hard and his pace kind of stuttered under the weight of his arousal, but he recovered quickly. The pleasure mounted and then finally spilled over. I came with a loud, unabashed cry.

I could feel Mark slowing down, so I reached out blindly to keep him in place.

“Keep going,” I begged, voice so raspy I almost didn’t recognize it. “I want you to cum inside me.”

Mark growled and then snapped his hips upward. It was the first time I truly felt like I was being fucked and not doing the fucking, and though the buzz of my orgasm was already starting to wear off, I basked in the glory of this newfound intensity.

“Yeah, baby,” I whispered, hands tangled in his hair. “Just like that. Cum for me.”

Mark didn’t need any further encouragement.

“Carter,” he said. His voice sounded absolutely wrecked. He hid his face in my chest and shook slightly as he came. I held him close and pressed my lips to the top of his head, cooing at him and telling him how good it felt until he gave one final jerk and fell still. We stayed like that for a while.

When I finally dismounted, I did so with a grunt.

Mark traced my jawline with his thumb.

“You okay?” he asked.

I nodded. “Just a little sore. I’ll be fine by tomorrow. That was amazing.”

Mark leaned over and smothered me in kisses until I started to laugh.

“I should get cleaned up,” I said finally, pulling away.

Mark grabbed my hand and laced his fingers through mine.

“Let me come with you.”

My eyes shot toward the door and then back at Mark. I was probably smiling like an idiot. We had just had rough, loud, passionate sex and still, the intimate and tender look had not left Mark’s eyes. It made my heart flutter knowing that he was just as gone on me as I was on him.

“Okay,” I said and helped pull Mark to his feet. We stepped out into the hall and walked to the communal bathroom naked. It wasn’t like there was anyone around to catch us. We stood in front of the mirrors and kissed while we were waiting for the water in the stall to get warm, and then even more once we were under the stream; cleaning yourself was rather difficult when it constituted letting go of someone you desperately did not want to let go of.

Afterward I kept expecting Mark to grow distant and put his clothes back on and tell me that he had to go, but that moment never came. We talked and cuddled and enjoyed each other’s company all throughout the night. We ended up falling asleep nestled together on top of my twin bed with Mark’s head resting on my chest, right over my heart.

Talk about bringing in the new year with a bang.