Chapter Text
Ottawa, Ontario, December 2009
The day before Shane's second Prospect Cup final was a typical one for an Ottawa winter: icy cold, with a knife-edged wind. He stood with his mom by their car in the parking lot across from the ice rink, waiting for his dad to finish work so the three of them could go for lunch.
His mom was talking and Shane was listening, mostly. She was chasing some endorsement deal for him and he was grateful, honestly, but he had a cup final to play and he couldn't help feeling like it was more important to be thinking about that.
It would be a rematch, this final. Canada versus Russia, round two. Shane was determined not to let him—no, them, not to let them—win. Not this time.
No way was he letting Ilya Rozanov (okay, so maybe it was a him) get the edge on him again. Not after last year's final. Not after Rozanov had been selected as the number one draft pick to Shane's number two. Not after the hotel gym on draft night, a night Shane 100% never, ever thought about and definitely not as he lay alone in his bed, nearly every night of the six months that had passed since.
Fuck Rozanov. He was not going to win tomorrow, not here in Shane’s hometown. Nope. Not gonna happen.
“Oh, did you hear about Rozanov?”
His mom's question snapped Shane’s attention back to her. “No,” he said. “What about him?”
“The word is he might not be going to Boston after all.”
“What?" Shane was fully on alert now. "Why not? Is he going to another team?”
“No, apparently there’s some sort of problem with his visa. He may end up back in Russia.”
“Oh.” Shane was quiet for a minute as he processed this. He felt… bad about it. Wrong. Rozanov may be an asshole, he may be arrogant and cocky and maybe proximity to him made Shane’s body do things he wasn’t entirely comfortable with but the idea of him just… not being there, being thousands of miles away instead on another continent entirely was wrong. Shane didn’t like it.
From the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of movement, someone heading around the corner to the back of the rink. He turned his head in time to register a black cap with dark-gold curls peeking out from beneath it and his breath caught. Rozanov was probably sneaking off for a smoke.
“Hey,” he said, “can I meet you guys at the restaurant? There’s something I forgot to do.”
“Oh. Sure.” His mother gave him her concerned frown. “Is anything wrong?”
Everything is wrong. “No, nothing, don’t worry. There’s just something I’ve got to do.”
“Okay,” she said. “Don’t be too long. Dad just texted, he's two minutes away.”
“I'll be there soon. Order for me if you want,” called Shane over his shoulder as he hurried off.
He found Rozanov as expected leaning against the back wall of the rink with a cigarette hanging between his lips. He drew in a deep breath when he saw Shane, then slowly let it out. The smoke he exhaled wreathed his face in curls, like his hair.
“That’s so gross,” Shane said. “Why do you still do it?”
Rozanov shrugged. “Life is short. And sucks. What does it matter?”
“Yeah, uh. I heard. About your visa. That does suck, I’m sorry.”
Rozanov’s lip twitched up, just at one corner. “You are sorry,” he repeated. “Really.”
“Yes, really!” Shane protested. “You’re a good player. A great one. Could be great. Would be, I mean, if—yeah.” He shuffled his feet and rubbed the back of his neck, then shoved his hands in his pockets. “What’s the problem anyway? With the visa?”
Rozanov took the cigarette from his mouth and released another cloud of smoke. “Problem is my father,” he replied. “He doesn’t want me to play in America. So he, um.” He made a gesture with his hands, like tugging on something. “English expression is, I think, ‘pulled strings’. With Russian government and embassy.” He took another drag on his cigarette. “He is powerful man, my father. He gets what he wants.” The bitterness in his voice was audible.
“Wow.” This was so far outside Shane’s experience of parents and how they behaved with regard to hockey careers that he didn’t know how to react to it. “Isn’t there anything you can do?”
Rozanov shrugged again. “I am eighteen now. I could marry an American, if I could find someone. That is maybe the only way.”
“But you don’t have anyone?”
“Who do I know in America? There is only one, my friend Svetlana. She would do this for me if I asked her.”
“Will you? Ask her?”
Rozanov shook his head. “Svetlana is American citizen, but her father, he is Russian and if she did this for me then what my father would do to hers…” he trailed off with another gesture followed by a shrug.
“Yeah,” said Shane, “I get it.”
“So there is no one,” Rozanov concluded. He took a final drag on his cigarette and dropped the butt on the ground. His heel made a grinding noise against the pavement as he stomped it out. “I go back to Russia next week and I will stay there. Maybe I will play hockey. Who knows.”
Something about the way he stood, shoulders hunched, something about the tone of his voice made Shane feel itchy under his skin. Wrong, his brain screamed, wrong wrong wrong. Ilya Rozanov shouldn’t be looking defeated, he shouldn’t be sounding like deep down he wanted to cry. It was all fucking wrong.
“You know me,” Shane said. The words were out of his mouth before he’d fully processed them, but he didn’t give himself the chance to take them back. “You could marry me.”
Rozanov snorted. “Sure, Hollander. I could marry you. Canada allows this, I think.”
“Yeah. It does.”
Rozanov looked at him sharply. Whatever he saw on Shane’s face had his eyes widening. “You would do this?” he asked. “Really?”
Yeah, Shane, would you? Really?
“I would,” Shane replied. “Really.”
Rozanov stared at him, his mouth slightly open.
“I mean, just for the visa,” said Shane. He could feel his cheeks begin to flush. “So you can still sign with Boston and play there. Just until you get citizenship. Canadian citizenship but that should be okay too, right?"
Time seemed to stretch as Rozanov stared silently and Shane held his breath, and then, “Yes,” Rozanov said. “Canadian citizenship would be okay." Shane released his breath in a puff that was visible in the frigid air.
"So, yeah,” he said. “Okay. That's all it would be.”
Rozanov stared at him a beat or two longer, then he shook his head. His mouth closed, lips pressed together and Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “Okay,” he said. “Fuck it. Why not. I take your deal.”
He offered Shane his hand this time.
Shane clasped it in his own. They shook.
The deal was done.
Shane had to sneak out of the house very early the next morning to meet with Rozanov before practice, before his parents woke up and asked questions. He’d barely slept, so when he arrived at the small diner to find Rozanov already there with a cup of black coffee in front of him, Shane ordered the same for himself. When the waitress delivered it he took a sip and grimaced.
“You don’t drink coffee,” Rozanov observed. “Normally.”
“No.”
“Why this morning, then? They have milk.”
“I don’t drink milk either, asshole.”
“I meant to put in your coffee, Hollander. Fuck.”
“Sorry.” Shane rubbed his temples. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t sleep that much last night.”
“Mmm.” Rozanov nodded, but the look on his face was weird. “You have changed your mind?” he said.
“No.”
“You were thinking of how to…” he paused, hunting for the expression. “To break it to me gently.”
“No. I haven’t changed my mind. I was up all night researching Canada’s marriage and citizenship laws.”
Rozanov stared at him, with the same expression he’d worn in the parking lot the day before. Wide-eyed, with a curl at the corners of his lips. Like he found Shane funny, only Shane didn’t feel laughed at. “You were researching,” he repeated. “All night?”
“Fuck you,” Shane muttered. He noticed that behind the teasing grin Rozanov looked tired too. “I don’t need to ask what you were doing.”
“No.” Rozanov smirked. “Probably best not.”
“You’re such an asshole.” Shane took a notebook out of his pocket and shoved it across the table. “This is what I learned.”
Rozanov sipped his coffee as he read Shane’s pages on pages of scrawled notes. Shane took a gulp of his. It burned his tongue, which he thought might actually be a good thing. That way he was less able to taste it.
“Says here we have to live together,” Rozanov said after several minutes’ silence. “This will not be impossible?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Shane was prepared for this and many other questions. “We don’t have to be there all the time especially since we’re required to travel a lot for our jobs. We just need to share a residence and be able to show that we spend enough time there together to be considered a legit couple.”
Rozanov nodded. “So where will we live?”
Shane fiddled nervously with the napkin under his coffee cup. “Somewhere in Canada.”
“Canada is very big place. Not as big as Russia of course, but—”
“Ottawa,” said Shane, because he was not getting into an argument with Rozanov about whose country—whose anything—was bigger. “Here. My parents have a cottage nearby, on a lake. I’ve always wanted to build one of my own there too.”
“Build? This will take time.”
“In the meantime we can rent a place somewhere, or buy an investment property maybe. Look, we just need something that has both our names on it, where we can live in the off-season. When we’re playing we can stay at each other’s places sometimes too, just. Quietly. This has to stay a secret.”
“I know.”
Rozanov’s fingers tapped on the side of his coffee cup. Shane suspected he was wishing for a cigarette. “I spoke to my father,” he said. “Last night.”
“Oh. Okay?”
“I told him that to break my contract with Boston would look weak to American people. Like running away. Like I could not—” he hesitated. “‘Cut it’, is expression, yes? I could not cut it in MLH.”
“Oh,” said Shane again. “That was smart.”
“Yes. Also successful. He agreed to one season in Boston and after that I must go home. So there is time to think of another way. If you don’t want to do this.”
Shane hesitated. Here was an out, a way to back off from this insane idea without going back on his word. But there was something in Rozanov's demeanour that made him say, “Do you not want to do it? Because a season is good but that’s really not a long time. Getting married, applying for permanent residence, that all takes time. Even if we start now.”
Rozanov’s fingers continued to tap on his cup. He looked up at Shane, probingly, then back down again. “You really haven’t changed your mind?”
“No." This was the truth, Shane realised. He hadn't. If anything, he was more determined than ever to see this through to the end. It was a goal for him now, and once Shane had set a goal for himself, he never wavered. He was going to win the Prospect Cup, he was going to be a superstar in the MLH. He was going to marry Ilya Rozanov and keep him from being forced back to Russia. That was all there was to it. "Have you?”
The briefest pause, then, “No.”
Shane nodded. “Okay then. Let’s make a plan.”
Shane would never be certain what made it happen. The coffee maybe, or the adrenaline compensating for lack of sleep. The exhilaration, at doing something truly daring, reckless even, for the first time in his life. Or maybe it was just the simple will to win. Whatever the motivation, Shane played the best game of his life that night in the final. Rozanov played well too, brilliantly even, but Shane was unstoppable.
And when, during the post-game handshakes, Shane’s fingers closed on Rozanov’s, when he gave them a squeeze and muttered, “See you soon,” they both knew fully what he meant.
Rozanov returned the squeeze along with a smile Shane had never seen on his face before. Conspiratorial, that was the word for it. The smile of a shared secret.
Shane carried that smile with him for the next six months.
June 2010
Ilya sat in the lobby of the hotel, waiting. His leg was bouncing, his fingers toying with his phone. He felt knotted up with nerves and tension and one single, overriding thought.
What if he doesn’t show up?
Maybe it was a mistake, to rely too heavily on Hollander for his future in North America and in hockey both. No, it was definitely a mistake. Hollander was beautiful, he was annoyingly good at hockey, he was far too fuckable for Ilya’s personal comfort but he was also a good boy. A rule-follower. Someone who did not defraud the government of his own country by marrying a foreigner just so that man could get Canadian citizenship and freedom from his father’s influence.
Hollander was definitely going to chicken out. Ilya’s leg bounced faster.
The hotel’s main doors slid open and Ilya looked up. Hollander was there, framed in the doorway, gripping the handle of his suitcase so hard his knuckles were white. Ilya’s breath left his lungs in an audible whoosh.
He’s here, he thought. Fuck. He’s actually here.
We’re going to do this.
Hollander came over to where Ilya was sitting and Ilya rose to meet him. “Hey,” he said. His eyes darted around the lobby, like he expected government agents to jump out from behind the potted plants and denounce them. “Um. Everything go okay?”
“Yes.” Ilya watched as Hollander continued to scan the room. “Hollander, relax,” he said, though he himself was far from relaxed. “This is Las Vegas. You are not famous here yet.”
Hollander shot him a smirk. “Not yet.”
“So there is no one to recognise you or care if you get married. Everyone gets married here. That is what you said, yes?”
“Yeah.” Hollander nodded. “Easiest place in the world to get married. No blood test, no residency requirement, no waiting period. Doesn’t matter where you’re from. Just fill out a few forms, go to a chapel and it’s done.”
“Good. Then we are ready.”
“Yeah. We’re ready. You check in yet?”
“I waited for you.”
“Okay. We check in, we go get the license, then we go to the chapel. Appointment at four p.m.”
“Yes,” said Ilya drily, “I remember the plan.”
“Fuck you,” muttered Hollander, but the words had no bite.
Later, Ilya thought. He couldn’t help thinking it. I hope.
They checked in using their real names. The desk clerk didn’t even blink at them. They went up to their room long enough to drop their bags and change into suits then headed out again, to a taxi and then the Clark County Marriage License Bureau where they took a few minutes to fill in the required forms, waited in line for several more minutes, then after a brief conversation with the least interested public servant Ilya had ever seen—and he grew up in Russia—they had their marriage license.
Another taxi, this one just a short ride to a wedding chapel far nicer than what Ilya had been expecting. Vegas he'd thought was all neon lights and people dressed as Elvis but this place Hollander had chosen for them was quiet, set back from the road, with a garden and a gazebo and an arched bridge over a stream, both painted in soft neutral shades of cream and brown. The chapel itself was white and made of wood, with a single steeple topped by a rounded roof that almost, Ilya thought, if he squinted, resembled the onion domes atop St Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow.
Almost.
He followed Hollander into a low outbuilding where they were greeted by a very friendly woman. Friendly in the American way, thought Ilya, all wide smiles and a cheery voice but with a hardness behind it all. In Russia the people wore their hardness on their faces for everyone to see and honestly Ilya preferred it this way. It was more honest. Hollander of course was Canadian and they were hard-wired for politeness so he returned the woman’s smile and said all the right things but he was also vibrating with a tension that Ilya himself could feel. He thought about putting a hand on Hollander’s shoulder, for reassurance, but decided that would only make things worse.
It struck him then that he’d barely even touched this man he was about to marry. Only his hand, five times to shake it and twice when passing the water bottle in the gym on that night Ilya could not forget. The sheer absurdity of the situation had a manic laugh bubbling in his chest. He suppressed it, barely, and tuned back into the conversation in time to hear the friendly-hard American woman ask Hollander about the rings.
“Um,” he replied, “well.”
“We have some for sale here if you haven’t got any,” said the woman, with a genuine light in her eyes for the first time.
“No, uh…” Hollander paused and for a minute Ilya thought he was going to say that they’d go without rings. “I mean, I—” he glanced back at Ilya. His cheeks were pink, his freckles dark against this rosy background. Ilya was so caught by his beauty he almost didn’t hear Hollander say, “I have one, actually.”
He fished in his pocket and pulled out a small black box. “I guess I just thought… I don’t know what I thought.” His cheeks flushed deeper. “It’s probably dumb.”
“Is not dumb.” Ilya felt a flash of something that was almost anger, that Hollander would think such a thing about himself. “Or maybe you think I too am dumb.” He reached into his own pocket and pulled out a similar box, this one red. “I have a ring also.”
“You do?” Hollander stared at him in surprise. His lips were slightly parted, pink like his cheeks. Ilya wanted to kiss him. He always fucking wanted to kiss Hollander and it occurred to him that very soon he would not only be able but expected to do this. American wedding ceremonies ended with a kiss. His heartbeat picked up speed.
“Yes, of course Ho—of course,” he said, hiding his rising excitement behind a scoff. “Is wedding. Rings are necessary, yes?”
“Yeah. I just didn’t think—never mind.” Hollander turned back to the woman. “I guess we’ve got rings.”
“Looks like you do.” Her smile never wavered but the hardness was back behind it. “You’re all set. Follow me.”
She led them back out to the pretty yard then into the chapel itself. There they were greeted by a tall man with a wide smile far more genuine than the woman’s, who introduced himself as Pastor Dave, took their rings, briefly explained what to expect from the ceremony, then ushered them over to the door of a room made to look like an American church, with a wide aisle and wooden pews and an altar at the back. Very plain, Ilya thought, no gold, no colours. Neutral, like the outside. But—nice somehow. Simple. Peaceful.
“You two want to walk down the aisle together?” the pastor asked.
“Yeah,” Hollander replied. “Sure.”
The pastor smiled and went to stand behind the altar. Music began to play. Hollander hooked his arm through Ilya’s. When Ilya looked at him in surprise, he hissed, “It has to look real.”
Ilya tightened his arm to pull Hollander close against his side. If he wanted real, or the appearance of it, then real he would fucking get.
They began to walk down the aisle together, awkwardly at first. It took a few paces for them to figure each other out but by the time they reached the altar they were perfectly in sync.
It was like on the ice, Ilya thought, the way they moved with each other so smoothly and naturally it felt like it shouldn’t be possible. It would be the same, he knew, if he ever managed to get Hollander into bed.
The pastor began to speak but Ilya wasn’t listening. He was watching Hollander, drinking his fill of that pretty face, safe in the knowledge that no one knew them here or gave a fuck about hockey, and that Hollander would soon be his husband. Husbands were supposed to look at each other. It would be weird if they didn’t.
Hollander kept his own eyes fixed on Ilya’s chin until the pastor said his name. Then he blinked and looked up, and Ilya was able to catch his gaze.
Hollander didn’t look away.
“Do you take this man to be your husband?” Pastor Dave intoned. Hollander’s gaze didn’t waver.
“I do,” he said.
The pastor said Ilya’s name then, with a decent attempt at Russian pronunciation, then repeated his words. When he got to the question, Ilya was ready.
“Do you take this man to be your husband?”
Hollander appeared to be holding his breath. “I do,” Ilya said. Hollander exhaled slowly through pursed lips.
The rings they had chosen for each other lay on a white satin pillow in front of the altar. They were plain gold bands both, simple and serviceable. Ilya swallowed hard as Hollander slipped one onto his finger—the wrong finger; in Russia wedding rings went on the right hand—then forced himself to breathe normally as he did the same, holding Hollander’s hand more lightly than he wished he could and slipping the ring onto the wrong-hand finger where it fit perfectly. He repeated the words the pastor instructed him to say without really understanding them. His attention was all on Hollander’s hand, still clasped in his.
“…power vested in me…” he vaguely heard the pastor say, and “…I now pronounce you…” then finally came the words he had been waiting for. “…seal your vows with a kiss.”
Hollander had stopped breathing again. He looked a bit like a baby deer caught in headlights, all pink cheeks and wide eyes and palpable terror. Ilya, by contrast, felt calmer than he had in months. He reached up to lay his hand on Hollander’s cheek and brush his thumb across the freckles whose pattern he was certain at this point he could draw from memory. Then with a slight tug he pulled Hollander in and finally—fucking finally—kissed the mouth he’d been thinking about kissing for a year and a half.
At the first touch of their lips, Hollander seemed to melt. The tension drained from him and he leaned into Ilya, his free hand slipping beneath Ilya’s jacket to lie heavy and warm on his back, separated from his skin only by the thin fabric of his shirt. His mouth opened just enough for Ilya to taste him and when their tongues brushed, briefly, Ilya in a surge of dizzying want ended the kiss, to preserve the decency of the ceremony and his own fucking sanity.
Hollander made a soft sound of protest and looked up with dark, hazy eyes that set something wild and fierce to howling in Ilya’s chest. Fuck, he thought. If I can’t fuck him soon I may not survive it.
The pastor was speaking again and Hollander, though still flushed, appeared to be making all the correct replies. He kept his hand in Ilya’s as they walked back down the aisle—the ring felt heavy and strange on his finger, Ilya thought, and wondered if for Hollander it was the same—then over to a small table where they signed the wedding certificate. The woman, who had sat in a back pew during their ceremony, signed it as well, as a witness.
When she set her pen down she turned her hard smile on them once again. “You’ll want a picture,” she said.
“Yes,” Ilya replied before Hollander had the chance. If there was no visual evidence of this he wasn’t sure he would believe it had happened, heavy ring on his finger or no. He felt Hollander glance at him, then he too said, “Yeah, one picture.”
There was a camera on a tripod already set up. The woman instructed them how to stand, where to put their hands, and then said, “Smile!”
Ilya hoped his face did everything it ought to. He was good at smiling but the surreality of the day was beginning to get the better of him. The camera flashed a few times and then the woman said, “Stop back tomorrow and we’ll have the photo ready.”
And that was that. “Congratulations,” the pastor said and shook their hands and then they were on their way, out of the chapel just in time for the arrival of the next couple on the schedule.
Their taxi was waiting and they stumbled into it. Ilya felt overwhelmed and he sensed Hollander did too. His tension was back and stringing him tight once again, though it felt different this time, sort of manic.
“Holy shit,” Hollander whispered. He leaned back in his seat and ran his hands over his face. The gold ring on his finger glinted even in the dim light through the cab’s tinted windows. “Holy fucking shit. Did we actually just do that?”
“I think so. Yes.” This time when he felt the urge to comfort Hollander, Ilya didn’t resist it. He took Hollander’s hand and folded it in his own, and when Hollander looked at him with a mixture of alarm and the same softness he’d shown after their kiss, Ilya gave his hand a squeeze.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Um.” Hollander closed his eyes and gave his head a little shake. “Yeah. I think so.” He opened his eyes again. “You?”
“Yes. It is a lot, but… yes. Thank you.”
Hollander’s lips formed a soft smile that Ilya wanted to kiss right off his face. “For what?”
“This. Everything. You did not have to do all this.”
“Yeah, I did.” Hollander’s voice dropped lower. “I can’t explain it, but—it was wrong. You being forced back to Russia forever. It would’ve been so wrong, I couldn’t let it happen.”
“I will go back, tomorrow night,” Ilya said. “There are things in Moscow I must do. But when I move to Boston for start of hockey season, it will be for good.”
Hollander nodded. The cab pulled up at their hotel and Ilya realised he was still holding Hollander’s hand. He released it with a reluctance that felt curiously wrenching and they got out of the cab. Hollander thanked the driver then looked at Ilya, who looked back. The pair of them then turned together in wordless agreement and headed up to their room.
The closing of their door behind them enfolded them into a silence that Shane found hard to breathe in. He was hyper-aware of Rozanov’s presence beside him, of the lingering feel of their clasped hands, of his taste still on Shane’s lips. Shane licked them, just to be sure, and fuck yes there it was. Nothing that tasted of cigarettes should be so good but the faint trace of smoke on his tongue just made him want more.
“What do you want to do?” he asked. It was only six o’clock and they were in fucking Vegas. He figured a guy like Rozanov would want to go out, find a nightclub, then do—whatever it was people like him did in places like this. That was their deal, after all, meticulously worked out via text and email over the six months since they’d shaken hands on it behind the rink in Ottawa. They were married now but there were no ties between them. No commitment. Nothing but a piece of paper that five years down the road would make Rozanov a citizen of Canada. He could do what he liked in the meantime.
Shane knew what he wanted to do tonight. The knowledge of it pressed insistently in his brain and refused to be ignored or locked away, as Shane had done his best to lock away every thought and feeling he had about Rozanov, particularly the ones from that night in the hotel gym. His skin felt hot and too tight, uncomfortable. He risked a glance at Rozanov and found him staring intently, eyes half-lidded and lips parted. The look on his face was the same as when he’d watched Shane drink from his water bottle. Shane caught his breath.
Rozanov’s hand curled around Shane’s waist as he walked him back into the wall, pressed him against it with his body that felt so big even though he was only an inch or two taller. There was a question in his eyes and Shane nodded in answer to it.
Yes, he thought. Fucking please.
Rozanov smiled as he gripped Shane’s face again, harder than he had in the chapel. His fingers dug into Shane’s cheek a bit but he didn’t mind. He wanted to feel this, to feel all of it. Rozanov’s fingers and his lips as he kissed Shane again, feathery-soft kisses that deepened as Shane pulled him closer, his tongue in Shane’s mouth, his cock, hard and fucking huge and pressed against Shane’s hip in a way he couldn’t ignore. Didn’t want to ignore.
Rozanov’s lips were wet, his breath hot on Shane’s cheek when he said, “Tonight, I think we should consummate our marriage.”
Shane smiled at his careful pronunciation. “Did you look that up?”
“Yes. Is right word?”
“Yeah.”
Rozanov managed to look both cocky and hesitant at once as he asked, “And you want?”
Shane nodded again. “Yeah. I want.”
The hesitancy vanished and Rozanov was all confidence again, grinning as they fell into each other, as they kissed hungrily and tugged at each other’s clothes, as Rozanov pushed them away from the wall and they stumbled together to the bed. Rozanov sat on the end of it and stripped down completely but Shane, despite the pounding of his blood and the lust that made him dizzy, hesitated.
Rozanov looked up with that smile of his, warmer than it had sometimes been but still presenting a challenge Shane knew he could never resist. “Is your first time with a man?” he asked.
Shane nodded. “You?”
“No.” Rozanov shook his head. Shane couldn’t hold back a small, disbelieving laugh.
“Really? With who? A teammate?”
“No. My coach’s son, back in Russia.”
Fuck, this guy has steel-lined balls, Shane thought, and Rozanov’s smile widened as though reading his mind.
“I like danger,” he said, and Shane laughed again.
“Am I dangerous?”
“Yes.” Rozanov laughed too. “You, boring Canadian good boy Shane Hollander, are the most dangerous thing I have ever done. And I want to do more to you. Come here. Clothes off first.”
Shane began to undo his pants even as his mind snagged on Rozanov’s words. “What do you want to do to me?” he asked.
“Everything. Everything you will allow.”
Shane suspected he’d allow pretty much anything Rozanov asked for and that frankly fucking scared him. He wasn’t, he thought frantically, prepared for this. He pulled his pants off, folded them neatly and draped them over a chair, then stepped closer, hesitantly, still with his boxers on.
“I don’t have any—” he stumbled briefly on the word “—um. Condoms.”
Rozanov waved this away. “Is no problem. There are some in vending machine in lobby.”
“There—what?”
“Also lube.”
“What?”
Rozanov shrugged. “Is Vegas, yes? People fuck here.”
Shane processed this for a moment then made a vague gesture towards the door. “So, should I go—”
“Ugghhh, Hollanderrrr!” Rozanov collapsed back onto the bed, hands flung dramatically over his head to land on the pillows. Spread out like that, lit by golden evening sunlight through the hotel window, he was absolutely glorious, all fascinating dips and bulges of muscle and a cock so long and thick and hard that Shane couldn’t take his eyes off it. “Don’t be so boring,” Rozanov said. “Listen.” He leaned up on his elbows and caught Shane in the act of ogling him. He blinked for a beat, then grinned.
“You want to suck my cock,” he observed.
“Yeah.” Shane couldn’t have denied it, even had he not been caught staring.
“I want to suck yours too. So we do this first. To…” he paused to arrange the words. “To take the edge off, yes? Then condoms.”
Fuck. “Really? Um, both things?”
“We have all night, Hollander. You would rather watch a movie? Pay-per-view?”
“No, Jesus. Fine.” Shane stripped off his boxers to let his own aching cock free. He turned away to fold them and put them over the chair. When he turned back Rozanov was watching him with a strange, soft look that quickly vanished as he eyed Shane’s cock appreciatively. He slid up the bed to lay back against the pillows and patted the space beside him.
“Come here,” he said again. Shane went, and laid back as well. He tried to feel comfortable but the heat of Rozanov’s body in the cool of the air-conditioned room was disorienting, and when he rolled onto his side to lean over Shane and take hold of his cock Shane once again felt enveloped.
“Is this okay?” he asked. Shane nodded. Rozanov stroked him for a moment, his touch firm and confident, then he said, “You want to suck me now?”
Shane didn’t need to be asked twice. He pushed Rozanov’s shoulders until he fell back onto the bed then crawled down his body and got comfortable between his legs. Rozanov sucked in a breath as Shane’s mouth closed over him, with tremendous eagerness and absolutely no idea what he was doing.
Though no, not absolutely no idea. Shane was aware of the basic principles of cocksucking, obviously. He’d had it done to him before and knew what he liked and also he had low-key been thinking about this for longer than he felt comfortable admitting. Whatever it was about Rozanov that got under his skin got all the way under it, to the point where Shane worried he was maybe a little bit obsessed.
The guy’s dick was not helping to ease that obsession, either. It was beautiful—an insane word to apply here, Shane thought, but fuck if it wasn’t deserved. Hot and heavy and slightly salty against his tongue, too long to fit fully in his mouth. He lost himself in licking and sucking on it, seeing how far down he could go, then Rozanov moaned and tightened the fingers he’d buried in Shane’s hair.
“Hollander, quick, I’m going to—” he said, and pulled Shane off of him just in time to grab his dick and come into his hand. With his other hand he tugged Shane back up the bed and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “Fuck, Hollander,” he said, then kissed him hard, and Shane felt ridiculously pleased with himself.
“Was that all right?” he asked.
“All right?” Rozanov snorted. “Yes, Hollander, was all right. Okay. I mean, I will take it, if I have no other option.”
“Fuck you, Rozanov,” Shane retorted, but he was grinning and Rozanov was too as they kissed again. Rozanov reached behind him for a tissue to wipe his hand, then when he’d finished rolled fully on top of Shane and leered down at him.
“I will teach you technique now, yes?” he said. Shane sputtered in protest as Rozanov kissed down his chest but then he swallowed Shane’s dick all the way to the back of his throat and wiped every coherent thought from Shane’s mind.
“Holy—holy shit, Rozanov,” he moaned as he writhed beneath the onslaught of Rozanov’s mouth and tongue and teeth. “Fuck, I—oh fuck. Oh shit. Oh God.”
He held out for as long as he could manage but still in what felt like no time at all he was pulling frantically at Rozanov’s hair. “I can’t stop,” he gasped, but Rozanov kept right on going until Shane bucked beneath him and spilled helplessly into his mouth. With one final suck and lick he detached himself and collapsed back into the pillows, where Shane stared at him like he’d never seen him before.
“That was—you didn’t have to do that,” he said.
“I don’t mind.” Rozanov turned to face him. “How do you feel?” he asked.
Fine, Shane started to say, an automatic response, but then he stopped to think.
How did he feel?
Amazing, for a start. He’d never come so hard or so well before in his life. Insane, because this whole situation was insane, this whole day, the fact that he was in bed with Ilya Rozanov, that they were married. It was so crazy Shane knew he hadn’t fully processed the insanity and would probably need to have a breakdown about it in a day or two.
Mostly, though, he felt good. Just simply really fucking good, and realising that scared him. Should he be feeling good about fucking Rozanov, wedding night or no, should he be almost sick with excitement and anticipation of what they would do next? Was that okay?
“I don’t know,” was the answer he settled on.
He expected Rozanov to laugh at this but he did not. He looked—sympathetic, almost, and brushed the backs of his fingers across Shane’s cheek.
“Is a lot for you,” he said. “We can stop, if you want.”
“No.” Shane didn’t have to think about that answer. “I don’t want to stop.”
Rozanov raised his eyebrows. “You want I should go get condoms?”
Shane swallowed. “Yes.”
“Lube too?”
“Yes.”
Rozanov kissed him hard, hand gripping the back of Shane’s head, then released him with a smacking noise and rolled off the bed. He pulled on his suit trousers with no underwear and grabbed one of the room keys.
“I will be right back,” he said.
“Okay.”
As the door shut behind Rozanov, Shane blew out a breath and ran his hands over his face.
“Holy shit,” he said again, this time to no one but himself.