I WOULD CLAIM that everything remains within the realms of decency for the rest of the season, but decency has a flexible definition when it comes to us.

I don't tell him that I worked out the logistics five minutes after I saw him walk in. Dakota and Haley appear to have split (though I'm not entirely sure), and no one's parents are around, and I ignore the small matter of my almost boyfriend and focus on the friction of Dakota's palms grazing against the side of my ribcage. His hands are too warm, too gentle, not enough, as they slide across the satin of my leotard.

Dakota barely has time to lock the front door to his apartment behind us before I push him up against the wall and kiss him, hard. He makes a soft sound of surprise; I don't know why, when he has intimate first-hand experience with how I kiss. But I take advantage of the moment to lick into his mouth, press myself harder into his open-palmed grasp.

"Shit," he stutters, against my lips, and there's a sudden jangling of metal as his keys fall out of his grip and onto the floor.

"Leave it," I murmur against his lips, urging him to focus solely on us.

There's a hint of uncertainty in his eyes when he looks at me, so I bring a hand up to cover his. His fingers are trembling at my hip – whether with nerves or with anticipation, I can't say.

"It's fine," I whisper, gently, and I press a kiss to our joined hands.

"We're fine," I say, as I guide his hand underneath my shirt.

The look in Dakota's eyes as the doubt turns to iron-willed determination makes my pulse race. He dips his head to kiss my neck, and his hand begins to move against my stomach, dragging back and forth against the tight muscle of my abdomen. I can feel him smile into my neck as my head drops back, and his hand moves steadily higher.

"Finally," I whisper, in a shaky exhale of breath. My eyes flutter close, body leaning into his touch as he moves his continues to move his hands higher.

"Didn't know I'd been keeping you waiting," he says – but there's a shit-eating grin on his face as he pulls back to look at me. He's known full well what I've been after for the entire summer of training, what my pride and my rules would never let me ask.

I wrap my hand around the back of his neck, grabbing a fistful of his curls.

"Less talking," I tell him, in a brisk tone of voice. "More work."

For once, he doesn't argue.

His hand creeps higher and higher up my torso, and he's pressing kisses to my neck with increasing determination, and I am incredibly thankful that we didn't massively fuck up and do this in the bar, because the high-pitched, breathy noises I keep making would be very difficult to cover up. Besides, it would have robbed me of discovering the pleasing effect the sound has on Dakota, who shudders and rolls his hips into mine as if on cue.

Suddenly, he stops.

"Ken," he says, in a slightly strangled tone of voice.

"Hm?" I respond. His breath tickles the wet mark he's left on my neck in a way that's pleasantly distracting, but I do my best to pay attention, and – oh.

"I thought I'd save us the time," I explain, as he drags his gaze up to meet my eyes. His pupils are blown wide in what I hope is a mixture of surprise and arousal but might also be a little bit of fear, and really I think this is an overreaction because it's not like I wear a bra to competition either.

"Right," he chokes out. "Sorry, yeah. Makes sense. Just unexpected, I guess."

"I mean, I can put it back on if you want?" I reply, trying my hardest to look only somewhat disgusted by the idea. "It might take some digging around in my bag, th–"

"No, no, it's fine," he rushes, before I can even finish my sentence. His eyes keep darting down to my shirt, as if I'm hiding some hideous monster.

"Thanks for the glowing compliment," I say, raising my eyebrows.

The uncertainty is written plain across his face as he returns his gaze to me, and for a disquieting second I wonder whether I'm going to have to give Dakota a pep talk on how to fuck me – but then he straightens, and his brown eyes set intently on me.

It reminds me of the moments before we take the ice at competition, when I can feel the nerves jangling under his skin, through our linked hands. As soon as we step out onto the ice, Dakota's gaze locks onto mine, and the nerves ripple into the thrill of adrenaline, and it's just us, in our own little world. I see the same intensity in the way he looks at me now.

Slowly, I let him walk me backwards into the shadow of the hallway, until I thud into the wall. In the darkness, I can barely see his face as he leans over me. His hands are strong and purposeful as they slip back under my shirt, earlier hesitancy forgotten, and my stomach twists in anticipation.

"How's this?" he murmurs.

Finally, finally, his fingers brush over my breasts. I make a noise somewhere between a laugh and a moan; it seems to be the answer he's looking for. He grins, all glinting teeth and glinting eyes as he dips his head to my neck and parts my thighs with his knee, lets me rock shamelessly against him.

"Too – too many layers," I gasp, breathless with need.

If I wasn't so turned on right now, I might have the hindsight to be a little embarrassed by my lack of coherency – but as Dakota grinds his knee into me, I can't bring myself to care. I'm much more concerned with the way his mouth parts as he watches my hips circle to meet his movements, the quiet groan that he makes when I drag my fingers down his back, pressing my nails in through his shirt.

"Off," I remind him.

Eight years of partnership carries him through interpreting my demands and he quickly divests himself of his shirt. As he straightens back up to face me, I eye him with undisguised appreciation. I've seen Dakota shirtless so many times I've lost count, but here, everything is different. The lack of boundaries make me dizzy; I can run my hands over the bare skin of his chest, can feel his heart hammering against his ribs, can trace along the ridges of his hipbones and watch how the muscles twitch underneath my fingers. His body has carried us to the top of the world, to National and very soon beyond, but I've never been privy to this.

"See something you like?" he says with a smug grin, does a little shimmy.

I roll my eyes.

"Nope, no, you ruined it," I say. "We had a good thing going..."

The words die in my throat as he leans in and brings his hips up to meet mine. I can feel the hardness of him through our layers, can't help the fluttering moan that escapes me as he grinds against me, oh so slowly. His gaze is focused intently on me, every movement careful and deliberate and maddeningly controlled.

"Good?" he says, like he even has to ask.

I don't trust myself to speak as he continues, just nod my assent and let my head fall back against the wall. The feeling as he moves is exquisite, sends chills running across my skin. I feel feverish from the heat of him. I can't believe it took us eight years to get to this point, can't believe we've spent at least a third of those not doing this. How much time have we wasted having sex with other people?

"Kennedy," he says. "Ken," and I realize that while I've been busy having an epiphany, he's been trying to speak to me.

"Mhm?" I manage to get out, struggling to bring my attention back to his face.

"I said, do you want yours off too?"

He nods towards where his fingers have curled under the edge of my shirt.

If I were more inclined towards eloquent speech, I would tell him something about how right now, in this precise moment, I would happily give up my collection of medals if it meant he would get rid of my damn shirt, along with the rest of my clothes.

In reality, I hiss something that's more like "yes, hurry up," and try to shrug out of my shirt as soon as he's undone the first button. It's an awkward state of affairs that takes us a lot longer to deal with than if I'd just waited for him to undo all the buttons in the first place, but together we manage to pull the shirt over my head and onto the floor.

Dakota looks dumbstruck when I meet his eyes again. He steps back, almost imperceptibly, as though he needs space to take it all in, but I match him, step for step, until he stops in the middle of the hallway. To the left of his head, there's a large framed photo of his family from years ago, all dark hair and beaming smiles. I try not to make eye contact with Lilith.

"Are we really doing this, Ken?" he asks.

"You invited me here for one reason, right?" I say, with a small shrug.

"I know, I just...I don't want to fuck this up," he replies. His brow furrows, the corners of his eyes crinkling with concern. "You're too important."

I study him for a long moment.

"Listen," I say, and concentrate on keeping my hands steady at his chest. It's clear he's becoming a little overwhelmed by the situation. "This doesn't have to mean anything more than sex. You keep seeing who you're seeing, and I'll keep seeing who I'm seeing, and we can have...this, on the side. No strings. If it stops working for one of us, we'll call it off."

He looks at me with a measured expression.

I wasn't exactly planning on laying all my cards on the table before we'd even had sex once, but oh well. At least Dakota hasn't immediately recoiled in disgust at the prospect; this bodes well, I think, indicates that he's not too bothered by the moral deficiency of my offer. Is there a standard protocol for how to react when your skating partner suggests engaging in a no-strings-attached affair? Nothing about our relationship has ever been remotely casual or discreet, but in this moment, I think I would say just about anything if it means he'll keep touching me.

"Alright," he says finally. "Deal."

"Deal?" I repeat back.

"What, you want to shake hands?"

"Dakota," I say, drawing myself up on my tiptoes to level my gaze with his. "What I want is for you to stop talking and fuck me."

I half-expect him to enter a mild state of shock. Instead, he flashes me a grin, hooks his arms under my legs and sweeps me up off my feet. The off-key refrain of the Bridal March that he hums as he carries me into his bedroom is a bit much; I let it go only because his hand keeps sliding between my thighs in a way that's unfairly distracting.

I would love to say that I remember every detail about Dakota's room. I would love to tease him endlessly about the color of his bedsheets, the photos on his wall, the inevitable disarray of his cupboards. In truth, I forget pretty much everything about the outside world the moment he drops to his knees in front of me.

Okay, everything except the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles poster on the back of his door – that one gives me serious grounds to reconsider our arrangement.

If Élise notices any difference in the session the week after, she's tactful enough not to say anything, but I definitely catch a wry smile or two out of the corner of her eye. Thursday nights become a fixture in the calendar, accompanied by curiously good moods in Friday morning practice.

Not that we limit ourselves to Thursday nights – it turns out there are a lot of excuses for sex.

There's celebratory sex when we win, conciliatory sex when we lose (the latter happens more often these days, but the sex almost makes up for it). There are times at competition when I can barely wait until we're alone in the hotel room, spending the whole evening at the banquet finding excuses to palm his ass and draw close enough to whisper my plans for the night into the shell of his ear. The night we win Nationals, Pierre shows up unannounced and whisks me away to dinner. The marks Dakota leaves on my skin later that evening take an entire tube of concealer to cover up; he sits and watches me apply my makeup the following morning with a smirk that's entirely too self-satisfied.

We skate like shit the entire year, further proving my point about the inverse correlation between our love life and competitive performance – not that there's any motivation for us to do otherwise. The judges throw their weight against our program choices from the very beginning of the season. All we get in feedback is half-answers about how "daring" and "risqué" our choreography is, as though the judges, sat in their little line at the side of the rink, are not the very same people who were praising us for their "tantalizing chemistry" only a season ago.

In our finishing pose at the very end of our program, there's a moment where the music dies into the swell of cheers, and Dakota heaves for breath against my stomach, and I blaze with triumph, with an energy that prickles like electricity under my skin. I always make sure to look out at the judges. Sometimes I catch one of them swallowing and avoiding my gaze.

Look at us, I want to tell them, tell the world. See how his body moves for mine, and mine for his.

We lose Worlds, despite our best efforts, despite a hometown crowd, despite pushing so hard that I feel like I'll throw up when we step off the ice after our skate. One mistake in the short seals our fate.

We both know this cannot last. The next season, a fresh start, looms around the corner, and we need to have our priorities in order by then – can't keep fucking and fucking up like we've done all season. Winning requires clear focus, one thing I certainly do not have when I spend half of every practice session brainstorming excuses to invite him over afterwards.

So we set ourselves one last week, one week of summer between the end of competition and the beginning of the the next season. The last time, I tell myself, until Worlds are done and dusted, and we can begin to consider what life looks like in the aftermath.

We never do make it that far.