"Oh, for the love of . . ."
I'd been in the lobby of Greensboro, North Carolina's, Coliseum arena, the Christmas tree that had been decorated there jerking me back into the season from the skating competitions that had been controlling my life in the last couple of weeks, where Stacy Nelson, the event coordinator, had stopped me and we did a doubletake. The figure skating regionals were always done right before Christmas, which invariably stole the Christmas spirit from me. This year was no exception to that.
I had come back to the arena to retrieve notes I'd left at the judge's table down near the ice, when we'd heard the voices raised—well, at least one—and we'd headed toward a door into the skating arena.
"That bastard's been on a tear all week," she said, as we got to the door and looked down the seating area to the ice. One of the men's figure skating coaches, Frank Foyle, was out on the ice with two of his young men skaters. As we reached the door, we saw him slap one of them so hard that the skates came out from under the skater and he went down on the ice. My heart took a jump when I realized that it was the nineteen-year-old skating phenom, Kyle Kim, of Asian descent as so many of the U.S. skaters were, and a dream to watch on the ice. The other skater, looking on and cowering, was his stable mate, Jordan Reynolds, who had been the highlight men's skater of the previous year but had been eclipsed this year by Kim.
We were at the end of the first day of the mid-December U.S. Figure Skating Association's regional championships. The men had done their short program. Kim was at the top of the rankings; Reynolds was number three. It was after 10:00 p.m. and the complex was about to close down for the night, with Foyle's men being the last off the rink from the practice for the next day's free skate competitions.
Frank Foyle had every reason to be proud of where his two men were sitting in the rankings, but he was a demanding coach, as I well knew. Too demanding, I believed. And he could be volatile. He certainly was dominating with his men skaters, and in more than skating terms. One of his promising skaters, Richard Rankin, had folded under the pressure a few years earlier and had committed suicide. Foyle's methods had been scrutinized at the time, but he had too big a name in figure skating to be kicked out of it.
There were just the three of them on the ice now. The only other person in the arena was a technician up in the lighting booth. Nelson, the event coordinator, was about to bellow something down at the ice at Foyle, but the man already was exiting the boards and going in under the stands where the bowels of the arena, including the locker rooms, were. Kim was picking himself up off the ice. Jordan Reynolds followed Foyle off the ice and under the stands.
Nelson turned and went back to the lobby, and I descended the aisle to the judges' desk, which was where I sat during the competition. I was a TV sports caster now in Greensboro, but I'd had my own run at the figure skating competitions ten years previously.
"You OK, Kyle?" I called out as I walked down toward the aisle to the ice from arena heaven. "You need help? That wasn't much in the Christmas spirit."
"No, it's OK, Ted," he said. "Why should Frank be any different during Christmas?" he added. He was already up and skating over to the boards. "I cut my forearm on my blade, though. That won't help me any tomorrow night."
"Here, I'll go back to the locker room with you and get that disinfected and wrapped up." He could call me by my first name rather than Mr. Joyner, because we'd been intimate. That put us on first-name basis. That had happened the previous summer in Colorado Springs, at the Figure Skating Museum and Hall of Fame by the Broadmoor Hotel, where ceremonies had been held in last year's national championships. Jordan Reynolds had taken the gold and Kim the bronze. Kim and I had had an immediate attraction and he'd wound up in my bed at the Broadmoor. That wasn't unusual for male figure skaters. That made for some awkwardness here in Greensboro, of course, with Kim on the ice and me as a judge, but it wasn't something we could tell anyone about, and the U.S. figure skating community was small enough that judges knowing the skaters couldn't be helped. We just tended not to talk about it. Of course, not many judges knew the skaters like I knew Kim—every luscious square inch of him.
It didn't really matter. It looked like the gold-bronze rankings might be switched this year. Kim's short skate had been impeccable, unreachable, and it looked like this year he was going to blast right past Jordan Reynolds.
That is if the cut on his arm, caused by his coach, wasn't bad enough to disrupt his concentration when he skated.
This was where my lack of surprise that Frank Foyle had struck Kyle Kim came in, though. The strong rumor was that Foyle favored Reynolds. I knew for a fact that he was fucking both of his skaters. He had fucked me while he was my coach. That's the sort of control he demanded over his male skaters and he only took them on if they were cute and willing to go under him. In exchange he made them champion skaters.
But his pique with Kyle for winning the short program no doubt stemmed from Kyle having beaten Frank's favored skater, Reynolds, so far in the competition. To be fair to Jordan Reynolds, though, although I can't see him being displeased to being displaced, I got no indication from him that he resented Kim personally or appreciated Foyle's preference for him. He seemed to be in awe of what Kim could do on the ice, and he chaffed a bit at what he had to give to Foyle to be coached by him. He was at the stage I'd reached when I parted from Foyle.
By the time we got to the men's locker room, we were the only ones there. Both Foyle and Reynolds had left, along with all the rest. Kyle showered, coming out with just a towel around him, while I went looking for a first aid kit. He wasn't a bit self-conscious by showing himself nearly naked around me. We were well beyond the stage of such embarrassment considering what we'd done with each other. Then we sat side by side on a bench running between two banks of lockers and I tended to the wound. It wasn't deep, and although there had been blood, it had mostly stopped on its own.
I had been smitten by the young man in Colorado Springs that summer and I not less so with his sitting beside me, just with a towel around his waist and giving me his forearm. Our heads were close together, and the kiss just came naturally. The second one was deeper and I had my hand under the towel to find that he was hardening. I was in erection too.
I looked around. "Where can we . . .?" I didn't ask him if he'd let me lay him. His response made clear that wasn't necessary. He had me unzipped and we each had our hand on the cock of the other.
"The shower. You could strip and we could go back in the shower," Kyle whispered.
I was processing that, mentally already being in the shower room with the young man in my embrace, pressing his back against the tiles, his knees hooked on my hips as a fucked up inside him—but all that was dissipated by the sound of whistling from out in the corridor. We managed to pull apart and Kyle had his locker open and his briefs on and was pulling a T-shirt over his head, when the technician who had been in the lighting booth came in. Nodding to us, he opened a locker down the row from where we were and began to strip. He obviously was going to use the shower room.
"I'll wait for you upstairs in the lobby," I said to Kyle and then fled the locker room.
A few minutes later Kyle appeared, all bundled up, although it wasn't too cold out in December in Greensboro. It was evident, though, that the moment was over—at least for now. Or was it?
"Where are you headed?" I asked.
"I'm staying at the Holiday Inn on West Gate City Boulevard," he answered.
"Isn't everyone?" I asked, with a laugh. "How were you planning to get there?"
"Frank brought me. It looks like he didn't wait to take me back."
"It's tough thinking of you having to stay in a hotel and concentrate so hard on skating right before Christmas."
"It's hard having to give up Christmas for this every year," Kim answered, "but this is what I've dedicated my time to."
"I think what you need tonight is to relax and not think about tomorrow. And you need a little of the Christmas mood. I have a car. I live here in Greensboro, but my apartment's across town. I have a Christmas tree up in the apartment. You need a bit of the Christmas spirit. I checked into the hotel to be in the mix and for convenience to the competitions. I could give you a lift to the hotel or we could go to my apartment. Your call." I didn't want to pressure him, but he wasn't the only one who needed a break from this figure skating at Christmas.
"That would be nice—a lift to the hotel," he said, and the look he gave me told me that I could give him so much more than a lift once we got to the hotel.
I didn't drive him to the hotel. I drove him to my apartment across town. That didn't seem to bother him a bit. He did note that a was driving off in the wrong direction when we left the Coliseum, but when I said, "There are too many from the competitions staying at that hotel," he accepted the explanation and immediately understood that it wouldn't be good for either of us for others to see us hooking up. He didn't ask where we were going or how long it was taking us to get there.
Where we were going was my bed in my apartment. We had a drink—nonalcoholic, of course—and listened to a Christmas album by the lighted tree, but I can't say we devoted a lot of time to the Christmas mood. I took him to my bed and we fucked most of the night.
Kyle was small and compact but hard-bodied and, in keeping with this talent for getting low in spins and being able to do a full leg extension and fully extended leg arch-from-behind Biellmann spin, he had extraordinary flexibility. All of that made for a great fuck—well, three fucks. I did him in a missionary, with his legs in several very interesting positions, and a doggy. When we were naked and starting into it on the bed, one couldn't have told from our frenzied wrestling whether Kyle was resisting or attacking. But when I first got lodged just inside his channel, him gasping and letting out a plaintive little cry, he surrendered to me, collapsing back on the bed, gripping my biceps with his hands, arching his back, raising his tail to me, and just lay there, docilely, only his eyes flashing the taking, as slowly, ever so slowly, as I stretched out over him, I sank in. Both of us were panting, waiting for it to begin—the dancing of the deep, sensuous fuck. And then it did—it began. And it continued, building, eventually up to a fury of giving and taking again.
We were accomplished lovers with each other, taking off here from where we'd left off with the sex in Colorado Springs. After we'd dozed a bit from the first two couplings, I lay back on the bed and he rode me rodeo style in a cowboy. He hadn't lost his enthusiasm for doing athletic exercises with me in bed.
I had been a figure skater too. I could keep up with him—almost. At least I could manage well considering I was almost ten years older than he was.
After we'd both had our third finish and were lying there, stretched out against each other's bodies, and in each other's arms, Kyle whispered, "I guess I'd built up a lot of tension."
