by R J Scott
“Yes, fucking rush. I need you in me,” he huffed as he went to his elbows.
Pillows slid to the floor. I flipped open the lube. He groaned at the sound. Fingers slick as my cock, I pushed two into him. The big man arched back, his spine bowed like a Halloween cat. I toyed with his ass for a bit, working the lube into him, pressing on his prostate, enjoying the sight and sound of this fingering.
“Trent, for fuck’s sake, man!”
“You really want to be fucked, don’t you?” I slid my fingers out and pressed myself to him, my cock slipping up between his taut cheeks. “Tell me how badly you want to be fucked.”
“Fuck, Trent, I need you so bad,” he said, his voice low and smoky. I ran my fingers up his sides. He shuddered, his skin rising with gooseflesh. “Fuck me – do it now before I come all over my hand.”
Taking myself in hand, I pressed the head of my cock into him. There was resistance at first, and then his inner muscles relaxed and I pushed in deeper and deeper and deeper still. Dieter grabbed the back of his head with both hands when I flicked my hips, a keen of pleasure filling the overly warm hotel room.
“Jesus, Trent…”
“I know,” I gasped. The sheer pleasure of being joined with him was beyond description, so I didn’t try to form words to speak. My body spoke for me. I gave it free rein to do so.
The rhythm we quickly fell into was wild, fast, manic. Dieter came as I rocked in and out of him, his hands still locked behind his head. The clench of him around me pushed me over the edge. I thrust hard, pulling him back onto me, and tumbled off the cliff.
“Oh…shit…oh,” the man under me coughed, his strong legs the only thing keeping us from tumbling to the bed. My spine and all the other bones in my body were now goop. Cock kicking inside him, I bowed down over his back and bit down on his shoulder. “Shit…baby…yeah,” he crooned heatedly. My cock slid out and I fell on top of him then slithered off, shivering from the orgasm still gripping me.
“Ah, lord above,” I whispered, grabbing my cock, and giving it a slow, final stroke.
Dieter went to his belly amid the tousled blankets and sheets. “Oh fuck, I made a mess,” he complained, but didn’t move. “Can we call housekeeping at midnight for clean sheets?” The covers muffled his voice.
“I doubt it.”
He rolled toward me, his weight pinning me to the bed as he battled to get the wet spot covered with one of the four blankets hotels always put on beds.
“You’re heavy,” I said, then wiggled free of the gorilla on top of me.
He chuckled. “You love it. You get hot about how I can toss you around in bed, don’t deny it.”
I didn’t. I could not lie. I loved that he was so big and I was so small.
“True, it’s all true.”
He moved me toward him, pulling me close to his side then pressing me into the bed and kissing me so tenderly I wanted to weep.
“I love you, Trent.”
“I love you too.”
His eyes were damp now. “I mean it. You stood by me through some awful shit.”
“I’m a stander, what can I say?” I chased his lips, eager for more of his kisses.
“Say you’ll keep standing by me.” He drew back to stare into my eyes.
“Always, babes, always.”
I lifted my head from the rumpled sheets. This time I managed to catch a kiss or two or twenty.
Sixteen
Dieter
When the call came, I’d been expecting it. Layton had warned me that he’d been talking to his counterpart down in Dallas, and that the net was closing on Marianna, or Susan Kenton – I didn’t know what to call her in my head anymore. She was a serial blackmailer, but I’d been with her for a month; how the hell had I let myself get into that situation? I didn’t recall a specific time when I’d thought she was fake; I just knew that toward the end of us she had become very interested in the possibility of a new contract with the Railers.
I’d bet she’d been expecting the kind of money the big guys got; my less-than-a-million payout probably seemed puny to her, but still she’d gone after it.
“You okay?”
Connor leaned on the same wall as me, bumping elbows. He was clearly there as representation, or support, something confirmed when Toly arrived as well. My captain and the player rep? Maybe I should have called my brand-new agent for her to be in the room as well.
“I’m good,” I said, shuffling from foot to foot, really wanting to get inside Layton’s office to find out what was going on.
“It’s been some season,” he said dryly. “What with Ten and Jared, and now you and your blackmail.”
“And sleeping with the pretty-boy figure skater,” Toly said with an added chuckle. “I like your pretty-boy.”
I shot the Russian a quick look. I could never tell whether he was joking or not; he had one of those faces that gave nothing away.
Connor cleared his throat dramatically, and Toly laughed even louder. “He is very good on his skates,” Toly pointed out. “That is all.”
Connor cursed under his breath and Toly gave something back, the two of them bickering and teasing, and it flowed over me with familiar warmth.
I loved it there. I never wanted to be traded, I wanted to play out my years there. Of course, that wouldn’t happen. I’d do well there, or I wouldn’t. I’d stay, or I’d get traded. Whatever happened, I was there right now, and coming off last night’s win against Vancouver and the gloating rights that gave me over Dad, I was in a good place.
I wasn’t even that nervous about this meeting.
Or at least not as nervous as I could have been.
“Did you hear that?” Connor said, loud enough to break through my internal ramblings.
“What?”
“’Toly is wearing a purple-and-green suit to the wedding.” He was clearly shocked by this, but then he would be. He was the best-dressed guy on the team by far, with his designer suits and his neat beard. Quite a few sports magazines had had his face on the cover, alongside one GQ spread where even I’d found myself disappointed he was straight.
The wedding was the occasion of the Railers’ year, between our marketing lady, Emma, and her fiancé Paul. We’d all been invited.
I fist-bumped Toly. “Trent was muttering something about scarlet.”
Connor rolled his eyes.
I opened my mouth to tell them about my dark navy suit and plain shirt, but Layton’s door opened.
I gestured for Connor and Toly to go in first, and was just about to step in myself when a loud voice came from behind me.
“Am I too late?”
Gayle, Trent’s agent and now my agent, stood there looking like she’d run up all five flights of stairs.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” I offered lamely.
“Trent said you had a meeting. You should start telling me these things, idiot.”
She swatted my arm and went into the meeting, and I followed, cowed by her chastisement and also by the mood of the room. Everyone looked so serious.
“What?” I said, and looked right at Layton, who was standing behind his desk.
“She pleaded guilty,” he said in one simple sentence, no exaggeration or explanation. I was lost for what to say.
“What does that mean?” Connor asked, vocalizing what I wanted to say but couldn’t.
“It’s over. Some statements, but she’s plea-bargaining, and we could get past this without your name attached to it legally.”
“That won’t stop it from being made public,” Gayle said. I was thankful for her and Connor’s presence.
“No, it won’t, but there will be no video release, no stills, and no money paid, so I think we can call this a win.”
Even thirty minutes later, out on the ice, running drills, I was still dazed – so much so that I skated into the net, narrowly missing a very irritable Stan. He pushed me forcefully away from his crease, causing me to fall, then stood over me telling me off in a mess of broken En
glish and angry Russian. I just lay there and took it, but when he stopped talking, obviously wanting me to comment, I got up and hugged the big guy. After a while he patted my back.
We parted, and I skated away, snowing the guys waiting at the other end.
“What was that about?” Ten asked, inclining his head at Stan.
I shrugged. “I skated too near him, he didn’t like it, he said some shit none of which I understood, and we hugged it out.”
Practice was skills and stretches, and afterward lunch at a local bar. Life with my teammates and friends was good.
But I missed Trent.
“Heavens above, who taught you to fix a tie?” Trent asked. He attempted to tie it again for me, but the height difference was kind of an awkward mess of me stooping and him on tiptoes. In the end, he cursed under his breath and clambered up on the coffee table, putting his height a little above mine. That way he could concentrate on getting my sapphire-blue tie as perfect as he wanted it.
“You know I’ve been doing my own ties for years now,” I said. Not that I minded that he was so close to me, fiddling with my clothes. In fact, I might well have made today’s effort a little messy just so he would come to my rescue.
This close, I could see the warmth of the brown in his eyes, the sweep of color on his lids, and the smudge of liner. He’d put gloss on his lips – this was the third time, because I kept kissing it off him. I couldn’t help it; his lips all slick like that were enticing. He straightened the tie a little, then tutted just before I kissed him again.
“Stop that,” he said, but there was no heat in his words and he deepened the kiss. I lifted him, and he wrapped his legs around me.
“We should kiss some more,” I demanded, and attempted to do so. He avoided my kiss and wriggled free of my hold.
“We’ll be late,” he said, checking his lips in the mirror and applying more gloss. I watched him the same way I did every time he did that, and caught a glimpse of the shine on my own lips. I wasn’t quite ready for a public appearance with gloss, and wiped at the slick of it with a tissue, but it wouldn’t be long before I had my lips on his again.
When we arrived, I spotted Toly immediately in his purple-and-green suit. He looked good, and of course Connor was front and center looking like the GQ model he was. Ten and Jared were hand in hand, and Layton stood so close to Adler it wouldn’t be long before that secret was out.
As for me, I took Trent’s hand and tugged him toward the group. Trent fit in there, despite his scarlet suit, his dark hair with streaks of red, and his makeup. He was a skater – ice was his mistress, the same way as it was for all of us.
The wedding was beautiful, as weddings are, and afterward it was back to Connor’s place for a surprise. He wouldn’t tell us what it was, but it was something that Trent had organized, so God knew what I expected.
We were all handed champagne – just the tiniest of glasses, because Connor was way past responsible at all times – and then he instructed us to take a seat in his home cinema room. Yep, he was that player, with the cinema seating and the large screen, and he’d even set up extra chairs; there were hockey players sprawled everywhere. I was lucky enough to get one of the cinema seats, and Trent decided to sit on my lap.
Since we’d arrived, he’d been a little twitchy, and I held him close; maybe someone had said something, or he was worried about whatever was happening here.
“What is this?”
“They’ll have made me a figure of fun,” he whispered to me, his voice tight with emotion. “Please don’t be too embarrassed.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, but I didn’t get to say anything else, because Connor turned the lights off and took a chair.
“Ready?” he asked, and we all nodded, and then in unison said yes, because hockey players aren’t stupid – we’d all come to the same conclusion that it was dark and no one could see our nods.
The screen lit up, a flashy image in sparkling diamonds that segued to ice in the sun, then moved on to a rink.
“This winter,” the announcer said in a typical movie voice, “join Trenton Lawrence, Olympic figure skater, as he attempts to corral a rink of hockey players…”
Oh, it’s the show, or at least some kind of trailer.
Trent’s face appeared, and he was smiling, and then the image zoomed out to us, the big hulking hockey players that dwarfed him. We were standing in a semi-circle, like we’d been placed; I recalled they’d stood me to one side to balance Stan, or something like that. That single image was so telling. How was this itty-bitty figure skater going to handle us?
The presenter said some other stuff. I wasn’t listening – I was holding Trent tight and hoping to hell this went well.
The picture disappeared into diamonds again, and this time we had Stan on the screen, jumping, arms extended, in full goalie gear, ending in a cartwheel.
Over the top, Trent’s voice. “Only by learning the basics can we work with the strength…”
The camera had caught Stan tumbling to the floor, then moved right to Ten, who barreled into him mid-spin. I couldn’t help smiling, and I heard Stan’s Russian and Ten’s snort of laughter in the room.
They weren’t poking fun at Trent; in fact it was the complete opposite.
The film showed other falls, then moved on to some of the things the guys had learned, brief glimpses of before and after stats.
“So join Trent and his friends for a Christmas launch of the new reality show…”
I tuned out again, seeking Trent’s lips with my own and kissing him.
Then I said what I thought he needed to hear. “I couldn’t be prouder.”
Epilogue
Trent
“Are we sure this is cool?” Dieter asked, his new Flyers jersey looking more than a bit odd on him. The black hockey skates dangling off his broad shoulder looked fitting.
“It’s my rink. If we want to sneak in at midnight, we can.”
“Yeah, okay. Can I take this off now?” He plucked at the vibrant orange jersey, lifting the shoulder a bit then letting it drop. You could just see the flash of the brown sweater he’d worn to dinner around the loose collar of the jersey. “I mean, I appreciate your grandmother buying it for me for my birthday and all, but…it feels weird.”
“Sure, you can take it off.” I snickered while unlocking the front door of Rainbow Skate. We hurried inside and I locked the door behind us.
He yanked the sweater – I’d learned that was what hockey players called jerseys – over his head, leaving his hair twisted and standing up. I reached up to flatten it down.
“I wish we had more time together,” I sighed as the thick mass just stood back up.
“I told you that once we were into the season things would be tight, babe.”
“I know, I know.” I pushed my hand through his hair, not to tidy it, just to feel it slipping over my fingertips. “I’d consider moving my coaching business to Harrisburg, but my kids couldn’t make the move.”
“It’ll work out. It’s only two hours one way. Like today, right? I just get up early tomorrow and I’m back at the barn in time for morning skate.”
“Of course, I know. It’s just…the nights alone are hard.”
“That’s the life of a hockey wife,” he teased, then danced out of reach of my swat to his ass.
“I’d make a divine hockey spouse.”
“Yeah, you would. Come on, let’s do some ice time.”
He latched onto my wrist, pulling me to the ice area. We sat down and began lacing up skates. His were twice the size of mine. I pointed that out and got a neck-nibble for stroking his ego a bit.
“So, I see your mom looks happier. Are you and Clay talking yet?”
I frowned down at my laces.
“We’re not talking, actually.” I exhaled and sat back, leaving my laces dangling. “It’s more like…” I wasn’t sure how to explain it. I thumbed a blue strand of hair from my face. “Well, it’s more like we’re not actually t
alking, but we’re not actually not.”
“That made no sense at all,” he stated flatly.
“I know. It’s still a massive problem for me. I keep trying to work it out, you know, in counseling and talking about it with Mom and Lola, but I can’t seem to get past the betrayal. Please don’t ever cheat on me or lie to me. I can take quite a lot, but…”
“Hey, look at me.” He took my chin and turned my head. I loved his eyes. “First off, who the hell else would want me? Ex-addicts aren’t high on most people’s turn-on list.”
I shot him a look of disgust, but he was teasing me.
“Joking aside, there is no other man who could ever take your place. Have you looked in the mirror lately?”
“I am rather stunning, aren’t I?” I teased back, and the weight of my relationship with Clay – such as it was – lifted a bit. “I’m not sure I can skate. I ate too much birthday dinner,” I moaned, and rubbed my protruding belly after lacing up.
Dieter placed his hand over mine. “You’re as flat as a board. Sexy, too.” He let his hand slither down toward my crotch. I swatted his wandering fingers away.
“Nope, no petting until we skate. This is my present to you. Well,” I stood up, popped out a hip and gave him a smoky look, “it’s one of my presents. The other involves lube and a butt plug I bought for you. Oops. Guess that cat is out of its bag!”
“Shit, I have a half chub just thinking about that.” He chuckled, pushed to his feet, and followed me over the thick matting to the sound system.
“I had the CD I burned on top,” I sighed as I began pawing through soundtracks for Frozen, Beauty and the Beast, and Mary Poppins. “The kids do love their Disney.”
“How’s Scotty doing? She okay with school and all?” He stepped behind me, his breath moist and warm on the back of my neck.
“She’s doing well. Such a brave thing. Ah! Here it is.”
I waved the CD over my head, then slid it into the old stereo. Now that I’d gotten the first of my checks from the TV show as well as my payment from the Railers, I had plans to upgrade things around here. I’d already paid off the mortgage on my mother’s house. The taxes had been paid as well, on both properties. The check to the bank was in the mail for Rainbow Skate. I could breathe again.