HeartOn

by Amy Jo Cousins

  “Hey, are you Josh?” the man asked with a friendly grin.

  “’Fraid not.” Deion shook his head and waved in the general direction of the back of the clinic. “He had to run and help with something. He’ll be back in a few.”

  “Got it. Sorry.” The guy smiled and looked him up and down, admiring more than flirting, which Deion caught himself regretting for a moment. “You’re seriously ripped, so I assumed you were my trainer.”

  Deion was still stuck on realizing that he’d have been totally okay with the flirting thing if this guy had checked him out. Some kind of switch had clearly been flipped in his brain if he was looking at random guys like . . . that.

  He cut himself off before he got stuck in that tangle of thoughts. “Are you here for rehab?” he asked, lifting his chin at the man’s arm and leg.

  “Nah. This is old news,” the man said, gesturing at the left side of his body. “I’ve recovered all the mobility I’m gonna get.”

  “You’re looking for some general strength training, then?” he asked, feeling something that registered like professional curiosity now for a reason he didn’t entirely understand. Not like the guy had even mentioned football or the NFL, and that was the only profession Deion had ever known, other than some part-time jobs as a high school student.

  The redhead clenched his jaw and narrowed his eyes. “I’m looking to get a body so ripped it’ll make my neighbor swallow his tongue when he sees me. We went on one date—you know, the kind that last twenty-four hours and multiple orgasms?—and then he ghosted on me. He’s in Hong Kong for the summer, but he’ll be back eventually. I want to be ready.” The guy paused and blinked, as if waking from a trance. “Sorry. TMI, I just realized.”

  Deion laughed out loud. “No worries. Well, that’s motivation right there.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Deion, a friend of Josh and Benji’s.”

  “Owen.” The man shook his hand firmly, cocking his head as he stared at Deion, who knew that look from past experience. “You look familiar, actually. Do I know you from somewhere?”

  Yup. He could always tell when someone who didn’t actually follow his career had figured out that the big, black man with muscles out to there and the vaguely familiar face was probably a football player.

  “Are you a Kansas City Chiefs fan?” he asked, bracing himself for the inevitable sympathetic “Oh my God, is your life just over?” conversation that followed from most football fans when they figured out who he was. The hit that had separated his shoulder had been spectacular enough to make ESPN’s game highlights that night, and to pop up throughout the rest of the season whenever the Chiefs were on the news.

  “Oh, hell. Yeah. Man, sorry about your shoulder.” Owen winced. “I was hoping you were gonna make it back eventually.”

  An hour ago, Deion wouldn’t have hesitated to answer with confidence, “Hell, yeah, I am.” But Josh’s come-to-Jesus talk had made an impact. So instead of shooting Owen a cocky smile, Deion grimaced. His confidence was definitely rattled. He’d pushed hard to work his way through the almost inevitable depression that hit guys on the IR. Thinking about how much harder that task would be if he lost the game permanently? The idea stole his breath like a surprise tackle from a linebacker. “I think I’m ready to play. We’ll see what the docs say. Nothing to do but wait and see.”

  “I’m familiar with the suck-it-up-and-deal strategy,” Owen said, raising his weak arm with fingers curved in as if their natural position was curled, not straight. “Had lots of opportunities to use that one.”

  Deion was fucking thrilled to change the subject. “You lost how much mobility?”

  “About thirty percent. Not enough to make anything impossible, except a tight enough grip to lift weights. I pretty much gave up on the gym afterward.”

  “You still look good,” he said, and surprised himself by tossing Owen a friendly wink that got him a laugh in return.

  “Thanks. But good isn’t gonna cut it now. I need Chris Evans as Captain America. Chris Helms as Thor. Hell, any of the Chrises will do. Anything that stops traffic when I take my shirt off.”

  Deion could appreciate that level of commitment. And he was getting to the point where he could admit that he appreciated the visuals inspired by Owen’s list too, even if he would have put Jason Momoa as Aquaman at the top of the hot, ripped superhero list himself.

  He had some time to kill while he waited for Josh, in any case. “My trainer and I came up with some work-arounds when I broke my wrist one year, totally different than the shoulder stuff I have to work around now. Want me to show you some tricks?”

  “Hell yeah,” Owen said, nodding sharply and crossing the room with his slight limp. “If you can show me how to look like you, that’d be fucking awesome.”

  Deion smiled. Amateurs were cute. He gestured to himself and said, “Well, this is the end result of about three hours a day in the gym.”

  “Holy shit.” Owen’s eyes widened. “I’ve got a job. And a life. How ripped can I get if I’ve only got an hour a day?”

  “You up for changing your diet and putting in extra time on the weekends?” Deion asked, heading for the racks of equipment. Owen trailed behind him.

  “How much change? I’m a food truck addict. I made an app, actually, to keep track of where the best ones are on any given day. It’s making me a pretty penny.”

  “That’s nice.” Deion was unimpressed. Building one-night-stand-stunning muscles was serious business. “You’re about to become a broiled chicken breast and steamed veggie addict.”

  Owen shook his head mournfully, clutching his chest with his good hand. “Aww, man. I’m really gonna miss tacos.”

  He shrugged. Real goals required sacrifice. “How badly do you want to make this guy fall in love with you?”

  “Whoa, hey there, no. Love is not on the table,” Owen said, backing up a full step so fast Deion snorted. His face flushed almost as red as his hair. “I don’t go there.”

  “Okay. Then, how badly do you want to rub that dude’s nose in what he’s missing out on?” Deion arched a brow and smirked.

  Eyes narrowed, Owen muttered, “So bad.”

  “Then stock up on kale and broccoli and brown rice, my friend, and get to work.”

  “Shit. Maybe I could just buy a motorcycle,” Owen said, sighing. “This is going to be brutal, isn’t it?”

  Deion clapped him on the shoulder and led him over to a peg wall where exercise bands of various sizes hung in rainbow groupings. “If Josh doesn’t have Velcro braces, he can pick some up and you can do a lot of stuff, like flies and curls and other moves, both with weight machines and without. But you can start with these.”

  * * *

  By the time Josh came back, Deion was several exercises deep into a workout Owen could manage with his weakened grip and leg stability. When he’d first started demonstrating techniques, Deion had felt like an impostor. He wasn’t a personal trainer or a rehab specialist. The only degree he had to his name was his B.S. in business in marketing education.

  But it turned out he really had been paying attention to all the PTs and specialists he’d worked with over the years. All the words he needed to describe the musculoskeletal impacts of different exercises and their modified versions came back to him as he needed them with Owen.

  Not that Deion wanted to be a trainer or rehab specialist or anything like Josh’s career plans. But it was satisfying to discover he’d acquired a pretty good depth of knowledge of the field incidentally over the years. And he couldn’t deny that his brain had been bubbling with ideas for Josh and Benji’s business plans during Josh’s tour of their facility. He kept picturing what it would be like to be a real partner in their business, living locally and seeing them almost every day.

  Seeing Carlos too. And didn’t his stomach just do a whole loop-the-loop thing at that very idea? He’d better get a tight grip on his fantasies about that before they got out of control.

  “I see what you did there,” Deion said,
shooting Josh a warning look as he slid onto the wicked hot seat of Josh and Benji’s shared car. “I gotta go help Benji, Deion. Just hang out in the workout room, Deion.”

  Josh’s face wore the innocence of an angel. “No idea what you’re talking about, man.”

  Deion rolled his eyes and lowered the window while Josh turned up the air, not willing to sweat his balls off in the sauna that was a Miami car in the middle of the afternoon sun. Hopefully the AC would kick in before they died. “You always were a shit liar.”

  The snort of laughter Josh let escape told him he was right. The entire clinic visit had obviously been a setup that went hand-in-hand with Josh’s worry that Deion wasn’t going to be cleared to play again, or that no team would want him even if he was. Dropping hints that Josh and Benji planned to expand in two years, once they had the funds to remodel or move and add a full workout facility to their establishment, had been a slick move too. Deion had joked with Josh last year about how he was dying to spend his retirement in Miami, but that was before he’d realized his stay on the injured reserve might not end with a return to the playing field.

  The joke wasn’t so funny these days.

  “We got a hella good pickup football game in the park too, you know.”

  “When the time comes, I’ll think about it. Jesus.” He forced a laugh, because every great football player was relentless, and Josh had always been a brilliant fucking offensive lineman. But this conversation, their earlier talk, hell, the whole day had him on edge. He didn’t want to make this kind of plan for his future, no matter how fun the fantasies were. Not yet. Please. And every well-meaning friend or family member who suggested he start looking for business opportunities to invest in set his teeth on edge. “You can let up on the sales pitch. I see why you love it here. I don’t know though, man, it’s hella far from my family.”

  Josh looked at him funny, because Deion had been living halfway across the country from his family for years now.

  Yeah, I know. I’ve never mentioned that being a problem before now, but it sounds better than “I’m freaking out because I kind of want to move here, someday, because I’m never gonna be ready to stop getting naked with your friend Carlos” and that ain’t something I’m ever gonna say out loud.

  Because that would be stupid. Right? Moving across country based on a few nights of sex—of fucking killer, make-his-balls-ache-from-coming-so-hard sex, admittedly—with a guy he pretended to enjoy hanging out with like a casual buddy to the rest of his friends wasn’t just stupid.

  It was fucking crazy. Like, 100 percent sure to bite him in the ass crazy.

  So even though he loved the heat and the hustle, the ocean and the diversity of the community, even though he’d already considered moving close to Josh because his friend was one of the best examples he had of someone who transitioned from football to a civilian life that still provided him with all the satisfaction and all the wins he used to find in sport, Deion was pulling back.

  Ever since he’d met Carlos in person—putting a face to the name of the sarcastic bastard on Twitter who busted Josh’s chops every chance he got—the loudest voice cheering for Miami was the one that wouldn’t shut up about Carlos.

  And that scared the living shit out of Deion.

  10

  The next afternoon, Deion was back in Carlos’s big, white bed, and they were theoretically about to fuck. Not that theoretically, actually, since Carlos’s dick was hard enough to pound nails, but Deion had just said something that distracted him from the licking he’d been focused on, trying to see if he could taste a difference between Deion’s pecs and his hard, flat nipples.

  “You’ve seen a rocket launch? Like, an actual rocket firing into space?” Deion’s eyes were big and he grabbed Carlos by the forearm like he’d shake him if Carlos was kidding.

  “Yeah, man. Cape Canaveral is only a few hours up the coast,” Carlos said, surprise catching him off guard “My parents took me up there a bunch of times when I was little.”

  “That’s so fucking cool.” Awe filled Deion’s voice. “I always wanted to be an astronaut.”

  Okay, then. Carlos dug for information stored away in his brain since the last time he’d been to the space center. “Most of those guys, and women, don’t make it until they’re in their thirties. You’ve still got time.”

  Deion rolled his eyes. “I’d only need to go back to school for a new advanced degree, learn how to be a pilot, speak Russian.”

  “Yup,” he said, agreeing. “Totally doable.”

  Deion laughed. “Totally.”

  “Hey, you’ve gotta do something with yourself after football, right?” he asked, treading carefully here, because Deion had told him about his talk with Josh and Carlos knew this was sensitive territory. “Why not that? First football player in space sounds pretty catchy to me.”

  “I don’t think it’s high on NASA’s list of future marketing opportunities.” The light had dimmed a little in Deion’s eyes.

  “Hey, you know they’re always fighting Congress for funding. How’s anyone going to turn down a chance to send a former Kansas City Chiefs offensive guard into space?”

  “I can think of a bunch of our opponents who’d gladly chip in for that chance,” Deion said, laughing again at least.

  “So,” Carlos asked, because sex was way less likely to trigger post-football anxiety than this kind of talk, “how do you want to do it today?”

  He recognized that sly gleam in Deion’s eyes. Experience told him a new adventure was about to be proposed.

  “I was thinking you might want to want to eat me out,” Deion said, oh so casually, as if dropping a lure in the water.

  “You were, were you?”

  “Yeah.” A confident nod. And then the bait. “Because I think that’d be a great way for you to get me ready to get fucked. By you.”

  Carlos burst out laughing, which only made Deion grin.

  “How long did it take you to come up with that sales pitch?”

  “Been thinking about it for two days now,” Deion admitted, and Carlos shook his head.

  “Nothing like a competitive bastard to figure out a way to trick the competition into scoring an own goal,” he said with a stupid amount of fondness for this gorgeous, sexy, constantly-surprising-him man.

  Deion flipped to his stomach and wiggled his ass in the air. “And I rewatched the prep video, like, three times. I’m clean as a whistle.”

  Carlos was pretty sure no other human beings were laughing as much during sex as they were. And maybe that went part of the way to explaining why this was the best sex of his entire fucking life. Because something had to explain it. It was crazy how much fun he was having.

  Deion was having some fun too.

  “Oh my God, getting my asshole licked is exactly as fucking awesome as I thought it would be.” Deion’s groan made Carlos smile while deep in his ass, and maybe Deion could feel that because he stuck his butt even higher in the air, spreading his knees and digging his hips closer toward the bed, as if dying to get some friction on his dick.

  When Carlos pulled his mouth—which was doing a lot more than just licking, because sucking and poking with a stiff tongue were both getting play—off him, Deion groaned in frustration.

  A stinging slap landed on his ass, and Deion sucked in air. “Shit. Don’t do that. You’re going to push me over the edge.”

  “Jesus, your glutes.” Carlos’s voice rang with admiration. “I mean, just your ass altogether. I could play with it for days.”

  “If you don’t stop talking and fuck me, we’re gonna run out of time this century. My flight leaves on Monday, remember?”

  “Roll over, Beethoven,” Carlos said, and Deion did.

  Uncertainty haunted his face.

  “Want me to warm you up first?” Carlos offered, with a significant glance at the nightstand drawer where he kept the dildo he’d used on himself that first afternoon fuck. They hadn’t broken it out since.

  Deion’s pupils
dilated and his breathing sped up. “Yeah.”

  By the time he was punching at Deion’s prostate with the heavily lubed dildo and sucking Deion’s cock halfway down his throat, it was clear they were going to be just fine.

  And when Carlos finally yanked the dildo out and slid home deep in Deion’s ass before he had time to tense up again, something else became clear too as he leaned into Deion’s thick thighs and locked their hands together with intertwined fingers gripping tightly.

  This experiment had gone way beyond just fucking. And Carlos was 100 percent screwed.

  * * *

  Wednesday night, Carlos dragged Deion out for a sunset kayak trip that wrapped up with a barbecue and bonfire on an island beach. It was starting to weird him out a little, how casually Benji and Josh handed Deion off to him without question for whatever social plan was on the agenda that somehow now only included the two of them. He’d fumbled awkwardly to extend the invitation to his friends when he’d mentioned the outing over dinner at their place the night before.

  Josh had opened his mouth, but Benji’s voice had shot across the room like a lightning bolt, knocking the words out of Josh’s mouth before he even had a chance to get them out.

  “We were afraid Deion would be bored a lot this week, with all the hours we have to put in at the clinic. Thank God you’ve got a break right now between shows, or he’d be stuck entertaining himself most of the time,” Benji finished, as he sailed over to the table with plates full of perfectly laid out omelets oozing cheddar cheese, chunks of salty ham, and green pepper. They were doing breakfast for dinner because no one had remembered to pick up groceries on the way home from work that day.

  Deion’s stomach rumbled audibly as Benji slapped a plate down in front of him. Carlos couldn’t help laughing as Benji smiled with satisfaction.

  “Man, cooking for you guys is the best. Like, your stomachs do the talking for you. I don’t even need to hear the words.”