Dreamspinner Press Years One & Two Greatest Hits
Page 56
“Hey, whose turn was it to bring the beer?”
“Mine.”
The hair on Jack’s neck stood straight up and his fingers clenched around his hockey stick. He turned around to see Julian standing in the doorway of the change room, a case of beer under one arm and a hockey bag thrown over his shoulder. He was wearing beat-up sneakers, jeans with holes in the knees, and a long-sleeved tee that fit him just right. With Jack on his skates, the top of the doctor’s head reached the middle of his chest.
Christ. “Hey, Doc,” he said casually. “Didn’t know you played.”
“Roz said I needed to get out more. Started last week.” He set the case down in the pile of Zamboni ice outside the change room, then hauled his bag in after him. “Did she clear you to play?”
“I didn’t ask her permission,” Jack said dryly. As a matter of fact, it had been Roz’s suggestion that he return to his regularly scheduled physical activities, saying it was the best way for him to make sure everything was working the way it was supposed to. Now he was suspicious. “But given the way she’s been working me in physio this week, I should be fine.” He swallowed hard as Julian pulled his T-shirt up over his chest, looking away. “I’m going to try a few warm-up laps,” he said to no one in particular. “See you on the ice.”
TWENTY MINUTES later, the first period was well under way. Jack’s leg barely even twinged at him, and he was keeping up with the younger guys pretty well. He tended to play defense, which was good—less balls-out skating; he’d probably be thankful in the morning.
Julian had turned out to be one hell of a hockey player. The kid was fast, and his stick work had Jack coming up with some really horrible pick-up lines. Unfortunately, he was playing for the other team, so to speak. So far he had one goal and an assist to his credit, leaving Jack’s team trailing by a point. At least the first goal had been scored before Jack had hit the ice, so he didn’t have to feel stupid about the way Julian waltzed right through the defensive line and put one right in the goaltender’s five-hole.
“Incoming,” Brad warned, skating backward from the blue line. Jack followed suit, keeping his eye on the speeding blur of a red jersey. Julian broke toward him, two other red players following behind looking for the drop pass.
With luck, they’d never get it. Jack’s teammates were hot on their heels.
Jack knew he could never hope to match Julian in terms of speed, not with his injury and Julian’s greater momentum. Instead, he found himself watching his skates, trying to get a feel for where he would go. Jack had to hand it to him; the kid could move.
Finally, he thought he could see what Julian saw, where the hole was. He moved to close it just as Julian tried to shoot a pass laterally across the ice and intercepted it with his stick, shooting around the back of the net with the puck on the edge of his stick.
Putting on a burst of speed, Jack felt his left leg burn a little as he leaned into the corner, shifting the puck to keep it out of reach of his pursuers. He snapped off a quick pass to Brad…
…and wheezed as his body was pushed against the boards, the air forced from his lungs. He went down hard, sprawling onto his back, his stick flying out of his grasp. Damn. What the hell? They didn’t play with a ref; it was pretty much “anything goes” with penalties decided by mutual agreement, but the games were normally pretty tame unless there was a rivalry going. He hadn’t actually been boarded—the push had been gentle and he’d been too close to the boards to do himself any actual injury—but he hadn’t been expecting it, and surprise as much as anything had caused him to lose his footing. Jack blinked and looked up, suspicions strong.
Sure enough, Julian was standing over him, expression totally innocent. Jack didn’t buy it for a second. “Need a hand?” he offered, reaching down.
What the hell? Julian didn’t seem the type to start shit on the ice. He was a nice guy, and a doctor to boot. Then again, Jack had never figured him for an athlete before he’d seen him on skates. Besides, he was clearly caught up in the moment. Enjoyment of the game had spread an attractive flush over his features and put a sparkle in his eyes. Jack was glad he was covered in pads from head to toe, or he might have had another incident like the one at the clinic.
Eyes narrowing, Jack reached out and tugged on the outstretched hand, sending the other man sliding on the ice beside him. “Thanks,” he smirked, climbing to his feet and retrieving his stick before Julian had finished laughing.
A cheer went up at the other end of the ice, and Jack smiled. His team had just tied the score.
THE REST of the game went along in the same vein. Competition was fierce, the two sides almost evenly matched.
Confrontations between Jack and Julian popped up whenever they were both on the ice. Jack had decided he needed a breather shortly after dumping Julian on the ice and had sat out until the second period, when he retaliated for Julian’s first boarding by hip-checking him almost viciously, sending him careening into a teammate. Jack’s team hadn’t managed to score on that possession, but Julian’s hadn’t either, so he figured they were doing okay. They both rotated off-ice for a few minutes after that. Then, at the beginning of the third period, Julian leaned in so close when Jack had the puck he was almost tempted to call for a holding penalty. Jack had been so distracted at the thought of their bodies pressed together that Julian had stolen the puck almost before he’d realized it.
Now, with less than a minute to go and the score tied at three all, both teams were skating balls to the wall. Julian had the puck at his own team’s red line, and was passing it across to Tim Johnson.
Jack waited. He was exhausted and his leg hurt, but damn if he was going to sit out the last forty seconds of the game.
The red team raced down the ice.
With thirty-eight seconds to go, Julian crossed center ice, and Jack fell back close to the net, holding his breath. Jack’s left winger slid in to block the passing lane, snatched the puck out from under Tim’s nose as he went, and slingshotted around the net to break the opposite way up the ice.
To Jack’s left the team members not on the ice were hooting and hollering, kicking the boards and cheering madly. Jack focused on Julian, quickly gaining on the left winger, and abandoned his usual safe zone as a stay-at-home defender. He tore down the ice, ignoring everything around him except for the players between him and the puck.
Left, right, center, across the ice. Eric passed back to Brad, who cleared it up to Jack again. Jack directed it to the right winger, deflecting a grab for the puck with his shoulder. The right winger took the shot with a second left to go. The puck hit the crossbar just as the buzzer sounded, signaling the end of the game.
Damn. That had been a close one.
“Ooof.” Something bumped into Jack from behind when he wasn’t paying attention, knocking him flat on the ice.
Then it fell on top of him.
There was a smattering of laughter from the guys heading off the ice. Jack stayed where he was. “Julian, I am going to kick your ass. I know you can stop. I’ve seen you do it.”
“Ow,” Julian whined. “I think your skate is already violating my ass.”
“It doesn’t sound too serious.”
“Fuck you.”
“You first.” Jack huffed. “You going to get off me, or what? ’Cause I, for one, need a beer.”
There was a grunt, and then the weight on his legs shifted. “Okay, okay. I’m up. Need a hand?”
“I got it,” Jack grumbled, wincing as he stood. He was definitely going to be sore tomorrow. “What was that for, anyway?”
Julian tugged off his helmet, and Jack could see that his red cheeks weren’t entirely due to exertion. “Uh… I wasn’t watching where I was going, actually. Sorry.”
“Man, and people call me accident prone.” Jack half-limped off the ice, already stiffening up. In more ways than one, unfortunately. “Where’d you learn to play? No way are you new at this.”
“Right here in this arena, actually. Roz’
s parents owned the complex before they retired to Florida. But I played through high school and two years of undergrad. Once I hit med school I sort of ran out of leisure time.”
“Yeah. Doing my master’s felt like that.” Jack shucked his helmet onto the bench in the dressing room, running a hand through his sweaty hair. Yuck. It was definitely shower time. If only he could keep his mind—and gaze—off Julian’s body for long enough to preserve what was left of his dignity. He peeled off his gloves and started unfastening the rest of his equipment.
Beside him, Julian was sitting to remove his skates. He’d already taken care of his arm and shoulder pads, leaving him naked from the waist down. Shit, he looked even better without a shirt on. So much for keeping himself distracted. “Pass me a beer?”
Someone had carted the sweating beer case into the change room and set it on the end of the bench. Julian reached in and grabbed the last two. Evidently they’d been flat on the ice for longer than he’d thought. “Cheers.”
Jack clinked his bottle against Julian’s automatically before sitting back to take a long swallow. He wasn’t looking forward to taking the hockey pants off; he had a feeling there were going to be some complaints from his injured leg. Still, he couldn’t wait much longer; the gym was only open until ten on weeknights.
“How’s the leg?”
How does he do that? Jack could see, from the corner of his eye, that Julian had removed the rest of his hockey equipment. Needing an excuse not to look at him, he started unlacing his skates. “It’s been better,” he admitted. “Not too bad, though. I was expecting to play less and be in a lot more pain.”
“You got lucky,” Julian told him. There was a flap of something that sounded like a towel and Jack thought it might be safe to look up. Julian was wearing it like a skirt. Pretty. Then, “Good God, you weren’t kidding when you said you were accident prone.”
Jack could actually feel his gaze on him, raking from his back and shoulders down his chest, making goose bumps appear on his skin. It was true; he’d had his fair share of incidents resulting in scars on his body. There was the small burn scar on the back of his right shoulder, the faint white line on his left arm from when he’d broken it tobogganing as a kid, and the twin scars on the right side of his abdomen from having his appendix removed, then the infection drained, when he was twenty-three. He’d been in bed for a week and a half after that, and his roommate had had to take care of him. “That one’s not my fault,” he said, pointing. He wasn’t self-conscious about them, but then, no one had ever looked at them quite the way Julian was doing now. If he kept that up, bets were off as to how long Jack could keep his hands to himself.
“Yeah, I could tell.” Julian’s gaze lingered darkly on the appendix scar for a moment, making the hair on the back of Jack’s neck stand straight up. Then Julian flashed a smirk at him, grabbed a plastic bag filled with soap and shampoo, and headed toward the showers.
Ohhkay. Jack took another deep swallow of beer, then peeled off his hockey socks and started working on the pants.
“You okay?” Brad asked, “You look a little off.”
Jack shot him half a smile. “Leg hurts like a sonofabitch.” It wasn’t a lie, but it was a convenient excuse. He squirmed the rest of the way out of his hockey pants and grabbed his kit. “I’m getting too old for this.”
Brad just laughed at him. “Whatever, man. Just try not to kill the new kid before I have a chance to play on his team. That fucker is fast.”
“Tell me about it.” Jack grabbed his towel and stalked off toward the nearest shower stall.
Dressing room showers were not meant to preserve anyone’s modesty, and these were no exception. There was a wall more or less blocking the showers from the changing area to keep equipment from getting wet unnecessarily, but the shower area was basically an open room with shower heads on all sides, individual showers only marked off by a waist-high tile wall that served more or less as a place to put the soap.
Jack turned on the spray and stepped under, closing his eyes. The water was only lukewarm, but it felt wonderful to have the sheen of sweat he’d worked up washed from his body. He reached for the shampoo and scrubbed at his hair, noting how long it was. It had gone far beyond starting to curl at the ends; now that it was wet, it hung nearly to his shoulders in the back. Making a mental note to call Katherine to set up an appointment, he ducked his head back under the spray. It gave him an excuse to keep his eyes shut tight. He knew if he saw Julian naked he’d never be able to stop at just looking.
Finally he had to open his eyes again, having forgotten where he’d put the soap, so he took a half-step back out of the spray and wiped a hand across his face.
Jack noticed right away that most of the showers had been turned off; he could tell by the sound. The second thing he noticed was the bar of soap, a few inches from his right hand.
The third thing he noticed—and the last thing, because how could he pay attention to his surroundings after that—was Julian standing in the shower almost directly across from him, back to the spray, dark hair plastered to his head. Water was rolling in beaded rivulets down his defined, slender body, much the way Jack’s fingers were now itching to do. Jack took in the vision before him, from the wet hair and relaxed expression to the flat, dusky nipples to the trail of fine dark hair leading down from his navel. Jack swallowed hard, wondering if he was imagining that Julian was half-hard, eyes closed in apparent bliss, hands caressing his supple body.
Breathing in sharply and forcing himself to turn around, Jack reached for the soap with one hand and the cold water tap with the other. This was not the place to get into a naked wrestling match with his doctor. For one thing, there were too many potential witnesses. For another, the gym would be closing any minute now and when he finally got his hands on Julian, he wanted to be able to take his time. Jack finished his shower in record time and practically fled from the showers back into the dressing room.
It was empty, the case of beer sitting on the end of the bench, drained bottles in place but for the two he and Julian had been drinking. Jack took one look at his half-empty bottle and downed the rest of it, replacing it in the case, then grabbed his towel and dried off as quickly as he dared for the cold September night. His hair was still damp, but he wasn’t going to worry about it right now.
Jack pulled his usual post-hockey clothes from his backpack (putting them in his hockey bag would have defeated the purpose of the shower entirely) and slung his equipment over his back just as he heard the water cut off in the shower.
The evening manager, Marianne, was already turning out the lights when he left the rink area. She gave him a friendly wave. “You the last one?”
Jack shook his head. “Dr. Piet’s still in there. I think he might’ve drowned in the shower.”
“I’ll give him a few more minutes before I head in and revive him. Drive safely.”
Chuckling, Jack waved. “Night, Marianne.”
The parking lot was nearly empty, with just two pickups and Marianne’s old beat-up SUV left. It was also dark. The recent switch to daylight savings time had meant that dark was coming sooner and sooner, and apparently someone had forgotten to reprogram the streetlights. The night was lit only by the spillover from the recreational complex and the sliver of moon peeking above the distant mountains. Jack tossed his gear in the bed of his truck, debating.
Hell, what harm could it do? He double checked his own truck was locked, then sauntered over to wait by the other, shoving his hands into his pockets to keep them warm.
He didn’t have to wait long. It wasn’t two minutes before the door to the complex opened again, and a lean figure was silhouetted in the doorway for a moment before the main lights went out. Jack held his breath, willing his heart not to race.
“So you’re stalking me now?”
The voice was calm, cool, almost unaffected. Julian heaved his hockey bag over the side of the pickup and stood back, face barely visible now in the faint moonlight.
Julian didn’t back down. “You never thought I might just not be interested?”
Jack tried to remind himself of all the reasons why pursuing this conversation was a bad idea. One: Julian was so hot-and-cold it could drive even the sanest of men crazy. Two: it violated their established doctor-patient relationship. Three: they were in a tiny, conservative backwater town in northern Alberta. Four: Sex in a parking lot was a bad idea under the best of circumstances. Unfortunately, all his libido was telling him was he wants you now, and since that was fairly obviously true, it wasn’t easy to ignore.
“You’re interested,” he said confidently, maneuvering closer. He left his right arm down by his side, leaving open an avenue of escape—just in case.
Julian didn’t budge, but his tone was flirtatious, not flat. “If I was interested, what would you do about it?”
Hmm. This seemed like a time for showing rather than telling. Not that Jack was exactly in control of his actions at this point. He let the lust take control and raised his right hand to Julian’s face, brushing callused fingertips across his forehead and brow ridge and down his cheeks, feeling the rasp of five o’clock shadow almost too fine for the eye. As Jack’s thumb trailed over Julian’s lower lip, the other man’s tongue flicked out to trace hotly across the pad of his thumb. Julian never even broke eye contact.
Fuck it. Jack dropped his arm to Julian’s elbow and stepped into his body, pressing him lightly against the side of the truck, reveling in the way their bodies aligned. Taking a sharp breath, he gave in to the pull and leaned in close, slanting his mouth down over Julian’s.
Julian’s lips were moist, a bit chapped, and opened almost immediately under his assault, allowing Jack’s tongue to slip inside and taste the inside of his mouth. Jack swallowed the other man’s moan as Julian’s right hand fisted in the front of his shirt. The response from their bodies was both immediate and obvious. Jack could feel Julian’s erection pressing insistently against his thigh, and subconsciously rubbed his own into the other man’s hip. God, it had been ages since anyone had touched him, he thought hazily as Julian dragged his tongue sparking across his upper lip. He slid his right hand up the other man’s arm to his hair and dug his fingers into the damp curls, tugging gently.