by RJ Scott
I sputtered and scrubbed the guava taste from my lips. Penn raced out of the room yelling that he needed a piano stat. I glanced around to see Alex, Ryker, Henry, and of course Tate standing in the doorway mouths agape.
“I did not… he kissed me for…a song title. I’m not gay.”
Four heads bobbed slowly.
“Totes.”
“Right.”
“Never thought otherwise.”
Tate said nothing, then walked off with his spine stiff.
I threw a string of Russian curses at the young players gawking at me, then set off after Tate. Damn that fucking Colorado Penn and his loose lips. I jogged to catch up with the leaner, faster, and younger man. He jerked to a halt when I touched his shoulder. I moved around him, face-to-face, to block his path to the dressing room.
“I do not go around kissing men as a habit,” I told him, my voice low and aiming for secretive.
“You kissed me, but hey, that was a month ago and then when I kissed you it was all Fuck off, Tate! So I fucked off.”
“I never told you to fuck off. I just…” I threw a look up and down the corridor. There were far too many people here. “This is not the place for this. Come to my home. For a dinner. We will talk.”
He bristled a bit. “You’re my captain on the ice but not off. If you want me to come over, ask nicely like a friend who’s had his tongue in my mouth a few times.”
This man. There wasn’t one button I owned that he did not push, repeatedly, every damn day. Being in such a close proximity with him was stripping my senses.
“Fine,” I pushed through clenched teeth. “Will you come over for my place to dinner? For dinner. To my place. Fuck you.”
The bastard had the gall to smile, just a bit. “I’ll be there at seven. Fuck you.” And off he went, skirting around me, heading back to join up with his friends. Sweaty towel in hand I stood there in the hall looking like a complete jackass.
“Bolvan,” I muttered, calling myself a jackass in two tongues to drive home the point.
Eli lobbed a stinking sock at my head. That broke the spell for Tate, his smile, and his ass in those shorts. We would talk tonight. All would be settled and my life could return to where it had been before Tate Collins had blown into it like a typhoon.
My first mistake, which was one of many I’d made over the past two months, was to be stupid enough to think that Tate being in my home would somehow squash the attraction we had for each other. He fit into my condo well, looked far too good walking through my living room, his dark eyes rounding when he spied Frank.
“Does he talk?” Tate asked as he approached the huge cage in the corner. His jeans and tank top were nicely cut, baring his arms and most of his shoulders and neck. I loved a long neck on a man.
“Ublyudok!” Frank yelled, clicking his beak at this stranger staring at him.
Tate’s bright brown gaze swiveled from the macaw to me. “How cool! He speaks Russian. What did he just say? Hello or something?”
“Motherfucker,” I replied. Tate laughed aloud. A sound that felt warm and nice in my usually quiet condo. “Please do not stick your finger into the cage. He bites. It is a problem from his previous owner and I have not fixed it yet. We are working on it.”
“Got it.” He shoved his hands into his front pockets, but still stood there admiring the bird.
The timer in the kitchen went off.
“I must take out our dinner. Please, sit and be comfortable. Is a glass of white wine to your liking?”
“I’ll just have a beer, or…no, uhm, just some water with lemon.”
“Yes, of course. Sit.”
I scurried off into the kitchen to remove the garlic potatoes and chicken one-dish meal I had prepared. With a big salad, this was a perfect dinner for two athletes sitting down to talk. I placed the chicken on a trivet, moving around my kitchen to the fridge where I had the salad stored.
“So, you like Taylor Swift?” I glanced up from the inside of my refrigerator to see Tate now in the kitchen. Did he never listen to directions? “You own every CD she ever made? Or did you miss her kindergarten Christmas concert?”
“Snooping is unbecoming,” I mumbled as I pulled the big bowl of salad from the fridge. He chuckled. “My love for Taylor is a private matter.”
“Yeah well if you’re trying to hide something maybe you shouldn’t be so obvious.”
I knew that he meant that in reference to all the CDs and vinyl albums lined up on one long shelf on my bookcase. Or at least I thought he meant it in that manner. Hands filled with a cold glass bowl heaped with romaine, iceberg, radish slices, carrots, and tiny bits of black olive, I stared at him openly, unable to form a sensible reply. Which was my standard operating procedure with Tate nearby.
“He kissed me,” I said for some bizarre reason. It was important that he know that I hadn’t initiated anything like I had with us. “For a song about tits.” He arched any eyebrow. “It was…you should have been there to understand it best. You…this thing with us, this attraction…it’s making me off-center. Wobbly. I think perhaps we should not act on our lusts anymore until after the season is over.”
“Uh-huh. Is that what you really want?” He walked over, took the salad, placed it on the island, and then planted himself right in front of me. “I’m not going to pressure you. I have enough shit to deal with, let alone adding dating my team captain to the list.”
His eyes were lovely. Thick sweeping lashes and eyes that were brown with flecks of gold, like those little Russian chocolate caramel candies everyone always wanted me to bring back to the states.
“You should be in the living room.”
“Hard to eat in the living room when the food is out here.”
“I have meat.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed.”
I lunged for him at the same time he moved toward me. I captured his head in my hands, slanted my mouth over his, and dove into his mouth like a man starved. Truly, I had been. It had been five weeks or so since we’d kissed at the party. A lifetime, to be sure. He gripped my hips, tugging madly to get our cocks aligned. When they brushed, he gasped. I inhaled his breath, savored it, and then moved from his lips to his neck. A throaty moan bubbled out of him. I rolled his head this way and that, lapping over his Adam’s apple, his new whiskers rough on my tongue. I nibbled an ear, tugged on the lobe, and felt him melting into my arms.
“Fuck yes,” he panted when I caught his hands and lifted them above his head. Then he was pinned to the inside of the refrigerator, the cold air on his back, his head on the freezer, which was still shut. I licked into his mouth again, demanding a hotter response, which he gave me.
“Stay like this, arms up, do not move,” I huffed beside his ear. He grunted, rotating his pelvis against mine. I was already close so I moved away, dropping to my knees to free the cock that I’d fantasized about tasting for what seemed like years.
“Fuck, oh fuck yeah,” Tate panted when I took him in hand and licked at the slit of his prick. A droplet of pre-cum appeared. I licked it off, ran my fingernail over the underside of his dick, smiling wide when he whimpered my name. “Shit I…” I heard his fingers scrabbling over the top of the fridge as he worked to stay where I had put him. “Fuck, just…ah shit.”
“You’re mine now, sweet one.”
“Say that in Russian. Call me sugar in Russian.”
I lapped at his cockhead, watching his face as passion overwhelmed him. God yes, he was beautiful and he was mine. Perhaps just for this half hour or maybe for a night, for this was perhaps the most unprofessional thing I had ever done.
I whispered what he wanted to hear right before I swallowed his thick cock to the root. He cried out. Frank replied with a scathing curse word that Tate wouldn’t have understood, thank God. The man unraveled. He was vocal, yet obedient. Thrusting his hips to pump his cock in and out of my mouth while gripping the freezer door for dear life, he fucked my mouth wantonly. I egged him on, sucking harder when he did so
mething that I liked, easing off when he didn’t. The first spurt of cum that hit my tongue made my balls contract but I tamped it down. I wanted him to get me off, one-handed, right there in the kitchen.
His taste filled my mouth. I swallowed each pulse, then got to my feet. His eyes were black with lust. I covered his mouth with mine, smearing his taste over his tongue. He bucked for a moment longer, lost in the final tremors of his orgasm. Then with a gasping breath I took one hand down and pressed it against my crotch.
“Use your hand,” I said over his kiss-swollen lips. He nodded, his gaze fuzzy and sensual. I kissed him again and again. He freed my cock. I bit down on his lower lip, gently, and he moaned. Arching into his palm when his hand circled me, he tugged with jerky motions, his fingers toying with my foreskin as if it were a novelty. “Have you never been with a man who was uncircumcised?”
“I… no…not just…uhm, there were a few guys in college, hand jobs, all cut. I…fuck that is sexy.”
“You are sexy. Too sexy for my mind.”
“Too sexy for your shirt too?” he asked with a soft laugh.
“Your shirt is sexy.”
“Oh my God, Drax, just stop being so you.”
His palm rolled over the head of my dick and I lost my train of thought. For a man with little experience with other men he was certainly working me with skill. Or perhaps it was just that it was Tate writhing in my arms, jerking me off, wearing the love bites I’d put on him. Seeing those dark marks, I lowered my head to give him one more as he worked me into a frenzy. When I came my teeth sank into his neck. He worked my spunk all over me, whispering for me to suck harder, mark him. So I did; I sucked harder. When I could breathe properly, I moved from his mottled neck back to his mouth. Our kisses were softer now that the fire had burned down a bit.
“This is not how this was to go,” I confessed, nibbling at the corner of his mouth.
“Yeah, I figured.” He pulled his hand out of my pants. I groaned at the loss. Then he rose a bit to capture my mouth. “My ass is cold but I don’t want to stop kissing you.”
“Yes, I…” I stepped back, disliking the cool air blowing between us. “Me either, but…” I looked at him, his flushed face, his brown eyes heavy with satisfaction and warmth, his arm still obediently over his head, his clothes rucked up and sideways, and knew then that I’d never be able to go back to just being his teammate. “Yes, we should…you should wash your hands.”
“Tell me to move,” he whispered. “Give me permission.”
Oh. Fuck. He’d found me out all too fast.
“Go wash up, then we will talk.” I ran my thumb along his lower lip and felt him tremble. I stole one final kiss before moving away to give him room to right himself. I tucked and zipped, my eyes never leaving Tate’s while he did the same.
“Bathroom?” he asked, his voice soft and appealing. How had he read me so quickly? And why was I now unable to picture a tomorrow that wasn’t wrapped up in the taste of him on my tongue and the subtle dip of his head as we played with this new dynamic.
“By the front door is a powder room. Go wash up.” I pushed the door of the fridge shut. Color lit his cheeks. “Come back and we’ll eat and talk.” He nodded, and he seemed unable or unsure of what to say or how. I gave him a smile. “Go, clean up. We’ll work this all out somehow. Go now, Tate.”
He shuffled off, his gait a little off-kilter. Which was exactly how my thoughts, hell, my whole world, now were.
Chapter Seven
Tate
The powder room had a mirror over the basin, and as I washed my hands I stared at my reflection and wondered why I didn’t appear to be any different. Surely what I’d just done, the connection, the lust, would have made me change outwardly. I could see the signs of Vlad’s touch on me, dark bruises near my throat, my hair sticking up this way and that, and my skin reddened from stubble, but it wasn’t in the way I looked that made me feel as if my world had been rocked.
I still felt unsteady on my feet.
The way he’d told me to leave my hands where they were, the hardness of the refrigerator behind me, Vlad on his knees sucking me down, then the heat of him spilling over my hand. It was sensory overload, and I gripped the basin. I’d never experienced an orgasm that intense, had never been spoken to in that way.
Perfect Tate Collins with his manners, and his clean cut All-American looks, squeaky clean, nice to everyone? That wasn’t who I felt inside right now. Inside, I was lust and need and raw with emotions.
“You okay?” Vlad asked softly from outside the door. I don’t even know how long I’d been staring at myself checking for differences, but the water was still running and the mirror was fogging up. It was as if the old Tate was being misted over, and maybe this new Tate, the one tarnished by Lacey and her shit was now free to do what he wanted. He could still be the guy he was inside, caring, a good friend, polite to everyone, working for charity, playing good hockey, but maybe he could allow this other side of him free now.
If Vlad even wanted to do this again.
“Tate?” Vlad murmured, and I heard a noise, like maybe he was resting his forehead on the door. I was fucking this up staying in here like a coward, when I wanted to be out there with Vlad, getting to know him better, kissing, maybe taking it further, maybe…
Stop thinking and get the hell out of the bathroom.
I opened the door, cautiously, in case Vlad was leaning on it, but he’d moved away and was leaning on the wall opposite.
“I can take you home,” he said, his hands in his pockets, not moving an inch, and I saw in an instant what my messing around in the bathroom had caused. Doubt. So much doubt. He probably thought I regretted what we’d done.
“No, I—”
“As your captain I can tell you what to do on the ice, but in here, when it’s us, I would ask that you don’t tell people about me… I have family to consider, and I know you’re a good man, but—”
I launched myself at him, cut off his words with a messy, uncoordinated kiss, and nearly climbed him like a freaking tree. He grabbed me and held me steady as we slid down the wall and I straddled his lap. He was in shock, his eyes wide, and we stared at each other for the longest time.
“I would never tell anyone—”
“I’m sorry if I—”
We talked over each other, and with my polite gene I smiled, “You first.”
“I’m sorry if I implied you would ever—”
I kissed him again. “No apologies, but you maybe want to take this into the bedroom?”
He levered me off him, catching me before I fell, and then he tugged me down past the kitchen.
We were so close to getting inside and for me to experience everything I’d dreamed about when his cell made this obnoxious alarm noise and he stopped.
“Colorado Ublyudok!”
Frank copied him immediately. Although why Colorado’s name was in there, I didn’t know.
He released his hold on me and picked up the cell, connecting the call and letting off a stream of obscenities that were a mix of Russian and American. I heard someone shouting back.
“What!” He was incredulous. “No, I’m not— Ublyudok! Thirty minutes and don’t you fucking leave, you moronic asshole kusok der'ma.”
He slammed the phone onto the counter, bent his head, and I could see the tension in every corded muscle of him, his hands curling into fists as if he wanted to hit someone so hard they’d end up through the Plexiglass at the arena. His reaction didn’t scare me since he was all about control, but every so often, where the Raptors were concerned there were glimpses of an awesome Russian temper. This was different, though.
“What’s happened?” I asked, and took a step closer to him, wondering if we were in a place where I could touch his arm to calm him down.
“You don’t want to know,” he ground out, “Fucking Colorado! He’ll be the death of me.”
We all knew Colorado was a live-wire, or a loose cannon, or any combination of words th
at described someone with tentative control on himself, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen Vlad curse as much as this before. He was the captain who dealt with officials in a calm, professional manner, the one who had every team member’s back, but whatever Colorado had done now was clearly a long way past bad.
“What did he do?”
He left out a sigh, then turned to face me. “He’s holed up in his house with that fucking emu, and is refusing to come out.”
“How do you know that? Why did he call you?”
“Because Animal Control is outside his place, he’s broken a hundred rules, and now they’re calling in the cops, and he calls me every single goddamn time he messes up. So often I even have a ringtone just for him.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Temper flared in his eyes. “How will that look? You want Colorado seeing us together, with my mark on your neck?”
I instinctively covered the place I’d seen the bruise, and the temper left him as soon as it had appeared. He pulled me into his arms and held me close.
“I’m sorry, dorogoy.”
“What does that mean?”
He looked past me at the door. “I have to deal with this, call management, make this less than it is before he destroys everything.”
“I understand.”
“You should go home.”
“I can stay here.” Wait for you to come back.
“Go home, we have the flight to Calgary tomorrow,” he said, and I imagine he was trying for reassuring, but his head was elsewhere. He was using his captain voice, and I didn’t argue. Then he cradled my face and kissed me gently. “I’m sorry, dorogoy. So sorry.”
When I got home I was at a loss of what to do in the huge space, I showered, made an omelet after my stomach reminded me I’d had nothing to eat, and then it was an aimless wander through empty rooms. Property was cheaper in Tucson than it had been in Dallas, but then I’d bought an apartment in downtown Dallas close to the Arts District as an investment and it was sure as shit expensive there. This place was rented, I didn’t own one small part of it, and it was too big for me. I wanted something more like Vlad’s, open plan with a view, a kitchen where you could prepare food and have friends propped up against the counter. Renting was a waste, but I had all this money just sitting there, investments that I had control over, some property, some more speculative and I earned more than Vlad did, more than anyone on the Raptors. They’d paid a huge price to have me come here, and I guess our first away game would show them if I was worth it. Only, we were up against a Calgary team that was still hot from last year’s cup run.