by RJ Scott
I really need to find someone to scratch this itch. I need to get laid soon, before I spontaneously combust.
“There he is,” Ben said, and reached for the leash. “I take my eye off him for one minute…”
Stan looked so disappointed Ben was there taking the dog it was comical. I didn’t want to laugh but it just happened.
Stan huffed and stalked away, and that left me with Ben, Layton, and the dog in the lonely corridor.
“We meet again,” I said to Ben, then groaned inwardly. Lame. My game was so not on point.
I eased past Ben, which was a tight fit, and sue me if I didn’t press a little more that I needed to on his arm. He stepped back, nearly falling over Bucky, and I gripped him to stop him from barreling into Layton. Call it a hockey instinct, or just a need to get my hands on him. Who knows, but I was there, and I held him until he shrugged me off. He glared at me, then pointedly turned his back to me.
“So, this would be all the team for the calendar, or can I pick who I want?” he said to Layton, as they walked away talking. I heard my name, and a chuckle from Layton, before they headed out to the kitchen.
“Heads up,” someone shouted, and I only just ducked in time to avoid getting a soccer ball to my head. I retrieved the ball and threw it back to Westy and Mac.
“Stupid rookies,” I muttered, and muscled my way through, ignoring their laughter as much as I’d ignored Ben and Layton’s.
No one laughed at the big bad defender.
And when I took both rookies to the floor at the beginning of practice, I felt vindicated when I saw in their eyes that it was a lesson from me.
If only I could get Ben on the floor under me, all wriggling and cursing at me.
Now that would be a Very Good Thing.
Practice was hard. Our first game in the finals was on the Flyers’ home ice, which meant a plane, and hotels, and messing with the rhythms of our day. We’d deal with all that; at the end of the day, it was all about the hockey.
Ten cornered me, as much as you can corner someone on an oval piece of ice.
“Did Mads show you the—”
“Yes.”
“And did you—”
“Yes.”
“Okay then.”
We fist-bumped, because we just got each other. I’ve seen a lot of kids come up and be labelled the next great one when they were still wet behind the ears, but Ten here, he had hockey smarts, and speed, and everyone genuinely liked him.
Well, except for the section of the Railers’ fans that felt Ten was defined by what he did with his dick. Morons.
I’d already heard some of the chirping he got from certain skaters on opposing teams, just enough to inform me which assholes I was taking off their skates into the boards. No one said things loud enough to get caught, no one spoke clearly, but nevertheless it was an easy go-to thing to comment on a man’s sexuality.
I preferred using my brawn over my brain when it came to getting things done.
Didn’t mean I was short of a brain, though.
Just that my brain had this thing in it, and it wasn’t good, and I didn’t even want to think about it.
“Again,” Mads said, and had me and James “Westy” Sato-West, a newbie up from the minors, going two-on-one with Ten. Little shit still got past the both of us, a slap shot to the net, and not even Stan could stop that one.
Ten crowed a little—he’d earned that—and then he snowed to a stop right next to me.
“Better luck next time,” he said with a grin.
“Little shit,” I cursed, but I was smiling, because fuck I felt alive out here.
We finished with what I affectionately called circle time, all of us around the inner Railers’ logo on the ice, all taking a knee and listening to assessments and timetables.
We were flying out the day after tomorrow. Flight left at five p.m. Hotel was assigned. Optional practice in the Flyers’ place the morning of the game. We were told to skip the ice tomorrow, spend our time in the gym, work with the therapists on any lingering issues, and then be ready to fly out.
Some of the guys were beaten and bruised after the end of a heavy season; we all needed some TLC, but I wished we could have got the skate time tomorrow, early, when the ice was new and maybe I was the only one out on it.
Just me, the ice, and the echoing ghosts of the cheers from the last game.
I was the last off the ice. It was kind of a thing I had going on at all my teams; it didn’t bother me when I got on the ice and in what order, there was no superstition there, but leaving the ice at practice? That was all me being last.
God knows why. Maybe it was that part of me that said if I wore the same shirt on game day, or a particular tie to a game against LA, then we would win. Hockey superstition is a weird thing.
I saw him before he saw me, or at least, he was staring off in the other direction, making shapes with his hands as he talked to Layton, who was grinning at him as if Ben was telling him the best joke ever.
I wanted to walk over and see if they were still laughing about me, but I didn’t.
Not at first, anyway. Only when Layton answered his cell and that left Ben on his own did I think about culling him from the herd.
I used all my best moves, coming up on his blind side, nearly tripping over the dog, and sliding effortlessly between Ben and Layton, who took his call a little farther away.
Me and Ben. Alone. Finally.
“We should get coffee. Or beer. Or a hotel room,” I announced, because hell, life was too short to mess around. Ben could say yes or punch me in the face, and either I could handle.
“You just don’t take a hint, do you?” he said, and wrapped Bucky’s leash around his hand, ready to move off.
“You know you find me hot.”
“Jesus, you’re an arrogant ass—”
I leaned in to him. “I don’t mess about. You’re fucking gorgeous and I want to fuck you into tomorrow.”
“What if I want to be the one doing the fucking?” he snapped, then blanched when he realized what he’d said.
God, I was so hard my cup was cutting off circulation. The idea of this man getting it on and taking charge was exactly my kind of thing.
“I can go for that,” I whispered.
“Why are you messing with me like this?” he asked, horrified, and looked around him. “Is this some kind of sick joke? A game?”
“No joke, and Ben, I don’t play games,” I said.
Something in that must have resonated with him because he stopped in his tracks and there was something in his expression—a hope, a need—and it was the same as mine.
“Max—”
“I’ll be at Blue. It’s a bar on—”
“I know where it is.”
“I’ll be there at eight. Your choice.”
I didn’t give him any time to discuss or argue. The offer was there—we met at Blue, we had a drink, we talked, maybe we had sex up against a wall. Either way, I’d found the way in to this beautiful man’s mind. A simple promise I didn’t play games.
“Wait,” he called after me as I headed for the lockers. I didn’t stop. I’d laid it out there, and now it was on him what happened next.
Chapter Three
Ben
Longest. Day. Ever.
I’d spent hours debating and whining, bouncing back and forth over whether I should meet Max or not. It had taken me until four o’clock to slap myself and make the call. Yes. Drinks with the big man who looked at me as if I was filet mignon. Why? Because there was a current, sharp and hot, and it had been years since I’d felt that kind of spark.
Getting out of the office at six—an hour past my “official” quitting time, which I never actually saw because shelter manager—added another sixty minutes to the torture.
“What do I say to him when I show up?”
You say you want to fuck him until he passes out. Then fuck him—or have him fuck you—until you or he passes out. Simpleton.
�
�That really wasn’t a question I needed answered, brain.” Bucky glanced over at me as we made our way to Allison Hill and the red brick row houses me and my two great-aunts called home. “Talking to myself. Go back to what you were doing.”
The malamute gave me a knowing look and returned to his previous entertainment, which was riding along with his snout out the six-inch dog-nose-sized gap in the window, slobber flying off him on occasion to coat said window and speckle my arm.
Pulling up to a red light, I glanced at the clock on the stereo. Quarter after six. Why was I so obsessed with time today?
You know why.
“Okay, seriously, I will shut your shit down, brain!” Bucky rolled those blue eyes toward me, the whiskers over his eyes twitching in what seemed to be amusement. “It’s not funny.”
No, it was not funny. Not at all. I’d made an ass of myself over a man. That hadn’t happened since…forever. Since Liam.
“Right, so what we’re going to do is just meet for drinks. No fucking.”
Bucky woofed out the window.
“No, see, fucking is for the nameless men. Max has a name. Well, okay, yeah, the other men did too, but they didn’t make me feel as if I’d swallowed live goldfish when I thought about them.”
The light turned green just as I cranked up the volume on some slow stuff from Lionel Ritchie. We drove as I talked. When I came out of the conversational fog, we were about four blocks from my street. I shook off the spike of fear I’d felt after realizing I’d driven for ten minutes and not once noted my surroundings. I’d get myself killed over a man with whiskey-colored eyes and a voice like a chainsaw on idle.
Allison Hill was a rough neighborhood or had been. It still was in pockets, but there were now areas that had been gentrified. And then, on the south side of Allison Hill, there were abandoned houses filled with squatters, many with addicts who slept on beds of empty syringes and shattered dreams.
The bad side of the city was why I’d moved up after I’d gotten that spiffy major in business administration with a minor in animal science. My two great-aunts on my father’s side had lived there all their lives. When crime had started taking over their neighborhood, instead of moving down to D.C. with my parents as they’d been begged to do, they’d simply dug in like ticks and begun speaking out for the people of the area. That had brought them a lot of trouble from criminal elements who didn’t want the streets cleaned up. Enter Benton Worthington, nephew extraordinaire and bail-payer for two wild women who should be home knitting and baking cookies instead of playing social justice warriors in their late seventies and early eighties.
The job offer from Crossroads had come before I’d even fully moved in, which had been a miracle, but one didn’t question blessings. They just thanked God for them.
And I had every day for the past several years. My job, Liam, good health, and a full life had been in my grasp. Life had been good. So good that I’d been rapidly promoted. Only two years after I’d become shelter manager, the owner, who had been aged and sickly, had offered Liam and me the shelter. We’d talked, plotted, begged, borrowed, and came close to stealing to raise the down payment. Legally, all had been settled after the transfer of ownership had taken place. Our wills had both stated that should one of us die before the other, the shelter went to the surviving spouse. Little had we suspected that one of us would be gone within a few years.
When Liam had died, the sunny gloss had faded from my existence. So had passion and feeling and the hot lick of attraction for another man. All gone. Until I’d gone and looked into Max van Hellren’s eyes and seen fire and life there.
Bucky whimpered, and I stared at our house while moving past.
“Shit. Next time tell me I drove past our place before I drive past it. Sorry, not your fault. Totally on me.”
Bucky’s tail thumped against the seat. I circled the block, parked in my designated slot in front of the row of townhomes, and unbuckled my dog. He leaped out of the Jeep and trotted to number 20, knowing we’d go check on the old gals before entering our own small house.
My aunts were in the kitchen, at the table, the small kitchen smelling of coffee and rebellion.
“What are we protesting this week?” I asked, giving each of the short women a kiss on a leathery cheek. Both were gray, wrinkled, and as lean as whippets. Neither had ever married, and they had never borne any children.
“Unfair wages,” replied Aunt Carol—the youngest, at seventy-seven—as her brush moved with confidence over the blank top of a picket sign.
“That prick Senator Rudy wants to vote down a raise in the minimum wage. Don’t those rich politicians know that a higher minimum wage will mean poor people can buy more goods, which will help small businesses and lower crime since stealing and robbing folks isn’t needed if you can earn a decent living?” Aunt Glenna—the older at eighty-one—waved a hand at the microwave. “There’s a plate of pork chops and scalloped potatoes for you.”
“Thanks, but I grabbed something at work.” That was a lie—I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. My stomach was too knotted to eat. I stole a look at the clock on the wall. Ten after seven. I had to get a move on or risk being late.
“If you’re free on Saturday, come march with us,” Carol said, tongue between teeth as she painted some sort of slogan on her sign. I began inching toward the back door.
“Yeah, come join us as we stick it to the man,” Glenna chimed in, then stapled some poster board to a slat of wood.
“I’m pretty sure no one says ‘the man’ anymore,” I commented, my eyes darting back to the clock. “And if I go and get arrested, who will bail your backsides out?”
“He makes a good point,” Carol said as she painted.
“You okay, baby? You look off.” Glenna reached out to take my hand.
I gave her a wobbly smile. “Just low blood sugar.”
They both stopped making signs and gave me that look. The one that was stuffed with frustration.
“Benton, baby, have you been running too hard again?” Carol looked at me through paint-smeared bifocals. “You know all that jogging during the summer makes you faint.”
“Once. That happened one time.” I held up a finger, then slid toward the door, Bucky waiting with his nose flat to the screen in the door. “And that was only because I didn’t hydrate properly. I have to run to stay in shape. My job has me behind a desk for…” I sighed. I gave up. We’d been over my need to jog a thousand times. There was no changing some minds.
Both old women gave me surly looks.
“I have to go out tonight. Can you check on Bucky in a couple of hours and let him out? Thanks. Night!”
I ran out, tripped over the dog, and nearly went on my nose.
“Where are you heading to, Benton?”
“Is it a date?”
God above, save me from old women. “Just a meeting. About dog crates.”
I grabbed Bucky’s leash, and we hightailed it next door.
My skinny house was stuffy. Bucky ate dinner, then curled up on the bed to nap while I opened the windows, showered, shaved, and tried to find clothes that said I was maybe interested but not madly in lust.
“So, clothes that lie,” I said to my reflection in the mirror that hung on the back of the closet door. I settled on a short-sleeved cotton shirt, soft blue, one Liam had said was my color. Then jeans, clean but not pressed, and some loafers. Maybe a watch? I yanked open my underwear drawer, and there it was. The small soft square of velvet that I’d wrapped my wedding band in just two months ago.
Suddenly I felt traitorous. I sat on the bed beside Bucky, gently opening the folded swatch. The thin gold band blinked at me in the late day sun. I slid it on, eyes closing, memories rushing over me. The day Liam had proposed right after we’d graduated college, our frantic plans to get up into Canada to get married, and the sheer joy of the day we exchanged bands and vows. Rubbing my finger over the smooth circlet of gold, I could see Liam’s brother Rolf storming into the small venue we’d
rented upon coming back to the States. Rolf, the sneering hateful bigot who never could decide what sickened him the most: his brother marrying a fag or his brother marrying, in his words, a black fag. Only he didn’t use the word black, but loved throwing the most offensive terms he could to describe the color of my skin. Never mind Liam was also gay. It was all me. I had led his baby brother astray.
“Man was a flaming jackass,” I told Bucky. My dog rolled onto his back, so I rubbed his belly for a moment, letting the memories fade away just a bit. The dog dozed off, and I glanced at the clock beside the bed.
“Shit.” I rushed from the bedroom, grabbed my wallet and keys from the side table by the front door, and slid out, promising Bucky I’d be home in an hour.
I cruised into Blue’s parking lot on South Cameron Street nearly thirty minutes later. Parking was a hassle, but I finally found a slot around back. I inhaled, exhaled, and let the dulcet tones of The Miracles wash over me.
“Right. Drinks with a sexy man. You got this, Benton.”
The moment I entered the bar I could feel those predatory eyes on me. It felt as if cougars had spotted a newborn lamb bounding across the pasture.
Max watched me walk to him, sipping from a tumbler that held something amber. The tables were full, as were the booths along the wall, where Max held the last one by the jukebox.
“I thought you were going to blow this off,” Max said as I sat down across from him in the wide booth.
“Had to work late.”
He waved at the bartender as he sipped. His tongue darted out to grab a small droplet of liquid, the sight spearing me in the groin, unfurling into hot fingers of lust.
“Whiskey and water,” I told the barkeep. Max looked pleased with my drink choice.
“Glad you came,” he said, his gaze roaming over me as a smile worked along his lips, pulling up the corners then fading. “So, you go and get married since this morning?”
My eyebrows knotted, then I remembered the band on my finger. “Oh, uh, no. I was just trying it on and forgot to take it off.”
“Planning on getting married, then?” His demeanor seemed chilly now.