Chapter 10
chapter ten
Sandro had no idea what he was doing.
What he did know was this:
First, he wanted Bennett.
Second, whatever reasons he had for not acting on that want didn’t matter, not in this precise moment in time.
And third, he was tired of resisting. He just wanted to take without overthinking it or worrying about what would come later.
Bennett seemed to be on the same page.
But that was nothing new—they’d almost always been on the same page.
“Remember when you ordered the spicy curry?” Sandro said, recalling a time they blatantly hadn’t been on the same page. His body buzzing, he brushed past Bennett into the house and left his shoes and jacket by the front door.
“At that Indian place in Chicago.” Bennett closed the door behind himself with a very quiet, very deliberate good-shit’s-about-to-happen click. “I remember.”
“It practically made my ears bleed.”
“Still not a fan of spicy foods, huh?”
“No.” Sandro walked to the back door and peered out through the glass. The sun had dipped behind the Adirondacks, and he could just make out the impression of the mountain peaks against the twilit sky. “I like to be able to taste my food.”
Bennett settled in behind him, not touching but close enough that Sandro could feel the heat of his body. “Spice enhances the taste,” Bennett said, his voice a sensuous rumble against Sandro’s skin.
“That so?” Sandro faced him. He’d always loved that they were evenly matched in height.
Loved it more now if that was possible, though he couldn’t explain why.
Bennett hadn’t turned on any lights and his face was in shadow, making this encounter feel deliciously illicit.
“What spice would make me taste better?”
“Hm. Let’s see.” Bennett trailed his nose along Sandro’s cheekbone, his jaw, lower. He gave a quick lick where his neck met his shoulder, sending Sandro’s body into overdrive.
“Jesus.” He clutched the front of Bennett’s T-shirt in two fists.
“Paprika, maybe,” Bennett murmured against his neck, his breath warm. “Or maybe a combination of cinnamon and cloves—spicy yet sweet.”
Sandro dug underneath Bennett’s T-shirt and dragged his hands up his back, his stomach somersaulting at this first touch between them after so many years. “I’m not sweet.”
“No?” Bennett nuzzled their noses together. “Must’ve been someone else who sat with Prinnie.”
“That’s not sweet. That’s just being a decent human being.”
Bennett cupped his ass. “Do you want to debate that? Or do you want me to show you the bedroom?”
Sandro didn’t bother telling him that he already knew where the bedroom was—he’d visited Dabbs here more than once; he knew the house’s layout. Instead, he grasped Bennett’s jaw with a whispered “Come here,” then crashed their mouths together.
Whatever he was expecting, it wasn’t for their past to fall away.
It had been so long since they’d been together that Sandro couldn’t recall the taste of Bennett or how his body felt under his or the sounds Bennett made when he was aroused.
He was about to rediscover Bennett for the first time, a phenomenon he would’ve previously argued was impossible.
Yet here they were.
Bennett’s mouth was hot on his, his kisses unhurried and wet. Trapped between Bennett and the door at his back, he had nowhere to go.
Not that he wanted to be anywhere else.
Bennett backed him against the door, the cool glass doing nothing to modulate the heat coursing through him. His skin tingled everywhere Bennett touched him, and he groaned when Bennett inserted a thigh between his legs.
“Oh god.” Sandro’s head fell back as Bennett’s thigh nudged his erection through their jeans. “B . . .”
“What do you need?” Bennett asked as he trailed desperate kisses along Sandro’s collarbone.
Sandro dragged Bennett’s head up to kiss him again. Part of him wanted to spend hours necking on the couch like virgin teenagers. The hornier part of him wanted Bennett’s hand on his dick.
Their breathing was loud in the silence of the house, interspersed with the wet sound of their lips clinging and releasing, clinging and releasing.
Bennett’s tongue in his mouth made his head swim, and Sandro couldn’t wait a second longer.
Flipping their positions, he dropped to his knees, unzipped Bennett’s jeans—
“Sandy, fuck.”
—and took Bennett in hand through his boxer briefs.
Bennett exhaled a rough sound.
Sandro lowered Bennett’s jeans and underwear, exposing his hard cock to the air. Licking his lips, he smiled up at Bennett and said, “This is going to be better than it ever was with the model.”
“Who?” Bennett rasped, sounding genuinely confused.
“Goddamn right,” Sandro muttered. And without any warning, he took Bennett in his mouth.
“Shit, Ro. Shit.” There was a thump, no doubt the back of Bennett’s head hitting the door. “Ungh, yes.”
Sandro groaned around him, which had Bennett sucking in air through his teeth.
Bennett was hard and leaking in Sandro’s mouth, and his breathing stuttered when Sandro massaged his balls to add to his pleasure.
Sandro remembered the first time he’d ever sucked Bennett off.
August, sophomore year of college. Classes hadn’t been scheduled to start for another week or so, but Sandro and Bennett—as well as the rest of their college hockey team—had arrived on campus early to begin practice.
Of course, day one of practice had started out with the guys catching up on their summers in the locker room, where Bennett had loudly told one of their teammates that he was single while side-eyeing Sandro.
Sandro had responded that he, too, was single after the relationship with his girlfriend had fizzled and died over the summer.
Three hours later, they’d been naked in Bennett’s dorm room with a sock on the door.
Three hours after that, Bennett’s roommate—a fellow hockey player—had taken Sandro’s spot in his dorm room, and Sandro had moved in with Bennett.
Three hours after that, Sandro had asked Bennett to be his boyfriend while his dick was in Bennett’s mouth. Bennett had given him a very imperious “obviously, you jackass” eyebrow.
And that had been that.
Now, as Bennett got impossibly harder in Sandro’s mouth, Sandro closed his eyes when Bennett carded his fingers through his hair.
“Fuck, I’m gonna come,” Bennett panted. “Ro. If you still hate to swallow . . .”
Surging to his feet, Sandro kissed him while Bennett finished himself off and ejaculated into the space between them.
“Jesus, fuck,” Bennett groaned against Sandro’s mouth.
Synapses firing at lightning speed, Sandro grinned and was about to gloat about his mouth being better than a damn model’s when Bennett undid his jeans and grasped his erection in one tight fist.
“Christ with a hockey stick, B.” Sandro tucked his face in Bennett’s neck, those firing synapses zinging up and down his spine. “Warn a guy next time.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Bennett said in his ear, his voice a sinful caress.
He used his come-slick hand to jerk Sandro off, and in an embarrassingly short time, Sandro was coming all over them both with a drawn-out groan that left his throat aching. Panting, he leaned his weight against Bennett, trusting Bennett to hold him up. “We’re a mess.”
Bennett chuckled. “Whose fault is that?”
“Yours. Just like that D on my marketing project.”
“I’m sorry, who wanted to go to that frat party the night before he had to hand it in?”
Sandro smiled against Bennett’s neck. “Also you.”
“That is not how I remember it.” Bennett patted his butt. “Come on. Let’s get cleaned up. We should probably Windex this door too, otherwise my ass print is going to be permanently engraved on it.”
Lifting his head, Sandro peered around him, and sure enough, there was a butt print steaming up the glass. Unable to help himself, he dissolved into laughter and pressed a quick kiss to Bennett’s lips. “I’m hungry.”
“Seriously? We just ate so much cheese.”
“I want beef Wellington.”
“I can offer you bagels.”
Sandro thought about that for a second and nodded. “I’ll take it.” He looked down at himself, at where Bennett still held his softened dick. “And a wet cloth.”
Several minutes later, cleaned up and sitting on a barstool at the kitchen counter in his underwear and one of Bennett’s hoodies, Sandro watched Bennett—also dressed in underwear and a hoodie—pop a bagel into the toaster.
Sandro had peered into the freezer when Bennett had opened it to grab the bag of bagels and found that Bennett really did only have bagels.
The fridge was equally barren, he discovered when Bennett opened it. In addition to the tub of cream cheese he pulled out, he had fast-food ketchup packets, eggs, a carton of milk, and a jar of strawberry jam.
“Are you on the world’s worst diet?” Sandro asked. “Or do you get a lot of takeout?”
“Takeout and Trailblazers’ food.” The bagel popped out of the toaster. Bennett plated the two halves and handed them over along with the cream cheese and a knife. “Most of my days are spent with your team, so I’m usually eating what you’re eating. And you guys eat very well.”
“Our team chef looks after us.”
“So the bagel’s probably subpar, huh?”
Sandro spread cream cheese on each half.
“It’ll do in a pinch.” He took a bite and looked around, taking in the naked walls and lack of any real personal effects aside from a couple of receipts on the kitchen table and their shoes and jackets by the front door. Bennett sure traveled light, didn’t he?
“What’s your place like in LA?”
“It’s nothing fancy,” Bennett said, sitting next to Sandro.
He tugged Sandro’s barstool closer, grabbed Sandro’s legs at the knees, and draped them over his lap.
Some of his hair had come loose out of his hair tie, and it hung around his face in wavy strands that made him look temptingly debauched.
“A one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood Heights.”
“Is that near the ocean?” Sandro asked, his skin prickling where Bennett ran a thumb over his kneecap.
“Not even close.”
“And since when are you an LA hockey fan?” Sandro nodded at Bennett’s hoodie, which proudly displayed the LA Waves’ logo.
“Eh, you know what they say—when in Rome and all that.”
It was a nice hoodie, black with silver accents and the silver logo on the front. But the irritation that flared at seeing another team’s logo on Bennett’s chest made Sandro want to tear it off him.
Bennett’s fingers lightly traced the back of his knee, and Sandro’s entire body erupted in goosebumps. His dick twitched, a fact Bennett didn’t miss, judging by his very self-satisfied smirk.
“You need a Trailblazers hoodie,” Sandro announced. He finished off his bagel and set his plate aside.
“I have a Trailblazers hoodie.”
“Why haven’t you been wearing it?”
Bennett scoffed. “To the arena? You don’t think that’s coming on a little thick? Your teammates would think I was trying to butter them up.”
“Which one is it?” Sandro demanded.
“Huh?”
“Which hoodie? We’ve got several different versions.”
“I don’t know. The one your organization gave me when the contract for the series got signed.”
“Show me.”
Bennett’s hand wrapped around Sandro’s thigh. “Right now?”
“Yes, right now.” Ignoring his slowly hardening dick, Sandro swung his legs off Bennett’s lap and nudged his barstool back. “Go get it.”
“Jesus Christ, fine.” Rolling his eyes, Bennett disappeared upstairs, muttering about annoying hockey players and who cared about stupid hoodies?
Once he was gone, Sandro dropped his head back and crossed his arms over his eyes with a low groan.
He inhaled a bracing breath and tried to multiply 18 by 32 in his head to calm his body down.
Of course, since he was shit at math, he didn’t get far before the sound of Bennett walking around upstairs distracted him.
But along with anticipating what more the evening would bring were doubts that crept in the longer Bennett was gone.
Fucking fuck, what was Sandro doing? Sex with Bennett couldn’t possibly be a good idea, yet here he was, raring for a second round, his body thrumming as though someone was playing him like a guitar.
He shouldn’t want this. Shouldn’t want Bennett, not after everything. But his body hadn’t gotten that memo.
Neither had his heart, apparently.
Sick of his own thoughts, he shot off the barstool and up the stairs. “Did you find it?”
“Yeah,” came Bennett’s voice from his left.
Sandro followed it to the bedroom at the front of the house.
A bedroom that looked lived in, unlike the rest of the place.
A suitcase tucked into a corner of the room, a pile of clean laundry on the dresser next to a powered-down laptop, a pair of rolled-up socks lying next to the nightstand, a tablet on the nightstand, and about seven thousand folders and documents and photos on the desk.
“Here.” Bennett thrust a piece of clothing at him.
The hoodie was one of the Trailblazers’ newer designs, white with the logo in dark green. Sandro didn’t care about that, though. He snatched the hoodie from Bennett, turned it around to see whose name was on the back, and growled.
Showing Bennett the back, he said, “Dabbs? Really?”
“Like I said,” Bennett said with a laugh, “your organization gave it to me.”
Balling it up, Sandro tossed it out the door. “I’ll get you a new one.”
“Will you?” Blue eyes alight with laughter, Bennett hooked an arm around his waist and drew him closer. “Will it have your name on the back?”
“Obviously,” Sandro barked. He shoved a laughing Bennett onto the bed, then dropped down onto him.
No, Sandro’s heart and body definitely hadn’t gotten the memo.