3. Griffin
CHAPTER 3
GRIFFIN
The first game of the season is right around the corner, and Coach has run every last one of us into the ground.
No one hits up any of the usual spots after practice. We’re hockey players who just burned every shred of energy we had, so usually food or alcohol is our go to at the end of a long practice, but not today.
Today, we’re all in silent agreement that we go back to our apartments and feel sorry for ourselves before we have to suck it up and show up again tomorrow.
I still don’t have a car, so I ride back to the apartment with Riley, moaning and groaning the entire drive. Most of it has to do with the sore and aching muscles, but a little might have to do with how he puts a comforting hand on my thigh as he drives down the road.
Adrenaline is high, and I can’t help it if it makes me a little horny, too.
Not that I’m up to doing anything about it, because I am absolutely beat.
I hit the couch as soon as we get the door open, shirt already tossed haphazardly onto the floor and wiggling out of my jeans.
“Think you could let me get out of the room before you get naked?” Riley laughs and swats my ass as he makes his way to the kitchen.
“Not a chance. One of these days I’ll catch you looking.”
The line between my joking and flirting is thin, but he doesn’t freeze up at it anymore. More often than not he laughs, and even occasionally flirts back. All in good fun, of course.
I hear the stove click on and cookware being moved around, and I don’t know how he manages to keep standing let alone meal prep after the day we’ve had. My shoes aren’t off, my jeans are hanging around my ankles, and I’m splayed across the couch like a washed ashore starfish.
Sleep sounds epic. Sleep sounds like a beautiful siren call.
But it’s ripped away by a hand gripping my shoulder and jostling me out of the darkness.
I squint toward the open room—turning away from the arm of the couch my eyes have been pressed into—and find that the lights are dimmed low. Riley smiles at me soft and reverent, dragging his touch from my shoulder to my hair and ruffling the fluffy strands.
“Foods done.”
I rub my eyes and stretch, then frown and look down to see my shoes and jeans lying on the floor at the end of the couch.
“Did you undress me?”
Riley lightly flicks my forehead and steps back. “You were grumbling and kicking in your sleep. Figured you could use some help.”
Normally, I’d come up with some snarky, sexual comeback, but even a little power nap hasn’t renewed any energy.
I push myself into a sitting position but still slouch against the cushions as my muscles protest. It’s like perfect synchrony as I hold my hands out and Riley places the neatest looking bento box in them.
There’s grilled chicken, brown rice, some scrambled eggs, steamed broccoli, and a little container of teriyaki sauce.
“I really wish you were gay,” I say, not even a little apologetic as he chokes on a snort of laughter. “Seriously. I am hungry as shit, but I would blow you right here and now for this food.”
“‘Thank you’ is also an acceptable response.”
He doesn’t rise to my bait, and honestly, it’s for the best. Starving is putting it lightly as I take the fork and devour every shred of carbs in the box before tossing it onto the coffee table with a deeply satisfied burp.
“I love you,” I say with what feels like a dopey, blissed out smile, and Riley simply rolls his eyes and takes the box back to the kitchen. “Aren’t you going to eat?”
“Already did,” he calls back, appearing again and offering me a hand. “Up and at ‘em.”
I take it but give him a hard frown. When he leads me down the hall, I pull the breaks and dig my heels into the carpet. “Hey, wait. I know I joke a lot about wanting to sleep with you, but that doesn’t mean you have to humor me.”
He gives me a blank look and stops us in front of the bathroom. “If I wanted to humor you,” he says, backing me against the door and throwing an arm against it above my head, “I’d be a little more tactful about it.”
His gray eyes dance with amusement, and my post-nap grogginess is finally wearing off as I become aware of just how close we are. Our chests brush, and he aims a smirk at me.
“Go shower before I dunk you.”
He reaches around to open the door, and I nearly tumble inside as it swings open. There’s a towel sitting on the toilet lid with a pair of pajama pants on the counter, and before I can turn to him to make some kind of domestic joke, he swings the door closed, creating a barrier between us.
Is it bad that having a man take care of me turns me on? That the sweet gestures make me want to beg him to rail me into next week? There’s gotta be something in the DSM-5 about how fucked up that is.
I fall back against the door and drag my palm down the length of my hardening dick.
Fuck, that feels good.
After how rough this week has been, standing in the shower with hot water beating down my back while I play with myself nice and slow sounds like the perfect end to my day.
“At least make it to the shower before you jerk off,” Riley shouts, banging a fist on the door and only serving to make me twitch beneath my briefs.
“Fuck you,” I mumble back, but he only laughs.
The sound of receding footsteps echoes down the hall, and with an immense amount of effort, I push myself off the door, peel my boxers down my legs, and get the water started for a long, hot session of relaxation.
I make quick work of getting clean, letting all the sweat and grime circle down the drain as the heat bleeds the tension from my shoulders and calves. No sooner are the suds washed away that I take my length in hand and give it one long, slow stroke from base to tip.
Ah, fuck, I need this.
A few pumps and my dick is leaking, salivating for a touch to bring it to the edge. But I want to enjoy the torturous build, the heat pooling in my gut as I picture gray eyes looking up at me. A waiting tongue for me to drag the tip across.
It would be so easy to take myself down to a bar or club and scout out a horny man willing to get on his knees for me.
But my stupid libido is stuck on a certain hockey player, and the one time I’ve hooked up since coming here, I made it back to the apartment feeling dirtier than a dog rolling around in the mud. I jerked off three times that night trying to replace the smell of the strange man’s spunk all over my body.
So, instead, I let the desire build and fester until all I can do is close my eyes and pretend the tight fist around my cockhead is one very witty man’s talented mouth.
I glide my palm along the underside, pulling the foreskin down to press my thumb to the flushed, sensitive slit. Imagining a tongue flicking across it and warm lips around the head drawing out every drop of precum until the real thing is ready to spill down their throat.
Fuck.
Cradling my balls in one hand and stroking my shaft with the other, I rest my forehead on the wet wall.
This is what I need. To be worked up. To be worked over.
I prop a leg on the tub of the shower and reach lower, pressing past my balls to my hole and push with the pad of one finger. It gives easy, used to accepting one of my toys, and soon I’m jacking my cock with quick motions that match the thrust of the digit deep inside.
“Griff?”
Most people would be hands off the moment they hear their roommate’s muffled gruff through the bathroom door, but not me. His voice spurs me on, and I’ll only be another moment, so I work myself harder. Faster. Imagining myself barreling towards release with Riley Easton waiting to taste my cum.
To swallow it down and groan around my length as it pulses in his mouth.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
The peak rises, my abs tense, my thighs quake, and my lips part on an uncontainable groan.
At that exact moment, the shower curtain is yanked back, and my eyes fly open even as I know there’s no stopping the orgasm already in motion.
I meet Riley’s startled, frazzled gaze as I feel the first spurt of cum shoot from my dick. It pulses, hits the shower wall with some dripping down my fist that’s still milking my release.
We stare at each other as I bite back the moan that comes from slipping my finger out of my ass as inconspicuous as I can. It still draws his attention, and those eyes slide down my body, breath whooshing out of his lungs as they land on my cock.
The cock that twitches hard between my fingers and spits up a few extra drops of cum like having Riley’s gaze on it is enough to draw out another orgasm.
I can’t look away from his face. From his wide eyes and parted lips that get to experience the erotic movements of his tongue. There’s a flush down his bare, furry chest, and an obvious tent in his dark gray sweats.
Riley snaps out of it first, and thank god because brain function doesn’t seem to be returning anytime soon. My other head is still very much in control.
He lifts his eyes to the ceiling before slamming them shut and stepping back.
“Sorry. I called for you, and when you didn’t answer, I just wanted to make sure you didn’t pass out or anything.”
I let out a self-deprecating laugh and finally take my hands off myself to reach around for the towel on the toilet lid.
“S’alright,” I mumble as I struggle to catch my breath.
It was a hell of a good orgasm.
He doesn’t say anything else. Just pinches his lips together, takes a deep breath, and turns away. Walks right out the door, shutting it gently behind him.
It takes me nearly a whole five minutes to recover, especially with the previous exhaustion setting back in. And when I do, the guilt kicks in right along with it.
Riley is fun to tease and fantasize about, but he’s also a real fucking person who gave me a place to stay and humors my flirtatious attitude. He deserves a hell of a lot better than a roommate who jerks off to him every chance he gets.
I get dressed in my pajama pants and a ratty t-shirt, thinking about going straight to my room and passing out, but deciding instead to face Riley and apologize.
“Hey.”
He’s sitting on the couch scrolling through his phone when I come out, and it’s immediate how his eyes ping to me. There’s an edge of panic, but still he smiles. “Hey.”
“Look,” I say, shoving my hands in my pockets and chewing on the inside of my cheek. “I’m sorry.”
He jerks his head hard. “Don’t be.”
“I kind of feel like a douche.”
“Why?”
I open my mouth and slam it back shut. Do I admit to genuinely thinking about him while getting off, or am I the one blowing this out of proportion?
Riley lets out a long, slow breath and rubs a hand down his face. “It’s fine, Griffin. I promise. Just. Can you come here for a minute?”
There’s only a brief moment of hesitation before I cross the distance from the hall to the couch, but there’s a bigger one when he smiles up at me and spreads his meaty thighs, motioning to the floor between them.
“Sit,” he says with that signature amused smile. You’d think he didn’t just walk in on me having an orgasm.
But also—I’m sorry—he wants me to sit between his legs ?
I think straight boy needs a lesson on how not to arouse a gay man.
The masochist in me pushes through and fits myself between him and the coffee table with my back to his hovering frame. His hands come down on my shoulders, and I tense, but then his fingers press into the knots lodged deep beneath the skin and I turn to senseless putty.
Tiny moans punch out of my lungs as his rough, skilled fingers find every ache, every overworked pressure point, and kneads them down to nothing.
“You do this for all the players?” I mumble and lean my head back, watching his upside down look of concentration.
“Matty used to like this a lot. When he had a long, rough day at the studio, he liked to come back and unwind.”
“Hm, was that your roommate?”
His fingers pause, but then they dig in harder, and my eyes fall shut as I incline back to get closer to the touch.
“Yeah. He was training to be a dancer.”
“Was?”
Maybe I’m pushing it, but all of my barriers are down as long as his hands are on me.
Hot breath blows across my face, but I don’t open my eyes. The hands on my shoulders slide around to my chest, not gripping or groping, but gently traveling down. I feel his chest press against my back, and I swear there’s a slight tremble in the next exhale that skitters over my skin.
“He was in an accident.”
I half turn in this strange hold his arms have on me, looking up at the sadness marring that smile I can’t get enough of.
“Is he alright?”
He chuckles and ruffles a hand in my hair, but instead of falling away, it grips on the back of my neck like an anchor.
“He’s fine. Still has big dreams. It gave him a new lease on life, I guess. Gave him the motivation he needed to get out of this rinky dink town and find something better.”
I know the heartbreak in his voice. Intimately.
I’m sorry, I can’t.
Neither can I, Griffin.
You learn a lot about yourself and the world when you fall in love. When you keep that love buried until it grows thorns and poisoned leaves, and you’re forced to bleed out or cut yourself free.
I’ve laid on the ground until my secrets threatened to suffocate me, until it became me or them.
Live or die.
“Sounds like you lost your best friend.”
His smile is unwavering, even as I get to my knees and grip onto the thickness of his thighs.
“I guess I did.”
I give him my own lopsided smile and lean in, tipping my chin up and earning me a questioning brow raise.
“So, I’m your rebound friend.”
A softness takes over his features, and then his forehead thunks against mine. He breathes in deep, gripping my neck and pulling me in so his beard scratches the stubble on my cheek.
Cut yourself free or disappear into the overgrowth.
“You make it impossible not to want you, Griff.”
My fingers slide up his thighs to find the stiff outline of an erection pinned down one leg.
“I think I’ve made it pretty clear you can have me.”
I don’t take things any further. The ball is in his court. I won’t be anyone’s secret, but I can be their fun time. Maybe just this once.
“I can’t,” he whispers, dropping his hold on me and leaning away. He covers his hard-on with his hand and looks off to the side. “But I could really use that friend.”
I feel the desperation, the ache for a closeness of someone who wants nothing more from you than your company. Who isn’t asking for more than you can give. For more of yourself than even you’re able to grasp.
I can do that. I can shut off the physical attraction—or at least the part of me that has been half-heartedly acting on it.
We can be roommates.
We can be teammates.
We can be friends.
If that helps heal whatever part of himself he’s been warring with, then at least I know I’m good for something on this team.
“Then, you’ve got me, Riles.”