Chapter 3 #2
Devon was the one to lick his lips this time, and fuck if that didn’t scramble my brain all over again.
“I am your coach.” I sounded far too nervous for a coach talking to a player. “Which means a rematch—it’s off the table. It has to be.” Why did I sound like I was pleading with him instead of laying down the law? What was wrong with me? Why were his lips so mesmerizing and—
“But if you weren’t,” he murmured, “you would?”
I didn’t dare answer. I’d already said as much, and every admission of what I’d enjoyed and what I’d wanted would make it harder to walk away from this without doing something stupidly irresponsible.
Voice hollow, I said, “We can’t.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Frustration knotted behind my ribs, but it melted beneath the heat in Devon’s gaze.
My teeth threatened to chatter for some reason as I said, “It doesn’t matter, though. We…” I swallowed. “We can’t.”
“We shouldn’t,” he acknowledged, though he didn’t seem the least bit deterred.
“We can’t,” I insisted weakly.
Oh my God, I needed to get a grip. Consummate professionalism collided with years of loneliness.
The need to hold on to my job clashed hard with the need I hadn’t been able to define until this man in front of me had met that need last night.
I still couldn’t define it, if I was honest; all I knew was that something about the way he’d talked to me, touched me, absolutely manhandled me had satisfied a nebulous craving that had been driving me insane for ages.
“I can see it in your eyes,” he said, looking right into them. “If I told you to kiss me right now, you would.”
My breath stuttered. The professional hockey coach who gave a shit about his career would’ve said, “We can’t do this, and we’re not going to do this.”
The man trying like hell to not fall to his knees at Devon’s feet whispered shakily, “Are you telling me that?”
He stared at me. I stared at him. I wondered who was more surprised by my answer.
For what felt like millennia, the room was dead silent aside from the noisy heater and my pounding heart. I held my breath. I thought he might’ve been doing the same. Conflicting emotions danced in his eyes, as if he were internally debating whether to tug at this thread or prioritize his career.
After empires had risen and fallen and glaciers had formed and melted, Devon drew the tip of his tongue across his lips again.
I couldn’t stop myself and murmured, “Jesus…”
Something flickered across his expression. Maybe fear. Maybe hunger. Maybe a bit of both. Because holy shit, both of them were burning hot in me right then.
Devon took a half step closer, moving right into my space. “Kiss me. Now.”
My mouth was on his before a single thought could cross my mind.
Then his fingers were in my hair, and thoughts became impossible.
All I could do was open to his probing tongue and try not to melt to the floor.
I wrapped an arm around his narrow waist, as much for support as to feel more of his lean, hot body.
Every welt, bruise, and ache he’d left last night glowed again, and one clear thought finally cracked through the chaos: More.
I wanted more. More of him pounding into me.
More of his strong hands digging in painfully on my hips, my shoulders—whatever he could grab hold of.
More of that burn in my scalp as he tightened his fingers and whispered, “That’s it. So good. Mmm, yeah, that’s good.”
Just… more.
Devon broke the kiss but he didn’t let go of my hair. The hand that had appeared at some point on the small of my back didn’t lighten. Forehead touching mine, he panted against my lips. “Tabarnak.”
I managed a soft, breathless laugh. “It wasn’t that bad, was it?”
His laugh was a warm rush against my lips. Then he was kissing me again. Walking me backward. Turning me.
My back hit the wall, and a helpless whimper escaped my throat. Devon’s lips curved against mine, a brief grin, and then he was exploring my mouth again. I was rock-hard now, and so was he, rutting that thick cock against me as if he wanted to get off here and now, clothes be damned.
When his lips met my throat, all I could do was close my eyes and arch off the wall, holding on to him for dear life as he—
“Calisse.” Devon suddenly shoved himself off me and stepped away, raking a hand through his own hair. I stared at him, trembling and out of breath as I tried to make sense of what was happening.
The Quebecois swearing that tumbled from his swollen lips this time was more earnest than before. More horrified—no longer the kind of cursing that happened at the peak of amazing sex, but the kind that followed something he was about to regret.
That was when the pieces clicked into place. When my mind finally caught the hell up and remembered who he was and who I was and why we’d come up here in the first place.
We can’t do this. I’m his coach. We can’t.
Devon turned to me, eyes wide with panic. “I’m sorry. We shouldn’t…”
“I know.” I nodded, leaning forward and resting my hands on my thighs as I tried to make the room stop spinning. “I’m sorry too. It was… It was both of us.”
He paced back and forth, muttering more curses. Then, “I should go. This was a mistake.”
“Wait.” I stood up again and faced him, pretending my heart wasn’t going wild. “We came here to talk.”
“Mm-hmm, and look how that worked out.”
“Okay. Well. Then I think we’re both on the same page. This can’t happen again.”
Devon exhaled, and he nodded, his shoulders sinking with… disappointment? Frustration? “Maybe we should’ve just said that in the car and been done with it.”
“Probably.”
He swallowed. Then he gestured toward the door. “I’m gonna…”
I nodded. “I’ll see you at practice.”
He closed his eyes and murmured more Quebecois profanity. Without another word, without another look… he left.
As soon as the door closed behind him, I sat on the end of one of the beds, swearing in English. And Russian. And Czech. Basically all the cursing I’d learned from teammates throughout my career.
Except Quebecois. Because somehow that—all those delightfully blasphemous words and phrases—scraped too close to the bone this time.
Fucking hell. What was I supposed to do now?
Okay, I knew what I was going to do. Grab a shower, probably jerk off, sleep, and then coach the Abbotsford Grizzlies like the professional they’d hired.
Pretty fucking simple. And also… not.
How the hell do I do my job when every time I look at him, I see everything I didn’t know I was craving?
I still didn’t know quite what it was he did that turned me into electrified jelly, only that I was an absolute idiot for his touch, and I needed more.
Except I needed this job, too. And nothing would end a coach’s career like people finding out he’d slept with a player.
I knew coaches whose careers had survived all kinds of things that should’ve been one-way tickets to unemployment, but sex between a coach and player?
A male coach and a male player? Yeah, no.
Hockey had made some progress in terms of accepting out queer players in the years since I’d been the first to come out, but not that much progress.
And anyway, coaches and players fraternizing quite that much wasn’t a precedent anyone should be setting; the power imbalance, the potential for favoritism—it was a bad idea. A terrible idea.
A seriously hot and irresistible idea.
I groaned and lay back across the bed, staring up at the ceiling as I wondered when I’d turned into a complete dumbass.
I’d skated on eggshells for most of my career, needing to be the pristine example of moral flawlessness and athletic excellence so I could pave the way for more queer players to come after me.
I’d been the first to come out. The first to bring a male partner to a red-carpet event. The first to marry another man.
And also the first to very publicly divorce that man, which hadn’t done good things to my professional reputation. Because, of course, us splitting up was proof of everything everyone said about gay men, I guessed. I still didn’t understand all the bullshit.
Nor did I understand why Devon made me want to be reckless for the first time in my career. The first time in my life.
Sighing, I wiped a hand over my face. Maybe this would get easier when I could no longer feel everything he’d done to me. When the bruises faded and the aches died away.
Or maybe it would get worse because I’d crave everything that had left me with those bruises and aches.
“I’m such an idiot,” I murmured into the stillness.
I really was. But I wasn’t that much of an idiot.
I needed this job. The Abbotsford Grizzlies needed me.
The team was depending on me to do my job right and do right by them.
And what happened when Vancouver needed us to send up a defenseman if I was sleeping with one of them?
It wasn’t my decision, but the GMs and Vancouver’s coach would ask for my input.
How could I be unbiased about selfishly keeping Devon close by?
Or even more selfishly sending him up so I could breathe?
This wasn’t going to work. Even with us keeping our hands off each other, I couldn’t be objective about him. That wasn’t fair to him or either of the teams.
Okay. We’d put a stop to things. That was done.
Next step, I’d coach this team back onto the rails and get them through this season.
Then, when the season was over, I’d sign a contract elsewhere. I’d get the hell away from the Grizzlies. Away from Abbotsford.
Away from the man whose incredible kiss I could still taste.