Chapter 10 Spot Me?
Chapter Ten
Spot Me?
ELI
Why couldn’t I get Gabe out of my fucking head?
I raised the speed on the treadmill and tried to focus on keeping one foot ahead of the other. Last thing I needed was to trip and bust my face open. I happened to be a hockey player who’d managed to keep all his teeth and wanted it to stay that way for as long as possible.
I just couldn’t stop thinking about him.
It was odd, this constant tug in my thoughts that pulled me toward Gabe.
I wondered what he had to do that had been so pressing last night.
Maybe he had double-booked himself and had another hookup planned?
Clearly, I didn’t make the cut. Wasn’t exactly unexpected, but still didn’t mean that it didn’t sting.
Then again, even with that sting, I still couldn’t get him out of my head. To the point where I had my first sex dream since, oh, I don’t know, since I had seen Henry Cavill in Superman. Back when I was nineteen and my full-time job was fighting off acne flare-ups and playing hockey.
Now, at twenty-seven, my full-time job was hockey, and my skin had never been clearer.
And clearly, my hormones had never been wilder because I had woken up to a sticky mess all over my bedsheets from a dream that had me wanting to go right back to sleep so I could keep experiencing it.
Gabe and I had been on a beach somewhere in Hawaii, with lush green mountainscapes behind us and the gentle lapping of the waves making a soundtrack with the loud clapping of my cheeks.
Fucking hell, dream-Gabe had fucked me senseless. He worked me like putty, flipping me around and bending me and treating my body like it was his own personal wonderland.
Thinking about it sent a pulsing warmth down to my dick.
The running on the treadmill and the fact that I’d forgone any underwear, thinking the lining of the shorts would be enough support, meant that my dick was bouncing and growing harder.
I glanced at the door to the training room.
I was alone in here, but that didn’t mean someone couldn’t just walk in.
We’d all been around earlier for the video review of our (absolute shit-fest) first game, and a lot of the guys hit the weight and training rooms right after, but I went for a skate. Thought it would clear my mind.
Clearly, it didn’t, since I couldn’t stop thinking about a hookup that never even happened.
But fuuuuuck, it was so good.
Best of all? Dream sex on the beach meant not a single grain of sand getting stuck in places sand should never touch. It was beautiful, it was erotic. Hot and primal and intense.
It was a dream.
Just a dream.
I shifted focus to the television hanging on the wall. The afternoon news was playing, the news anchor teasing a story about some local official being caught in a bribery scheme. They then tossed it over to the sports anchor. The first story?
“Our very own Bobcats bungle up the first game of the AHL season. Scott, we’ll see if it was just first-night jitters or if this is a trend that continues.
Their new trade, Elijah Sager, did put on a good show but made some mistakes that—” The TV clicked off.
Was there a power outage? All the lights were still on…
“Don’t torture yourself with local news. Unless there’s a live car chase being broadcast, it’s not worth it.”
I nearly stumbled from hearing Gabe’s voice. I gripped the handrails and lowered the speed, narrowly avoiding being launched by the treadmill and turned into a human cannonball.
That would have been really embarrassing. And painful.
But mostly embarrassing.
“I didn’t even hear you come in.”
Gabe smiled, his icy blue eyes half-covered by an all-white Bobcats cap. He had a shadow of dark scruff growing in around his jaw. “I’ve been told I have quiet footsteps.”
Funny, because dream-you has extremely loud orgasms.
…Does the real you have the same?
Damn it. Where was a spray bottle filled with ice-cold water when you needed it?
“I’ll get you a collar with a bell to put around your neck for Christmas,” I teased.
Gabe didn’t seem to find that funny. He huffed and walked past me toward a bench. This room was smaller than the weight room. There were a dozen treadmills, some ellipticals, a few StairMasters, and a couple of other random pieces of equipment that were mostly overflow from the weight room.
Great. I was already annoying him.
I checked the time. I still had another thirty minutes left for cardio, but I wanted to wrap it up. The less time I was alone with Gabe, the better. I didn’t want to continue making a fool of myself.
I brought the treadmill to a slow stop. There was a mirror that stretched most of the length of the wall in front of me.
A sweat mark formed on my chest, darkening the white T-shirt.
I ran a hand through the waves in my hair and fluffed it up a bit like a preening bird.
Gabe sat on the edge of the bench, but he wasn’t working out.
He leaned slightly forward and had his eyes locked on mine through the reflection.
A muscle in his perfectly angled jaw twitched.
His nostrils flared, and his head cocked, but his stare didn’t break.
It wasn’t an analytical stare or an aggressive stare, but it did make me uncomfortable.
Only because I could feel myself start getting hard.
“Alright, I’m out,” I said, waving goodbye.
“Hold up.”
I stopped and turned on a heel.
“Can you spot me?” He smiled at me.
I arched a brow. He only had two forty-five plates on the bar. “You can’t bench-press that?”
“My shoulder gives out sometimes.”
“Really?”
“Happened once. Back in high school.”
“That’s not sometimes.”
“It’s one time. That’s enough. Now, come and spot me.” He lay down and reached up for the bar as if I’d given him an answer.
I rolled my eyes and walked over to the bench, moving to stand behind it. This was ridiculous. I could lie down and have him bench-press my entire body weight, and I doubt he’d even break a sweat. Still, for some reason, I decided to entertain him. Not like I had much else to do today.
“Ready?” I asked, avoiding Gabe’s direct eye contact.
This position, with him on his back and his face so close to my dick, definitely did things to me.
Things I didn’t want happening to me right now.
It didn’t help that Gabe looked extra attractive.
His cap was low, his light blue Under Armour shirt fit tight around his muscles, and his five-inch-inseam shorts were thin and bunching up around his crotch so that his meaty thighs were on full display.
Gabe pushed up on the bar. I ghosted my fingers underneath the center of the steel bar, but—as I had assumed—Gabe had absolutely zero trouble benching the weight. He finished his set and smiled up at me. “Thanks, buddy. Your turn.”
I ignored the tickle in my core. Gabe slid off the bench and swapped places with me.
Now I was the one lying down, looking up at a cocky and annoyingly handsome man. He licked his full lips. The warm lights above him made his skin glow, traced shadows along the veins that went up his big biceps.
I sucked in a breath, as if preparing myself for the light weight, and inadvertently got a whiff of Gabe.
And wow, did he smell good. It was an odd thought that I’d parse out later with a therapist, but I wanted to slide myself up and bury my face between his thick and hairy legs, drowning myself in his scent and having him squeeze me with his thighs until I passed out.
My dick pulsed. I closed my eyes.
“Want me to drop them down to tens?” Gabe asked, knowing damn well I could do double this weight, just like him. This wasn’t a real workout to him. This was a game.
“I’m good,” I said.
My dick twitched again. I was getting hard. I tensed my legs, hoping that could stop my body from betraying me. Gabe inched forward so that his crotch pressed against the bar, just between my hands. I could see up his shorts, and—holy fuck, he wasn’t wearing underwear. I could see everything.
I went from a chubby to pitching a full-on tent in seconds.
Fuuuck.
Maybe he wouldn’t notice. I pushed the bar up and started my set. My cock throbbed, pushing up against my shorts. It ached. I closed my eyes as a way of avoiding Gabe’s gaze while I did my ten reps.
I got this. I got this.
I put the bar back on the rack and immediately sat up so that I could conceal my stiff dick.
“You sure you didn’t want to go down to tens?”
“Yeah, why?” I asked, looking directly ahead at the mirror. My eyes flitted downward at a quick second of movement.
Gabe’s dick throbbed again, and holy shit, did that look big. “Because it looked like you were having a hard time.” He smiled and rubbed himself over his shorts. I swallowed audibly. The room turned into a scorching oven set to broil. “I think we worked out enough. Want to relax in the steam room?”
I had to decide now if I wanted to play along with Gabe’s games or if walking away was the smarter choice.
Maybe our rendezvous last night getting canceled was a sign?
Knowing he wanted me was nice, and it was definitely a confidence booster, but from everything I’d picked up on, Gabe was clearly a DL gay or bisexual guy trying to hide behind a straight shield.
Yes, we could hook up now and then and try to keep things simple with no strings attached, but that was never really my style.
Strings always seemed to attach themselves to me.
I found my ex on Grindr and hooked up with him one night under the pretense that neither of us was looking for anything serious.
Three months later, I was telling him I loved him and looking up apartments for us to move in together.
That Grindr date gave me a four-year relationship full of drama and some serious emotional baggage that I was still unpacking to this very day.
The first year was great, and then it quickly went downhill once the fighting started.
The shouting, the denigrating, the shit-talking, all coming from him.
He had anger and control problems I hadn’t known about since, well, I knew him for less time than it takes to gestate a baby before I moved in with him.
That relationship had broken me down to a point where I had a difficult time seeing a life outside the storm.
Like the wall of the hurricane was never going to pass over me, leaving me trapped inside, never knowing what day would twist from great to traumatic because of a simple mistake or silly miscommunication.
The only thing I had that kept me happy during that time in my life was hockey.
So, knowing my propensity to fall for someone I was hooking up with, and knowing how complicated that would be if it happened with Gabriel Sanderson, a seemingly straight man and teammate, I started to think that maybe dipping the hell out of here was the right choice to make.
Gabe gave himself a squeeze. A drop of precum leaked through his gray shorts. “I’ll meet you in there.” He winked and walked to the other end of the room, where the thick glass door of the steam room was, leaving me behind with a hard choice to make.