Chapter 19
August
August wasn’t panicking. He was calm, cool, composed, and most of all, not panicking.
Niko looked up from his book when August opened the door to their room, raising an eyebrow at him like he was waiting to hear whatever he had to say—
“I sucked his dick.”
Niko’s other eyebrow went up.
“I’m definitely bisexual.”
A scarred lip curved into a grin, and broad shoulders began to tremble from the sheer force of holding back a laugh. “At what point did you have this revelation?”
August heaved a sigh and gripped the door handle. “Probably when I let him come in my mouth, and I liked it.”
A pause.
“Okay,” said Niko, and he calmly set his book down. “I’m happy to hear it, but you might want to get in the room and shut the door before the entire hotel hears anything else about your recent sexual encounter.”
August’s lungs seized, and ever so slowly, he tilted his body out the doorway to check that the hall was empty, which it was.
“Fuck,” he said, fully stepping into the room and closing the door. Then he locked it for good measure. “I think I’m dumb.”
For whatever reason, that was the statement that broke the dam on Niko’s control. His laughter cut through the tense silence, booming loudly as August stood motionless, his cheeks burning and his heart galloping in his chest.
“It’s not that I don’t want anyone to hear that I slept with a guy,” August insisted when Niko eventually stopped laughing to take a breath. “I’m just not the kind of person who broadcasts shit about my sex life.”
Niko held his hands up to stop him from explaining further. He was still chuckling, but he was trying to settle so he could talk seriously.
“Man, I know it’s not that. But you literally just said that you liked it when a guy came in your mouth—and that’s not something Cap should have to hear while sleeping in the room across from us. No one would want to hear about their family member getting railed by a friend.”
Ohhhh shit. He’d forgotten that Callahan was in the room directly across from theirs.
Great.
“He better be fucking sleeping,” August muttered. “I will never look him in the eyes again if he brings it up tomorrow.”
“Neither will I,” said Niko. “Except it will be because I’ll start laughing so hard that they’ll have to sedate me.”
“Har, har.” August crossed the room to his bed and flopped onto his back, sighing loudly. It was late, and he was exhausted and feeling floaty in a nice way for the first time in weeks. “I’m going to sleep so well tonight.”
Niko snorted. “It was that good?”
August’s eyelids were heavy, so he shut them and got comfortable, smirking as memories began to flicker at the edge of his mind. Memories of Quinn on his hands and knees, back arched beautifully, and the skin on his ass turning red from the force of their bodies colliding.
“It was perfect,” said August.
“And your head?”
Blissfully, wonderfully, quiet.
No pain. No whispers. No darkness creeping toward him.
“Perfect,” August echoed. “Wanna do it every night.”
He heard Niko give a mumbled answer, but August was already gone. This time when he slept, he didn’t have nightmares—he didn’t even dream. One moment, he was drifting in heavy comfort, like someone had thrown a warm, weighted blanket over him, and the next, his morning alarm was ringing.
August jerked his head, half-propped on his elbows, and eyes squeezed shut as he looked around for his phone. He had no idea where it was, and it must have been lying face down because there was no light in the room.
Niko’s groan told him that he was on his left, so August shuffled that way so he could locate the side table between them. He found his phone and shut off the alarm, turning the flashlight on to keep them both awake.
“Oh fuck,” Niko said, voice pitching into a whine. “I need at least two more hours of sleep before I’ll feel like a person again.”
August dropped his head onto his pillow and rolled his eyes. “That’s why adults invented coffee.”
“Gross.”
Niko could sometimes be a brat in the morning, and it looked like today was going to be one of those days.
With the thought of coffee and breakfast in mind, August got up and flicked the light on, stumbling to his bag so he could find clean clothes to wear. When he was dressed, his hair and teeth brushed, and his face shaved, he returned to the bedroom and found Niko snoring with a pillow over his head.
August grabbed it and smacked him, laughing when Niko sputtered and sat up, looking murderous.
“You fucking asshole, what are you doing?”
August tossed the pillow at him and went back to putting his shoes on. “How are you so punctual on practice and game days, but as soon as we need to catch a plane, bus or air balloon, you do everything you can to drag your feet?”
Niko flipped him two middle fingers. “I’m the Bigfoot’s star player. They’ll wait.”
“Jesus Christ.” August put on his coat and retrieved his backpack. Before he left, he made a point of grabbing Niko by the foot and yanking him onto the floor. “Get your ass going before I tell them you’ll be late because you have a raging case of diarrhea.”
That got Niko to cooperate. He was spluttering and cursing, but August solved the issue by leaving the room and closing the door behind him, cutting Niko off before he could get an intelligible word out.
The kid was lucky August didn’t take the star player comment seriously—because Niko really wasn’t that kind of person—or he would have kicked his ass.
He headed to the dining room to enjoy the team breakfast, greeting the staff and nodding to some of his teammates as he picked a table.
He was stirring his coffee five minutes later when Niko came hurrying in.
Callahan kept giving them confused looks because Niko wouldn’t stop elbowing him and stealing his food, and it got to the point where August had to step on his friend’s foot to put him back in his place.
At least Callahan hadn’t said anything passive-aggressive about people having private conversations in the hallway in the middle of the night, so August assumed he was in the clear.
Logan, who always seemed to be sitting on August’s other side these days, poked him to get his attention. “Gusty, you get laid last night or what?”
Well, there went that assumption.
“What do you mean?” August asked. He kept his tone low in the hopes that Logan would get nervous and back off, but the idiot only grinned and poked him again, this time on the neck.
“This,” said Logan. “You either fucked someone, or you wrestled a horny octopus.”
August slapped a hand to his neck and ducked his head when several gazes at the tables around them turned in his direction.
What the fuck had he missed while he was looking at himself in the bathroom mirror this morning?
“Why does the octopus have to be horny?” asked one of their D-men—Tom Craven.
“Why else would an octopus manhandle someone as big as Gusty, Munchy?” Logan shot back. “I bet a shark would take a look at our guy and swim away.”
This started a debate about what aquatic sea animals August could kill, successfully drawing his teammates away from the topic of sex, which was usually a difficult task to accomplish.
“You got a big ‘ol hickey on your neck,” Niko drawled, touching a different spot from the one Logan had pointed out.
Just how many had Quinn left on him?!
“Shut the fuck up,” August muttered, grabbing his coffee so he could wet his dry throat. He had the cup pressed to his lips when he met Callahan’s gaze from across the table, and his first sip went down the wrong way when he saw how narrowed those blue eyes were.
August coughed and hit his chest, throat spasming as he tried to clear the coffee from his lungs.
He was dead. He would have to will Niko the house before he went missing on the way to the airport, and they found his body in a ditch somewhere.
He knew Quinn told him that he wouldn’t hide anything from Callahan, but he was hoping his captain wouldn’t catch on immediately after they spent the night together. Callahan seemed like the type of guy who needed a little warm-up first before he found out someone was fucking his brother.
Or…he had heard August running his mouth in the hallway last night and had put things together on his own. Quinn probably wasn’t awake yet, so the chances of him telling Callahan were low.
Niko not-so-subtly placed a hand on his shoulder. “It was nice knowing you, buddy.”
August stepped on his foot again, making Niko shout and jerk his leg up, smashing his knee on the underside of the table.
Callahan’s attention dropped to the cursing and scowling Niko, giving August enough time to abandon ship and retreat to the bus. Maybe once he was out of sight, Callahan would forget about him.
He picked a seat toward the back and removed his headphones from his bag. He had been listening to an audiobook on the way to New York and was eager to jump back in. Riding a dragon into battle against another bigger, eviler dragon sounded more fun than talking to Niko or dealing with his captain.
And yeah, he got so entranced while listening to the book and looking out the window that he almost didn’t notice when Niko sat in the seat beside him and tapped his arm.
“Haven’t forgiven you yet,” said August, batting the hand away. “You make me something to eat when we get home, and I’ll think about it.”
“You’re not abusing our newest teammate, are you?”
Shit.
August tore his headphones off and spun in his seat. “Cap—fuck. Okay, whatever you heard last night, I just want to say that I’m sorry.”
“Snow—”
“I know talking about sucking dick in the hallway isn’t professional, and I know it’s not the way you envisioned finding out about Quinn and me—”
Niko quickly came into his line of sight, shaking his head and crossing his arms to form an ‘X’.
“But everything was consensual, and I promise that we know what we’re doing.”
Niko covered his face and groaned, but August wasn’t sure what he had done wrong.