Chapter 13 #3
Patience – the Thunder weren’t going to win every battle, but the idea was they’d win the war in the end.
Work together – Coach Dell was always preaching that their defense had all the pieces they needed to be successful, they just needed to execute but even more importantly, they needed to rely on each other. Let their weaknesses and strengths complement each other.
By the time Zane moved onto the offensive game plan for the week, Nate felt even more externally confident and certain that they’d prepared well for the week.
Jordan was playing well, if a little scattered, but he usually pulled it together on game days, and Nate was hoping that this week would be no different.
Plus, now he’d figured out that something about Sterling bothered Jordan especially—put him on edge—and Nate would know to watch out for that. Keep an eye on Jordan and steer him away from Sterling unless there was no way to avoid it.
With his own game plan in place, he touched base with Sterling, checked in with Jordan, met Aidan’s eyes across the room, giving him a brief nod of acknowledgment and then headed back to his apartment.
Toronto was one of the few teams in the league that didn’t require players to stay in a hotel the night before home games, and Nate intended to take full advantage of that. A nice hot shower to relax his muscles. Watch some TV. Spend a long, restful night in his own bed.
Maybe a few texts with Ramsey. Maybe he could even gently encourage Ramsey to send him a good picture, under the guise of wishing him luck. Give Nate something to look at when he lay in bed thinking about the guy he was almost probably, certainly not in love with.
They’d just decided they were dating. The last thing Nate needed to do was freak Ramsey out by throwing out words that would certainly send him running the other direction.
He made it home in decent time, and, after parking in the basement lot, headed up in the elevator to his floor.
To his surprise, when he input his door code into the pad, it beeped insistently at him, indicating that the door was already unlocked.
Nate tensed. The door definitely should have been locked. In fact, he’d set the pad to the highest security setting—to lock the moment it shut.
Carefully, he turned the handle and slid through the small opening he’d made. But the moment he fully entered the entry, he knew it wasn’t going to be a problem and all the sudden tension leaked out of his body.
Admittedly, he didn’t know why Ramsey was in his kitchen, humming under his breath in that distinctive way of his, or why the house smelled of tomatoes and garlic, but it wasn’t some crazed fan, at least.
“Hey,” Ramsey said the moment Nate walked into the kitchen. He was stirring a pot of something that smelled delicious on the stove. “I’ll be out of your hair in a minute. I just wanted to stop in and um, fix my favorite pre-game meal for you. For tomorrow. You know, before your game.”
Nate raised an eyebrow. This was not what he’d expected at all.
“You broke into my apartment to fix me dinner?”
Ramsey ran a hand through his unruly blond curls.
It pulled his T-shirt up, showing off his flat, muscled stomach.
Nate sucked in a breath, still feeling unsteady and awed that this guy—this clever, unpredictable, brilliant, gorgeous guy—was his.
Yeah, the voice inside his brain, the one that sounded painfully like Dawson, said, you’re not in love with him at all. Not even a little.
“Yeah?” Ramsey looked briefly ashamed, before that expression melted away, replaced by his usual self-confidence. “Yeah. I didn’t break in. Not my fault you’re kind of lazy about how you plug in your door code.”
“Good thing I wasn’t doing it in front of someone I cared about keeping it a secret from, then,” Nate teased. He reached out and to his pleased delight, Ramsey let himself be pulled into his embrace.
“Good thing,” Ramsey said, voice muffled by Nate’s shoulder.
He pulled back a little. “I meant it though. I’m sure you’ve got your regular routine, and I don’t want to mess it up, but I just thought it would be nice, or, um, thoughtful, even to have dinner waiting for you.
And if you don’t want to eat it tonight—”
Affection swamped Nate. He loved the calm, self-possessed Ramsey.
The one who charmed everyone, who made it look easy as breathing, even as Nate knew it wasn’t.
But he liked this Ramsey too. The one who wanted to be kind and thoughtful, but didn’t know how to do it without being clearly nervous about it.
“Hey,” he interrupted gently, placing a finger on Ramsey’s mouth to keep him from rambling, “it’s fine. It’s good, even. Maybe . . .maybe time to start a new routine, even.”
Ramsey’s eyes softened. It was unreal how Nate had ever believed he was coldly calculated. He could chess-master the hell out of any situation but it wasn’t ever cold. It was burning hot, every bit of his machinations suffused not by how little he cared, but how much.
“How would this new routine go?”
“Hmmm.” Nate tilted his head. Then leaned in and brushed a kiss across Ramsey’s mouth. He tasted like basil and garlic. Like he’d been sampling the sauce, wanting it to be perfect. “We can start with that. You got any ideas?”
Ramsey’s grip on his shoulders tightened and his body swayed closer, pressing up against Nate’s.
“I can think of a few things.”
Ramsey kissed him this time, soft and lush, drawing it out until Nate’s head was swimming with an intoxicating combination of lust and something so much sweeter. An emotion that he didn’t want to name, even though he was becoming more and more sure he knew what it was.
Maybe what it had always been.
“That’s good, too.” Nate broke off with a gasp. And sucked in another breath when Ramsey dropped to the floor. Tugging Nate’s sweatpants down with him.
“Yeah?” Ramsey looked up, the blue in his eyes slowly getting swallowed by the pupils as he stroked Nate’s rapidly hardening dick. “How about this?”
Naturally, Ramsey was good with his hands. A deft, skilled touch.
This would’ve been plenty. Frankly, even a non-sexual text from Ramsey might’ve been enough to get him going when he’d gone to bed later tonight. He’d imagined a picture being the most he could hope for.
But now he had Ramsey tilting his head up, looking at him from under his lashes, like he knew exactly what he looked like, and stroking his cock like he was born to do it.
“I think this is a nice touch, how about you?” Ramsey’s tone had gotten breathier, and his face looked like a freaking wet dream come to life, but none of it felt manufactured.
From the way he kept squirming, like he couldn’t help how much it turned him on to have Nate like this, to the obvious erection tenting the front of his gray sweatpants, it was clear he was one hundred percent into this.
Into Nate.
That was the fucking ego boost of a century, but that wasn’t even why Nate loved it so much. It was everything else about Ramsey.
The carefully hidden thoughtfulness and generosity and loyalty that ran through him, deep, that he’d begun to allow Nate to see.
Then Ramsey slid an inch closer and Nate’s fingers dug into Ramsey’s curls, tightening as Ramsey took his cock into his mouth.
And as good as Ramsey had been with his hands, it was nothing, nothing, compared to how good he was at this.
“So fucking amazing,” Nate breathed out unsteadily.
Ramsey hummed around his length, doing something sinful and incredible with his tongue. Pleasure fizzed through Nate’s body, and Ramsey groaned hard when Nate’s fingers sank even tighter into his hair.
It was hard to even know what was more arousing. The incredible visual of having Ramsey on his knees for him like this or how fucking insane he was at sucking cock or the fact that it was happening at all after so many months of never believing that it would.
Ramsey’s fingertips dug into Nate’s thigh, and Nate, who’d been trying to keep his eyes away from how spectacular Ramsey looked like this with the hopes of prolonging the dirty joy of it even a few seconds longer, had to look down.
Then he saw Ramsey grinding against his own palm, a damp patch obvious on the gray fabric of his sweatpants, and that was it. Game fucking over.
He tensed, nudging Ramsey’s head with his touch, making it clear he wasn’t lasting much longer, but Ramsey didn’t budge, and a moment later, he tumbled headfirst into an orgasm he wouldn’t forget anytime soon.
Ramsey was panting and a moment later, Nate’s softening cock just slipping from the heat of his mouth, he made a shocked sound and came too.
For a second, neither of them moved. Nate because he didn’t trust his body or his brain.
Maybe he’d scoop up and carry Ramsey to his bed, tie him down, and never let him leave.
Whisper sweet nothings in his ear until he stopped being afraid, stopped worrying that this wasn’t real and wasn’t lasting.
But then Ramsey stretched and Nate easily caught him up, lifting him to his feet.
“I . . .” Ramsey’s eyes were still wide, shocked.
Like he couldn’t believe he’d come like that either.
Somehow Nate knew it wasn’t that surprising that he’d given Nate a blowjob in the kitchen.
But the rest? Nate knew he’d be stuck on that.
“Damn, I think that’s gonna have to be my new routine,” Nate teased, tugging Ramsey close so he couldn’t wiggle away.
Ramsey’s head tilted closer to his. He still was looking over Nate’s shoulder, not meeting his eyes, but he also wasn’t running.
“I think . . .I think you should go strip down. Find some clean clothes—”
“Your clothes aren’t going to fit me,” Ramsey said matter-of-factly.
“No, but I’m going to enjoy seeing you in them anyway,” Nate said, deciding that if Ramsey was being blunt, he could meet him there.
The corner of Ramsey’s mouth tilted up in a smile. “Yeah?” He still seemed a bit sheepish. Embarrassed, clearly.
“It’s going to be hot,” Nate said steadily, “but you know what was even hotter?”
“Hmm?” Ramsey asked.
“Watching you get so worked up you came in your pants, just from blowing me.”
Nate had never seen Ramsey blush before, but he was rewarded now, with the reddish tinge creeping across his cheeks. “Come on,” he said.
“I mean it,” Nate said, leaning in and giving him a quick, hard kiss.
“You don’t have to say that for me,” Ramsey scoffed.
Of course Ramsey was going to be a tougher nut to crack than that. “How about I’m saying it because it’s true?”
Ramsey stared at him for a long moment. Nate felt like he was trying to see straight into his soul, into his heart—and maybe he could. Maybe what Ramsey saw there was going to freak him out, but there was no way to change how he felt.
But instead of tensing or finding another reason to run, Ramsey relaxed.
“Alright,” he said. He raised an eyebrow and asked archly, “Anything I want to wear?”
“Sure,” Nate said, already turning to the pot on the stove. “I’ll get dinner plated up.”
When Ramsey came back ten minutes later, Nate shouldn’t have been surprised, but he still burst out laughing and then had to pin Ramsey to the counter and kiss him about it, fingers digging into the sweatshirt with Nate’s name and number emblazoned on the back.
“You’re incorrigible,” Nate said when he was finally able to drag his mouth away from Ramsey’s.
Ramsey grinned. “Just the way you like me.”
And Nate was beginning to realize how true that really was.