THIRTY-TWO
Max
I can get laid, or I can get answers.
Luca circles me in the bedroom like I’m his prey.
He’s strong and built like me, but he moves in a different way, so masculine and sure of himself.
Because I identify as a top, I believed I should be attracted to a...a twink, for the lack of a better term. Luca challenges everything I stupidly believed because he’s massive, cut, and strong.
I’ve been assuming he tops his lovers, and it blows apart my belief system that this alpha will get on his knees and take my dick.
“Tell me about your first kiss. No names,” I bite out that last part.
“A professor at university,” he answers with a tilt to his voice.
“Was it forced?” I ask through clenched teeth. The idea that someone hurt him the way my uncle hurt me floods my veins with rage.
“No,” he answers with a smile. “He came off as this playboy, a confirmed bachelor. It was completely consensual, but I was a secret, and I hated that.”
Wow, I’d be asking him to do the same thing. “Was he also your first...sex?”
“Yes.” Luca glares at me, not liking my intrusion.
“Did your parents know about you?”
“No, Ivan Belova’s father killed my parents before they found out.”
“Why... Why did Ivan’s father kill your parents?” God, their tragic history runs so damn deep.
“They owed him money. Sam and I were young.”
I nod, not knowing what else to say or ask. The world he came from is unfathomable, and I feel like shit thinking I had it so rough. Sure, I’d been raped by my uncle, but before that, I lived in an idyllic childhood fantasy.
My misery now is this confusion and anger bottled up inside me. “Did you like your professor?”
“Other than the sneaking around, I did. I had stars in my eyes. He was...brutal. I was raised to be tough, and I wasn’t sure how that would fit with being gay. He took the lead, and I decided I liked it. Liked being pleasured.”
Jealousy burns through me. “Has anyone ever fucked you besides him?”
“No.” Luca slowly starts to undress, unbuttoning his shirt, unraveling the tie first. “Who was your first sex, Max?”
“That kid in high school.”
“What happened to him?” Luca asks.
“Don’t want to talk about it.”
“Did he play?”
“Me, yeah.”
“Shit.” He grips my package. “He walked away from this deliciously distracting dick?”
I see stars from the forceful contact. Good stars. “We were kids, I’ve gotten a lot bigger since then.”
“Prove it.”
Strength and clarity wash over me. Courage, mostly. “What if I decide I want to take this further after the season ends?”
Luca glides a hand up my torso and over the T-Shirt until he reaches my mouth. Stroking my lips, he says, “Why would you want to take it further?”
My heart pounds. “I’ve not been able to stop thinking about you. ”
“I can’t be in a relationship with you.”
My eyes slip closed. “Because I’m a pro athlete and I live in the spotlight?”
“That, and I’m in between worlds right now, can’t give you what you need. I’m secure here with the team. But Belova can figure out who I am any minute.”
“You’re running away.”
“I don’t like the term running,” he hisses. “Or hiding. I had guns pointed at my head. It was either take off or be killed. When you swear an oath to a criminal organization, it might as well be in blood. It’s the air you breathe but it’s also the fire that burns you if you make one false move.”
I think about his son and wonder how to broach that topic without causing pain. But ignoring it feels wrong, too.
“Where is your son buried?”
Luca’s lips twitch, and I think I’ll be told again that I can’t know his truths, but he whispers, “Vermont.”
My head pitches back with surprise. “Of all places...”
“Exactly.”
“Does Belova want you back?”
“All I know is he wanted me dead.”
“Why exactly?”
“He said it was because of money. But I know it was out of vengeance for making his sister so miserable that she killed herself and my son. Elijah was his heir. Belova has two daughters. His wife kept having miscarriages. It was either he got a new wife who could give him a son, someone he can groom to take over, or make my son his heir. He chose the latter. But I told him he could never have my son for that. Next... they’re both dead.”
“That accident took everything from him,” I say, feeling sympathy, but anger brews in Luca’s eyes .
“And me.”
“And you,” I exhale, seeing how something so tragic can’t be fixed.
What is there to negotiate?
“Belova backed me into a corner when he made me marry his sister. He set me up to fail. Fail her. Fail him. It’s been five years, and I’ve managed to elude him.”
“But he just bought a hockey team.”
Luca steps back. “And I’m deciding if that’s a coincidence or not.”
“Hey, we got off track.” I grip his fingers and kiss them, my wet mouth drawing his eyes to mine.
“I can’t change the past,” Luca whispers. “Right now, until the season ends, you’re stuck with me.”