7. Ben
BEN
I can let the elevator doors close. I can go to my room, sleep this off, and never find out where Fraser’s tattoos end.
My arm shoots between the doors.
They bounce open before they touch me. I step into the hall with my heart slamming hard enough to feel in my throat.
Fraser is already at his room. Eleven twenty-seven, exactly where he said it would be. He’s holding the key card against the lock, but he hasn’t opened the door yet.
I might actually be losing my mind.
The hall is empty. Thank God. If Bobby or Caleb came out of a room right now, I have no idea what I’d tell them. I don’t know what I’m going to tell myself, and I’m the one who got off the elevator with my cock hard.
Fraser looks over his shoulder when he hears me coming. The corner of his mouth lifts. He doesn’t say anything.
I stop behind him and put my hand over his. His fingers tighten around the card. For a second neither of us moves, my palm covering the back of his hand and my chest close enough to feel the heat coming off him.
Then I press the card to the reader with him.
The light turns green. Fraser pushes the door open, and I follow him inside. It shuts behind me with a heavy click.
His hotel room is the same as mine. A short entry opens toward the bed and desk, with the curtains pulled over the window beyond them. I barely see any of it. Fraser turns, and the grin he gives me is filthy enough to make my cock press harder against my zipper.
Then the grin fades.
“What are you doing here, Ben?”
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard him use my first name. Pope. Saint Pope. Once, Benjamin, when he wanted to be especially annoying. I stare at him for a second too long.
“Fuck if I know.”
I put my hand on the back of his neck and drag him close. His mouth parts, but I turn my head and press mine to the ink below his ear.
Then I lick it.
His skin is warm and faintly salty under the clean smell of hotel soap. The black lines aren’t raised. I knew they wouldn’t be, but my tongue searches for them anyway, following the edge of the tattoo down the side of his neck.
Fraser moans.
The sound goes straight through me. I lick him again, slower this time, and his head tips to give me more room. My hand tightens in the short hair at his nape. I drag my tongue over the same spot until his pulse kicks against it.
“This is a terrible idea,” he says. His voice is already unsteady.
“Shut up and get naked.”
Fraser pulls back enough to look at me. The filthy grin returns, but it doesn’t hide how hard he’s breathing. “So Saint Pope wants to fuck.”
I move before he can say anything else. My hand closes around his throat, fingers spanning the sides and my thumb pressing under his jaw. I don’t squeeze. I don’t need to. He goes still with his pulse beating hard against my palm.
“You talk too much.” I slide my hand up, cover his mouth, and press my thumb against his lower lip.
His eyes stay on mine. Then he opens his mouth and sucks my thumb inside.
Wet heat closes around it. His tongue drags over the pad, slow and deliberate, while his cheeks hollow. He knows exactly what he’s doing. I can see him enjoying the second my control slips.
I’ve never been this hard in my life.
He sucks my thumb deeper, his tongue circling it like he’s showing me what his mouth can do. My cock jerks against my zipper hard enough to hurt. I push my thumb over his tongue once, and his eyes flare. He moans around it.
“Naked,” I remind him when I pull free. My thumb shines with his spit. I rub it across his lower lip before letting him go. “Now.”
He reaches for his shirt. I expect another joke, but he doesn’t make one. He undoes the buttons without looking away from me. His fingers are fast until the third button catches, and then he has to pull it through twice.
I want to do it for him. I keep my hands at my sides.
The shirt opens. Ink curves from the left side of his neck over his shoulder and onto his chest, exactly where I’ve watched it disappear for three weeks. I’ve seen him shirtless in the locker room almost every day since I got here. Here I can stare as long as I want. I can put my hands on him.
Fraser shrugs the shirt off and drops it. His pants follow. He steps out of them, hooks his thumbs into his underwear, and pauses.
“All of it?”
“Did I stutter?”
His nostrils flare. He pushes the underwear down.
His cock springs free, thick and fully hard, slapping up against his stomach. A clear drop gathers at the tip while I stare. His balls hang tight beneath it. Dark hair runs from his navel down around the base, and the ink I haven’t seen before spreads along his ribs and across his right thigh.
I finally know where else he’s tattooed.
Fraser kicks the underwear aside and stands in front of me completely naked. I’m still wearing my suit, even my shoes, and my cock pulses at the sight of him exposed for me.
“Well?” he asks.
I take his left wrist and turn his arm until the sleeve faces me.
Up close, I can see every line, the places where black fades into gray, the way the shapes bend around muscle.
I inspect it like one of those lines might tell me what the fuck I’m doing here.
Then I run my thumb from his wrist to the inside of his elbow. His skin roughens beneath my hand.
“Cold?”
“Not even a little.”
I follow the ink higher. My fingers wrap around his biceps and drag over his shoulder. He stays still for me, but his cock bobs between us every time he breathes.
I’ve spent three weeks wanting to know what the tattoo feels like. It feels like the rest of him, hot, smooth skin stretched over hard muscle. I keep rubbing my thumb over it while I think about putting my mouth on every inch.
I push him back until his shoulders meet the wall. His breath catches when I bend to his neck again. I lick from his collarbone to the place below his ear, taking the same path the water followed in my first dream.
Fraser grips my waist. His fingers dig through my shirt as I suck the ink into my mouth. I feel the low sound he makes against my tongue.
“Fuck, Pope.”
I move down. The tattoo crosses the top of his chest. I trace it with my tongue, then close my mouth over his nipple and suck until it hardens. His hips jerk, and his cock rubs against the front of my pants.
The contact nearly makes me come.
I put a hand on his hip and pin him to the wall. “Stay still.”
“You’re the one with your mouth on me.”
I bite the edge of his pec. His answer breaks apart into a gasp.
“Stay still,” I say again.
This time he does.
I work my way across his chest and down his side. The piece over his ribs is separate from the sleeve, dark curves following the lines of his body. I press my tongue to the top of it and taste him all the way down.
He can’t keep still anymore. His stomach pulls tight under my mouth. His hand lands on my shoulder, not pushing me away or pulling me closer, just holding on while I sink lower.
My knees bend as I follow the ink toward his hip.
His cock is level with my mouth now. The head is dark and wet, a string of precum stretching from the slit when it twitches.
I can smell his skin and arousal. If I lean forward an inch, I can drag my tongue over the head.
If I open my mouth, I can find out how he tastes.
I want to.
The need hits so hard that one knee touches the carpet. Fraser’s fingers tighten on my shoulder, and his cock jerks toward my face.
Sucking him would cross some line I haven’t crossed yet.
As if standing on one knee in front of my naked teammate with my tongue wet from his body puts me anywhere close to the right side of it.
I drag my tongue over the tattoo on his thigh instead. Fraser swears, and his hand fists in my hair. His cock brushes my cheek, hot and slick, and for one second I turn toward it.
Then I stand.
Fraser’s pupils are wide. His mouth is swollen from sucking my thumb, his chest marked where I bit him. He looks wrecked already, and I haven’t touched his cock.
Seeing him wrecked makes me want to see how much worse I can make him look.
I’m straight. I know I’m straight. I’ve wanted women all my life and never looked twice at a man before Fraser. He got into my head, then my dreams, and now I’m in his hotel room with his taste on my tongue.
Maybe going through with this will get him out of my system. I can go back to being Ben Pope, the guy who scores goals and fucks women without seeing a tattooed man every time he closes his eyes.
Fraser is watching my face. Whatever he sees there makes the challenge come back into his expression.
“On your knees,” I tell him.
His eyebrows rise.
I expect him to laugh or tell me to fuck off. Instead, he lowers himself to the carpet. Slowly. His hands slide down my thighs as he goes, and his eyes never leave mine.
The sight of him there almost finishes me.
He sits back on his heels, naked and hard, looking up at me like obeying was somehow another way to challenge me. Precome spills over the head of his cock and runs down the shaft.
He is into this. Really fucking into it.
So am I.
I hate how much.
Fraser reaches for my belt. I catch his hand.
“No.” I open the buckle myself. My fingers aren’t as steady as they should be. I get the button open, drag down the zipper, and push my pants and underwear low enough to free my cock.
It springs out in front of his face. Fraser’s lips part.
I wrap my hand around the base and hold myself there, close enough that the wet tip touches his lower lip. “Open.”
His mouth opens wider. I lay my cock on his tongue. My thighs lock, and my hand tightens around the base.
His tongue is hot and wet beneath the head. He curls it around me, tasting the precum there, and makes a pleased sound low in his throat. The vibration runs through my cock and pulls my balls tight.
“Suck.”
Fraser closes his lips around the head.
Fuck.
His mouth is softer than I imagined and twice as hot. He sucks slowly at first, dragging his tongue along the underside while his eyes stay fixed on mine. My hand goes into his hair and tightens. He keeps watching as he takes another inch.