Chapter 10 #2
“Fuck—” The word tore out of me, and my hips jerked forward involuntarily. He didn't pull back, just hollowed his cheeks and sucked harder, one hand wrapping around the base of my cock to work what he couldn't fit in his mouth.
It was obscene. It was perfect. It was everything I'd been denying myself for years, and I couldn't stop the sounds escaping my throat—ragged breaths and choked groans and muttered curses that echoed off the alley walls.
He pulled off for a second, stroking me with one hand while he caught his breath, and his voice was wrecked when he spoke. “You taste so fucking good.”
Then his mouth was back on me, and this time there was no teasing, no slow build.
Just relentless pressure and heat and the obscene wet sounds of him sucking my cock like it was the best thing he'd ever tasted.
My free hand went to his hair, fingers tangling in the dark strands, and I tried not to pull too hard even though every instinct was screaming at me to thrust deeper, take more, chase the release building at the base of my spine.
“Close,” I managed, the word barely coherent. “Ethan, I'm—fuck, I'm close—”
He hummed around my cock, the vibration sending sparks up my spine, and that was it.
My orgasm hit like a freight train, pleasure slamming through me so hard my vision whited out at the edges.
I came in his mouth with a strangled groan, my hips jerking, my hand fisting in his hair as he swallowed around me and worked me through it until I was shaking and oversensitive and barely able to stand.
He pulled off slowly, licking his lips, and looked up at me with a satisfied grin. “Good?”
I sagged against the wall, my legs unsteady, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. “Yeah. Good.”
He stood, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and tucked me back into my jeans with surprising gentleness. “Told you. You needed to relax.”
I laughed, breathless and dizzy and riding the high of post-orgasm endorphins. For five minutes, I'd been completely free. Completely myself. No mask. No performance. Just want and release and the simple human connection of someone making me feel good.
Then reality crashed back in.
I was standing in an alley behind a gay bar with a stranger who'd just sucked my cock, and if anyone had seen—if anyone had taken a photo—if word got out—
“Hey.” Ethan's voice cut through the spiral, and his hand landed on my shoulder, grounding. “You good? You look like you're about to pass out.”
“I'm good.” I wasn't, but I forced a smile anyway. “I just—I should go.”
“Yeah. Probably.” He stepped back, giving me space, and his expression softened. “For what it's worth, you should come back sometime. When you're not so wound up. You're allowed to have this, you know. You're allowed to want things.”
I nodded because I didn't trust myself to speak, and I slipped out of the alley before I could do something stupid like ask for his number or tell him the truth about who I was.
The taxi ride home was quiet, the driver mercifully uninterested in conversation. I stared out the window at the city lights blurring past and tried to sort through what I was feeling. Relief. Guilt. Satisfaction. Shame. All of it tangled together in a knot I couldn't untangle.
We were two blocks from my building when I saw it. Coach's car in the parking lot of the practice facility, the interior dark but the vehicle unmistakable.
“Can you turn around?” The words came out before I'd fully thought them through. “Drop me at that arena instead.”
The driver shrugged and made a U-turn, and five minutes later I was standing in the parking lot staring at the building and wondering what the fuck I was doing.
It was past midnight. I'd just gotten my cock sucked in an alley by a stranger.
I should go home. Should sleep. Should do literally anything other than walk into that building knowing Coach was inside.
I walked inside anyway.
I used my key card to get through the employee entrance, and the building was dark except for emergency lighting and the faint glow coming from the practice rink.
My footsteps echoed on the concrete as I made my way down the hall, and when I pushed through the doors to the rink, I found exactly what I'd expected.
Coach was on the ice, alone, firing shots at the empty net. His form was perfect—weight transfer, follow-through, the puck hitting the back of the net with precision over and over again. No misses. No hesitation. Just muscle memory and control, the kind that came from a thousand hours of practice.
I stood in the doorway and watched him for a full ten minutes before he finally acknowledged me. He didn't look up, didn't stop shooting, just spoke into the silence like he'd known I was there the entire time.
“You gonna stand there all night, Hartley, or you want to actually skate?”
My pulse kicked up. “I didn't bring my gear.”
“There's rental stuff in the equipment room. Go change. I'll teach you a few things.”
It wasn't a request. It was an order, delivered in that calm, controlled voice that made my stomach flip. I should have left. Should have made an excuse and walked out before this turned into something I couldn't take back.
Instead, I headed to the equipment room and pulled on skates and gloves, grabbed a stick, and laced up like I was getting ready for a game instead of a midnight practice session with my coach.
When I stepped back onto the ice, Coach was waiting at center, a bucket of pucks at his feet. The rink lights were still dim, just enough to see by, and the silence was so complete I could hear every scrape of his skates on the ice.
“You've been hesitating on your one-timer,” he said without preamble. “Gripping too tight. Thinking instead of reacting. We're going to fix that.”
He started feeding me pucks from center ice, hard flat passes that came at me fast and required instant decisions.
Catch and release. No time to think. Just muscle memory and instinct.
The first five I whiffed on, my timing off, my hands still wound too tight.
The sixth one I caught clean and fired top corner, and the sound of it hitting the mesh sent a spike of satisfaction through my chest.
“Better.” Coach's voice carried across the ice. “Again.”
We ran it twenty more times, and with each rep I felt something loosen in my shoulders, in my hands, in the part of my brain that had been overthinking every movement for weeks. This was what I knew. This was what made sense. Puck on stick, eyes on net, body doing what it was trained to do.
“You're getting there,” Coach said after the twentieth rep. “But you're still in your head. Stop thinking. Just react.”
“I'm trying—”
“Try less. React more.” He skated closer, and suddenly we were only a few feet apart. “What's got you so twisted up, Hartley?”
The question caught me off guard. “What?”
“You've been off. Distracted. Making mistakes you wouldn't normally make. So what is it? Personal shit? Contract pressure? Something else?”
I couldn't tell him. Couldn't admit that part of what had me twisted up was standing three feet away from me looking at me like he actually gave a shit. “Just... life. Stuff outside hockey.”
“Handle it.” His voice was firm but not unkind. “Whatever it is, figure it out. Because you're too good to let it interfere with your game.”
“You think I'm good?”
His eyes met mine, steady and certain. “I think you're one of the best pure snipers I've ever coached. You've got instincts most guys spend their entire careers trying to develop. But talent doesn't mean shit if you can't get out of your own way.”
I wanted to tell him it wasn't that simple. That I couldn't just handle it, couldn't just flip a switch and stop feeling everything so intensely. But he was looking at me like he believed I could, and that belief felt heavier than any criticism.
“Let's go one-on-one,” I said instead, needing to move, needing to burn off the energy building under my skin. “You and me.”
His eyebrow went up. “You sure about that?”
“Why? You think you're too old to keep up?”
His mouth twitched into something that might have been a smile. “Alright, Hartley. Let's see what you've got.”
He took the puck at center ice, and I lined up across from him, adrenaline already spiking. This was stupid. This was reckless. But I wanted it anyway—wanted to see what he could do, wanted to test myself against him, wanted the contact and competition and the excuse to be close to him.
He came at me fast, his skating still pretty good despite his age, and I met him at the blue line.
We battled for the puck, stick on stick, and I felt his strength immediately.
He was solid, immovable, using his body to shield the puck while I tried to strip it.
I hooked his stick and he spun away, firing a shot that I barely managed to block with my body.
“Nice try,” he said, circling back.
We went again. This time I had the puck, and he came at me with the kind of defensive positioning that made it impossible to get around him.
I tried to deke left, then right, but he stayed with me, his stick always in the passing lane, his body always between me and the net.
I tried to go through him instead, driving forward with my shoulder, and we collided hard enough that I felt it in my ribs.
We ended up tangled together against the boards, both of us breathing hard, and for a second neither of us moved.
His hand was on my shoulder, steadying me or maybe steadying himself.
His face was inches from mine. I could see the grey in his stubble, the way his pupils were slightly dilated and the rise and fall of his chest.
Time slowed. The rink felt too small. Too quiet. Too charged with something neither of us was naming.
Then he pulled back, breaking the contact, and skated toward center ice like nothing had happened. “Good effort. But you're still telegraphing your moves. Work on that.”
I stayed against the boards for a second longer, catching my breath, trying to get my heart rate under control. What the fuck was that? We'd just collided during a drill. It didn't mean anything. It was hockey. Bodies hit. That was the game.
Coach headed toward the tunnel without looking back. “I'm gonna shower. Lock up when you're done.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
He disappeared through the doors, and I was alone on the ice with a bucket of pucks and a pulse that wouldn't slow down.
I stayed out there for another twenty minutes, firing shots at the empty net until my arms burned and my legs ached and I was too tired to think about anything except the simple mechanics of hockey.
When I finally headed to the locker room, the showers were silent. Coach was gone. I sat in my stall and unlaced my skates slowly, methodically, and tried to make sense of the night.
None of it made sense. All of it felt inevitable.
I was in so much trouble.
And the worst part was, I didn't want to stop.