Chapter 7 Beck
BECK
The second I slip back into the athletic dorms, I’m grinning like a self-satisfied idiot.
I didn’t flatten Brody’s tires myself. Hell, it wasn’t even my idea. But I definitely didn’t stop it from happening. It was Pierce and his little band of cronies that are so desperate for my approval they keep coming up with new ways to torture Brody while I sit back and watch the show.
Thus far, nothing seems to get to that bastard. Not the locker room pranks, not seeing his underwear hung from the rafters of the student union like a goddamn victory flag, not even having to traipse across campus butt-ass naked—hell, he almost seemed to enjoy that.
The only thing that’s gotten to him in the slightest has been Pierce and his irritatingly persistent antics with the beer cans. I still don’t understand what’s up with that, but it’s the only thing that seems to get under Brody’s skin. Not that he shows it.
He tries to hide how much the beer jokes bother him, but I see it. The way his smile cracks for just a second before he glues it back in place. I hate myself for the pang of sympathy I get when I see it. How maybe that one actually hurt him.
Which is stupid. It’s none of my business. I don’t know why it keeps bothering me. I barely notice it, and it’s only because I’m watching so closely.
So I can watch him crack, obviously. Not for any other reason.
Watching him finally lose his shit, dragging his hands through his messy hair, pacing the parking lot like a caged animal? Now that’s a reaction.
I finally saw him break.
That was satisfying. Or… it should’ve been.
But on the walk down the hallway to the elevators, the satisfaction curdles. It settles weirdly in my stomach, sharp and acidic, like guilt pretending not to be something other than what it is.
He deserved it. Right?
It’s not like he hasn’t been pushing my buttons nonstop since the day he got here.
The smirking. The stupid jokes. The way he says my name like he’s licking the inside of my skull—Lincoln—over-pronounced every time.
And the pet names. God, the fucking pet names.
Always whispered in my ear like some kind of filthy taunt when we’re on the mats.
He’s the one that’s been trying to get a reaction out of me, just as much as the other way around.
So I should be able to enjoy this victory, whether or not I’m the one that messed with his tires.
I reach the elevators, thinking about watching him from the window of my floor, just to see if he’s still pacing around the parking lot like an angry wet cat.
Before I can push the button for my floor, a sudden weight slams into my back.
My chest hits the wall so hard the breath punches out of me.
A heavy arm bars across the back of my neck, pinning me in place.
The pressure is firm, unyielding, terrifying.
It sends a shock straight through my body in a way I absolutely do not want to acknowledge.
A voice growls in my ear. Low, rough, and spine tinglingly familiar.
“You think that shit was funny?”
My breath shorts out. Brody isn’t just upset. He’s furious. I can feel it radiating off him, hot and crackling and so dangerous it makes my knees weak.
“I didn’t—” My voice comes out cracked, pathetic. I try to steel myself. “Get off me.”
He presses harder. Not enough to hurt, just enough that I can’t move. Enough that my entire traitorous body goes stiff. My entire body.
He notices, because of course he does. He’s the harbinger of my personal doom. Of course he has to notice my weakness.
A dark scoff huffs out of him. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
Before I can tell him to shut up or push him off, the elevator dings behind us, signaling that someone is coming this way.
I consider calling out, but something keeps me quiet while Brody curses under his breath and drags me sideways, gripping the back of my neck like it’s a handle.
He yanks me into the stairwell, slamming the door shut behind us and manhandling me against the wall.
I stumble, breath hitching, spine pressed to the cinderblock wall. He doesn’t let me go. His arm comes up again, pinning me in place with a force that shouldn’t ignite every nerve ending I have—
But it does. God help me, it does.
He leans in close. So close I can feel his breath stir the hair at my temple.
“I’m not done with you,” he murmurs.
A shiver rips down my spine.
I try to speak, try to snarl something back. Try to regain even a fraction of control. But my throat is tight, and my jaw won’t work, and I can’t get air into my lungs.
Every inch of my skin prickles, oversensitive like the pain of a limb waking up when it hasn’t gotten enough circulation. Probably because all the blood in my body has rushed straight to my dick. Why the fuck is my dick so hard?
His blue eyes are burning holes through me. Seeing everything. Knowing everything. The same way he looked at me that day on the mat, two years ago, only less surprised and more like he’s blaming me for it. Like he could see the exact moment my body betrayed me and he thinks I’m pathetic.
His gaze drags downward, so slowly.
His lips part.
“…Lincoln,” he says, voice dropping to something dark and disbelieving. “You’re shaking.”
I am. Goddamn it, I am. So much so that I can’t even correct him for using my first name.
My knees feel loose. My pulse is pounding—in my throat, my wrists, then lower, and lower… Heat rolls through me, humiliating and impossible to hide.
Brody’s jaw ticks.
“You like this,” he says softly.
“No,” I rasp.
His eyes flick up, sharp as a blade. “Say it again. Look me in the eye and say it.”
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
Because I can lie with my voice. But my body won’t let me. My body is pulsing with adrenaline and panic and something far, far more dangerous. Something I definitely don’t want Brody Miller to see. Something I have spent years burying so deep I hoped it would die.
But it’s not dead. It’s alive, clawing its way out of me from the inside, hissing and starving.
Brody’s lips curl—not in amusement, but something darker.
“Oh, Lincoln,” he murmurs. “You really are screwed up.”
Humiliation floods through me so hard my vision blurs. My fingers twitch helplessly at my sides. Shame burns through me like acid, but my first thought is somehow that I don’t like him calling me Lincoln.
“Don’t call me that,” I whisper hoarsely.
He leans in closer. His forehead nearly touches mine. His voice goes low enough to gut me from the inside.
“You think you’re the biggest, meanest fucker at Huntston,” he says. “The captain. Top dog. Golden boy. Untouchable.” His breath brushes my jaw. “But look at you. Look at what a little pressure does to you.”
“S-stop,” I choke out. He ignores me.
“You’ve been trying so hard to tear me down,” he says. “To prove you’re better. Stronger. Straighter.” He lets out a rough, humorless laugh. “But you can’t even pretend right now. You’re so fucking hard for me.”
“I said stop—”
“Say you don’t want this.”
I open my mouth to speak, but I can’t. I physically can’t force the words out. All that comes out is a pathetic, breathy sound. A cross between a moan and a whine. A plea.
Brody’s expression shifts into something terrifying. Something predatory and hungry. He rakes his eyes down my body, and I have no doubt he sees me for what I am—a pathetic, simpering, weakling. And the humiliation of it all is only making my situation worse.
I’m not just hard. I’m aching. Leaking. And seconds away from begging—for what? I don’t know. For escape. For release. For a goddamn moment of peace.
“Drop your pants.”
My eyes flash open wide, staring into his blue eyes that are darker than I’ve ever seen them before.
Like he’s another person. No longer the happy-go-lucky, charismatic charmer with the energy of a labrador.
That Brody isn’t here. The man who stands in front of me is a cold, hard, demanding, dominant beast of a man I’ve never seen the likes of before.
And I’m powerless, a slave to his whims.
I try shaking my head. I try choking out a protest. But I don’t actually move or say a word. I only part my lips, and untie the drawstring on my athletic pants.
They drop to the ground in a soft swish of fabric that settles around my ankles.
“These, too,” he says, snapping the waistband of my boxers. “And hold up your shirt.”
Brody steps back, not far, just enough that the air between us is suddenly cold and empty.
“Thought so,” he says quietly, and smirks as he looks down at my exposed erection. He sweeps his gaze up from my leaking dick to my watery eyes. “I thought big, bad Lincoln Beckett would have a bigger dick. I should have known better, considering you try to rub it on me every day at practice.”
“I don’t—” His hand closes around my throat, keeping me pinned to the wall while he puts a few more inches of space between us so he can get a better view of my shame.
My face is burning so hot, the flush is bleeding down my chest. My dick is already so flushed and engorged it’s purple, so the rest of me might as well turn the same color.
“There’s something wrong with you, Lincoln.”
“Don’t—”
“Don’t what? Don’t tell you how pathetic you are? Don’t tell you that I don’t give a damn what you like to be called, not when you’ve been set on making my life miserable since the day I walked through those doors? And why? Because I make your pathetic little dick hard?”
It’s not little. I want to say, but I don’t. He laughs in my face because he can read me too well.
“Smaller than mine,” he laughs. My eyes fall to the considerable bulge in the front of his jeans and I swallow dryly. He’s hard, too. Is he going to do something with it? Make me… touch it? Put my mouth on it?
My cock jerks and dribbles pre-cum.
Brody chuckles darkly.
“You’re so weak for me, I bet it wouldn’t take more than one word to make you lose your shit and make a mess all over yourself like the pathetic little man you are.”
A whimper escapes me. A fucking whimper.
“That’s right. I bet you want to come for me. And I bet it wouldn’t take more than a word to make you do it.”
I’m really shaking now, all my veins trembling, limbs weak and wobbly. A tear falls down my cheek. My mind screams with the need to hide, to vanish, to claw out of my own skin. But my body rebels. My abs tighten. My ass clenches. And my cock jerks and weeps and waits for my damnation.
I blink open teary eyes and find myself locked in Brody’s dark glare.
“Come.”
One word. One simple, clipped command given in a low, gravelly voice. And I am undone.
My skin burns with humiliation, but I cry out, hips thrusting into empty air as my cock erupts.
Tears splash against my cheeks and my cum splashes on the floor, on my legs, on my underwear and pants piled around my feet.
Brody steps aside so it doesn’t land on him, and observes blankly as he watches me fall apart in real time.
He releases me and takes a slow step backwards, eyes never leaving me. I sag against the wall, trembling, skin burning, heart pounding in my throat.
“The next time you or your boys fuck with me, I’ll make you sorry,” he says, his voice low and sharp enough to saw through bone.
Then he turns away without waiting for a response. Without giving me a chance to breathe, or recover, or gather up the pieces of my shredded dignity.
The stairwell door closes behind him.
And I slide down the wall onto my ass, shaking so hard I can barely keep myself upright.
I should hate him. I should be furious. I should want revenge.
But all I can feel is the raging fire in my veins and the horrible, unavoidable truth that I have never in my life felt so fucking calm. Like nothing that was troubling me before Brody Miller pinned me in a stairwell exists. I can’t even bring myself to freak out over what I just let happen.
I just feel… free.