Chapter 29
TAYLOR
Sebastian was a few feet away in the kitchen, muttering to himself as he reviewed a recipe, while I was lounging on the couch in the family room. My left knee was propped on a pillow, an ice pack wrapped in a dish towel balanced on top of it.
Last night, I’d logged twenty-two minutes of ice time, which was high for me. My knee had started bitching at me in the third period—nothing serious, just the regular aches and pains that came with being a guy in his thirties who'd spent years of his life speeding around on razor blades.
“How’s your knee?” he asked from the other side of the island.
“Fine.”
“That’s what you said after the Ottawa game.”
“That’s because it was also fine after the Ottawa game.”
“You were limping when you got home.”
“No I wasn't.” Did I sound like a petulant brat? Yes. Did I care? Not a bit.
He tossed me a look that said he wasn’t buying my bullshit. “Sure. Whatever you say.”
“It’s fine, Seb. Really.”
He set down his spoon and wiped his hands on a dish towel before coming around the island to stand in front of me, his hands braced on his hips.
“You need to keep it elevated,” he said, bending to add a second pillow under my knee.
The ice pack slipped off, and he caught it before it hit the floor, turning it over in his hands. What used to be solid was now floppy and sloshy.
With a put-upon sigh, he said, “This isn’t even cold anymore. You need to tell me when you need to swap it out.”
Sebastian would balk if someone described him as a natural caretaker, but he definitely was.
Always had been—at least when it came to me.
Back in college, when I'd torn my abdominal muscles, he'd futzed over me for weeks, making sure every little thing was taken care of, and he was doing it again now.
I probably shouldn't enjoy the Mother Hen routine as much as I did, but it gave me a secret thrill.
“Stop treating me like a baby,” I groused, just to get a rise out of him.
“Stop acting like a baby and I will,” he said, turning back toward the kitchen, blowing me a kiss over his shoulder as he went.
A minute later, he was back with a fresh ice pack, which he draped over my knee. “Dinner’ll be done in about forty minutes.”
“Smells good. What are we having?”
“Mushroom risotto with grilled chicken.”
“How very bougie of us.”
“It’s literally just chicken, rice, and mushrooms.”
It turned out to be really fucking good chicken, rice, and mushrooms, served with a mountain of freshly shaved parmesan and a drizzle of truffle oil.
Sebastian had grown up with a private chef, something I’d teased him about back when I first found out, but I wasn’t teasing him now. Between all the fancy meals he was cooking for me, I’d never eaten so well in my life.
When I looked up from scraping the last of the rice from the bottom of my bowl, Sebastian had pushed his empty plate aside and was turned slightly toward the dark window, his wine glass loose in his hand.
I didn’t think he was looking at anything in particular, but he wore that inward, focused expression he often got when he was working something over in his mind.
“What’s up?”
He took a sip of wine, then refocused his attention on me. “My parents asked me to join them for Thanksgiving. They have someone they’d like me to meet.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah. Ah.”
“What’d you say?” I asked, trying my damnedest to keep my tone neutral and mostly failing. He was well aware of where I stood on this particular topic.
“I said I was busy. I also said I was seeing someone and that they need to stop trying to set me up with every single blonde woman who crosses their path—though I do have a preference for blonds.” He looked at me pointedly, his mouth hitching to the side.
I ignored his quip about blonds since I knew he was only saying it to distract me from what else he'd said.
Sebastian had come a long way in his Big Gay Journey (his words, not mine), coming out to my closest friend and his colleagues, but I hadn't expected him to say anything to his parents.
Not that telling them he was seeing someone was even remotely in the same ballpark as coming out to them, but shutting down their attempts to set him up with some random woman felt significant. In the past, he would have gone along with it, quietly miserable the entire time.
This was progress.
Sebastian pushed his chair back, gathered up our dishes, and walked them to the sink. “I only bring it up because I was thinking we could spend Thanksgiving together this year. I found a local farm selling heritage turkeys. They said they'd hold one for me.”
He said it all so casually, like spending the holiday together wasn’t a huge fucking deal.
Thanksgiving wasn’t Christmas, true, but it wasn’t Arbor Day, either. Most people spent it with their families. Well, most people who weren’t professional hockey players with games the day before and after.
I really fucking hated having to tell him no.
With a sigh, I pushed back from the table and joined him in the kitchen, grabbing a dish towel off its hook. He washed while I dried.
“Bell hosts a dinner for the guys and their families every year.”
I’d been trying to think of a way to broach the subject all week. I wanted him to go with me, but I knew he’d probably shoot me down. Dinner with them was one thing; a party with the majority of the team was a whole other.
“Oh, okay,” he said, the disappointment in his voice unmistakable. “Maybe I’ll get caught up on work or something instead.”
I pulled in a breath for courage, all the while bracing myself for rejection. “You should come.”
He passed me the final bowl, then turned to face me, leaning his hip against the counter, his arms folded loosely over his chest. “How would that work, exactly?”
He wasn’t saying no. That was good.
“Bell and Ethan already know our cover story. Bonesy knows I’ve been hanging out with my college roommate, who’s in town for work. We can say things are too busy with the campaign for you to head home for the holiday, so I took pity and dragged you along.”
“People wouldn’t think that’s weird—someone crashing a hockey holiday?”
I shook my head. “Not at all. Last year, one of the guys brought his neighbor, who’d just gotten divorced. The year before that, someone’s wife’s cousin tagged along. Dinner’s pretty much an open invitation for anyone stuck in town.”
His brows dipped. “I don’t know, Tay.”
I gave him my best puppy dog look. It was a dirty trick, but I didn’t care. I wanted him at that dinner with me, even if most people wouldn’t know why. “Please?”
He stared down at me, his expression caught between amusement and resignation, like he’d already decided to humor me and was pissed about it. “You rat.” He kissed the tip of my nose.
I blinked in surprise, figuring I’d have to really lay it on thick to get him to agree. “Really? You'll go?”
“Yes.” He tipped my chin back with one finger and kissed me, his lips warm and unhurried, and I immediately forgot what I’d been anxious about.
“Out of curiosity," he murmured against my lips. "How far were you willing to go to try and convince me?”
“I was going to let you do anything you want to me,” I admitted shamelessly, licking into his mouth.
“You already do,” he pointed out with a huff of laughter, settling his hands on my waist and walking me backward across the room.
My calves hit the couch, and I went down onto the cushions.
I looked up at Sebastian, breathing hard.
He held my gaze for just a second, then climbed over me, his hips bracketing my thighs.
I slid my hands up his back, feeling the shift of muscle, and braced my feet flat on the rug, pressing upward. Seeking friction.
Sebastian smiled against my jaw. “Your knee.”
“Is perfectly fine. Now come here.”
I tried to yank him down, but he leaned away, his gaze moving over my face, a divot forming between his brows. “Fuck, I love you,” he said in the second before he captured my mouth.
He worked my shirt off over my head then, and I returned the favor, tossing both of them on the floor.
Our mouths came together again, and we spent long, lazy minutes kissing, his hands moving over my chest, stomach, and sides until I was hard and leaking, a wet spot forming on the front of my sweatpants.
My fingers fumbled with the button of his jeans until it popped free. Sebastian stood and hooked his thumbs into the waistband, dragging his clothes down to pool at his feet. I shoved my sweatpants and boxers down my thighs and over my ankles, kicking them off.
Sebastian stepped out of his clothes and let me look my fill as moonlight streamed in through the French doors, illuminating his long, lean muscles. I would never get tired of looking at this man.
“You are so fucking beautiful.”
He hummed, and then the couch dipped beneath his weight as he pressed one knee into a cushion, then the other, and settled himself fully onto my lap.
“Can I—”
“Yes,” I answered, before he could finish his question.
He huffed out a breath of laughter against my throat. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
I tilted my head to the side. "No, but as we previously established, I'd let you do anything to me.”
“I really want to ride you—”
“Yes. That.”
“Can your knee—”
I set my hand on his chest and pressed him backward, catching his eyes. “I love you, but I really need you to stop worrying about my knee and let me fuck you already.” I glanced down and reached between us, wrapping my hand around his cock.
He kissed me hard, then stretched toward the side table, flipping open the lid of a wooden box I kept there. Originally, I’d bought it to store my remote controls, but after a naked mad dash upstairs to grab some lube, I’d started keeping a small bottle there, too.
He flipped the cap open and drizzled some into my waiting palm before slicking up his fingers and reaching behind himself. I slicked myself up as he worked himself open, watching his brow furrow, his lower lip catch between his teeth.
“You’re staring.”