Chapter 10
Sasha
Aaron Kelly looks ridiculous in a tie.
Not bad. Never bad — the man could wear a trash bag and I’d still want to put my mouth on his neck.
But he’s sitting on a green room couch in a black tie that Diego picked out, tugging at the knot like it’s personally trying to strangle him, and he looks so uncomfortable that it’s making me want to do terrible things to him.
“Stop fidgeting,” I say. “You look like you’re being held hostage.”
“I feel like I’m being held hostage.” He tugs at the tie again. “Why do I have to wear a tie? We’re hockey players. Nobody expects us to look professional.”
“Diego expects us to look professional. And the tie is good on you. The white shirt too.” I stretch my arm along the back of the couch behind him. Not touching. Close enough that he knows I could. “It makes your shoulders look very broad. Very All-American.”
His jaw tightens. He glances at the closed door. “Sasha.”
“What? I am complimenting your shoulders. This is normal teammate behavior.”
The green room at the station is small. Two couches, a coffee table with bottled water, a mirror with bulbs around it that makes everything look washed out and overexposed.
There’s a TV on the wall playing the station’s daytime programming on mute — some cooking segment, a woman holding up a pan.
The door is closed. The PA said twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes alone with Aaron Kelly in a locked room.
That’s plenty.
“I need to tell you something,” I say.
He stops fidgeting. Looks at me. “What?”
“I’m going back to Russia this summer. I promised Olga I’d spend the summer there. It’s been so long since I’ve been home, and Masha and Maksim — they deserve to actually see me before they forget who I am. And Maksim deserves someone who knows what they’re doing to teach him hockey.”
Aaron is quiet for a second. His fingers stop pulling at the cuff button.
“Oh,” he says. “That’s — yeah, that makes sense.”
“The whole summer.” I watch his face. He’s doing the thing where he arranges it into something neutral, something easy, something that doesn’t give him away. I know every version of that face by now. “I’ll be in Omsk.”
“Right.” He nods. Runs a hand through his hair.
The wave falls back across his forehead immediately.
“Well, I’ll be helping my dad with the business anyway.
He’s got a full schedule this summer — three big jobs lined up.
So it’s probably just as well. I wouldn’t be able to do much sponsorship stuff. ”
Just as well.
“So you won’t miss me,” I say.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You said just as well. That means it doesn’t matter to you whether I’m here or in Siberia.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“What did you mean, Aaron Kelly?”
His ears are going pink. He’s staring at the muted TV like the cooking segment is the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen. His throat works when he swallows.
“I meant it’ll be fine,” he says. “We’ll both be busy. The summer will go fast.”
“The whole summer is a long time to go without seeing someone you’re used to seeing every day.” I shift closer on the couch. My knee presses against his thigh. He doesn’t move away.
“We’ll survive.”
“I know we’ll survive. I’m Russian. I survive everything.” I bring my hand to the back of his neck. My fingers press into the short hair at his nape and his breath changes — shorter, faster. He still won’t look at me. “But I want you to say it.”
“Say what?”
“That you’re going to miss me.”
“Sasha —”
“Say it.” My thumb traces the tendon on the side of his neck. His pulse is hammering under my fingertips. The cooking show woman is making a salad now. I can smell Aaron’s soap and underneath it, his skin. “We’re alone. No cameras. No one is listening. Say it.”
He closes his eyes. His hands are in his lap, fingers laced together, knuckles tight.
“Yeah,” he says. Quiet. Almost nothing. “I’m going to miss you.”
There it is.
I kiss the side of his neck. Just below his ear, where his pulse is going insane. He makes a sound — caught, frustrated, the sound of a man who wants to be annoyed but whose body has already made the decision for him.
“We have an interview in twenty minutes,” he says.
“Eighteen now.”
“Sasha. We can’t —”
“We can. We have eighteen minutes and a locked door and you just told me you’re going to miss me.” I pull back enough to look at him. His eyes are open now, green and furious and hungry. “Let me give you something to miss.”
His mouth opens. Closes. He looks at the door again.
“It’s locked,” I say.
“Someone could knock.”
“Then you’ll have to be quiet.” I put my hand on his thigh. High. His muscle jumps under my palm. “Can you be quiet, Aaron Kelly?”
He stares at me. I watch the fight happen behind his eyes — the good boy, the rule follower, the people pleaser, all of them telling him this is insane, they have a live television interview in eighteen minutes, his hair is going to be messed up, someone will notice —
“Yes,” he says. Barely a whisper.
My hand doesn’t move. I leave it on his thigh, thumb tracing slow circles on the inseam, and wait.
His eyes flick down to my hand, then back to my face. “What are you —”
“Ask me.”
“I just said yes.”
“That’s not asking.” I press my thumb harder into his inner thigh and his breath hitches. “You want this, Aaron Kelly. So ask me. Say please.”
The flush crawls down his neck. His jaw works. I can see him fighting it — the politeness that’s been drilled into him since birth warring with the fact that saying please right now means admitting exactly how much he wants this. How much he wants me.
“Please,” he says. Quiet and rough and it goes through me like a current. My own pulse kicks hard. I love that word in his mouth. I love that I’m the one who put it there.
“Good.”
I undo his belt. Pop the button on his pants. Slide the zipper down.
He inhales sharply through his nose. His head tips back against the couch and I watch his throat move, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and I think this — this is what I’m going to remember in July when I’m six thousand miles away and I can’t sleep.
I pull his cock out through the opening of his boxer briefs.
He’s already hard — fully hard, thick and hot in my hand, the head flushed dark and already wet.
A bead of moisture wells up from the tip and slides down over my knuckles.
He’s been like this since I touched his neck, probably before that, probably since we sat down in this room and he realized we were alone.
He bites down on his bottom lip so hard it goes white. His hips push up into my grip, chasing my hand, and I hold him down with my palm flat on his hip.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I say, stroking him slow.
Long pulls from base to tip, tightening at the head, my thumb dragging through what’s gathering at the slit.
His cock twitches against my palm and more wetness drools over my fingers.
“In about fifteen minutes, we’re going to walk out there and sit under the lights and they’re going to ask us about the rivalry.
And you are going to smile and say all the things you always say. ”
“I can’t — think about the interview right now —”
“Try.” I tighten my grip and speed up and his whole body jerks. His cock swells in my hand, pulsing, and a thick drop leaks down the shaft. “Tell me what you’re going to say.”
“What?”
“The trash talk. The rival stuff. What are you going to tell them?” I keep my hand moving, steady pressure, my thumb circling the ridge of the head on every upstroke.
He’s leaking steadily now, making everything slick, the wet sound of my hand on him filling the quiet green room.
My own cock is straining against my pants, aching, and I ignore it. “Practice for me.”
He lets out a laugh that’s half groan. “You’re insane.”
“I’m helping you prepare. Tell me. What are you going to say about the great Sasha Vorontsovsky?”
His hand grips my forearm. His fingers dig in hard enough to bruise. “I’m going to say —” He swallows. I speed up, stroking him faster, tighter, and his voice cracks. “That you’re — good. But I’m better.”
“Louder.”
“That you’re good but I’m better,” he says, and his hips roll up, fucking into my hand, and the sound he’s fighting back is thick in his throat.
His cock is throbbing against my palm, flushed and straining, dripping over my knuckles.
“That I outscored you this season. That I set the — the record, not you.”
“What else?”
“That you — fuck —” His thighs are shaking. I can feel the tension building in his whole body, his abs clenching under the dress shirt, his cock swelling even harder in my grip. “That you talk a big game but when it counts, I’m the one who —”
I tighten my grip and work him fast, short strokes focused on the head, my thumb pressing into the spot that makes him lose words.
He chokes on the rest of the sentence. His back arches off the couch and his hand flies to his mouth, biting the heel of his palm.
His hips are jerking up in sharp little thrusts, fucking my hand, and I can feel how close he is — his cock pulsing hard with every heartbeat, leaking so much that my hand is soaked.
“When it counts,” I repeat against his ear, “you’re the one who what?”
“Delivers,” he manages, voice rough. He bites down hard on his thumb. “I deliver.”
“That’s very good, Aaron Kelly.” I stroke him through it, fast, tight, relentless. “Very convincing. They’re going to love it.”
He comes with his teeth sunk into the base of his thumb, his whole body going rigid, hips snapping up hard into my grip.
His cock jerks in my hand — once, twice, three times — hot pulses spilling over my fingers and onto his stomach.
A strangled sound escapes past his hand, barely contained, and his thighs clamp together around my wrist as his body shudders through it.
I stroke him through every wave, slower now, gentler, feeling him twitch and pulse until he’s pushing weakly at my hand, too sensitive, gasping.
His chest is heaving. His tie is loosened and his belt is open and his stomach is a mess and his mouth is red where he bit it. His cock is still half-hard against his thigh, spent and glistening.
Fuck. My hands are shaking. My cock is so hard it hurts and I haven’t been touched and I don’t care because looking at him like this — undone, spent, mine — is doing more to me than any hand ever could.
I grab the napkins from the coffee table and clean him up — my hand first, then his stomach, careful with the shirt.
He watches me with glazed, half-closed eyes while I tuck him back in, zip him up, refasten his belt, straighten his tie, and fix his collar.
My own cock is aching against my zipper and I don’t do a thing about it. This wasn’t about me.
“Your hair is a disaster,” I say.
“Whose fault is that?”
“Yours. I didn’t touch your hair. You did that yourself.”
He drags both hands through it, pushing it back. It falls the wrong way and he tries again, and I reach over and fix it for him because he’ll never get it right with his hands shaking like that.
I smooth his hair back into place. Tuck a strand behind his ear. Straighten his tie where it’s gone crooked. My fingers brush the side of his jaw and he leans into my hand — just barely, just for a second — and my heart slams once, hard.
Aaron leaning into my hand like that. Like my touch is the thing he needed more than the orgasm.
Nobody’s ever done that before.
“There.” I brush my thumb across his cheekbone. His skin is flushed and warm. “You look like a professional athlete. Very composed. Very ready for television.”
“I look like I just —”
“You look great.”
A knock on the door. “Five minutes, guys.”
Aaron’s eyes go wide. I pull my hand back. We’re three feet apart on the couch in half a second, and when I look at him he’s straightening his tie and his ears are still red and he’s pressing his lips together to keep from either laughing or panicking. I can’t tell which.
“Ready?” I ask.
“I hate you.”
“You’re going to miss me all summer. You said so yourself.”
“I take it back.”
“Too late.” I stand up and check myself in the mirror. Hair fine. Shirt fine. I look exactly the same as I did twenty minutes ago because I am very good at this. “Let’s go be rivals.”
The PA opens the door and leads us down a narrow hallway toward the studio.
Aaron walks beside me, close enough that our arms almost touch.
His breathing has evened out. His face has mostly returned to a normal color.
He looks like Aaron Kelly, Ashford Sentinels co-captain, charming and camera-ready and perfectly in control.
Nobody would ever guess.
That’s the thing I can never decide if I love or hate — how good he is at pretending nothing happened. How fast the mask goes back on. Right now his belt buckle is still warm from my hands and he’s walking into a TV studio to tell the world how much he enjoys beating me on the ice.
The studio lights are blinding. Two chairs, a host with blindingly white teeth, cameras on tripods. The host shakes our hands — mine first, then Aaron’s — and says something about what a pleasure it is, what a season we’ve had, how exciting this rivalry has been for college hockey.
“So,” the host says, settling into his chair. “Let’s talk about the Kelly-Vorontsovsky dynamic. Aaron, you set a conference record this season — thirty goals. How much of that is about proving you’re the better player on your own team?”
Aaron smiles. That perfect, practiced, All-American smile.
“Look, Sasha’s a great player,” he says. “But when it counts? I’m the one who delivers.”
I keep my face neutral. I look at the camera. I nod like a gracious rival.
Under the studio desk, my hand is shaking.
The whole summer. I’m not going to survive a whole summer without him.