Chapter 31
Rhys
I wait until the locker room clears out.
It takes a while. We haven’t won a game in what feels like half a semester and the guys are celebrating like it, which is deserved, genuinely.
I’m happy for them. But I’m also sitting on this bench with my jaw held tight and a very specific conversation waiting to happen, so I smile when I need to smile and clap the right shoulders and wait for everyone to leave, all congratulating me on their way out.
I’ve got a different kind of celebration in mind—one that’s been burning me alive for weeks.
Jamie knows I’m waiting. That’s probably why he’s moving so slowly — reorganizing his bag, talking to Fitch longer than necessary, finding reasons to have his back to the room. I’ve learned to read him well enough by now to know avoidance when I see it.
Fine. I’m patient.
Eventually it’s just us. The noise from the hallway fades. The locker room settles into the quiet that only exists after everyone else has left — the hum of the ventilation, the drip of a shower someone didn’t fully turn off.
Jamie’s at his locker and I’m sitting directly across, just watching him.
“Nash.”
He goes still before he turns around. When he does, the guilt is all over his face — shoulders slightly dropped, mouth rigid, the way it gets when he’s holding something in. He looks like he was hoping to avoid this conversation.
Nope.
“I know,” he mutters. “You got in my head.”
“How am I in your head when you won’t even talk to me?”
He doesn’t answer, so I stand up. Spread my hands. “Well? Say something. Anything.”
He exhales slowly. Looks at the floor. Then back up at me.
“I’m always in control.” His voice comes out small. Without any of the usual armor in it. “Everyone knows it. I know it. It’s the one thing I’ve always been able to count on.” He pauses. “And lately I’m just — slipping.”
“Okay,” I say, encouraging him to keep going.
“Do you not—” he cuts himself off, tries again, and steps closer.
Drops his voice like even the empty room might overhear.
“Do you not feel that? Being around you—it’s like I’m on fire.
My blood’s fucking boiling. You make me feel like I’m losing my mind just by standing next to me. Especially when you do shit like—”
It sounds like a confession he hates giving up. Like it’s being torn out of him. Like it physically hurts him to be this honest. I know the real Jamie now, the one that’s all nerves under the armor. This, right here, is the barest he’s ever let me see him.
So I give it back. I step even closer.
“You think I’m fine?” My voice drops to match his.
“You think I’m untouched by any of this?
You think what I’m feeling just—what—evaporated because you ghosted me?
Not even close.” He’s staring at me. Arms slightly flexed, weight balanced on his heels, that wild animal stillness he gets when he’s cornered and hasn’t decided yet what he’s going to do.
I’ve learned this too. Push too hard and he bolts or swings, his fight or flight kicking into overdrive.
So I go still. You don’t corner Jamie Nash. You let him come to you. Wait. Stay calm. That’s how you win.
“There’s something here,” I say, even, unflinching. “We both know it. We’ve both known it for a while. So why don’t we just get it out of our system? Before it ruins everything for both of us?”
I reach out. My hand lands on his arm, feather-light.
No pressure. Just heat and skin and the question hanging heavy, like a third presence between us.
His eyes close. He breathes in slow, like he’s trying to hold himself together through the sensation of my hand on his skin.
I can see it moving through him — that thing he fights constantly, that he redirects into anger and slammed lockers and wrong decisions on the ice.
“Once,” I say, voice barely above a whisper. “We try this once. Then we move on. No more letting it bleed into the game.”
He reaches up and moves my hand away. I let out a frustrated breath.
Why am I chasing this? Why do I keep fighting for something that bites back every damn time?
I look at him standing there — chest rising and falling a little too fast, eyes back open now, green and exhausted and wanting something he won’t let himself have — and he’s pissing me off again.
I want to see how far I can push before he snaps. That’s the only thing he seems to respond to anyway.
So I shove him, hard, back against the wall, because he reacts to my anger more than anything else.
“You know what?” I murmur, close enough that my mouth almost brushes his mouth.
“You’re fucking scared.” His throat works around whatever he wants to say, like I struck something too close to the surface, and I feel a sharp, dark satisfaction curl low in my chest.
Good. There it is.
“And if you’re scared…” I tap his forehead twice, watching the way his eyes flash.
“You’re weak.” He exhales through his nose, sharp and controlled, but I can already see him slipping.
“And if you’re weak,” I lean in, lips grazing his ear, voice dropping until it’s barely more than a whisper—“you’re not in control anyway. ”
That does it. I feel him lock up. His breathing gets rough, heavy, like something just broke inside.
God, I love this part. The way he hates it and wants it all at once.
Jamie doesn’t want gentle. I tried, but he wants someone who’ll push right past his guard and take whatever they want from him. He wants a fight.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he bites out, but his voice isn’t steady anymore, not the way he wants it to be.
“All you do is run your mouth—get under my skin—you’re in my head and you won’t fucking leave.
” He tries to turn away, but I catch his wrist, stopping him cold.
For a heart-stopping second, we’re frozen.
His pulse hammers under my fingers. Mine matches it, beat for beat.
Slowly, I bring his wrist to my mouth. Press a kiss to the blue vein and lick it, slow. Not force, not dominance. Something worse. Something that worms it way under his skin and stays there. He shudders, rewired, body unsure what to do with me giving instead of taking.
“Get on your knees,” he says, voice ragged, shaking, but there’s power in it, power he needs, so I give it to him.
Fine. For now I’ll give him the control he so desperately craves.
I drop down, slow, making him watch every second—real surrender, not just for show.
Even as I kneel, the charge between us crackles, sharp and electric. I look at him.
He’s already falling apart for me.
“Is this what you want, Captain?” I whisper against the heated skin of his stomach, my voice low against him, but my eyes stay locked on his, challenging. I ease his shorts down slowly, and his cock immediately pops out, thick, straining, a drop of precum pearling at the tip like an invitation.
"Christ," I mutter, the word rough in my throat, and I grin up at him, at his dazed eyes, the flush high on his cheekbones.
He thinks he's winning this, thinks he's got the upper hand.
But I can see the desperation all over him, his thighs already trembling, his cock twitching toward my mouth like it knows exactly where it wants to be.
"Now look at me this time," I order. I drag my tongue along his length, slow and torturous, from base to tip, gathering that bead of precum, letting him watch me taste him.
And he tastes so fucking good.
His whole body jolts, a broken sound ripped out of him, half groan, half something like my name.
"So you do know how to be nice," I taunt, mouth still against him, breath hot on his skin.
I pull off. Just far enough that he can feel the loss, the cold.
His cock bobs in the air, wet and wanting, flushed pink.
I let my breath ghost over him, so close I could lick, but I don't. I let my lips graze his thigh instead.
"Beg for it," I say. "If you want it so badly, Captain, admit it."
His glare is lethal. He could kill with eyes like that. But his hips are betraying him, little involuntary thrusts, chasing my mouth. He grits out, "Go fuck yourself, Rhys."
I laugh. "Not until you go first." I slide my fingers up his inner thigh, slow and cruel, brushing his balls with a feather-light touch, then back off again. His thighs twitch, his breath comes out ragged.
"I won’t beg," he says, but his voice is thinner now, stretched tight.
I watch the pulse flutter in his throat.
I dip my head, let my tongue flick out just once, barely catching the tip and the salt of him.
Then I pull away again. I want to see how far he'll bend before he breaks.
He clenches his jaw, fists white-knuckled.
"Don't you fucking tease me, Rhys."
I rest my chin on his thigh, looking up at him. "Then tell me what you want. Say it." His whole body trembles. I can see him breaking now, the fight draining out of him, replaced by rawness and wanting. His eyes squeeze shut, jaw working, and when he speaks it's barely a whisper.
"Please."
"Please what?"
"Please, Rhys." His voice cracks. "I want you. I want your mouth. Please."
I grin, savagely, in deep satisfaction. "Good boy."
I feel him tense, feel the moment he snaps. His fingers tangle in my hair, rough and demanding, forcing me down. He touches me like he’s angry about needing to.
He wants it. He wants it so badly he's shaking with it.
So I give it to him.
I take him all, no gag, just cheeks hollowed and eyes locked on his, watching him break apart above me.
Watching the exact moment control leaves him.
His hips stutter forward, chasing my mouth, and he's gasping, cursing, my name over and over, "Fuck, Rhys, fuck", and I don't stop, I push faster, deeper, chasing the second he gives up.
Every twitch, every sharp breath is fuel.
I want him wrecked. I want to taste it, want to feel him come apart on my tongue, want to be the reason he forgets why this is a bad idea.
His grip tightens in my hair, not guiding anymore, not controlling, just holding on, like he needs something solid while everything else falls apart.
"Oh my fucking—" His voice cuts off, and it lands in the way his body gives out on him, knees going weak.
And there it is. The moment. The exact second he shatters.
Victory hits fast and hot, curling through my gut, my cock, everywhere, as I pull back enough to look at him, to see what I did.
Jamie Nash, completely undone. Because of me.
A slow, gratified smirk pulls at my mouth, settling deep in my chest, as I take all of his cum straight down my throat.
I loved it. The way he breaks. The way he loses himself.
The way he tastes.
I pull myself up so we're face to face again, my body sliding against his, feeling his hurried breaths, his racing heart. My thumb brushes my mouth, relaxed, predatory, like I'm savoring him still on my tongue, letting him watch me do it.
Then I look back up at him and smile, sharp and easy and completely in control. "That's what I thought."