Chapter 8 #3
They got in around ten, but the clubs opened by eleven or so.
Jax could post up at the bar and wait for things to get good.
He changed quickly, keeping the tailored suit pants but switching the button-up shirt and jacket for a plain white T-shirt.
If he had suspenders with him, he might have gone for a newsboy cap to round out the look.
He styled his hair to be a little messy, just to make his highlights pop, then dabbed a little eau de toilette on his wrists and behind his ears because he was classy like that.
He pulled on his shoes, checked he had his wallet, his phone, his room key, and a condom.
And then Tom knocked on the door.
Jax could tell it was Tom because even his knock was polite and a little reticent.
He yanked open the door. “No.”
Tom held up his tablet. “I thought we could—the power play—”
“Tom,” Jax said with all the patience he could muster. “It has been a very tense and emotional day, and I really need to suck someone’s dick about it, all right?”
Tom’s entire face went red. He stepped inside, and the door fell shut behind him. “In Montreal? Jax, you’ll get recognized—”
Jax groaned. “I can’t… How can you possibly want to talk about hockey right now?”
“I don’t.” Tom said it so quietly Jax barely heard it. “I, um, didn’t want to be alone.”
Well, shit. There went Jax’s plans.
Unless…
“You got a fucking hat trick tonight. You deserve to get off. Come out with me.”
Tom reared back, staring at him. “I…what? I couldn’t. No, no I couldn’t.”
“Why not? You’re gay. I’m gay. There’s a club three blocks from here selling shots for two dollars.”
“Jax.” Tom said it as though he thought Jax might be kidding.
“That’s two Canadian dollars. Come on.”
“I don’t go out.”
Time to play purposefully dumb. “You do too, with the team sometimes.”
“For team bonding, not for…you know.”
Jax looked Tom up and down. He still wore most of his suit, but like Jax, he’d ditched the jacket. His shirt emphasized the length of his torso and lithe grace, despite his delectable ass and thighs. “You have needs, though, Mr. Hockey Robot, same as the rest of us. What do you do then?”
“I just…you know.”
Heat rose in Jax’s gut, clouding his judgment. He’d started a very stupid line of questioning for a man who was trying very hard not to sleep with his captain. “I don’t know. What do you do? Get on the apps? Find a hooker?”
“No!” Tom appeared mortified at the very thought, focused directly on Jax for the first time since he’d admitted to wanting company. “I…take care of it myself.”
Oh God.
“You mean you…never?”
Tom shook his head. “Well, once, when I was seventeen, I… But no. Not since then.”
Jax did some quick mental math and wanted to jump into the nearest lake, no matter that it was November and they were in Canada. “Was it terrible?”
“No.” A secret little smile stole across Tom’s face. “It was…really nice. But afterward, I got so scared, and it never seemed worth the risk, you know?”
When Jax first thought Tom gave new meaning to the word “closeted,” he decided Tom must be lonely.
But “lonely” couldn’t encompass how desolate Tom’s life must actually have been.
Jax had assumed he must be hooking up somehow.
He couldn’t picture a life without at least the animal comfort of skin and heat and pleasure when he lacked the human comfort of home and belonging and love.
Tom had granted himself none of it in fifteen years.
But maybe he didn’t need that kind of connection as intensely as Jax. He could be ace, or more interested in romance than sex, or not interested in it at all. Before Jax went entirely off the deep end, he ought to at least ask.
“Is it something you want?”
“Of course I want it. It was always something I couldn’t have until…” Tom waved his hand vaguely. “After hockey.”
“After hockey could be years. Let me take you out. You could meet someone. You deserve…”
“Sex?” Tom laughed as if the idea itself was ridiculous.
Jax’s very thin thread of patience snapped along with the entirety of his ability to be normal about Tom. “You deserve to be touched like you matter. You deserve to be held and—and fucking worshiped.”
He’d stepped closer as he spoke. He didn’t remember doing it, but he must have because they were so close Jax could see every fleck of gray in Tom’s eyes.
“Jax,” Tom said, husky and low as if he’d been drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. As if he was drunk on Jax’s words.
Jax forced himself to step away. “So, yeah. You should come out with me.”
Tom swayed closer as if trying to follow Jax. “I…I, um…I wouldn’t know what to do.”
“I’ll show you.”
“Show me?”
“Yeah.” Jax cleared his throat. “I can teach you how to flirt, and dance, and get a guy to leave with you. It’s easy.”
Tom snapped to attention, back going straight and face going guarded. “It’s still risky in Montreal.”
“We’ll be careful. There aren’t many hockey fans in queer nightclubs, and the lighting is shit anyway.”
For a long moment, Tom said nothing, and Jax was sure Tom would turn him down.
And then he’d have to stay here, too, because Tom didn’t want to be alone, and Jax would never, ever leave him, and then maybe they would open something from the minibar and sit down on the bed, and Jax could watch Tom’s pink tongue lick the alcohol from his lips, and they would get closer, and—
“All right. Let’s do it.”
Jax didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.
The heating in the hotel must have been turned up much too high. The bracing air outside forced Jax out of the hazy headspace he’d been in. You deserve to be worshiped? What had he been thinking?
Clearly, he hadn’t been thinking. Not with his upstairs brain anyway. He made sure to keep his distance from Tom as they walked. He didn’t trust himself not to do something stupid if he got too close.
The club was mostly empty when they got there, a few groups standing awkwardly by the edge of the dancefloor, waiting not to be the first ones dancing.
Jax led Tom to the bar and ordered a beer for them both.
“Oh my God, relax. No one is watching us.”
It wasn’t strictly true. A group of college-aged guys had definitely taken note of their entrance.
Jax doubted they were hockey fans. Based on the way they’d eyed Tom up, their interest had to do with his extremely nice ass.
But with Tom’s shoulders hunched practically up to his ears, he looked terrified. Jax would point them out later.
“I can’t help it,” Tom snapped.
Fifteen years. He hadn’t been touched by another person (outside of hockey) in fifteen years.
Jax would allow a little snippiness. But only a little.
“And you’re sure this is—”
“Tom, I have been doing this for six years, and the only person who ever caught me was you.”
Incrementally, Tom’s shoulders loosened. “Okay.” He took a sip of beer. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Jax repeated. “So, Mr. Hat Trick. See anyone you want to have suck your dick?”
Tom choked on his beer.
Jax twisted in his seat to examine the room. It was filling up, albeit slowly. “So there’s a group over on the left. See them? The guy in the purple crop top would absolutely blow you in the bathroom.”
After wiping up his spilled beer, Tom turned to follow Jax’s line of sight. “He looks a little young for me.”
“Fair. You are a dinosaur. Okay, how about the guy heading toward the bar now, in the black T-shirt?”
“I don’t know…”
“Tom. Do you or do you not want someone to blow your brains out tonight?”
Tom’s eyes went a little wide. “I don’t know?”
“You don’t… Tom.”
Tom mumbled something so low Jax couldn’t hear it over the deafening sounds of a Dua Lipa club remix.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know how to ask!”
Jax had always found honesty the best policy. If he wanted his dick sucked, he would go up to a guy and ask. To be fair, most of the time he asked to suck someone else’s dick, which was an easier question both to ask and to answer.
He had a feeling his approach would not work for Tom.
“Okay. Pretend we’ve never met, and I don’t know you.”
Tom wore a deeply doubtful expression, but Jax hadn’t gotten this far in life by letting other people’s doubt deter him. He pasted on his sleaziest smile, the one most clearly indicating here for a good time, not a long time. Leaning in close, he said, “Hi. I’m Jax. You come here often?”
He only realized the tactical error when Tom blinked up at him.
He’d never seen Tom at this angle before because Tom was taller than him, but with Jax leaning over him while he sat, Tom had to tilt his head back to make eye contact.
The idea of Tom beneath him, Tom looking to him for guidance, for help, for pleasure, didn’t so much occur to Jax as it left him bruised and battered by the wayside.
He could be so good for Tom. He could show Tom everything he’d been missing, pamper him with kisses and fuck him so good he’d never need to hit on strangers in bars. Jax could be everything he’d never known he needed.
Tom ducked his head, seeming for all the world as if Jax’s lame come-on flattered him so much he couldn’t help it.
Jax wanted him so much he ached.
“This is my first time,” Tom said, low and smooth, not confident necessarily, but like a confidant, as though he was entrusting Jax with a secret.
“Can I buy you a drink?”
Tom gestured to his half-full beer. “I have one.”
Jax rolled his eyes. “If you wanna get laid, you say yes to the drink.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Tom ran a nervous hand through his hair, and Jax had to get out of there immediately before he suggested Tom cut out the middleman and fuck Jax instead, and then maybe marry him and have his babies while they were at it.
Jax drained the rest of his beer. “I’m gonna hit the head. Try it with the guy over there, huh?”