Chapter 4
CHAPTER
FOUR
ROMAN
“Fuuuck… that’s it.” My head hits the wall with a thud as my eyes roll back, fingers twisting hard in both their hair.
Jasper’s got me buried so deep down his throat his eyes are glassy, spit slicking his chin as his lips stretch wide. Below him, Zeke’s tongue moves slow and dirty over my balls, like he’s trying to draw the orgasm out of me one flick at a time.
“You’re sharing me so fucking good.”
They pulled me from sleep and had their mouths on me before I could even open my eyes.
“Whose mouth am I filling?” I rasp, barely holding it together.
“Mine,” Zeke growls, pulling off my balls with a pop.
“Motherfucker won rock-paper-scissors,” Jasper mutters around my dick.
“I’m sure our boy will share. Now get your mouth around me, baby.”
I tighten my grip in Zeke’s hair, guiding him closer. He takes me in one greedy swallow—no hesitation, no easing into it, just lips stretched wide, throat open, like he’s begging me to use him. His eyes water when I fuck into his mouth, and when I finally fall apart, he swallows every last drop.
Falling back breathless, I watch Jasper slam onto Zeke with a messy, open-mouthed kiss, my cum shared between them. It’s not sweet. It’s not gentle. It’s primal, frenzied, and completely fucking feral.
When they finally pull apart, they settle on either side of me, their bodies pressed close against mine.
“Hell of a way to wake up, birthday boy, huh?” Jasper nuzzles into my neck, and I can feel his smile against my skin before he sinks his teeth in.
My body’s wrecked. My heart’s pounding. And my cock’s already twitching again.
“Makes me wish it was my birthday every day,” I manage, still caught in that space between pleasure and consciousness.
“Christmas is coming.” Zeke flashes that smile—the one I fall for all over again every single day. “What are you hoping for?”
“Don’t care,” I say honestly. “As long as I get to fuck both of you… mouth, ass, fist, any way you want me, I’m in.”
We talked about our needs early on, and our sex life’s never been anything short of phenomenal.
But in the quiet moments, when we’re just being…
the love we have for each other is indescribable.
And for a guy like me, who’s still learning how to put emotion into anything other than action, that kind of love is fucking everything.
I don’t always have the words.
But when I touch them, they know.
Every kiss says, I’m yours, every touch is a promise to stay, and every breath we share is a reminder that what we have is bigger than any words I could find to describe it.
But I’m working on myself. I have been for years. And I’m a hell of a lot more open now than I was after…
No. Can’t go there.
I can’t think about the little blonde who still lives somewhere inside all of us, no matter how hard we tried to bury her after she married Mikey fucking King.
What the hell was she thinking?
The thought slips in before I can stop it, and Jasper’s hand tightens on my thigh. He always knows when I’m thinking about her. We all do because none of us ever really stopped.
Addison’s haunting us all, and those three cream-colored invitations on the nightstand are a constant reminder that not only are we invited to watch her father accept an award for his contributions to college hockey, but they want me, the former captain who helped bring home the championship, to present it.
“Right, I’m going to shower. We need to be at the rink in an hour.” Jasper rises from the bed, naked and hot as fuck, and I’m two seconds away from following him.
That guy buried himself inside my heart before I even realized it was happening, and the stubborn bastard made it clear that he had no intention of ever letting go.
I’m still staring after him when Zeke’s fingers curl around my jaw, and gently pull my focus back to him.
“You okay?” he asks.
“I’m fucking awesome.”
I lean in, my lips brushing against his.
Zeke’s got this heart that's too big for his own good and the kind of empathy that makes him feel everyone else's pain like it's his own. But he also has these dark, filthy edges. He holds us like we’re fragile, but the way he commands with just his body and his words… yeah, I’ll never get enough of that.
Then there’s Jasper. He’s got that devil perched on his shoulder, but fuck, he loves harder than anyone I’ve ever known.
He gets swallowed up by whatever’s eating at him sometimes, but he saves those shadows for us, and for the place we’ve built between the three of us.
A place where we keep each other safe when the rest of the world would never understand.
“You’re officially older than us.”
“True, but I get to say I’m fucking two younger guys, so I’d call that a win.”
“Which you can do as soon as we get you home tonight.” Zeke stands, tugging on a pair of black boxer briefs. “But first, we’re taking you out, sound good?”
“Perfect.”
“Great,” Zeke says, grabbing a gray T-shirt off the chair and tossing it at my face. “Now haul your ass up and get ready, or Coach won’t let you live long enough to see another birthday.”
We pull up to the rink together, jackets zipped tight against the cold, and it doesn’t take long before a handful of fans start gathering out front. Some are faces we know by name. Others are new, hanging around, hoping to catch a glimpse and maybe snag a photo or a signature to post online.
We sign a few posters, scrawl our names across some jerseys, and pose for the usual pictures—grins half forced while our hands are already half frozen—and then finally we head inside.
Chuck and Jonas stand guard near the entrance, the way they always do when the players roll in. They don’t smile, but then they don’t need to. Their presence says it all: You’re safe here. Now move your ass and get your shit done.
They nod once, and we nod back.
There’s no small talk or bullshit. Just the kind of respect that’s built from years of standing in the same cold hallways, watching the same bruised-up guys chase the same impossible dreams.
“Yo, birthday boy!” Garrett’s voice bellows across the room. “Retirement’s right around the corner for you, huh?”
“By the time you’re even considered for captain, Garrett, you’ll be a corpse rotting under the bleachers.”
“Fuck you, Ashford.”
Screw you, Ashford.
Those words have been playing on a loop in my head ever since the night Addison found out what Zeke, Jasper, and I really mean to each other. It wasn’t something I was necessarily ready for—hell, part of me was terrified—but deep down, I knew it needed to happen, not for me, but for them.
They’d been tied to Addison for years, bound by something that ran deeper than friendship but had never been touched or explored.
We’d had a relationship once, her and me.
It was real and raw, and we had the kind of connection that buries itself under your skin and refuses to let go.
We weren’t gentle with each other. We were a fucking explosion.
Every touch was a wildfire we couldn’t outrun, and every fight was like two storms colliding.
I handed Addie every side of me—the good, the bad, the messy, even the parts I didn’t always understand. But it all went to shit the day she looked me dead in the eye and said we were done, like I hadn’t handed her my whole damn heart and trusted her not to crush it.
It wasn’t that she stopped wanting me. Being with Zeke and Jasper all these years has taught me that a love like that doesn't just burn out. But eventually, someone else’s rules got between us, and when it mattered most, she made her choice, and it sure as hell wasn’t me.
Hockey was the dream I’d been chasing my entire life, but I would’ve thrown it all away for her. I would’ve chosen her above anything else because even now, if anyone tried to make me pick between the NHL and my guys, I’d let it all go without a second thought.
Our love isn’t a choice.
It’s a necessity.
Hockey might be the fire in my veins, but Jasper and Zeke are the air in my lungs, and I’d choose them in every lifetime.
I’ve been captain of the Vipers for three seasons now. Three years of bleeding on the ice and turning a group of individual players into a single, unstoppable machine.
Every time I pull on my jersey, I feel the weight of all the others hanging in that locker room pressing down on my shoulders.
I carry their hopes, doubts, and dreams, and it’s my job to make them believe in each other and themselves.
Some nights, being captain means being the toughest bastard on the ice.
You skate through pain, hit harder than you should, and bleed for the boys who’d bleed for you.
Other nights, it means knowing when somebody’s on the edge and pulling him aside.
Not to tear him down, but to remind him exactly who the fuck he is and that he’s not alone out there.
That no matter how bad it gets, he’s got a family fighting beside him.
The boys all give me shit. Constant chirping and endless jokes, the kind of brotherhood that could look like hate from the outside but is nothing but bone-deep love underneath.
And when the game’s on the line and everything comes down to those final few minutes, I know that these guys would go to war for me, just like I’d go to war for them.
“Happy birthday, Captain,” Jacky, our goalie who matches my six-foot-two height, grips my shoulder and flashes me a grin. “Did you get anything nice?”
Birthday head from the two guys I’d walk through hellfire for? Yeah, I’d call that better than nice.
And they know exactly what I’m thinking the second our eyes meet across the locker room. It doesn’t matter how many years pass—that fire, that pull between us—it never fades. It only grows stronger and hotter.