Chapter 14 #3
Ramsey nodded. “You did. Even from the first night. I’d never met anyone who could see through me, the way you did. Well, no. That’s not true.” He huffed out a breath. “Wes did.”
“You said—” Nate’s mind raced back to that June night. “You said it wasn’t a single guy. You said it was a couple.” As soon as he said it, realization dawned, hard and bright and inescapable.
“Yeah,” Ramsey said, “it was a couple. But they broke up, and I got Wes in the divorce.”
“Jesus,” Nate said, more than a little shell-shocked. “And the other guy—”
“Gone.” Ramsey said it succinctly. “Those are Wes’ secrets to tell.”
“I get it.”
Ramsey relaxed another fraction into Nate’s embrace. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Nate paused. “What did you mean when you said you hadn’t meant to tell me the truth about your position here tonight?”
“I mean, sure, I didn’t mean to. It did slip out. But don’t you wonder how sometimes we subconsciously protect—or unprotect—ourselves?”
“You think that big brain of yours wanted to tell me and so it did?”
Ramsey’s teeth bit into his lower lip. “Not my brain. No. That would stop me. For sure.”
There was only one thing that might override that enormous chess master brain, and it was Ramsey’s heart.
Nate felt his own lodge deeply in his throat. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” Ramsey leaned in, and it wasn’t hard at all—maybe one of the easiest things he’d ever done, in fact—to kiss him about it. They didn’t need to talk about it. Not yet. Maybe Ramsey never could. If it was only this, forever, then Nate would accept that.
Ramsey telling him, I was so fucking happy. And you were the first person I wanted to tell.
How could he ever be disappointed if that was true? And it was true. Nate could feel it in the tentative but sure way Ramsey met his lips. The way he lost himself to kissing him back. Tipping his head, Nate’s hand reaching up to cradle it.
They kissed for a long time, until Nate felt breathless and mindless with the feel of Ramsey’s mouth on his mouth.
It had been so good that first night, but the intensity of now, the way he knew Ramsey now and was beginning to see even more of the real guy behind the facade, made it even better.
He wasn’t just kissing that really hot guy he’d met in the bar, but Ramsey, with that big brain and that ride or die loyalty to Wes, to wanting the guys to come into this bar and welcome them but not know it was him who was doing it.
Ramsey was an enigma and a contradiction, but he was becoming Nate’s enigma. Nate’s contradiction.
And he never wanted to let him go.
Ramsey pulled back, pupils huge in his blue eyes. “Let’s . . .” He sank even white teeth into his swollen bottom lip. Nate wanted to do that. Nate wanted to drag him by his hair, back to his condo, and not let him leave the bed all night long.
But that wasn’t going to lead to even a decent team celebration? Between the two of them, it would be more than legit. The most legit. But Nate had responsibilities, and so did Ramsey, now that Nate realized the truth.
“I want to,” Nate said. “So fucking much. But I can’t leave. Not yet.”
Ramsey’s expression turned sly. He tugged Nate in the direction of the bench seat that ran all the way across the back of the room. “We could here,” he suggested.
And God, Nate wanted to. Wanted to pull that sweater off. Get his hands on all of Ramsey’s gloriously bare skin. Everyone who said he was hot in clothes had never seen him naked—and Nate was prepared to go to war to make sure that was a situation that didn’t change.
He felt greedy and possessive that it was only him now that could know Ramsey like that.
The past didn’t matter. But right now? For all those days and weeks and months in the future?
Ramsey was his. At some point he’d become hockey’s too, but even then, Nate hoped—hoped so fucking hard—that he would stay Nate’s too.
“I don’t know.” Nate hesitated. There was a door but not a lock. Not that he cared about getting caught. Everyone he knew here would probably expect it at some point or another. You didn’t date a guy like Ramsey and not let him tempt you into a few questionable decisions.
But that semi-possessive streak flared again, and Nate decided that no amount of arousal, no desperate need to get off, was ever going to equal the risk of someone walking in and seeing Ramsey like that.
Not when that Ramsey was all for him, now.
Not just his body. Not just his mind. But Ramsey had said it himself, the other thing that might intervene to pave the way to Ramsey’s potential happiness.
“What if I told you that we wouldn’t even be the first,” Ramsey teased.
“Really?” Nate supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. This was a bar. People did stupid things in bars. Especially in bars with rooms with unlocked doors.
He’d been in his share of gay clubs in his life and yeah. That was not a surprise at all.
“Oh, I won’t even tell you who it was, but that revelation would really surprise you.” Ramsey chuckled under his breath. He leaned in and kissed Nate again, but this time it wasn’t a purposeful kiss. A kiss meant to go somewhere. A kiss, instead, to tide him over through the end of the night.
“Come on,” Nate complained.
But Ramsey only smiled. Gorgeous and perfect and real. And in that moment, all Nate’s. “Nope. Not gonna say. Prerogative of the owner. Maybe you can take me home in a few hours and sexually torture it out of me.”
“I’m going to hold you to that,” Nate said seriously. What a fucking great idea.
God, Nate might have loved him even more in that moment. Not only that he’d read between the lines and knew what Nate wanted, even though Nate hadn’t really wanted to admit to the worst of his impulses. But to make it a game between them. A game they’d both very much enjoy playing.
Nate let his hands drift down. Get a nice firm grip of Ramsey’s gorgeous ass. “Good,” he said, heavy with promise.