8. Nolan
NOLAN
I sleep like a baby after Ben Pope fucks my mouth and comes all over my ass, which feels deeply unfair.
It was some of the hottest sex of my life, and we never made it out of the entryway.
We had an entire hotel room at our disposal.
A bed. A shower. Horizontal surfaces that weren’t technically carpet.
Pope ignored all of them, kept every piece of his clothing on, and still managed to leave me shaking against the wall with my come on his hand.
I had no idea he would fuck like that. Now I want to know what he’d do if it wasn’t a moment of insanity in a doorway.
Give the man time to plan and access to the whole room, and I might not survive it.
He’d probably make me wait while he stripped me himself, slowly, inspecting every inch like he did my tattoos.
Maybe he’d finish what he almost started when he dropped to one knee and take off his own fucking shirt.
That shouldn’t be the part driving me crazy, but it is.
I sucked his cock without seeing anything below his neck except what he pulled out of his pants.
His chest might be smooth or covered in hair.
I want to see it up close, put my mouth on his nipple, and find out whether that control finally breaks when I’m the one touching him.
My cock starts getting interested again under the hotel sheets. “Absolutely not,” I tell it. Pope made himself clear. I’m not. Shit happens on the road. It isn’t going to happen again.
Maybe I should feel worse about being used.
He wanted to get his dick sucked by a man without having to become the kind of man who wants his dick sucked by a man, and I happened to be available.
That’s not particularly flattering. Then again, I used him too.
I wanted the hottest straight guy I’ve ever seen to put his hands on me, and he did.
We both got off. Nobody promised anyone breakfast.
Shit happens on the road.
I shower, dress, and head downstairs feeling better than I have any right to.
The team has taken over one side of the hotel restaurant.
A breakfast buffet runs along the back wall, and most of the guys are sitting in clumps with their phones propped beside their plates.
I load mine with eggs, toast, fruit, and enough bacon to make Nara judge me, then take a small table near the window.
The chair opposite me stays empty while I eat. I avoid looking at it or the elevators, although I do drink half my coffee in under a minute.
Bobby stumbles in wearing team sweats and the expression of somebody personally betrayed by morning.
His hair sticks up on one side, and there are faint pillow creases across his cheek.
He looks about nineteen instead of twenty-five.
When he spots me, he changes direction and drops into the chair across from mine without getting food first.
“You look terrible,” I tell him.
“Don’t talk so loud.” He winces at the scrape of the chair when I shift my foot.
“This is my indoor voice.”
“Your indoor voice is an assault.” He takes my untouched glass of orange juice and drinks half of it. “Why do you look so awake?”
I slept for seven straight hours after having a teammate’s cock down my throat. I lift my coffee instead. “Some of us know when to stop celebrating.”
“I stopped.” Bobby squints at the ceiling when I ask him when, giving the question serious thought. “There was a piano.”
“That is not a time.”
“Then I don’t know.” He reaches across the table and steals a piece of bacon from my plate. I slap the back of his hand after he already has it in his mouth.
“Go get your own breakfast.”
“Too far.” He closes his eyes while he chews.
“The buffet is twelve feet away. You know we have morning skate.” I push the toast toward him because he’s going to take it anyway.
“I scored the winner. Gunderson can’t kill me.”
“He can make you wish he had.”
That gets one eye open. Bobby considers the buffet again, sighs from somewhere near his soul, and gets to his feet.
When the elevator doors open behind him, my eyes go straight to Pope.
One second I’m watching Bobby drag himself toward the food, and the next I’m staring at the broad line of Pope’s shoulders under a gray team quarter-zip.
His hair is still damp. He looks rested and composed, which seems impossible after the way he nearly ran out of my room with his belt hanging open. He looks exactly like Saint Pope again.
His gaze moves across the restaurant, passing the coaches’ table and Bobby standing motionless in front of the eggs before landing on Caleb. He walks over and sits with his back angled my way.
Bobby returns with a plate piled high enough to alarm structural engineers. “You ate my toast.”
“You left it unsupervised.”
He mutters something rude and starts eating. I keep my attention on him, my coffee, and the rain streaking the windows instead of the gray shirt three tables over.
At morning skate, our line drills force Pope to look at me.
Hockey doesn’t care if two linemates got each other off against a hotel wall.
Pope takes his place beside me for rushes.
I hit him with a pass through traffic, and he sends it back without holding the puck long enough for either defenseman to close.
We move through the drill cleanly. Efficiently.
His eyes track my stick, my skates, the opening over my shoulder.
Never my face unless the play demands it.
“Inside next time,” he says after I take a shot from the circle.
“There were two sticks inside.” I skate back toward the line while he follows.
“There’ll be three tonight.”
“Then I guess you’d better keep up.” He skates away before I can see if that gets to him.
Fine. I can do professional. I’ve fucked other hockey players since juniors, although they were guys from camps and summer skates, never anyone on my team.
I do have some survival instincts.
Usually the rink makes everything simple. Today, my head is back in last night’s entryway within thirty seconds.
Every time his hand closes around his stick, I see it around my throat.
When he leans into a turn, I remember his hips driving against my ass.
He licks his lower lip while Gunderson draws the neutral-zone setup, and my dick tries to remember being level with his mouth. That one is especially unhelpful.
I get through the skate without putting a puck into my own net or shoving him into the boards. That counts as a win. The actual game doesn’t.
We play well enough that the loss doesn’t feel like another piece of the season collapsing on top of us.
Our line creates chances. Pope and I connect on a rush late in the second, and for six seconds we move as well as we did the night before, already where the other needs us.
The shot catches the post, and we lose by one.
Nobody throws anything in the room afterward.
Guys talk through missed chances without blaming each other.
Bobby sits with a towel over his head and accepts shit about his shootout-hero hangover.
Gunderson tells us there were things worth building on, and for once nobody looks like they want to throw a skate at him.
Pope changes two stalls down from me. He speaks to Caleb, answers one question from Bobby, and leaves for his interview without looking in my direction.
If we’d won, I could have gone over and told him we needed to keep fucking for the streak. He’d know I was fucking with him, but at least he’d have to look at me long enough to tell me to go to hell.
Instead, we lose, and even I can’t make that pitch work. It would be ridiculous anyway. I get dressed and leave before his interview ends.
On the flight home, Pope takes a seat beside Caleb before I’ve even boarded. They spend the first hour watching video together. After that, he puts in headphones and closes his eyes.
I sit across the aisle and one row back. He has to know I’m there, but he doesn’t look. By the time we land in Seattle, I’ve become extremely familiar with the back of his head.
The next trivia night at Marlowe’s has barely started, and I’ve already missed why Micah is objecting to our team name.
Tessa has the answer sheet pinned beneath one hand while he leans over her shoulder.
I’m staring at a water ring and remembering the perfect circle Pope’s fingers made around my cock.
“I’m writing it,” Tessa tells him. “I choose how it’s spelled.”
“That’s not how words work.”
“It is tonight.” Tessa draws a thick line under the name and moves on.
I take a drink while the host reminds the bar how scoring works. Around us, teams drag chairs together and argue over who gets the pen. The table beside ours has six people and matching shirts. Tessa has already declared them cheaters based on team size alone.
Micah stops trying to read upside down and looks at me. “What happened in Arizona?”
“We won one and lost one.” I take another drink, but Micah doesn’t move on.
“I can find scores on the internet.”
Those used to be the only hockey details he didn’t drag out of me. “Since when?”
“Since your new teammate started staring at you on camera.”
I try to keep my face still and take another drink.
Tessa puts down the pen. “You’ve been weird since you sat down.”
“He was weird before he sat down,” Micah says. “He sent me a thumbs-up when I asked if he wanted his usual.”
“I was being agreeable.”
“You hate the thumbs-up.”
I do. It’s the punctuation mark of text messages.
The first round starts before they can keep going. Usually that ends all conversation unrelated to trivia. Tonight, Micah writes an answer and slides the sheet to Tessa without taking his eyes off me.
“You hooked up with someone on the road.”
My hand stops halfway to the answer sheet. Tessa moves it out of range. Traitor. “Why do you think that?”
Micah shrugs. “I know you.”
Normally, I’d tell them. Not every physical detail, because Tessa knows too many people who know too many people, but enough to pick it apart for a round, with Micah pushing me to text him and Tessa telling Micah to mind his business while also demanding to see a picture.
Pope isn’t a stranger. He’s my linemate, and I can’t turn this into a funny story over beer. Every detail gets too close to his name.
If I say teammate, they’ll know. Micah has been telling us to kiss for weeks. One look at my face after he says Pope’s name, and I might as well show them a video.
“I hooked up with someone in Arizona,” I say, keeping my attention on the sheet. “It didn’t go great. That’s all you’re getting.”
Micah grins. Giving him that much was a mistake.
Tessa studies me. “Didn’t go great how?”
“It ended badly.”
“Was the sex bad?” Micah asks.
My skin heats as Pope’s voice runs through my head. Open. Suck. Push back.
“No.” Micah waits, and I give him one more thing. “The sex was fucking great.”
“Oh, no.” He sounds delighted. “You’re in trouble.”
“I’m not in trouble.”
Tessa picks up the pen again. “Did you give him your number?”
“He already has it.” Her pen stops. Fuck. “No follow-up questions.”
Micah opens his mouth. Tessa points the pen at him. “He said no follow-up questions.”
Micah looks at her. “He already has the guy’s number.”
“I heard him.” The host calls time before Micah can keep arguing. Tessa shoves the answer sheet into his hands. “Go turn this in.”
He complains the whole way to the scoring table, but he goes.
When he’s out of earshot, Tessa bumps her knee against mine under the table. “You okay?”
For half a second, I want to tell her. Then I see Pope with his shirt still buttoned and his hand slick with my come, telling me he isn’t into men.
“Yeah.” I take another drink. “It was just a hookup.”
She watches me for a moment, then pulls the basket of fries closer. “Good. Because if you’re going to have a crisis, wait until after the picture round.”
I steal one of her fries. “You’d let me die during the picture round.”
“I’d call an ambulance. Quietly.”
Micah comes back before I can answer, and the three of us fall into the game.
Tessa argues with him over spelling. I stop them from changing an answer they had right the first time.
Somebody at the matching-shirt table accuses the host of reading too quickly, and the entire bar boos them until they sit down.
By the next break, Micah has moved on to complaining about our score.
Tessa has threatened to break the pen in half.
I’m laughing hard enough that beer nearly comes out my nose.
Micah buys another round, and Tessa lets me have the last fry after making me admit she carried us through the picture round.
The host starts the next round. Before he’s halfway through the category, I’m wondering whether Ben Pope is good at trivia.