Chapter 26
Rhys
Am I seriously the only one seeing through this?
"What are you trying to prove?" I poke him in the chest before I think about it — bad idea, immediately obvious, because there is nothing there but solid muscle under that white tee and the contact sends a shock through my fingers I have to actively decide to ignore.
Jamie looks at me. Completely relaxed. Amused in a way that makes my eyes twitch because Jamie Nash is never relaxed around me.
Jamie flinches and goes rigid and slams things.
This version — collected, arrogant, watching me like he knows exactly what he's doing and is enjoying it — I don't have a read on him and I don't like that.
"Just doing what Coach said," he says, nonchalantly. "Getting to know my team."
"You haven't had a single drink." I step closer. The room is dimmed, mostly made up of our shadows, the party noise muffled through the door, just us in here with the low light and not enough space. "You're full of shit, and you want me to believe it's about bonding."
His gaze stays on mine. Still calm. "You've been watching me now, Callahan?" He lets that sit between us for a moment. "Like what you see?"
I go very still. He's bluffing. Has to be bluffing. This is the man who deleted his Grindr account the second he got home. Who punched me rather than say one real thing. Who converts everything he feels into anger because feeling it directly is too intense for him.
He's bluffing.
But if he wants to play chicken — fine.
I invented this game.
I close the remaining distance between us.
Slow. Cautious. Until I can see the curve of his lips in the low light, the tic in the muscle just below his ear that gives him away even when everything else is locked up.
The room is small and getting smaller and I can feel the pull of him before I'm even close enough to touch — that heat, the woodsy cologne he put on tonight, and underneath it just him.
I stop close enough that neither of us can pretend this is accidental.
"You know what?" My voice drops all the way down. "Yeah." I let my eyes drag over him slowly, make sure he knows I'm doing it. "You want to get to know your teammates?" I look back up to his face. "Start with me. Get to know me, Jamie, all of me," I whisper.
Something dangerous flickers in the tightness of his jaw.
He doesn't move, though.
I bring my hand up. One finger. Press it flat to the center of his chest and drag it down slowly — feel the muscles clench underneath the fabric, the tension in it, the way his breathing changes by degrees as I go down.
Waiting for the flinch. The step back. The wall.
It doesn't come. He lets me go all the way down to the top of his jeans.
He stays exactly where he is, but I can feel him trembling with anticipation.
So I take it further.
Let’s play.
I lean in and press my mouth to the side of his neck — just below his jaw where his pulse is jumping — and bite down lightly.
Just enough. A graze. And it moves through him — that breath he tries not to take, the way it catches halfway, the almost-imperceptible shudder he's suppressing with everything he has.
I don't pull back. I stay there. Right there. Let him feel it — my mouth at his throat, his pulse against my lips, both of us standing in this dark room at this party with the whole thing balanced on a rope that’s about to snap.
"Here's what I think," I say against his skin.
The furnace that burns there. The salt of him.
"You like losing control." I let a beat of silence stretch.
"It's the thing you want most. The thing you fight hardest. Every single day.
" I pull back enough to look at him. Close enough that our breath mingles in the small space between our mouths.
"And I'm the only one who gets it out of you. "
His gaze is dark, hungry.
He’s still not moving.
I drop my eyes to his mouth for one second.
Look back up.
Then I take his wrist.
His hand hanging at his side, fingers slightly curled, the only part of him he hasn't been able to keep completely still. I take it slow — unhurried, giving him every single second to pull away.
I turn his palm up and guide it toward me.
Press it flat against the bulge in my jeans and hold it there with both hands, fingers wrapped around his wrist, and I watch his face when he feels it. Watch his throat move. Watch every carefully constructed wall he has strain against the weight of what his own hand is telling him right now.
The heat of his palm through the fabric. The way his fingers twitch once — involuntary, immediate, completely honest — before he locks it back down. "Feel that?" My voice is barely anything. Just for him. "That's not nothing, Jamie."
His hand goes motionless. Then it trembles. His eyes snap up to mine.
"Scares you," I say. "Doesn't it?"
And there it is.
Right there in the open. His eyes — god, his eyes — the desire sitting in them clear and real and unguarded in a way I've only seen once before, in a locker room, right before everything went wrong. Three full seconds of Jamie Nash not pretending. Not slamming it into a box.
Just there.
Wanting.
Lust.
All out there for me.
Then it's gone, as quick as it came.
I watch the wall go back up in real time. His face hardens instantly. The shoulders squaring. The green of his eyes going controlled and careful and locked. Brick by brick. The shutdown of a person who has been doing this their entire life.
"Go fuck yourself, Callahan."
He shoves me back. Hard. I take a step. He yanks the door open and the noise from downstairs floods in cold and loud and he's through it before I can say anything.
Gone.
I stand in the dark room.
I won this round. I know I did.
But standing here in the dark with the music bleeding through the walls, I keep coming back to those three seconds. That look. The real one. The thing about winning is it only feels good if you know what you're winning.
I'm starting to lose track of that.