Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
Ryan
Waking up in hotels while on a road trip is always disorienting.
The sheets are scratchy. The scent in the air is sterile.
The temperature of the room is always either too hot or too cold.
The same goes for the lighting. It’s either too bright or too dark.
There’s no in-between. No happy medium. No Goldilocks version of reality.
However, there is one very big upside. Now, during these road trips, I wake up to Brandon in bed beside me.
Here, where no one is watching, he’s much more relaxed.
And it turns out that a stress-relieving orgasm is just what he needs in order to nap instead of pacing the room.
It doesn’t even bother me that he is a bit of a bed hog when he sleeps.
My bed at home is a king. Which has always felt massive to me.
Sharing this full-sized bed with Brandon while the other one in the room remains untouched is much nicer.
And even nicer now as I sling my right arm over his prone body while he sleeps flat on his stomach with his arms and legs spread out like a starfish taking up most of the mattress.
“You keep doing that,” he says, his voice muffled slightly by his pillow.
“Doing what?” I ask as I grip his side and pull myself closer to him.
“Grabbing hold of me while you’re sleeping.” He rolls onto his side and shifts himself to become the little spoon.
“Technically, I was awake.” I nuzzle the back of his neck. He smells like locker room shampoo and the strands of his hair are tickling my nose. “Your hair is way too long.”
“You’ve mentioned that,” he says dryly and brings his hand to his head, then runs his fingers through it, stopping only after he accidentally pokes me in the eye.
“Ow,” I complain through laughter, rubbing my eye with the heel of my hand.
“Sorry.” He pulls his hand away and laughs, making him sound not sorry at all. Which is fine as I am enjoying the way his laughter makes his body rub against mine.
I squeeze him tighter. “I can’t believe you laugh at my pain.”
“If you can laugh at that giant bruise on my hip, I think I can laugh at your poked eye.”
I slide my hand down his side to land on his hip. His skin is warm under my palm. “How does it feel today?”
“Sore. But I guess that’s what I get for thinking I could battle for the puck with a guy like Andre Gagnon and come away unscathed.”
“You’re not hurt otherwise, though, are you?
” I slide my hand up his torso and nuzzle the back of his neck again.
He shifts himself more firmly against me.
I’m sure he’s fine. But that bruise is looking nasty.
It was worth it. We won that game two nights ago and if we win today, we can officially put this first round and Winnipeg behind us.
“I’m fine. Just sore is all.”
“Good,” I say while I kiss the back of his neck below his hairline. “Because I need you on the ice with me.”
“Is that so?” He sucks in a breath.
I spin him around so that he’s facing me, then go back to work, placing kisses along the underside of his jaw. “Don’t play dumb. You have to know by now what you’ve done for me and the team.”
He arches his neck higher and hooks his top leg over mine. “So all this time, the Mules just needed to bring in someone to get you off.”
I slide my hand down his torso again and slip my fingers under the waistband of his briefs to grip his growing erection between us. “Yes. That has been the key to unlocking my game play.”
“So you weren’t getting into fights before I came here?”
“No.” I lick a stripe down his neck, then settle my lips to gently suck on his pulse point. Not hard enough to leave a mark, but enough to make him shiver.
He sucks in a breath. “I still can’t believe you dropped the gloves.”
I pull away and flip him onto his back, then pin him down with my body. Hovering over him, I say, “He knocked your helmet off with his elbow. He earned that fight.”
It’s true. He did, but I shocked everyone by being the one to go after him for it. I’ve never been much of a fighter.
Brandon looks up at me. His expression has turned serious. “Are you not worried at all?”
“About fighting? No. I usually make Roysy do it for me.” I move to kiss him for the first time this morning on the lips.
He doesn’t let me reach him. “Not that,” he says. “And also, gross. I just woke up.”
“First off.” This time I manage to kiss him. “Not gross. And secondly, what are you talking about if not the fight?”
“Never mind,” he says and makes a move to get out of bed, presumably to go brush his teeth.
I stop him by sliding my hand around his hip to grab his ass, pressing him against me so our cocks, while still clothed, slot against each other. “Oh no. You’re not going anywhere until two things happen.” I grind my hips against his, causing him to groan.
“Which are?”
I stare down at him. “You stop dodging the question you were asking me.” I rut against him, and he shifts his body so I can slot myself more directly between his legs, bringing better friction.
“And we both come all over you.” I lean down and kiss him thoroughly.
“It’s your choice in which order we do that. ”
“Task two is making me not care all that much about task one,” he says, reaching between us to free both of our cocks. Together, we struggle for a moment to pull our underwear off, kicking it away from our legs.
I grin at him. “Good to know getting off is your first priority.”
“Fuck,” he groans when we slide back together. Skin against skin. Dick against dick.
I blindly reach with my hand to the bedside table and grab the lube off of it. Brandon takes it from me, pops the bottle open, and sloppily dumps some in his hand, making a mess of the sheets. I can’t help but laugh. I’ll leave the cleaning staff a nice tip.
As soon as he touches my dick again, wrapping his slippery hand around both of our lengths, I’m no longer concerned about who cleans this room. Because this right here between us is all I want to focus on.
“Fuck, that feels good,” I grunt out as I thrust into his fist, gliding our cocks together.
I dip my head down and start feasting on his neck again.
I pull back before I accidentally leave a mark.
We’re naked around the other guys far too often in the locker room to risk claiming him in such a way.
But it is tempting. I’ll have to go for his inner thigh next time my mouth is between his legs.
Anyone who’s looking down there and sees it would deserve the shock.
“Don’t stop,” Brandon says. “I’m close.”
I take that as my cue to go faster with my thrusts. Which puts me close to my orgasm as well.
He sucks in a deep breath and presses his hips up, then collapses back down as he crests over his edge and comes across his stomach.
He lets his dick slide out of his hold when he’s done coming but keeps a firm grip on mine.
I keep fucking Brandon’s hand, chasing my own release, then with a final snap of my hips I shoot the start of my load over his.
He strokes me slowly all the way through it, letting me coat him.
Collapsing beside him, I roll onto my side to face him. His eyes are closed and he’s smiling softly. His chest is expanding and contracting while he catches his breath, causing the pool of our releases to start to slide down his side off of him and onto the already messy sheets.
Reaching over with my hand, I turn him to face me. When he opens his eyes, I grin at him. “So what was it you were asking me?”
He cranes his neck and kisses me. “It’s not important.”
I run my knuckles over his cheek, caressing his cheekbone, which is slightly scruffy with a few days’ worth of patchy playoff beard stubble. “You don’t have to lie to me. If something is bothering you, you can tell me.”
“I know,” he says, averting his eyes, looking slightly embarrassed. “It’s just lately you’ve been getting careless.”
“Careless? By fighting? Brandon, it’s fine. We all drop the gloves at some point in our careers.” I brush my thumb across his cheek.
“I’m not talking about the fight,” he says, still avoiding looking at me.
“Then what are you talking about?”
He finally turns to look at me again and opens his eyes. “Don’t you worry about people starting to notice?”
“Notice what? That I play hockey?”
“No…” A hint of frustration flares in his eyes. He closes his eyes again and when he opens them back up, that annoyance is gone. But now he looks more scared. “Us,” he says. “You’re acting like you’re not scared if people find out about us.”
I roll onto my back and sling my arm over my head as I look up at the ceiling.
Needing to formulate my thoughts on this, I take a deep breath.
“It’s not that I’m not scared,” I say, because that is the truth.
I dread what will happen if this gets out.
But likely, not for the reasons I should. “I am. But I’m also tired of hiding.”
“Do you want to come out?”
“What I want is for me and you to be able to be together and for it to not be a big deal.”
He grabs my hand between us and gives it a squeeze. “I’d like that too,” he says. “But we both know that’s not how this works.”
“I know,” I sigh. “But there has to be a way for us to do this without needing to hold a big gay press conference announcing our relationship.”
His head shifts on the pillow we’re sharing. I turn to look and find him staring back at me.
“Is that what this is?” he asks. His bottom lip is trapped between his teeth.
“It is to me,” I say, and immediately feel a rush of relief run through me for just saying that out loud.
“Me too,” Brandon says. “But I’m not ready to come out yet.”
“That’s fine,” I tell him. Because it is. “We can keep this between me and you.” Rising, I start to pull him off the bed. “Come on, let’s take a shower. The bus leaves for the arena in two hours.”
Brandon
“Here.” Ryan tosses me a flat, wrapped box that he pulls out of his suitcase.