Chapter Thirteen #2
Phil reached out a wet, soapy hand to grab Ben by the bicep. “Stop saying that.”
“Phil—” Ben’s hands cupped Phil’s face tenderly.
“I don’t want you to go. I don’t want you to quit the team before the job is done. I don’t want—”
Ben’s grip tightened with frustration. “What do you want?”
What did Phil want? Phil wanted his team to win a Cup.
Phil wanted the owners to believe in them, wanted the coaches to be real coaches, wanted the GM to value the team over his own pride.
He wanted his knee to work. He wanted his house not to be so empty.
He wanted Charlie to live a happy life with his every need provided for. He wanted Ben to trust him. “I…”
“This is too much, I know. I’m sorry. It will be better if I—” Releasing his hold on Phil, Ben made to draw away.
Leave. He was going to say leave again, and Phil didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to even think it. He pulled Ben close again and mashed their mouths together in a desperate kiss.
Relief swamped him when Ben let himself be kissed, let himself be pulled close.
“I don’t want you to go anywhere,” Phil managed when their lips parted by a hair’s breadth. “I want you here with me.” He punctuated the last by pulling Ben closer still, until it became apparent they would have to do something about the side of the tub between them.
“Let me—” Ben started.
But Phil wasn’t interested in their lips being apart.
He silenced the sentence with another kiss, using the hand not clamped around Ben’s bicep to drag down Ben’s briefs and pull him in by the hip until he had to step over the rim of the tub with one foot and then the other, until he sank into the water and straddled Phil.
With both of them inside, the formerly half-empty tub became over-full, and Ben groped behind himself to turn off the water. Abruptly, silence fell in the bathroom apart from the slick sound of their mouths pressed together and the lap of the water against their skin.
Immediately, Phil repositioned his hands to grope the plump globes of Ben’s ass. “I love this,” he said. “You’re so hot.”
Ben leaned in to kiss Phil again, and the motion caused their hips to align.
Their cocks slid together, almost frictionless in the bathwater.
The thought was enough to make Phil moan, and he cupped a hand around both of them.
Ben pulled away to look at the space between them.
Phil followed his gaze, admiring the contrast of their skin tones even through the green translucent sheen of the water.
Ben splayed a hand across Phil’s left pec.
“You wax?” he asked, tracing the line of muscle.
“Yeah.” Phil sighed, hips shifting. “There’s always…oh fuck.” Ben flicked a nipple with his fingertip, and Phil arched up into it. “There’s always cameras and shit in the locker room.”
“I think you’d look good with chest hair,” Ben said and then ducked to suck the nipple he’d been playing with.
The sharp burn of skin sliding along porcelain stung as Phil tried to grip the side of the tub, but it wasn’t enough to stop him moaning. “How does that feel so… Fuck, that’s…”
“Good?” Ben asked, a tad too smugly.
“How do you keep making me feel so much? How do you…”
Ben kissed Phil again, deep and wet and thorough. It was a good thing because Phil didn’t know how he planned on ending the question. He gripped their cocks tighter and rocked up and forward against Ben.
Ben cursed, tossing his head from side to side. Water sloshed out of the tub.
Phil kept moving, the slick slide and heat close to perfect. He shifted his free hand to grope Ben’s ass again, pulling him closer, and then he started moving Ben up against him. He dug his fingers into the soft parts of Ben’s flesh, and the pain made Ben gasp.
Interesting.
“You feel so…so…” His mouth tried to form the sentiment building thick in Phil’s gut again without say-so from his brain.
“What?” Ben asked, low and gravelly. “How do I feel?”
Phil didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he led Ben into a filthy grind, cocks rubbing at an ever more frenzied pace.
The water lapped against the sides of the tub in waves from the motion.
Heat crawled up Phil’s stomach as if the water were melting him, piece by piece, until his body threatened to collapse into nothingness.
“You feel heavy,” Phil said when he remembered his tongue could move.
Ben pulled away, eyebrows raised in a mock-insulted look that ought to be deeply unsexy but was somehow endearing.
“I mean you’re strong,” Phil said. “And—and solid, and I didn’t know I could like this.”
He surged up to kiss Ben again, and the combination of it all—the heat, Ben’s mouth against his, the slide of their cocks together, the solidity of Ben’s body above him, big and firm and wanting him—was enough. Phil came into his own fist and all over Ben’s cock in hot pulses.
“Oh,” Ben said above him, eyes going wide. In Phil’s grip, his cock hardened a little bit more, and Phil held him more tightly against his own oversensitive, softening cock. He dug his nails into the swell of Ben’s ass cheek, and Ben’s breath hitched right before he fell apart.
For a while, the only sounds in the bathroom were their panting breaths.
“Water’s pretty gross,” Phil commented eventually. He didn’t know why, but the instant he finished, come went from sexy in the abstract to disgusting to deal with.
“Mm.” Ben hoisted himself up using the rail. Phil missed the warmth of his body immediately. “Wait a bit before you get out. The floor is covered in water. You’ll slip and hurt your knee.”
Ben mopped up the worst of the water with the towels stacked under the sink, then laid them on top of the towel hamper. Phil watched him the entire time.
I’m attracted to him. He tested the thought against the confines of his mind and immediately felt the panicked urge to deny, deny, deny.
I’m not gay. I’ve been in loving, happy relationships with women.
This time, he breathed through it, remembered Camille fondly, and then allowed the thought to continue. And I could do the same with a man.
The furious, desperate passion that had driven him to pull Ben into the bath had ended with their orgasms, but the attraction had not abated.
Phil still liked the look of his broad, freckled shoulders.
He still liked the softness at Ben’s waist, the love handles at his back.
He liked how Ben’s soft cock swung between his legs, not because he had an insatiable urge to suck it but because it was part of Ben, and he liked Ben.
How had he ignored this about himself for so long? How had he thought he could leave it in the back of his mind and pretend it wasn’t important?
Everything else, the team, Charlie’s guardianship, might be messy and convoluted, but Phil wanted Ben. He wanted him in a big, important, life-changing way, and as the panic of admitting it to himself receded, the other fear loomed larger: that Ben might leave.
“I’m gonna need to shower this off,” Phil announced when Ben finished mopping the floor.
“Uh-huh.”
“And I think I’ll need some help staying upright in the shower.” Phil smiled hopefully and reached out for Ben to help him up.
Ben did, and he let Phil hold on to his shoulders as he stepped out of the tub. But as soon as Phil could stand under his own power, Ben pulled back.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re confused and angry, and you don’t know what you’re doing.”
A wordless noise of protest rose in Phil’s throat.
Ben held up a hand to stop him.
“It’s been an insane day. You asked me to marry you this morning, remember that?”
Of course Phil remembered. “I stand by that.”
“Phil!” Ben stared at him, aghast.
“What?”
“You can’t…I can’t…”
Phil opened his mouth to share some of the thoughts careening through his brain at breakneck pace, only to find he didn’t know the words.
Instead, he fell back on an old standby.
“I want to help you both, and if this will do it, well, I’ve already gotten married and divorced once. I can do it again.”
But Ben shook his head. “I know it doesn’t mean the same to you. I know you don’t feel the same as I do. But I can’t marry you if I’m planning on getting divorced. I’m not straight, Phil. It would be real for me.”
Didn’t feel the same? How did Phil feel? Did Ben know? Because if he did, it would be really helpful if Ben could tell him.
But Ben only heaved a big sigh. “Look, it’s been a weird day. I know you mean well, but you’re pretty messed up right now. I think you need time to process all of this, the betting stuff and the…other stuff. We’ll figure out something else to tell CPS eventually.”
He turned to go.
Panic once again crowded Phil’s throat. “Wait!” he called, but he still didn’t know what to say.
Ben cocked his head, waiting on something Phil couldn’t provide.
“Don’t…don’t give up on me before I have a chance to…”
To what? To figure himself out after fifteen years of denial? To put a name to the longing that filled him when he saw Ben? To make what they’d play-acted at this morning for Ms. Rogriguez’s benefit real?
“It’s okay, Phil,” Ben said softly. “You’ve given me more than enough already. Get some sleep.” He left Phil standing in the bathroom, naked and bereft.
Did Ben know him so little? Did he think Phil would take back a surefire way to support Charlie because an organization he’d dedicated a decade of his life to hadn’t returned his loyalty? Even though that organization was wholly unconnected to Ben and Charlie?
Phil told him ages ago that his kindness wasn’t in expectation of reward. He chose kindness because he wanted to. He thought Ben understood that.
Despite Ben’s admonishment, Phil did not sleep well.
“I know you’re home,” Phil yelled as he pounded on the door.