Chapter Eleven
Layton
I was up and out of my seat as soon as the plane landed. It’s not that I hate flying—it gives me time to work uninterrupted—but the man next to me would not stop talking even though I’d given all the signals about how I didn’t want to be disturbed. His Boston vowels grated on me as he waxed lyrical about the weather, politics, and every other boring thing he could think of.
He even handed me a business card. Real Estate, apparently; it figured.
Added to all that, I was tired and out of sorts, and I blamed Brady for it all. The oldest Rowe brother had made me go out for a beer, grilled me all night about how Ten was doing with the Railers, then proceeded to get me drunk. Not that it took much. Five beers I think, maybe more—I lost count.
I’d also drunk texted Adler, or Ad as I’d started to call him. It had been two weeks since that post-presser blowjob, and we hadn’t actually done anything since that could be considered either sexual or very date-like.
He’d had an away stand, three games on the West Coast. I’d been asked to go to Boston for a midweek meeting that had ended up lasting four days. We’d texted, but it had all been shallow stuff—comments on teammates from him, replies from me asking questions about how they were getting on back there.
Apart from the text I’d sent the night before, which he hadn’t replied to.
I grabbed my overnight bag and walked as fast as I could away from the plane and through domestic arrivals, my mind far away from Boston or the annoying guy on the plane. All I could think about was how mortified I was by what I’d sent Ad. The Uber ride home was long enough for me to go through the stages of reaction to sending an inappropriate text.
First I re-read it.
I really need you to suck me off right now.
Then I read it one more time, like I had done a hundred times before. Just to make sure that what I thought I’d sent was actually there in black and white. Then I checked who I’d sent it to. I wasn’t sure if it would be worse or better if I’d sent it to someone other than Ad.
What if I’d sent it to the team owner, or his PA? Imagine how much shit I’d be in if I’d sent that to the people who employed me.
But no. It had definitely gone to Ad.
I really need you to suck me off right now.
I groaned and covered my eyes. That was the second stage—the awful realization of what I’d done. I’d stepped way past considering dating a player. Clearly, when I was drunk and my libido took over, my need for a blowjob outweighed my professionalism.
The third stage was quicker each time. That moment I had to either wallow in embarrassment and regret, or accept that my brain needed to get on board with the idea of getting off in Ad’s mouth.
I really wanted to touch him, and kiss him, and for him to suck me off. I was almost giddy with the excitement of a new attraction, and it was even worse because of what he’d done when we’d kissed.
He’d turned his body so he wasn’t caging me. He’d known somehow that I didn’t want to be trapped, and this was when the last stage of the whole thing hit me on the face.
I knew what I wanted physically, but the mental barriers were like iron around my heart. The last time I’d lusted after a jock, the only time before meeting Ad, had been a mess that I couldn’t get out of my head. Despite counseling and the enormous support from my family, I was still fucked in the head and I knew it.
What if Adler held me down? What if he forced me to swallow? What if he shoved me onto all fours, then put his hands around my throat and used his body to hold me still as he fucked me? Raped me.
But what if he didn’t do that? What if Adler Lockhart was the kindest lover I’d ever had, but then I had to tell him what had happened to me?
Then what?
“You okay?” The driver asked, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. I opened my mouth to say I was okay, then realized my hand was pressing my chest right over my heart and my breathing was rapid. “Hey! You need to go to the hospital?”
“No,” I said, and dropped my hand and the cell I was gripping so hard in the other. “I’m fine.”
The driver stared at me some more, to the point where I was concerned he wasn’t watching his driving. Then, seemingly satisfied that I wasn’t stroking out, he refocused on the road, and I attempted to relax.
After all those stages I came right around to the fact that any physical intimacy was off the cards with Ad. I needed to find my usual type—smaller, thinner, softer.
The driver looked me up and down and frowned as I paid, but at least he didn’t ask me if I was okay, which was good, because in my head I’d gone right back to the first stage of shame over the text and was probably scarlet.
My place was on the third floor and I always took the stairs; someone with a sedentary career such as mine needed to get exercise in somewhere. When I rounded the last corner toward my door and saw Adler waiting for me cross-legged on the floor, I wasn’t surprised. I should have been, but there was no room for surprise among the stress I was already fighting.
I stopped a few feet short of the door, and he stood up but didn’t move toward me.
“That was some text,” he said. His tone was careful, and I looked at him for the longest time, wondering if he was going to add anything else.
“I was drunk,” I said finally.
“I guessed that.”
I pulled out my key and let us both in, closing the door behind me and waiting with my back to the solid wood. Adler prowled my small apartment, stopping at the photos on the wall and examining them. Was he actually looking at them, or waiting for me to talk? He looked good in sweats and a Railers hoodie, his hands pushed deep into the pockets. His hair was unstyled, like he’d showered and not bothered to worry about adding product or fussing in front of a mirror.
“Have you been to practice today?” I asked.
I knew there was no game tonight, that they were playing the Canes tomorrow, and that the game after that was against a Canadian team. That was as far as my knowledge of games went, although over the past couple of weeks I’d become quite proficient in some of the weird terms attached to the game itself. Jane had explained a lot as we’d watched the Railers last matchup against the LA Kings on the monitor in the video room.
We’d lost that one, or rather the Railers had lost in overtime on a lucky bounce. I wasn’t entirely sure when I’d begun to consider myself part of the Railers team; it wasn’t like I’d be employed by them past Christmas.
“Yeah,” he said, and for a moment I wasn’t sure what he was saying yes to, then I recalled that I’d asked about practice. “Spoke to Jane, asked her when you’d be back.”
“How long have you been waiting?”
“An hour, maybe two. She knew the flight time, but I wanted to be sure to see you, so I got here early.”
“You should have texted me and I would have—”
“Really?” he interrupted me sharply. “I should have opened my phone to text you and see what you sent me last night.”
“I’m sorry about that,” I apologized, hoping I didn’t sound too miserable.
Ad pushed his hand through his soft hair, and it fell in layers over his forehead. He didn’t say anything, but then he shrugged off his backpack and pulled something out before placing it on the coffee table. “I saw this and thought of you.”
It was a mug in a box, and I could see the design from where I was standing. An Irish setter with a massive bone in its mouth stared out at me.
“I’m a bone hound,” I said, and looked up from the mug to Ad.
“I know,” he said. “It’s inappropriate and non-PC and you can’t take it to work with you, but it was funny, and after the whole setter thing it seemed right.” He stopped and huffed. “Yeah, I know what you’re thinking.”
“What is it I’m thinking?” I wasn’t sure I should ask him that; it felt like I was falling into a trap here.
“That I’ve learned nothing, and that I can’t stop thinking about sex and you, or sex with you. And that it’s a gift and you hate gifts.”
I wasn’t entirely sure what to broach first. Sex or gifts. Both were minefields. “You can’t give me gifts.”
“You took my handkerchief.”
“I had to,” I said, heat rising in my face. I still hadn’t moved from the door, needing it to hold me up.
“Yeah, well, this is different,” he said, and crossed to stand in front of me, less than a few inches separating us. He held out a hand, and I took it instinctively, and he tugged me closer, away from the door, pushing me gently until the backs of my legs hit the sofa.
“Sit down,” he said softly.
I sat, and expected him to pace and talk, or maybe sit next to me, or anything but what he actually did.
With grace that belied his size, he went to his knees between my legs and rested his hands on my thighs. He looked up at me, his blue eyes filled with emotion.
“Adler?” I asked, or begged, or fuck if I know what I was saying or for what reason.
He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the fly of my suit pants, nuzzling the erection that was growing fast. Then he unzipped me and urged me to raise my ass until he could pull pants and underwear down to my thighs. He stopped, considered the issue at hand, then clearly decided he wanted more. Between us, my shoes were off, my socks, and he opened my shirt, pressing kisses to my chest, focusing on each nipple for a short time before sitting back on his haunches and looking up at me again.
“When you texted me, you know what I did?”
“What?” I could hear the breathlessness in my voice and feel the way I was wriggling to get my cock closer to the hands he was loosely resting on my thighs again. His fingers traced patterns on my skin, and I’d never felt so exposed. He was fully dressed, and I was naked in the middle of the afternoon.
“I had my hand on my cock and I got myself off just to the images of what I could do to you. I imagined my mouth on you, my fingers pressing inside you, and I came so fucking hard.”
“Ad—”
“May I?”
I’d lost my train of thought there. “May you what?”
“May I slick my fingers up and push inside you at the same time as sucking you off? Tell me it’s okay?”
He looked pained, like he was expecting me to say no.
Fear snapped inside me, and I pushed it aside. I wasn’t going to let my past dictate the here and now. Not with Adler.
“Please,” I murmured.
He reached for his bag, pulled out lube, and slicked his fingers. As he took my cock in his mouth, sucking just the end then sliding down as far as he could, he pressed his fingers against my hole and massaged me there. I lifted a little, my cock pressing deeper into his mouth, and I apologized even as he groaned against me. He knew what he was doing, knew how I felt right at that moment. He pressed harder, and I moaned at the sensation of his fingers against me, his mouth hot and wet on my cock. This was every single fantasy I had and more. I wanted to touch him, but I didn’t. Instead I curled my hands into the throw pillows that came with the sofa and tried to stop myself coming too fast.
Embarrassingly wanton.
He pushed my legs wider, the rhythm of his sucking and pressing his fingers inside, and me on the edge of everything, and then I couldn’t stop myself. There wasn’t even any warning as my orgasm hit me hard, and he took it all, looking up at me and giving the tip of my sensitive cock one last lick before sitting back on his haunches again with a smug, self-satisfied look on his face.
Ass.
He was getting himself off, sitting there with his hands pushed into his sweats, looking at me sprawled near-naked on my sofa, the afternoon sun weak through the large windows. When he came over his hand, he was still smiling.
But then the smile turned to something more, a thoughtful expression, before he sat up and kissed me.
I didn’t even mind that he loomed over me, because I knew he wouldn’t hurt me.
“Okay, okay,” I said into the kiss. “I’ll keep the damn mug.”
Something changed between us that day, and I know most of it was on me.
Even dealing with the vilest of emails and tweets from the most bigoted assholes I’d ever seen, I always had Adler’s smile to think about. For every evil thing we received about Ten and Jared, we received a hundred supportive emails, and only ten people had said they wouldn’t use their season tickets.
I suggested it would be good PR to refund them the money. All Felix said was a very heated “Fuck ’em.” I didn’t broach the subject again.
Ad had left me more gifts; sometimes they were sitting on my desk, other times he handed them to me post-blowjob when I was at my most vulnerable. But they weren’t expensive. Among others, I was now the proud owner of a Tennant Rowe bobblehead, an inflatable Stanley Cup that sat in the corner of my office, and a Railers tie with Adler’s number on it.
I was also the proud owner of a brand-new offer from the Railers management; a full-time position with a view towards the team becoming a center of excellence and loaning me out to other teams. I’d told them I’d give them an answer when my contract was up in the new year. I was half excited and half terrified of accepting a role in a hockey team when the man I was falling for was always there.
The only other blip on the horizon was Christmas at home. Not that it was an issue for Adler; he was beyond hyped, and the gifts he’d been buying were all piled in the corner of his dining room. I saw them all on my one and only visit to his place.
The same night I met Adler’s friend Apollo, and was aware that I was being silently judged by the man. We’d managed to get through an entire mug of coffee before Apollo had been more than direct with me.
“So you’re the guy, then,” he said. Which was an obvious statement to make, as Adler had introduced me as the man he was exchanging blowjobs and kisses with.
Freaking Adler and his lack of filter.
“Yeah,” I said, which I hoped was the right answer.
Apollo nodded, made me another coffee, and offered me cake. Seemed that was all he’d needed to hear, because he launched into stories of when Adler was a kid, and threatened to get out an old photo album.
Adler was different around Apollo—calmer, franker, if that was possible, and so relaxed I thought he’d be falling asleep on the sofa.
“You want to see what I bought your family?” he asked me, and seemed more awake. He dragged me to the pile. The big pile. The enormous heap of things in embossed bags. I saw names like Cartier, Tiffany, Prada and Ralph Lauren.
“Adler, this is too much,” I said, and felt like a bastard when Adler’s face momentarily fell. The smile that came back was a little forced.
“I wasn’t sure what to get,” he said in explanation. “I’m going to wrap everything tonight, or at least Apollo and I will, and then get them shipped to your address.”
“Adler—”
He stopped me with a kiss, then hugged me. “Please let me. I need them to know the sort of man I am, and how much it means to me that they invited me.”
We were flying to Michigan the day after his final pre-Christmas game against the Blue Jackets, and that gave me some time to warn my parents that Adler was a millionaire who liked buying things, and that they shouldn’t feel uncomfortable.
I hoped my family would be able to rise above it and see the gifts for what they were. Not that the kids would care, particularly given the new game consoles and games I spotted right at the back.
There was more to these presents than a man spending his money. I saw something in Adler. A desperate need to be wanted and liked that I’m not sure anyone else apart from Apollo was aware of.
So I did what felt right. I pulled Adler in for a close hug and told him how much everyone would love the gifts.
When his smile became more natural again, I knew one thing.
I’d done the right thing.