Eyes wide, Micah nods, and I tell him everything. I tell him about my awful, negligent parents and the unstable home—usually a motel—where I was raised. The drugs and alcohol, the way they either ignored me or yelled at me, and everything that happened leading up to that day they took me to the family services building. I was clueless as to what was happening until they asked the receptionist, “So, do we just leave him here with you?” It was the Alpha-Gal, I think, that ultimately led to them abandoning me. It was a lot to handle—trust me, I’ve been dealing with it for years. And, yes, it has been long enough that I could try red meat again, but I like my diet the way it is, even if other people think it’s weird.
I tell Micah about foster care and the horrible homes I stayed in. Not all of them were awful, but none of them were great. The rules were strict, their funds were low, and there were usually too many kids to keep track of—always coming and going and being moved to another home just as you began making friends. It wasn’t fun, especially when there was little hope of me being adopted.
By the time I’m done, Micah is softly crying, and when I open my arms, he falls into me.
“That wasn’t meant to make you cry,” I say as his tears soak into my shirt.
“I know. I’m just a baby.” He sniffs. “Thank you for telling me, Rix.”
I squeeze him tighter. “Thank you for listening.”
✧ ✧ ✧
Later that night, alone in my bed, I recall the kiss between Micah and me. Despite both of us giving it our all, I feel nothing as I think about his lips moving against mine, the heat of his body against me, his soft hair between my fingers.
I feel nothing because I don’t want Micah or his thin lips . . . But plumper ones? Yes, I can imagine kissing thick, pillowy lips and pressing myself against a tall body hardened by athleticism. Tahegin’s mouth, hot on my own. My tongue tracing the seam, pushing in.
“Fuuuck,” I breathe as my hand slips into my boxers. One long pull has me fully erect in an instant. I had already been well on my way there anyway.
In the safety and privacy of my dark bedroom, I let myself want.
I want to taste Tahegin, his mouth, his skin. I want to touch him in ways we haven’t before—my palm on the back of his neck pulling him close. My thumb tracing his cheekbone, jaw, and lips. My hand sliding down his firm chest, bumping over the barbell in his nipple. My fingers tracing the hard edges of his abdomen, grasping his hips, hard, yanking him roughly against me.
He’s taller than Micah. His hardness wouldn’t hit my thigh—no, it would line up nearly perfectly with mine, hard length to hard length, rubbing directly against each other.
With a groan, I release my shaft and ball my fist before running the hard edge of my knuckles along the sensitive underside of my cock, imagining it is Tahegin’s against me. My knuckle catches the underside of my glans, a jolt of pleasure running from my dick to my toes to my fingers.
“God, T, you drive me crazy,” I hiss into the darkness, and then I flip over, shoving a pillow beneath my hips to rut against it.
Jerking off has always been perfunctory for me—fast strokes to an even faster release. Not like this. Never like this.
“Fuck me,” I groan, my hips rolling, my cock dragging against the fabric, seeking friction as my entire body buzzes on the precipice. Rubbing haphazardly like this is the exact opposite of quick. It’s a tease, a slow torture, each drive pulling me higher and higher with delicious pleasure. My balls ache, drawing tight to me. I gnash my teeth, wanting to bite into the muscle of Tahegin’s shoulder.
I’m thrusting against Tahegin in my mind. Earlier, his cock; now, his well-cushioned, muscular ass. I want it—more than I have ever wanted anyone in my life. I don’t usually spend two minutes jerking off, much less creating an imaginary scenario with one subject in mind.
Except now, as I tighten every already sore muscle to fuck against my pillow—my goddamn pillow like a teenager. I’m lost in a fantasy, refusing to let myself think about how impossible this is to ever truly happen. For now, I can let myself imagine.
“Fuck, yeah. Make me come, T—” I break off with a gasp that morphs into a low groan. I flood my sheets with my release, my cock pulsing and spurting violently with a nearly painful orgasm—arguably the best I’ve had in a long time. My toes curl so tight my calf threatens to cramp, but I don’t let up. I rut and rut and rut as pleasure racks my body limb by limb, drawing it out, until I eventually collapse.
I fall to my back on the clean side of the bed, panting and flushed and sweaty. My heart rate takes too damn long to calm to a normal rhythm, and by the time it does, I am well on my way to sleep.
I’ll deal with the aftermath of my actions tomorrow.
CHAPTER 18
TAHEGIN ELLINGSWORTH
“Has Micah mentioned anything about Hendrix?” I ask as casually and nonchalantly as I can manage, but the way Aleks pauses shuffling the deck of cards tells me that I don’t quite hit the mark.
Aleks’ eyes flicker across the plane to where Hendrix sits by himself, his luggage taking up the empty seat beside him and headphones jammed securely into his ears. His entire vibe gives off “do not disturb,” the same as it has been the last two back-to-back away games.
Before that, he’d been benched at halftime during our game after Thanksgiving, though at the time, he had told me everything was okay and that he was just distracted. Then, I didn’t hear from him for the rest of the week outside of work. He seemed a bit distant at our practices, but not like I’d done anything wrong, per se. At our first away game after that, I’d sat beside him on the plane, and he had immediately suggested we join Aleks and Kit’s card game. I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. In our room later that night, he’d wanted to join the guys having dinner downstairs, and when we went back to the room, he went straight to bed.
Yesterday, on our trip to New Orleans, only four days after our last game on Sunday, he’d blocked the seat beside him and put on headphones—just like today—and when I texted him, he ignored me. He wasn’t in the room after we checked in, and he didn’t come in until after I was already asleep. He left early in the morning, not saying a word to me.
Now, on our way home, he is still being distant. Our next game is nine days away, and a home one at that, which means I won’t have a chance to confront him anytime soon. I can’t just sit on my ass and twiddle my fingers and see if something changes before then.
“Nope,” Aleks responds in a tone slightly higher than normal, his gaze on anything except me. “No. Micah? Hasn’t said anything. Not a word. Well, I mean, he has spoken, but not about Sour. Why would we talk about him?”
I eye him suspiciously, not believing that poor lie for a second. “That was the most pitiful attempt ever.”
“I told him I wouldn’t say anything.”
“Just like you weren’t supposed to say anything about Kit and Larson?”
His cheeks blaze because, yeah, I just called him out as the gossip guy we both know he is. “I can’t tell you,” he blurts in a rush.
I narrow my eyes on him. “Can’t or won’t?”
He begins to sweat under my glare, the struggle to keep his mouth closed taking a physical toll on him. It’s an awkward amount of time before he breaks, and I grin triumphantly. “Okay, but you can’t tell him I told you.”
I’m not sure if he means Micah or Hendrix, but I agree either way. I will take any information I can get to explain the cold shoulder Hendrix is giving me.
“It has something to do with you two—” He looks around the airplane cabin as if our teammates are all listening, then whispers, “Almost-ay issing-kay.”
“Kiss, seriously. We are grown men capable of communicating without the use of made-up languages— Wait, what did you say?”
“Almost-ay. Issing-kay,” he reiterates in that made-up language. Jesus, it’s been, like, ten years since I even thought about pig Latin. It takes me a second to decode the words, and I feel the blood drain from my face when I do.