Last Defense, page 8
The windows glowed with sunny warmth as I moved around my small but homey kitchen. Coffee was soon perking, and I was digging out the makings for some French toast. Music from my phone filled the room, the Miracles’ “Love Machine” taking over my body. Pan in one hand, spatula in the other, I broke into a set of fine funky moves. I was a damn fine dancer. Liam always said so.
I spun around, and there stood Max in the doorway, rumpled and freshly out of bed, his arms folded over his chest.
“I cook better with music,” I said in reply to his one bushy eyebrow slipping up his brow. “Enjoy the show.”
I danced around a bit more, eager to hear him compliment my moves.
“Are you in some sort of pain?” he asked, which kind of stalled my slick steps.
“No, why?”
He shook his head. “You ever watch Seinfeld?”
“Sure.” I lowered the spatula and frying pan from over my head. I also stopped shaking my ass.
“You kind of look like Elaine when she dances.”
My jaw hit my chest. “You think I can’t dance?” I was stunned. Liam had always been glowing in his praise of my dancing ability. He’d been so bad in comparison that he’d never fast danced with me because he’d look so bad. Or so he had said.
“Not really, no.”
I tossed the frying pan onto the stove. “I can dance.”
“No, sorry, you really can’t. I mean, that’s fine, because I can’t either.”
I guessed he could sense I was getting mad. “I can dance. You’re just not used to seeing such soulful smooth moves.”
“If you say so.” He pattered to the door and let Bucky in. I was too stunned and hurt to move.
“I can dance.”
He walked over to me, took the spatula from my hand, and wrapped me in a huge, warm hug.
“No, you can’t.” He nuzzled up my neck, nipping and nibbling along my jugular. “Want to go back to bed for a bit?”
“I may never go to bed with you again,” I teased. Sort of.
“Now that would be a real pity.” He captured my mouth, his breath minty-fresh, then slowly backed me against the still-cold stove. “If I tell you that you dance wonderfully, will you come to bed?”
“Too late for that, Heller. I know what you really think.” I pushed a hand into his briefs, the backs of my fingers skimming the hard length of him.
“I’ll fill your ears with your other talents.” Oh, he was smooth. Not as smooth as me on the dance floor, but smooth. “I’ll fill your ass with my cock too, if you want.”
Oh, yes, I did want. I wanted that really badly.
“Benton! You have thirty minutes until morning service. Drop what you’re doing and get dressed for church.” I cringed at the sound of Aunt Glenna right outside the screen door. Max startled violently. I jerked my hand out of his underwear and cussed.
“You want to watch that talk, Benton. Morning, Max. You’re coming to church too.” Not a question. A statement.
“Uh, yes ma’am.”
“Good boy.”
Off she went in her Sunday best.
“I need to move.” I sighed and snuggled in close for one more kiss, then we had to get moving, before one of them came back and caught me with my hand around his dick again. I’d ask God to forgive me for groping my man on Sunday morning. I was pretty sure he would. God was cool that way.
Chapter Eight
Max
We only needed one more game to get through to the next round, but Washington weren’t taking it easy on us. They’d won game five in our arena, and we were back in Washington for game six. Halfway through this game, we were tied and they were all over Ten like flies on shit. I was currently toe to toe with the big D-man, Vladimir Vleck, six-four, built like a brick outhouse, and his hands in fists in front of him.
I’d already dropped gloves because the asshole had taken Ten into the boards, again, for the second game in a row. Coach wanted me to let it go, work on protecting Ten, but the way they’d had to help Ten off the ice a minute ago had me riled up. Not only that, but the rest of the Railers were suddenly playing with caution, and we couldn’t have that.
This game was stale, and it was my role to stir things up.
I waited for Vleck to make the first move. He was chirping some shit about my dick, or my mother, but I wasn’t listening. You don’t chirp and fight; it makes you sloppy. I saw him drop his shoulder, telegraphing the punch, dodged it, and came out swinging. I got two clean punches in, and he staggered back and gripped my jersey. I buried my skates, leaned into the hold, and he began to lose his balance. I could taste the victory, punching three times more, feeling others pulling at my jersey, hauling me away from the flailing Russian on the ice.
“Fuck you,” I said loud enough to hear but hidden enough that I wouldn’t get called on it. Toly was between us now, his face split in a wide grin. He patted my shoulder, then went with me and the ref to the penalty box, and that was it. They helped Vleck off the ice, blood on his face, and I was given a five-minute major for fighting, Vleck got an instigator call. Amazing how I could make things look to the refs when I wanted to. The team captain shouted something at me in Russian, and Toly shrugged when I looked at him.
“Your mom,” Toly explained.
I turned to face the massive Russian, who stared at me with fire in his eyes, and then I shrugged. I’d done my bit, and the team could rally off it.
Ten was back on the ice. He skated by and nodded; I’d taken out their biggest, baddest D, and he was making me a promise that he would make it count.
Twenty-three seconds later, with a move that would make playoff highlight reels, a crisp pass from the captain, and Ten buried the puck past a startled, off-center goalie.
The fire of competition burned hot in the team, and suddenly we were winning. Two more, and we’d broken the opposition. Toly even snagged an empty-net goal when they took off their goalie.
We won the game, won this round and the newest expansion team had made it to the next stage of the Stanley Cup. It wasn’t at home though, and the Washington crowd booed, but we’d had that all night; winning in the opposing team’s arena is something we can all hope for in our careers. Ten skated in circles around me, and we head-bumped Stan, who couldn’t stop grinning like an idiot.
Yeah. This was good.
And I needed to share that with someone. I needed to share all of this with Ben, who I knew had been watching.
We were staying at the hotel tonight, flying out in the morning, and the mood was high.
I didn’t look at my phone. I didn’t want anyone else to see what he’d said, or what I was going to say back to him. I wanted complete privacy, just me and his words, and I would savor them and the fact we were on a win. I was stopped by team members, including Dieter who told me Lola sent her congratulations. I thanked him, standing patiently as he told me all about how he and Lola had placed bets on how many fights I would get into. He’d won, apparently, because Lola had assumed I would need to drop gloves at least three times to have any effect on the game.
Toly wanted to tell me how much of a dick Vleck was, and how pleased he was that I’d taken him out.
Ten wanted to high-five me, then do this complicated fist bump thing and explain to me how I needed to get a Pokémon tattoo.
Jared just shook my hand and nodded.
By the time I got back to my room I was a mess wanting to know what Ben had texted me. As soon as the door shut, I opened the phone and saw just two words.
Call me.
I stripped off my jacket, my belt, my tie and pants, and sat on my bed, pressing his number and not quite knowing what to say when Ben answered on the first ring.
“Fuck me,” he said, uncharacteristically cursing, “That was intense,” he added. “Congratulations.”
I’d known I would love whatever he said, I just hadn’t known by how much. It wasn’t the words; it was the breathlessness of the delivery, as if the game, or maybe me, had really blown him away.
“It was a good game—”
“Good? It was amazing. The way that you took Vleck out, oh my God, I’ve never seen him fall so fast, and then Ten, the way he took… Look, I’m officially a Railers fan for the rest of the Cup run.”
I let him ramble on about Corsi scores, and twine, and lights, and the way Ten in his opinion would one day be captain, and how we missed Arvy but that it was okay because Dieter was a brilliant two-way forward. It went on and on, and I realized I was listening to a fanboy, and it made me smile. I was pulling Ben over from the dark side of supporting Washington, and if I had my way I would keep him.
Not for myself.
As a fan.
Of course.
He finally ran out of steam, and his voice dropped. “You know what I liked the most?”
I thought we’d covered everything, talking at length about my hit on Vleck, so it wasn’t something to do with me, which left me a little disappointed until he started talking again.
“They showed the room post-game on Twitter. That bit when the Railers hand that blue hat to the MVP of the game? I know they gave it to Stan, but that should have gone to you, and then you went over to congratulate Stan…and…” He went quiet for a little while. “You’d taken your shirt off, and you stopped right in front of the camera, sweaty, your hair like you’d run your hands through it, and I’ve never seen anything so sexy.”
Jeez. I was so hard, and I pushed my hand into my jersey shorts, wrapping my fingers around my aching cock. My man’s voice was like fine whiskey, a burn and then a smooth warmth that flooded my system. I heard his breath hitch and I knew what he was doing.
“Are you getting yourself off?” I asked.
“When you turned to the camera and realized they’d caught you on camera, you flexed, I saw you, and the sweat, and…guh…”
I pushed at my shorts and tucked up my shirt, wishing I had more time—I wanted to prolong this—and I put him on speaker phone.
“What would you do?” I asked as I shuffled back on the bed, bending my legs and letting them fall to the sides. I set up a rhythm on my cock and closed my eyes.
“I’d just make you stand there,” he said, his voice hitching again, “and I’d go to my knees, right there, and I’d suck you down so far…”
“Go on,” I encouraged as he stopped.
“What would you do?” he said, throwing my question back at me.
God, how was I supposed to think? “I wouldn’t let you move. I’d hold your head still and I would fuck your mouth so hard…”
Silence, and then he groaned, and I knew that sound—it was him coming—and in seconds I was there with him, curling up into my fist then falling back on the bed, spent.
We were both quiet, and I don’t know how long it lasted, but it was Ben who broke the silence.
“I’ve never done this before,” he murmured, “but seeing you on the screen, and you winning…”
It sounded to me as if he was apologizing, what for I didn’t know. Was it because it was a first for him? Or because he’d got turned on by a game?
“I’ve never had phone sex either, but hockey fights make me horny,” I admitted, and I wasn’t lying. I’d never made enough of a connection with a man to do something so incredibly intimate, but I was the first to admit I’d gotten off on a game before.
More silence, and I was just at the point of saying something stupid when he began to talk.
“It’s not that I didn’t have a healthy sex life with Liam; I did.”
Do I want to hear this?
“It’s just we were always with each other. We worked together, lived together, and I loved him so much, I didn’t want to be away from him.”
What does he want me to say to that?
“Uh-huh,” I offered, because it was all I could think of. Part of me needed to hear him talk about his husband, because then he would see that what we had wasn’t the same. It was just sex.
The other part of me ached for him, felt sorry for him, to have experienced such incredible, heartbreaking loss.
“I’m sorry he died,” I added to my simple uh-huh; I think he needed to hear that.
“Thank you,” he murmured. “I don’t… I need…” He was clearly searching hard for the right words. “I’m sorry I ruined this,” he finally said.
My stock response would be something crass about getting off to the sound of his voice, and to thank him for the fun. That was old Max. The Max that existed before I met Ben before he made me rethink what I was doing with myself.
Yes, I was retiring in a few weeks, yes, I was living with the fear of death hanging over me, but somehow Ben was reaching inside me, past all those knotted fears, and he was touching something icy and turning it hot.
So I rethought what I was going to say.
“You didn’t ruin anything, Ben. I want you to talk to me. I need to know you.”
Where those words came from, I didn’t know. I just knew they were true.
We had a few days off until our next game. Our opponents hadn’t been decided; their games went to the full seven needed, and that meant when they met us in the next round they would be tired.
At least, that was what Coach Benton said, plainly, clearly, and without any hint of emotion. You’d think the man would be excited about getting this far in the playoffs, but he was calmly rational about the whole thing. Today he had us working on defending against Ten, which was an education in itself. The kid wasn’t just fast, he had this way of looking at the ice, an awareness that had Westy and me dancing all over the place, not to mention Stan, who spent a lot of time patting his pipes in apology. The only time I actually stopped Ten was when I was catching a breather. He didn’t realize I’d stopped and he ran into my motionless stance. He wasn’t even breathing hard.
“My bad,” he said, and broke off in the opposite direction.
“You think Jared puts speed in Ten’s Wheaties?” Westy groused from next to me.
I tapped his shin with my stick. “Nah, we’re just getting old.”
“I’m twenty-four, asshole.”
I leveled him a look. “Then yeah, you’re just slow.”
Westy huffed a laugh, and we took our positions, watching a grinning Ten stick-handling the puck in front of us. Damn kid was going to take us the whole way to the final, I knew it in my bones.
“Come take try goal,” Stan shouted, his words even more jumbled than usual. I admired the big guy, with his vocab out of a Russian spy film and his love of all things Erik.
“I’m two up,” Ten yelled back.
Stan growled; I could hear it from there. “I let score. Make big ego.” he said, determined, and took a stance.
And then Ten moved, from a standing start he flew; left, a wraparound, catching my stick with his, lifting it, driving the puck between Westy’s legs, and he shot on the goal. Luckily, Stan was more observant and a lot faster than me and Westy, and he caught the puck, patting his pipes as he held it close to his chest like a kitten, hugging it protectively.
“You suck like Roomba suck rug!” he shouted at Ten.
I watched him and Ten chirping at each other, waited for the next D-pair to take their turn, then glanced up at the rafters. There were no retired jerseys there yet, and I doubted I would ever have my number retired after only being there a few months. Still, I would be part of this history-making team, and we were through to the next damn round.
Arvy skated over, still in the no-contact jersey. If he’d been healthy, then we would have had a formidable first line, unstoppable.
“How long now?” Westy asked, looking down at the injured leg as though he might be able to discern how the injury was. Then I realized I was doing the same thing.
Arvy shrugged. “Might get some ice time soon.”
Ten snowed to a stop next to us. “You back for the next round?” He sounded hopeful, but Arvy didn’t have anything to tell us.
Apart from one interesting thing.
“You’re looking at Mister April,” he said, and flexed his muscles. “I’ve still got it.”
“July,” Ten said. “They wanted me shirtless; Jared wasn’t impressed.”
I had no idea what they were talking about, but when Westy joined in to announce he was November and they wanted him to sit in fake snow, I was intrigued.
“It’s the calendar for the shelter, the one where we’re posing with the puppies as a fund-raiser. Ben is organizing it.” Ten slid me a sly look as he said that.
Arvy piped up. “What month are you?”
“I have no idea.” I doubted I would have been allocated anything. I was there for the Cup run, giving some depth and force, but after that I doubted the Railers would keep me on even if I wasn’t going to retire anyway.
“He’ll be October," Arvy said. “Give him some horns and he can be a devil.”
“We should get them to paint him red," Westy added.
“I hate you all.”
But at least the banter took the focus away from why I hadn’t been given a month to pose for. I didn’t want to talk about all that right now; my single-mindedness had to be on getting the Cup. As I showered, I thought about the rest of my day and felt peaceful.
Post-practice I was going to the shelter to catch up with Ben, we might even have an overnight stay where we actually managed to make love instead of falling asleep.
Life rocked.
And then, as I considered what I wanted out of tonight, I realized I hadn’t thought about having sex with Ben. I’d thought about making love.
My head hurt.
Chapter Nine
Ben
“Benton, if you don’t mind the hot dogs, they’ll be char dogs.”
I jumped a bit at Aunt Glenna’s voice at my side. “Sorry, I was watching the kids playing street hockey.”
I hurried to turn the wieners with my barbecue tongs as people milled around in my front yard, sipping lemonade and snacking on potato chips.
“Mmm-hmm. I’m sure it was the kids playing street hockey that had you all googly-eyed and dreamy.”
