We stood there in the tunnel, the noise of warm-ups bleeding through the walls, the moment stretching thin and uncomfortable.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
He laughed, a short sound without humor. “Don’t be. You’re not the one doing this.”
“I know,” I said. “But I hate watching it happen.”
He stared down the length of the tunnel, eyes fixed on nothing in particular. “I should be out there.”
“I know,” I repeated, because there wasn’t a better answer.
The weight of the night pressed in around us, my excitement about the Surge moving on to Round 2 tangling with the knot in my stomach. This game was supposed to be fun. A celebration. Instead it felt like standing in the wings while the world went on without him.
“Come on,” I said after a moment, touching his arm. “We’ll watch from the stands. Yell at the refs. Pretend we’re normal fans.”
He huffed out a breath and nodded, though his eyes stayed on the tunnel a second longer before he turned away.
As we headed back toward the noise and the lights, I squeezed his hand, trying to offer something solid in a night that kept taking pieces away from him. The crowd swallowed us up again, cheers rising as the team hit the ice, and I did my best to hold both truths at once. Pride in this team. Anger at the situation. And a quiet, stubborn hope that this wasn’t the end of his story, no matter how much it felt like it right now.
All through the first period, Landon couldn’t keep his agitation at bay. For the first time in my life, I found myself focusing on something other than the game while I was there.
“I’m gonna go grab us some popcorn,” I said, when the players started coming back to the ice for the second period.
But Landon grabbed my hand and stood up with me. “I have a better idea. I can’t sit here and watch this. Come on.”
With his fingers gripping my wrist, he led me out of the stands and back down the tunnel. To the locker room.
It still held the residual scent of adrenaline the guys had left behind moments ago, but where it made me pause, Landon didn’t seem to notice. As the whistle sounded off in the distance, calling the start to the game, I found myself entangled in a whole other style of play.
Landon pulled his t-shirt over his head and discarded it on the bench, fixing me with a wicked smile. “We have twenty minutes, and I never got the chance to christen this locker room yet.”
I approached him, stopping only once his back was flush against the locker behind him. “I don’t like playing to a clock. So where does that leave us?”
While he searched for something smart to say back, I sat on the bench in front of him, making sure to brush my body againsthis with every little movement. Pulling my lower lip between my teeth, I arched back and watched his eyes move down to the way my breasts rose under my shirt.
I let my own gaze wander over his inked skin, the lines and contours of a perfectly athletic body. For a brief moment, it snagged on the bulge in his jeans before looking up again, determined embers peering into stormy blue.
“Nothing to say, Cross?”
At my last words, his eyebrow briefly furrowed, but a playful simper pulled at his lips. “Two things: You need to be quiet, and you need to be quick.”
He already knew I’d agree with both those conditions, so I didn’t bother speaking and just leaned forward. The bench was at a perfect height for me to be directly in front of his now visibly hard cock.
Landon brought a hand to my face, gently brushing my jaw. His thumb sent jolts of electricity coursing through my body, making me melt all over. Snickering at the shudder rippling through me, he brought his hands to the waist of his jeans, his abdominal muscles flexing enticingly.
His voice husky and low, he added, “I feel like I should check one last time that you really want to do this.”
I swept his hands aside and undid the jeans myself, which was all the answer I had in me to give. In a flourish of denim, his jeans dropped to the floor with his boxers, and his hard cock sprung free. It twitched in front of me, ready to be played with.
With a delicious hum, I placed my palms on his stomach, relishing the feel of his abs tensing under my touch. Following the perfect V of his muscles, I closed a fist around his dick and squeezed lightly. Landon released a sharp breath as I wet my lips and leaned closer to the tip of it.
Opening my mouth, I hovered in front of it but did not take it in yet. Instead, I gave him an admonishing look and said, “I hope you know your rules apply to you too. Can you be quiet for me, Landon?”
He bit the inside of his lip and nodded, hands braced to the locker on either side of him.
With studied slowness, I moved my hand toward myself, slid my palm around his tip, and pushed back, up and down in a steady, repetitive motion. Groaning, he broke eye contact to tilt his head back.
I stopped stroking him, my hand still gripping his cock. “Also, I like it when you talk to me. The dirtier the better.”
