He grabbed Nico by the back of the head and pulled him into a kiss.
In the middle of the dance floor.
A dance floor Nico imagined was filled with familiar faces and strangers alike.
For the briefest of moments, he dreamed of life outside the cage.
Then, the music stopped and Nico was pulled out of that fantasy.
Pulled back into the real world where this was all he could have, and maybe it was his aching cock talking, or maybe it was his heart, maybe something else… Maybe it was the way Cooper continued stealing his breath, his oxygen, his ability to think clearly.
But there, inside that cage, Nico was happy.
Cooper broke from the kiss, his voice ragged and breathy, “The night doesn’t have to end here.”
Chapter Twenty
october 2023 - los angeles
The bet: Whichever team scored the highest against their respective opponents would be the victor, and the winning quarterback would get to tie the other one up during their next planned meeting the following week.
The victor: The Hollywood Knights won against the Alabama Oilers 21-17. The Columbus Cobras won against the Nashville Outlaws 20-14.
The situation: Cooper lay naked on Nico’s California king bed, his hands and feet handcuffed to the headboard and footboard.
Nico stoodon the terrace just outside the parted French doors, leaning against the railing with his phone pressed against his ear. Natalie rambled in circlesabout how awful the new principal at her school was. Nico was a good brother and so he listened, but it was getting harder and harder to concentrate on what his sister was rambling about. His cock throbbed in his underwear, tenting against the pinstripe fabric of the boxer shorts he’d stolen from Cooper’s bag.
Just through the doors, Cooper was stretched out on Nico’s bed. His hair had grown back since buzzing it earlier in the year and Nico preferred a little bit of length.
“Nico, are you still there?” Natalie asked through the phone.
“It’s not like you’ve stopped talking enough to let me interject, but the short version is your boss is an asshole, you should switch districts, and I love you but I have to go. My agent is on the other line.”
“If you hang up this phone?—”
Nico did, in fact, hang up. The next time they saw each other, his sister would make him pay for this grave sin. For now, though…
Nico stepped back into the bedroom, leaving the doors open behind him. With the house parked against the shore, there was nobody who could see into the room. More importantly, nobody could see what Nico was about to do to his rival. After theirdate—god, he hated that word—in the wide open space of John John, Nico craved more. But it went back to the same ol’ locked hotel rooms, hiding in closets and hiding in rooms with the curtains drawn.
Nico grew tired of closed spaces and dreamed of wide open spaces like those chicks used to sing about. That’d never be his life though, so he settled for keeping the doors open.
Cooper cocked his head to the right as Nico approached the bed. “I thought you were going to leave me here to die. Does your sister always talk this much?”
Nico folded his arms over each other as he admired the man in his bed. A naked Greek God who was kind of his but also kind of wasn’t. Whatever it was that they were, it felt real. Felt like the kind of thing one could see blossoming into something else in the future. Felt like something worth giving up one-night stands for. Though he hadn’t told Cooper that part. Hadn’t told him he hadn’t been with a woman since that night in the Florida wilderness. Nico figured the less he leaned into Cooper, the more Cooper would want him in return.
Did that make Nico toxic?
The thought made him grin a little. “Remember, I won our little wager so I decide how this goes.”
Cooper shot him a glare. “You have a gambling problem.”
Nico took another step toward the bed, stopping just short of it. “It’s not really a problem if I’m always winning, is it?”
“You’re just lucky,” Cooper whispered. “Or maybe that intentional grounding call was intentional to force the field goal because this is exactly what I wanted?”
“I know you better than that, Coop. Know you hate losing.” Nico passed his palm over Cooper’s leg, barely touching him. He could feel the ends of Cooper’s leg hair stand on end, the friction of his touch pulling each strand from the surface. “You hate not being in control.”
Cooper’s eyes followed Nico’s hand. “Does it look like I hate this?”
