CHAPTER 1
NOAH
The first time I met Luke Alexander he was getting his dick sucked under the mistletoe in my dining room. By a guy. Luke was my older brother’s college roommate. Justin had brought him home freshman year for the holidays because Luke was from Oregon and his family couldn’t afford his plane ticket home.
I was seventeen. He was nineteen. It was the twenty-third of December. My dad was on a business trip, coming home the next morning. My brother had invited some old high school friends over. Everyone got drunk, including me. No one was able to drive home so there were people sleeping all over the living room. Justin and a girl had locked themselves in my dad’s room, which left his bed, in the room he shared with me, empty. Luke had taken it, and Steve, my brother’s high school friend, had taken the floor between our beds. I woke up at four in the morning alone in the room with a pounding headache. I’m a bit (to say the least) overzealous when it comes to not letting people drink and drive, so I got up to make sure all the keys Justin and I had confiscated were still in the fruit bowl in the kitchen.
They were. No one had left. But I didn’t find out by looking. I found out by walking into the dining room and finding Steve on his knees, with his mouth wrapped around Luke’s dick and a hand cupping Luke’s round, muscled, bare ass.
I stood there, speechless, mouth hanging open, eyes bugging right out of my head. It was Steve who noticed me first. He stopped bobbing up and down on Luke’s very long, very thick dick. What did it taste like? How did it feel? Judging by the bulge of the front of Steve’s boxer briefs I’m guessing the answer to those questions was, ‘Pretty damn good’.
When Steve stopped bobbing, Luke looked over his shoulder to where I stood in the entryway from the front hall. “Hey.”
That’s all he said. Hey. Like he was greeting one of his teammates as they entered the locker room to get ready for a college hockey game. Hey. No one had bothered to turn off the Christmas lights outside, that lined the porch in excess, across the front and down every single column, so the light reflected into the house. Luke’s high cheekbones and naturally tanned skin glowed red then green in a chaotic rhythm. My heart was beating in that same chaotic rhythm as my eyes darted from Luke’s face, to Steve’s, to Luke’s dick, which now stood at attention, getting no attention from Steve’s mouth anymore.
“We left the bedroom to not traumatize you,” Luke says finally, breaking the oddly thick silence. “So do you mind going back to bed and acting like this never happened, please?”
I blinked. Inhaled sharply and scurried, like a scared mouse, back to my room. Then I spent the next seven days avoiding the living hell out of Luke Alexander while simultaneously letting him occupy my every waking thought. And wondering why I got hard, and had to jerk off, every time I replayed the scene in my head.
I’m twenty-four now and that moment, that image, is still frequently pulled out of the spank bank when I’m rubbing one out. I’m ashamed to admit I’ve even thought about it while I’ve been having sex to push me over the edge. Sex with women, because I haven’t had sex with men. Yet. I haven’t even kissed one. Yet. But I think about it way more than a straight guy would, which is how I know I’m bisexual.
I haven’t told anyone yet because I haven’t had the balls to confirm my assumptions. But then, I got traded. And I found myself spending every day and night in the presence of the person who made me question my sexuality in the first place. My brother’s old friend was my new Captain.
I was drafted into the NHL when I was twenty by the Portland Riptide. I’ve been playing hockey since I was three, and my whole life hinged on that one goal. I mean, not to anyone else, but to me. My dad constantly told me I’d be fine if I didn’t get drafted. But I wanted it so badly and the idea of failing at the one dream I’ve ever had was devastating. I got drafted one-hundredth overall. Not great, but not bad. I had accomplished my dream.
I played on the fucking farm team for two years before being moved up to play for the Riptide. I was holding my own on the second line. Middle of the pack, I guess, but better than the bottom. But two weeks ago, on the first day of December, my agent called and told me the news. I had been traded to the Las Vegas Vipers. I was on a plane that night and at practice in my new arena the next morning.
Being ignored by Luke.
It was so obvious that Luke was ignoring me that my new teammates started to ask questions. Stuff like ‘what’s up with you and Alexander?’ Or ‘did you guys fight during a game when you played in Van or something? He clearly doesn’t like you’. It was awkward and I began to worry the coaches would bring it up. But I wasn’t sure how to fix it. I mean, how do you broach the subject? Walk up to him post-game, in the shower, or while we’re taking the team bus back to the hotel or airport, and be like ‘Hey, so I’m sorry I interrupted your blow job back in the day, but…’ But… what? That was the question. Was that moment really the reason Luke Alexander was ignoring me now?
Finally, on a road trip just before our holiday break, I decided to find out. We were playing in Maine against the Portland Riptide. The team had arrived a day early, which we did a lot with cross-country trips. My brother and father were coming into town tonight to take me and Luke, who had remained friends with Justin, to dinner. And I really didn’t want that to be as awkward as everything else had been since I joined his team, so that’s why I’m currently knocking on his hotel room door.
CHAPTER 2
NOAH
He swings it open, and I can tell by his expression he looked through the peep hole and knew it was me. He’s scowling. I should be intimidated but it’s mildly arousing instead. I clear my throat. “Hey. So I was wondering if you have a minute.”
“I have to get ready for dinner with you and your family,” Luke says flatly. “So not really.”
“But, like, dinner isn’t for another two hours,” I remind him as he sticks his head into the hallway a little, the muscles in his thick neck straining as he looks both ways down the hall. “This will just take a second.”
What is he looking for, I wonder. He sighs and mutters, “You have the worst timing ever,” then pushes the door wider. “Get in here.”
I step into his room, which is basically the same as mine, just reversed with the bed on the opposite wall, and with a better view being that he’s two floors up. I can see the Old Port from here, whereas my view is just the brick and glass of the building in front of the hotel. I hear the door click behind me and then he speaks before I can. “Are you here to apologize?”
Luke walks around me to the bed. He’s a hulking guy, six foot three, with linebacker shoulders, thick muscular thighs, and a bubble butt that would make Sidney Crosby’s look flat. Not that I’m small. I was, sort of, at seventeen. I was only five-ten and kind of scrawny. All muscle but not meat back then. I hit my growth spurt late. Now I’m six foot one and two hundred and ten pounds with thicker, heavier muscles instead of the ropey ones. I was just developing the last time we were alone in a room together. Well, I guess not alone. Steve was there but he had his mouth full. I… wait, did he just ask me if I was going to apologize?
I look down at him as he drops into a club chair by the window and folds his big arms over his broad chest. He’s wearing a plain white t-shirt and a pair of loose woven joggers. They look like they’re made out of a charcoal gray cashmere throw. “Apologize? To you? For what?”
Luke’s dark eyes narrow. Those eyes are fringed with so many dark lashes there’s a rabid debate among female hockey fans online about whether or not he wears mascara. “You know what for.”
I sigh and shove my hands into the pockets of my own joggers, simple team issued cotton ones with the logo on the right pocket, and shrug a little. “You want me to formally apologize for accidentally walking in on you getting a blow job in my house when I was a kid? Then yes. I formally apologize. I’m sorry.”
Luke stares at me with such intensity the mild arousal I was feeling is starting to turn into cold, hard unease. It’s clear that was not the apology he was gunning for. “You think I give a fuck you saw me?”
“I mean… you said you left the bedroom so I wouldn’t see, so yeah. I guess I thought you cared,” I mumble and the feeling of being an awkward teenager, a feeling I never wanted to revisit, is bubbling up from my gut again. Jesus Christ, this sucks. “I wasn’t trying to be a peeping Tom. I wanted to make sure you and that guy hadn’t driven off somewhere. I’ve got a thing about drinking and driving, obviously.”
