Page 128 of Arctic Titans of Northwood U: Volume 1

He was…a guy, for fuck’s sake. He was a dude with a dude's chest and a dude’s muscled arms. And a dude’s junk. I wasn’t supposed to feel this desperate when I denied myself the sensation of kissing him.

What the fuck had I just done?

Chapter Eleven

CADEN

I made two hurried steps after Beckett, but he was already lost in the mist.

My cheeks burned and my cock hurt with neediness. My chest was too small for my beating heart and my rib cage was too tight for the air I wanted to inhale. I was suffocating despite the abundance of oxygen.

I clenched my fists and stepped back into the narrow space between the tavern and the diner.

What the fuck had that been?

I blinked twice as the world around me blurred. The fog was thickening. Aimlessly, I leaned against the tavern where Beckett had pinned me. I swiped a hand over my crotch, adjusting myself to relieve some of the excruciating pressure of my hard length. Skinny jeans had been a terrible idea.

I pulled my mind away from that thought and to the elephant in the room. Beckett had kissed me. Not only had he kissed me, but I’d kissed him back.

What the actual fuck?

And the asshole stormed off right after he had brought me to the height of lust. It blazed in me desperately, uselessly, as I gaped at the empty space where he had stood.

If this was his idea of getting back at me for some imaginary wrongdoing, he had another thing coming. He had crossed the line. I didn’t even know how to interpret any of this. Was this a joke? Was it some stupid prank? I was going to kill him. Not only had he scared a perfectly nice guy away, but he had given me the hottest fucking kiss of my life, then ran away.

I touched my lips. They were sensitive, even slightly swollen after the ferocious grinding against Beckett’s mouth. The fucker knew how to use those full lips for more than just pouting sullenly.

I could kill him now.

I could also kiss him again.

But most of all, I wanted to shake him silly and demand to know what the hell he had been thinking.

Sadly, I wouldn’t get that opportunity for a long time. When my blatantly obvious excitement softened enough to decently walk back into the tavern to grab my jacket, I returned to the house. It was quiet and Beckett was nowhere to be seen. I didn’t try too hard because I couldn’t promise myself that I would be smart if I saw him now. Just thinking of him turned me on as much as it maddened me.

The real problem wasn’t that evening. I was alone in my room. Alone with myself and the burning memory of Beckett’s body against mine. The lust he had sparked was easy to handle. Once. But the problems came like an avalanche the next day.

Taking care of my temporary feelings late at night hadn’t resolved anything. I woke up with more questions than I could answer. More than I could put into a list, even. But finding a moment with Beckett became impossible.

If we’d been avoiding each other before, he was doing it twice as hard now. Sunday passed in debilitating confusion. My mind fogged with thoughts, but none led me anywhere. Was he secretly gay? Was he actually into me? Was that some fucked up plan to get back at me for something? I could do nothing without answers. And I would demand those answers with brute force if need be. But on my own, I couldn’t reach a conclusion.

Drills were no place to talk. Beckett made sure he was never alone. He was trailed by an entourage of teammates, always lecturing, discussing, and deliberating. He seemed to never run out of topics to keep people busy listening. And in the evenings, he was never alone, either. I ran into him in the crowded basement and crossed paths with him and Jordan on the stairs. I spotted him in the kitchen, but Tyler was just three paces to the right, and Beckett called him over to show him something in the fridge as if exciting things popped up in fridges just like that.

Day after day, my patience thinned and Beckett seemed more occupied. But the worst fucking thing of all was the dull and distant look he gave me whenever his eyes accidentally brushed over my face. It said, ‘Who is this guy who haunts the house?’ And it bothered me more than words could describe.

You fucking kissed the soul out of my body, you asshole, I wanted to shout whenever he gave me that confused look. Don’t pretend you don’t know me. You’ve had your tongue in my mouth.

Not once did he get annoyed with me on the ice. Not once did he have a lecture for me and my “odd style,” as he’d called it in the past. In fact, we had never worked better together. Beckett allowed me to act however I wanted on the ice. He did everything just to avoid talking to me.

I should have been satisfied with that. It was an unexpected solution to all my problems. Except, I couldn’t look at him without my pulse quickening. I couldn’t pass behind him without taking a moment to inhale a lungful of his spicy-sweet cologne. I couldn’t close my fist around my cock without Beckett’s angry expression emerging from the mist, his arm reaching down to lend a helping hand, and his cock throbbing just like it had when he’d been kissing me.

The fucker wormed his way into my bones and I couldn’t wipe him out.

Late at night, even after relieving myself of the burden of unchecked lust, I wondered when the next moment would come. And I found myself avoiding the question, why had he run away?

A week passed and I was no closer to an answer. The weather took a turn for the worse. Rain drummed against my window on Saturday evening when the team went to a bar. I found a flimsy excuse to avoid it. There was nothing there for me tonight. I couldn’t imagine searching for someone else when this massive question remained unanswered.

And maybe that was what Beckett had wanted to do all along. Maybe he had wanted to mess with my head so much that I ran in circles while he…did what? What the hell did he have to gain, that selfish dick?