heart was still tripping rapidly inside me when his hand ran down my back then cupped my right buttock. I lurched away from him and his touch, spinning as I stumbled away. Dan’s face was dark with new whiskers. His eyebrows knitted.
“We have to be on the bus in—”
“I heard you,” he said, his nostrils flaring as he began to pick up the vibe I was throwing out. I glanced down at the watch in my hand again. “So this is how you want it? This is just about having a fuck-buddy for the road?”
I shrugged a shoulder. Dan sucked in a sharp breath as if I had slapped him or something. I made myself look at the man. His head was shaking in disbelief. His brow was deeply furrowed.
My gut rolled over on itself. I scratched my chest. “I don’t do emotional shit.”
He blinked a few times, then his jaw set tightly.
“We can still room together. I really like what we do to each other.”
Dan threw back his shoulders. God above, his body was a fucking work of art. Looking at him was like admiring some dark-haired dwarven warrior. He was thickly roped with muscle, with fiery eyes and bubbling anger just under the surface. All the man was missing was a beard, some finely crafted armor, a battle axe and a blond elfin companion to trade good-natured barbs with. My dick was stiff. He did not pretend not to notice how aroused I was. How could he?
“So I’m good enough to fuck but not wake up with, is that right?” he asked sharply.
His attitude instantly set me off. I tossed the watch at him. “If I wanted estrogen-laced BS at seven in the a.m., I would have fucked a chick,” I commented as I walked around him. I needed to piss. That would be tricky at the moment.
Closing the bathroom door in his face, I turned on the shower. My body was tacky with sweat and semen. Under the flow I stepped. This time he didn’t come in. Ten minutes later I stepped from the steam, towel around waist, to find him gone. No note. No goodbye. Just an empty two-star hotel room with the clinging aroma of our shared passion on the heated air.
I raced outside, bare-footed, in nothing but a towel. Buttonwood was just leaving his room, his eyes carrying bigger bags than our equipment manager. A gust of wind right off a fucking iceberg roared up under my towel. My balls climbed into my body for the duration.
The captain of the Cougars looked at me with an arched brow. “You’re going to freeze your nuts off, Kalinski,” he said, turning to pull the door to his room closed against the wind. “You looking for your boyfriend?” he asked, meeting my look over his shoulder.
There were two ways to handle this. Since neither Dan nor I was out, I could either deny or confront verbally. Being who I am…
“You need to worry about your own nuts, Buttonwood, or more precisely what your wife is going to do to them when she gets an anonymous call telling her about your philandering ways. Oh yeah, I went there, and I will so make the call if I hear one word about Arou.” Arms folded over my naked chest, I sneered at the fucker, daring him to retaliate.
To his credit, he did manage to look contrite. “Maybe you and him were watching porn last night and that was what I heard.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I said, stepping aside to let him pass. “And maybe I was mistaken about which room you were in. See you at practice, Cap.”
Buttonwood walked off, his shoulders up to his ears. I stalked back into the room I shared with Dan, slammed the door, then put my fist into a wall. Or four.
When I boarded the bus ten minutes later, right hand wrapped in an old Ace bandage, I saw the top of Dan’s head in the last seat. I sat down behind the driver, my gear still stowed in the hold of the couch. I burrowed into my coat. The last few stragglers ambled onto the bus, the door hissed shut and we headed to the stadium.
Laughter broke out at the rear of the bus. I slunk down in my seat even farther. That was a pretty common sound around Arou, I was noticing. He