Page 12 of Seduction on the Slopes

I can’t say I’m entirely shocked though. If a guy gets so worked up that his last meal makes an encore, it’s not surprising that he’d get so preoccupied with his worries that he wouldn’t be able to keep an erection, never mind beat off. But if a twenty-one-year-old dude can’t keep a stiffy? This is serious business.

Why can I not be one of those athletes who will take every advantage, win by any means necessary, even if those means are less than honorable? Why must I have a conscience, and why must my parents have drilled morals and sportsmanship into my brain? Could I not be unscrupulous in this one thing? But no. It may be a curse, but it’s mine and I know every time I look at those medals, knowing it wasn’t a fair fight, that I’d get a sour taste in my mouth and they wouldn’t be worth as much to me. It’s not worth anything if you didn’t come by it honestly. It’d be worse than outright stealing them. So though it is so wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong, my moral compass is pointing me to this as the only solution.

“Well, that’s not going to work.”

Crash mutters a “no” from under his arms which he’s folded over his face.

“Then I guess there’s only one remaining option.”

Those slim, sinewy arms of his shift enough to let his eyes peek through. “What’s that?”

I shrug, feeling self-conscious because what I’m about to suggest is patently ridiculous. And yet it’s the only solution that I can see, and I’m not a stupid man. In the long term, yes, we will figure something reasonable out but for now . . . emergency measures are called for. Emergency measures which I have to say out loud, and I don’t know if I can look at the guy as I do it. My skin is already burning up, and my insides are feeling all squirrely.

However, I’m the adult here, clearly. Which means I need to man up and present this as a, you know, think of England kind of moment. If the kid was willing to steal equipment to ski, is it really all that much more scandalous to accept some,oh-god-is-it-my-turn-to-puke,aidfrom a teammate to get the job done? My sense of decorum shrivels up and dies a torturous, dramatic death but I press forward even so.

“You need help, and I’m going to give it to you.” Who would’ve thought a person could feel so righteous and so mortified at the same time? But it’s about equal parts in my brain.

Crash’s arms come the rest of the way off his face and his eyes have gone big and impossibly round. “You’re going to fuck me?”

Interesting. Crash’s first impulse is to bottom. Which—Fuck, Palmer. Not okay. It doesn’t matter. This is just one teammate helping another teammate out by . . . any means necessary.

“No. Here’s the thing. I don’t fuck before races. It’s maybe a stupid superstition, but it’s worked out for me so far, and I’m not going to change it now. So, I’m not going to come.”

“Okay . . .” Crash’s eyes have narrowed, and he’s tipped his head like one of my mother’s confused corgis.Say it, say it, just fucking say it.

“But I’m going to, uh, assist you. If that’s okay.”

Chapter Eight

Crash

Miles Palmer has just offered me his . . . services. Holy. Shit. He’s like a stud horse. Except the exact opposite of a stud horse, because he’s not going to give up his spunk. God I’d love to make him spurt into my hand, my mouth, my ass, pretty much anywhere. But no. That’s not allowed.

“I . . . I don’t understand.”

“Haven’t you ever gotten someone off without getting off yourself?” Miles is looking at me like I’m some kind of alien life-form.

“No? I mean, what’s the point?”

His eyes narrow, and his perfectly arched eyebrows crunch in the middle. “That . . . is a conversation for another day. And not something you need to worry about anyway. I’m the one who will be depriving myself, not you. You . . . you’re supposed to, you know.”

Blow my wad. Shoot my load. Get my rocks off. Bake a cream pie. Show my O face. Spurt. Splooge. Bust a nut.

But I can’t say anything remotely like that toMiles-stick-up-his-butt-Palmer,so I settle for “Yeah.”

“Worth a shot, right?”

“Yeah.” My mind’s gone blank of just about everything, because now I’m picturing getting down and dirty with my childhood hero, and it feels . . . weird? Better than it should, but still weird. I mean, I should be grossed out by this, right? But the thing is—and I’ll never ever tell him this, because I’m pretty sure he’d be freaked out by it—Miles is the guy who made me realize I was gay. At some point, my hero worship of those box covers and newspaper clippings became less a fan shrine and more a spank bank.

None of the girls I knew, or any of the bikini spreads my other friends posted on their walls, made my dick react the way my pictures of Miles Palmer did. I didn’t even try to fight it. My parents may have had a lot of faults, but one thing they always made clear to all of us was that it was cool to be who you were. Love who you want, how you want. Wouldn’t matter to them.

So here he is, come to life, and planning to play, I don’t even know—gigolo? That seems wrong. So very, very wrong. But he’s right. We’re out of options. And who knows if this will actually work—please let it work, please let it work, for so many reasons, please for the love of Pete, let it work—but as he’s said, it’s worth a shot.

“All right then.” For the first time, he seems uncertain. To be fair, this probably isn’t something he does every day. Does he? Nah, he’d be way smoother about it if it were. This is the least smooth I’ve ever seen him. He’s like a goddamn moguls course.

“So, uh, how do we do this?” Because I’ve got no experience with this kind of thing. Either I’ve been trashed at a party and hooked up with someone, or I’ve been with a boyfriend, and half the time we’d be fucked up, too. I’ve definitely never had someone get me off as a . . . service, or whatever this is. Is he going to like pull on gloves and be all clinical about it? Because I don’t think that would help matters. Maybe make it worse. Yep, a lot worse, because at least if it was just his hands—oh my god, hishands—on me, then I could pretend that it’s more than it is. It’ll take me about three seconds to lose it, because Jesus, this is Miles Palmer, who I’ve had a crush on for as long as I’ve had crushes, and I get to have any kind of sex with him whatsoever? My pulse is beating so hard, I swear I feel it in my toenails.

“I hadn’t really thought it through that far to be honest with you.”

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