Page 62 of On Thin Ice

I let him go, watching the broad set of his shoulders, feeling helpless and heartsick. And I didn’t have the first clue how the hell to stop wanting him.

* * *

Blair was buzzingaround the space, fiddling with a ring light and a tripod. Not my favorite brand, but probably better for the harsh overhead lights of the arena. Behind her, the two interns from that meeting in Ramos’s office—guys I’d taken to calling Skinny Jeans and Gun Show because no one had ever actually introduced them by name—were hauling two heavy chairs out onto a blue carpet set up on center ice.

“Thanks again for agreeing to do this.” Blair flashed a timid smile at Ethan and me. Between that meeting and her nerves now, I got the impression this was the first big project Dante had put her in charge of, and she was desperate for it to be a success.

I could have told her that she’d picked the grumpiest guy on the team and there was little chance the footage would wind up being what she had in mind, but I felt bad raining on her parade.

I was fucking the guy, and even I couldn’t make him do what I wanted.

Well, most of the time, at least.

Alone at night in his bed, our bodies slick and sticky with sweat and cum, he was all soft sighs and sweet grins. And every now and then, when he was extra blissed out, he’d curl up beside me and talk. Tell me about what it was like growing up in the town where we’d gone to college, about his siblings and their kids. Confess how much he missed them, but didn’t know if he’d ever go back.

As much as I loved the sex—because really, it was the best I’d ever had—those conversations were my favorite part about … whatever it was that we were doing.

“And thanks for posting that teaser yesterday, Bell,” Blair continued, pulling my attention back to the reason we were here on our day off. “We got a couple thousand new followers almost immediately, and they’ve been steadily trickling in ever since.”

“Anything for you,” I said, putting a little extra sweetness into my tone.

From behind me, I heard the sounds of a poorly disguised snort.

I flashed Ethan a grin and a wink over my shoulder.

He rolled those pretty hazel eyes of his in response.

I turned to face him. Walking backward, I lifted my hands, palms facing upward, as if to askWhat are you gonna do?Just because we were dicking each other down almost every night and blowing each other most mornings didn’t mean I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to get my flirt on with a pretty girl … even if I was beginning to think something was going on between her and our center forward.

Ethan rolled his eyes even harder.

“Careful, or they might get stuck like that,” I teased, sticking my tongue out.

When he kept scowling, I flicked it side to side—a crude facsimile of how I’d moved it against the underside of his crown that morning.

His nostrils flared.

I chuckled and, glancing around to make sure Blair and the interns were still at my back, repeated the gesture slower this time, my movements more deliberate.

“Stop it,” he mouthed silently, his eyes scanning the area to make sure no one was watching.

“So paranoid,” I mouthed back, shaking my head.

I turned back around in time to see Gun Show gesture to the chair on the left. “Let’s have you here, Mr. Bell, and you in the other one, Mr. Harrison.”

I barked out a surprised laugh as I sprawled into the high-backed chair. “Dude. Mr. Bell is my dad, and that guy’s a dick. It’s just Bell.”

His cheeks turned pink, and he rocked back on his heels. “Uh, yeah. Okay, Mister … Bell,” he finished lamely, his face beginning to resemble the tomatoes still growing in Marjorie’s planter boxes.

Ethan sat down beside me with a grunt and pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up around his head. His knee bounced restlessly, a nervous tick that was more typical for me than it was for him.

The Ethan Harrison I’d met all those weeks ago had been almost preternaturally still. His gaze fixed, eyes always watching and assessing. He still frequently wore that stony mask—the one that said approach at your own risk—but since we’d started hooking up, he’d lost a bit of that stillness. He was more fidgety these days, almost like his skin could no longer contain his anxiety.

I’d managed to work up the nerve to ask him about it a couple of nights ago after we beat Pittsburgh, but he shut that line of questioning down the best way he knew how—by hoovering my cock into his wet, warm mouth.

I hadn’t gotten the answers I wanted that night, but I’d learned a few other things about Ethan Harrison. Like the fact that he’d somehow mastered his gag reflex.

A scrape of movement to my left caught my attention.

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