Page 26 of Tempting the Teammate
One.
I could remember one of them.
I had to.
But the sweet, colorful, vivid image of Andrei standing in our room not half an hour ago was burned into my memory so strongly that I couldn’t replace it. Not one girl came to my mind. And the harder I tried to remember any, the clearer Andrei became.
He was no longer the real person I had seen tonight. He was the ephemeral vision of uncapturable beauty that the fanfiction stories said he was. He lay in a bed of rose petals, flames flickering from the red scented candles, and his eyes closed. He lay naked, his hands on his abdomen, moving down, exploring his own body, sliding down his groin until his cock and balls were framed by the space between his fingers and his thumbs.
And I was on my knees, watching while saliva filled my hungry mouth.
I came in a tremendous shattering that possessed my chest. Every muscle in my body trembled with tension. I bit my lip to hold back a cry. Was he out there? Had he come back? Could he feel himself being used by me? Did he know I had just made him into a kink, an object, a sex toy for my own pleasure?
The water splashing down on me washed the cum off the back of my finger, taking it down the drain together with my sweat, but the bitter taste of guilt remained exactly where it had been all along.
Because it had been there. I’d known from the start that this was wrong. Even if I were curious—and I sure as hell wasn’t; I was just drawn to all things obscure and taboo—I knew how wrong it was to use my best friend for this exploration.
Tears got lost in the water running down my face, but I knew they were there. They burned hotter than the shower. They carved their paths down my cheeks as I let them go silently. And when they stopped, I washed myself twice before stepping out.
I didn’t look at the laundry basket. I didn’t listen to the sound of footsteps in case he’d come back. I sprayed myself with my deodorant and stepped out to dress quickly, finding the room empty. I slipped under the cover and killed the light.
Thankfully, Andrei didn’t come back before I’d fallen asleep. If he had, he would have seen the guilt on my face. He would have known I had done something awful. He would have asked me what it was, and he would have kept asking until I told him the truth.
Because the thing about Andrei was that I couldn’t lie to him. I’d tried, but he had always seen right through it.
That was why I didn’t go around doing bad things to him behind his back.
That was why I knew he would find out eventually.
Yet with all that settling into the depths of my mind, I couldn’t keep pretending that this was just some obscure curiosity. I couldn’t pretend that the stories hadn’t turned me on before. I couldn’t pretend that seeing him shirtless in our room didn’t tug at my heart harder than any girl ever had.
And fuck, I knew I was going to lose him because of it.
ELEVEN
Andrei
The afternoonof the dreaded buddy day shoot came sooner than I’d expected. Days came and went in a blur. Hockey practice remained in my memory as a sharp and vivid thing, the space between each one filled with a strange stupor. The last few days felt like the final moments before an afternoon nap by the fireplace took you into its comforting depths.
I could recall moments in late October when my cheeks burned against the cold air in the rink. I could recall the path that beads of sweat carved down my back after a rough workout. I could feel Griffin’s silence drowning out all the sounds around us.
And worst of all, I could see him coming up with excuses to leave the room when I entered.
For all his joking, cavalier attitude about the flood of edits with exploding hearts and fake blushes on my cheeks or his, the worst happened. He walked around with his chest thrust out, clapping shoulders and booming with laughter when someone brought up his “boyfriend,” and he handled himself well. He seemed perfectly unbothered.
Up until having to sit next to me.
Or undress near me.
Or have me stand above his head when he did bench press.
“Mind moving your balls an inch back? I can’t see the bar,” he said yesterday.
Heat flushed my face before I could channel anger. “No reason to be a dick.”
Griffin bit his tongue and grabbed the bar anyway, thrusting the heavy weight up and hissing through his teeth as he did it.
He took it out on me. And if that alone didn’t hurt enough, what broke my heart was that he probably didn’t realize he was doing it.
