Page 48 of Tempting the Teammate
His breaths were deep; mine were thunder. I shook all over, muscles pushed to the limit of their endurance. When I collapsed next to him, I didn’t give a single fuck that we were covered in cum and sweat. I wanted that proof smeared all over my bedsheet. I wanted us to turn to stone like this and forever stay in this blissful moment of pure satisfaction.
Andrei turned to me with a wicked look in his eyes and a playful smile on his lips. “Give me five minutes and we can do that again.”
I’d love to say I wasn’t as sex obsessed as all that, that I could be satisfied for more than a minute, but that would be a lie. When he said it, my dick stirred again.
SEVENTEEN
Andrei
Like walking through a dream,the days that followed were a slideshow of images, hazy with warmth, dimly lit, blurry, filled with lens glares and that tender, natural light. It was a collage of moments that hardly made sense, both individually and as a complete composition.
From the moment we embraced in bed, laughing at a joke, our friendship healed entirely. There was no more artificial distance between us. There was no silence that needed to be shattered. But it was also as if the universe itself had moved an inch out of place, shifted a little to the left, shook up just enough that someone perceptive would notice, but not so much that we were all walking upside down.
And it was the entire universe, I could have sworn.
It wasn’t just in our room that things were ever so slightly different. The same filter I looked at him through applied to all other things. Gym sessions required a little less motivation. Hockey drills were a little more gratifying. Playing a game in front of a large crowd against the Eagles was a little easier. Stepping into the view of the lenses from NextPlay Media was a little more fun.
Nothing was truly different in all these places. Nobody knew the unholy things Griffin did to me in the dark. Nobody knew that my last trip to the library involved being pinned against the bookshelf and kissed so slowly and thoroughly that I nearly knocked over the shelf.
Griffin and I played all the same, though Coach Neilsen said we were getting better at synchronizing our moves. Perhaps we were. Perhaps that hair’s width of difference would get us to score big next time we faced off against the Steel Saints from Chicago. That game was coming up, and it was in their home city, so the sense that everyone around me was on edge was becoming more and more present.
When I hurried from the last lecture of the day to the rink for our evening drills, Griffin was already there, and we were the first ones in the locker room. Jen was with Coach Neilsen, giving a friendly wave as I passed Coach’s office. I’d seen Phoenix hurrying in the other direction on my way here, so he was still minutes away. When I spotted Griffin shirtless, facing away from the door of the locker room, my heart hammered faster against my rib cage.
I let out a wolf whistle that made him laugh. “Is that you, Sokolov?” he called back before turning his head and looking at me over his shoulder. His gaze swept the locker room. “We alone?”
“Looks like it,” I said, letting my duffel slide off my shoulder as I stepped closer to him.
“Get over here,” he said, tossing his shirt on the bench and extending his arm to me.
I came closer, sliding into his reach so he could catch me and pull me in. Our bodies pressed together, his torso bare and muscular, and he planted a heated kiss on my lips.
“That’s a hello I could get used to,” I said.
“Better do,” Griffin said. His hand cupped the back of my head, and he kissed me again. Under my hand resting on his chest, his heart beat a little faster.
I adored the way he gave himself to this thing of ours. He gave all of himself to me whenever we were alone, even for a minute. He kissed me freely, touched me where he wanted, never worried about being misunderstood. It was the kind of confidence that was so typically Griffin that it amazed me that I even noticed it. It was his entire personality, his entire being, to be honest and open and exactly what he said he was.
Griffin’s hand slid around my head and pinched my chin. “If we keep kissing even a little longer, I won’t fit into my gear.”
“Won’t need that stick out there,” I said.
He choked on laughter and punched my shoulder, then pulled me away by my jacket and kissed me again. “I’ve changed my mind. Let’s just keep making out,” he said after a moment’s pause.
I smiled hard against his lips, unable to contain this flickering happiness.
Being alone with Griffin reminded me of being seven years old and getting onto a colorful carousel while my mom held my cotton candy for me. We had just played whack-a-mole, and I’d won a stuffed toy, and Mom took me to the carousel next as an extra treat.
This was it. Kissing Griffin was that extra treat, the unexpected one when you’d already had something good. Our friendship had been the focus of my world, the center of my universe, the source of gravity that tethered me to life. And kissing him was the unexpected, undeserved bonus.
“You’re smiling,” Griffin murmured against my lips.
I pulled back and looked at him. “I’m happy.”
“You’re pretty when you’re happy,” he said. “I want to photograph it.”
And he would, later. He would photograph me so often and so much that we were running out of developing supplies more often than not.
We stepped away from one another when the footsteps and laughter reached us from down the hall. It made my heart sink a little. Locker rooms and hockey rinks had been our shared home for much longer than the dorm room at the team house. Kissing him here felt more appropriate.
