Page 13 of Riding Pine
Lukas watches me, and I’ve never been ashamed of my body. I know I’m completely naked while he’s clothed and drinking me up. Passing him back his phone, he grins and messages me rightaway. Somewhere I hear the muffled notification on my phone that I left in the studio while I practiced my routine.
“Now you have mine too.” He pauses and stuffs his hands in his pockets. “Listen…I don’t want to sound like an ass, but I have an early morning tomorrow.”
“It’s okay. I still have some work to do here. You can go.”
He nods and turns towards the door. “You’ll lock the door behind me, right?”
Something in his question carries more than simple politeness. He actually cares that I lock the door behind him.
“I will.”
Still naked, I follow him to the main door. He pauses again. “Have a good night, Ben. Maybe next time we can get that hot dog.”
Lukas exits, and I lock the door behind him before heading back to my office in a post-sex haze.
The hot, tattooed mammoth of a man tracked me down. Wiggling my ass, I pull on my discarded clothes so I can clean the studio before heading home.
When my phone vibrates with another text, I rush to answer it, hoping it’s Lukas. It’s a message from Christine rescheduling our meeting for tomorrow evening. Which is honestly a relief because I forgot when I was too busy with my dick in Lukas’s mouth.
Talk about a day of unpredictable events.
I’m not sure what shocks me more. Lukas and the hot session in my office out of nowhere, or that I forgot a very important meeting. Either way, it ended well, and I’ll call that a win.
four
Lukas
Team meetings are quite possibly the worst thing about playing hockey.
Sure, I like my teammates mostly, but an email could cover most of this talking, and we could all sleep in. Social time is not what I want first thing in the morning.
Unless it’s with Ben.
I can’t believe how incredible sex is with the man, and we’ve only met twice. Both times led to very satisfying orgasms.Now, if Ben invited me to a morning meeting, I’d be there. He’d have all my attention. I wonder if he has a yoga class I could sign up for?
“Piney! Good to see you, man!”
The youngest member of our team drops into the seat next to me with far too much energy.
“Hey, Youngblood. I didn’t think I’d see you again so soon. How are you handling the change?”
Being the hot new rookie in the league, Carter Young, aka Youngblood, is a mere twenty-one years old. His dream of becoming an NHL star can still happen, but they took a giant step backwards with the concussion he suffered last year. He missed half the season, and his draft team sent him to the minors. After deciding he was too much of a risk, he was traded to us, the Bloomburg Aspens.
“It’s different. I always thought I’d stay in Nashville, but now I’m here in Canada, and it’s kinda weird, you know? They call soda pop.” He laughs with a shake of his head. “I call my grandpa Pop, so it’s a total mind-fuck.”
I nod and smile and wonder how he’s going to feel when he sees how much of the money is in coins and not bills. If the word pop is a mind-fuck, I can’t wait to see how he reacts to a loonie.
“What about you? I’m sorry you got traded, but this team could be the one! Lots of trades happened this summer. New coach, too. This team has potential.”
He’s right about that, and I appreciate his excitement. It’s the primary reason I’m one hundred percent invested in this season. It might be my last shot at winning…and it’s a long one, even with all the talent they acquired in the off-season.
“I’m okay. I finally found an apartment, and I’ve learned the town some. It doesn’t seem like they really like the team here. They’ve been so bad for so long, it’s a joke.”
It’s really the one thing I’m most worried about. Winning back home-crowd support can be tough. Without people in the seats, owners get antsy about losing money. That’s when things get nasty. I’ve known a few players traded to cut down the payroll with nothing in return but future draft picks and buckets of pucks.
Bloomburg needs to be my last stop.
We chat a bit more before the coaches arrive. After their usual welcoming speech and player introductions, I’m not even faking my excitement for the season. I may be a third-line enforcer, but I make shit happen. Often, it’s me who grinds along the boards and makes the play happen when everyone thinks the game might be over. I’ve made a living as a special teams player, and I’m just as important as the hotshots here. The team dynamic feels good, and for the first time in ten years, hope blooms that maybe, just maybe, something good could happen this year.
