Down by Contact (The Barons 2)

“Yeah, however you want to say it. I freaked out. Shouldn’t have pushed you and sent you home with, uh—” I licked my lips again, glancing down at his crotch. The heavy curve of his dick was clearly visible through his track pants. “With—”

“Blue balls?”

I exhaled with a whoosh of air. “Yeah.”

“It’s okay. There’s still time to redeem yourself.”

“Redeem myself,” I repeated slowly. “I dunno about all that.”

“I thought you were inviting me over for wings and football and all that bro shit?”

“Oh. Right.”

Simeon’s evil smile went up several notches. “What’d you think I meant, boo?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay, Bravo. I’ll think about it.”

He was backing me into corner after corner, and I kept following and slamming into walls that had apparently encircled my common sense. The last thing I needed was to keep stretching this out after the gay rumors had just started to fade. Instead of pairing us up, they were implying we were sitting on a pressure cooker due to our teams playing not even a month after the brawl.

But even knowing all that, I couldn’t stop myself. He was talking to me again, giving me a shot, and agreeing to once again spend time with me even after I’d flipped out on him. I needed to nurture that willingness before I lost it again. Considering how precarious our moments of getting along were, I was gonna have to make a comeback in a big way.

“Hey,” I said in one last rush of desperation as he turned for the door. “Why don’t we do it at your place instead of mine? That way you’re not coming into the city for nothing after I piss you off and you wanna bounce after half a minute.”

Simeon paused with his back to me. Some higher power had put a lot of effort and artwork into designing this man. Everything from his broad shoulders to his tapered waist and round yet still rock-hard ass was difficult to look away from. I punished my body to keep it in shape for the game, but I’d never thought of myself as a perfect specimen. Simeon was. Even his profile, when he looked over his shoulder, was straight out of somebody’s fantasy. It was why he’d first caught my attention back in the Predators’ training camp. Those big, pretty eyes and wide lips flashing ridiculously infectious grins had caught me then, and even now, they weren’t letting me go.

“Sound like a plan?” I pressed.

“Yeah, Adrián. It sounds like a plan.”

Simeon

“Do you ever think about how football culture is a total load of bullshit?”

This was the moment when I knew inviting Adrián Bravo into my house was the worst idea to ever take hold of my brain. No—scratch that. Allowing him to invite his damn self had been the worst moment of weakness to ever occur in my brain. There had been no reasoning or thoughts behind the decision. It’d just happened.

A few minutes of a beautiful straight boy showing absolutely unaware thirst, and I’d forgotten that he’d damn near given me a concussion after shoving me off him. Over a kiss. Good enough to swallow his jizz, but not good enough to brush my lips to his. Wasn’t that always how it went? But I’d given in because he was fine. Fine and blind about the extent of his own bisexual-as-fuck need to mount my ass.

“Shut up and eat your wings.”

“I’m serious, man. There’s so much psychological shit we put up with, and it really has a way of fucking with your head during the game.”

Adrián had barely touched any of the random crap I’d spread out in the kitchen. Since the game had started, he’d sat hunched forward with his forearms braced on his knees and his dark brows drawn down. Every muscle in his body was coiled tight, and his jaw was clenched. He flinched every time his team fumbled or was penalized or failed to get a first down. They were only down by six points, only needed one touchdown to pull ahead, but I could tell they weren’t gonna make it. Judging by Adrián’s sudden desire for “fuck football” trash talk, he knew it too.

“So your team is losing and now you hate football?”

Adrián finally tore his big dark eyes away from the screen to pin me with a glare. God, he was hot. I loved it when he was like this and not being a smarmy, sneering fuckboy.

“I didn’t say I hated football,” he growled. “I’m talking about football culture. Do you know what I mean by that?”

“Are you asking if I know what the word culture means?”

Adrián scoffed. “Forget it, man. Fucking never mind. I’m trying to talk to you about something serious and—”

I reached over to shove the side of his head. “Lighten up, Bravo. I was messing with you.”

Relief rolled off him, and some of the tension eased from his shoulders. “Okay, good. I try to talk about this shit with Rocky and Billings, and they tell me I’m trying to make it too psychological. But this whole thing is psychological. The pressure to win and make our fans happy so they keep spending their money turns it into this huge mindfuck. If we win, we’re national heroes. If we lose, everyone is right about hating us because we’re pieces of shit who don’t deserve the contracts we destroyed our bodies trying to get. So every week whenever we start losing ground, we get all psyched out because we don’t want to be the scum of the League.”