Page 52 of Hot Ice, Tennessee

I know exactly how you feel, I thought as the crowd thinned out around me.

After most people around me had filtered out, I kept scanning the hall toward the locker room, waiting to see if Jesse would come out.

I saw the look of defeat on his face as he emerged, wearing a clean white T-shirt and shorts, hair still damp from a shower. His eyes finally landed on me and I felt like I really was getting to see some kind of athletic demigod coming toward me.

Win or loss, I’d just watched Jesse be in perfect control out on the ice. I had no idea howfasthockey really was—how the players had to make split-second decisions and manage micro-movements of that tiny-ass puck.

It hadn’t just been impressive.

It was almost unbelievable, watching him skate around fluidly like it was what he was born to do.

Just tell him he was amazing, I thought, watching as he walked over.He’s not going to be happy about the loss. But there were so many great plays he made—

The moment he came up to my side, I was ready and loaded with compliments.

“That was incredible. Yourcontrol—”

Before I could finish my sentence, though, he leaned over and pressed his lips to mine.

Blood rushed to my cock all at once.

I drew in a sharp breath against his lips as he dipped me slightly backward, one of his hands sliding to the back of my head, his fingers nestling in my hair.

It was a tight kiss, his tongue sliding out against mine.

“I don’t want to talk about the game,” he said in a soft whisper near my lips as he pulled off for a second.

His eyes looked like fire. Behind the beautiful green was some sort of passionate urgency, like he’d wished everything had gone differently.

Was he always this disappointed to lose a game? Or… was this something more?

“But you played like a fucking animal.”

“And I didn’twin,” he said in a low tone, regret flooding out in his tone. His eyes dipped lower to look at my lips, and he let his hand slide down over my chest and stomach, landing on one of my belt loops and giving it a quick tug to pull me closer.

“So what?”

His eyes flashed to meet mine again. “You knowwhat.”

I swallowed. “So you’ll just have to suckmycock instead.”

He paused, letting my words hang in the air, tormenting me with silence as I slowly started to harden under his gaze.

That was my own little Hail Mary.

Not that I thought it was going to work.

He was quiet for a second, and I saw the same look I’d seen on his face before, where he gets all calculating and curious for a while and I fucking lose my mind waiting to hear his reaction.

I stared back out at the empty ice, where a guy was cruising around on a…Zanloni? Zoombini?Whatever the fuck I’d heard people calling it earlier. I watched it make slow, curved circles on the ice, where Jesse had been a total menace, just a little while ago.

Zamboni. Right. Because the girls near me were joking about a Halloween costume where they’d been in a skeleton suit and called it “zam-boney.”

I glanced back at Jesse. He had been looking down, his thumb moving gently over a bruise on his arm that he must have gotten during the game.

Fuck, please say something.

When he finally spoke, I was stoked into a frenzy, trying so hard to seem like I was cool and collected.

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