Page 10 of Blindsided

The kisses Brax landed on Trevor’s neck and shoulder had him giggling uncontrollably. “You, LB, are too sweet to have me speechless.”

“Except when I’ve got your dick in—”

Brax’s hand flew over his mouth. “And you’re not going to finish that sentence! Jesus, you’ve been spending too much time with Seth.”

I had to give Trevor credit. He’d made Brax’s cheeks turn a painful-looking red. At least their antics were enough to have me laughing. I’d spent far too much of the day in a daze.

Trevor sobered quickly and angled his body so he was looking at me, and I knew immediately that his outrageous words had only been to break the tension in the room. He might be under five foot five, submissive, and a very sweet little, but he was also the captain of a professional hockey team and had a way of commanding a room that few people I knew were capable of.

“So, who is this Lincoln? And why does he have you all out of sorts?”

CHAPTER 5

LINCOLN

The blood rushing in my ears hadn’t stopped over the last twenty-four hours. Seeing Easton Lafferty sitting in the chair in what was my newly minted office had thrown my entire world on its head, even more than my mom informing me I was the new face of the Nashville Parliament and would be taking Aston’s position as owner.

Three gin and tonics at the hotel bar had done nothing but increase my headache, a massage that morning hadn’t begun to loosen the knots in my shoulders, and the text I was staring at from Carissa had only confirmed my worst fears.

Carissa

Mom said he’s off-grid indefinitely. She doesn’t want him in the spotlight of anything. Oddly, Aston seems to agree.

And as though my best friend knew I was about to spiral out of control, a text appeared from her.

Bodhi

You know, there’s a BDSM club in Nashville called DASH. It’s for the LGBTQ+ community. It’s well respected and prides itself on privacy. Maybe you could hit it up and find some sexy Dom to make you stop freaking out.

No way in hell was I going to a BDSM club in Nashville. Not when the only man who had ever sent me flying and put me back together in ways I couldn’t begin to understand was in the same city.

Fuck no.

What if he was there too?

The thought was enough to make me clench my fists and want to scream. At least until the next thought entered my mind, making my frustration mix with icy dread that made me want to puke.

What if he was there with someone else?

At least I hadn’t said that to Bodhi. Shaking my head, I spoke to my reflection in the spotless desktop. “Stop being stupid.” I was the one who’d walked out on Easton. He had every right to be at the club with someone else. He had every right to be pissed at me. He had every right to be angry and hurt and confused.

I flopped backward and spun around in my desk chair, wishing like hell to be anywhere but here. “Fuck my life.”

“Not really sure that’s how someone should feel when they buy a hockey team.”

No matter how amused the voice sounded, it made me plant my feet on the floor and search for the door. Of course, with the way my luck had been going as of late, I’d stopped my spin while facing the window and had to spin around to see who was talking to me.

“Tom?” I tapped my computer to life and stared at the calendar. Earlier in the morning, the only thing I’d seen on my schedule had been a meeting with the GM, Daisy, for later in the afternoon. After our video call the day before, I was more than a little nervous about that meeting.

It was bad enough coming into things after someone else had started them, but it went double when it came to owning a sports team. I was two steps behind everyone else while I tried to learn the key players of the organization, come up to speed on what the hell an owner was responsible for, and learn not just a new city but an entirely new culture. A culture where the thirty-seven-year-old GM looked like a dominatrix who could have me bending to her will in the blink of an eye.

And then there was the Easton-sized wrench thrown in there just over twenty-four hours earlier. It was the thing I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since I’d fled my office and it had kept me from doing any studying on the Parliament and hockey over the last day.

He smiled casually. “How are you doing today?”

I tried to find Francis Lincoln Barrington-Lewis, the confident businessman I normally was. Unfortunately, Francis was nowhere to be found. Since Easton had walked out of my office the day before, the only person I’d been able to channel was the insecure, in-over-his-head Lincoln Lewis. “Do you really want the answer to that?”

Tom just chuckled. “Since the lights are on and you aren’t an unhealthy shade of green, I’m going out on a limb and saying the headache is gone?”

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