Page 20

CHAPTER 20

KENO

I shoot a puck across the ice to Morgan Rivera and push off toward the goal. Morgan sends it back to me and I shoot it at Horny. He has just enough time to shift his attention from the previous puck to mine, but somehow manages to stop it. I have half a mind it’s just reflex that had him hit the puck with his stick more than intentionally succeeding.

Circling the goal, I skate to the end of the line on the opposite side of the ice to perform the same move against our second goalie. I’m standing beside Julian. He glances at me, giving me a smile, and turns back to the ice.

“Hey, do you think hockey is a lame theme for a wedding?” I ask.

Patrick McEllen stops beside me as Julian glances my way again. “I mean… I feel like maybe it’s a little… obvious. Is that the right word? Like, of course, hockey will be their theme. They’re hockey players, type of thing.”

I sigh.

“Struggling with a theme?” Hilt asks from across the ice.

I nod. “Honestly, everything feels stupid and not us. It’s getting exhausting, but we can’t just ignore it and hope it goes away. This is holding us up, and we’ve been stuck for, like, two weeks!”

“You could do something like Prince Charmings,” Patrick says. “You know, without the princess. A twist on the whole princess thing.”

I nod. “Friends of ours did that.”

“Yeah, the other hockey player who got married last summer from L.A.,” Julian says. “They did princes.”

“They did a fairy tale,” someone further down the line corrects. “How about something with ice in it? That way you can tie in hockey without being so kitschy.”

“Ohh. Like an ice fort! That would be so cool.”

“Or just an old military fort.”

“Aren’t they all in ruins?”

“You’re a sad, sad man.”

“Hey, a ruined fort could be just as cool.”

“If you’re going ruins, head to Europe. In the shadows of a ruined castle or abbey would be absolutely breathtaking.”

I listen as my teammates throw random ideas back and forth.

“Underwater.”

“Sea world.”

“Orcas.”

“Space! Not in a childlike way, but you could totally elevate it. Imagine the stars overhead or maybe the milky way.”

“Oooor… Martians.”

I laugh.

“We’re totally doing that for a Halloween party next year. Seriously. Your best Martian costumes.”

“It’s on.”

“Antarctic wedding. I just saw something about two guys going down in history as the first people to marry in Antarctica.”

“You could be the first to marry in the Arctic.”

“North Pole!”

“Have a Santa wedding.”

“Winter wonderland wedding.”

“In June?”

“If they’re in the Arctic, it’s winter all the time.”

Etna meets my eye as the entire team starts throwing out ideas while we practice. Even our second goalie offers, “Pretty in lace” as I skate around his net. I grin, tapping my stick against the pole so he knows I heard him.

This goes on for quite some time and only stops when Coach Merrill blows his whistle. We stop what we’re doing and gather around. “Are you really talking wedding details during practice?” he asks, giving Etna and me an amused look.

“Sorry, Coach,” I say. “I asked Julian if hockey was a lame wedding theme and it kind of took off from there. Didn’t mean to distract.”

Coach shakes his head. “Strangely enough, I think you were all in the zone. You unintentionally made a game of it—calling out a theme right before you took a shot. I haven’t seen you all so focused in quite some time.”

“Thanks?” I say, earning myself a few chuckles.

“Let’s change it up and see if that focus remains in a different game. Four teams of keep away—three on one. Go.”

I’m not sure how successful our focus is. Now that the team knows Coach is aware, I think they’re getting more distracted than anything. There’s certainly a lot more laughter than usual. By the end of practice, we were no closer to finding a theme we liked than we were when I asked Julian about a hockey theme.

But it was probably one of the first practices in a long time where we laughed so hard. It was a pretty good practice, too.

However, when we climb into the car, Etna and I look at each other. “I’m getting frustrated with this theme thing.”

“I hate to say we just choose something random and go for it, but… same, bro.”

“I know we were going to head to my house and pack, but how about we float on the lake for a while in the boat with some snacks and see what we can find online? One last ditch effort. A big fucking push. We need to decide something today since it’s literally holding everything else up.”

I nod. “Yep, let’s do that. But I’m not in the mood to prepare snacks. Want to stop at the store?”

We end up buying over $100 in snacks. I’m not sure if we’re just super hungry or if this one bag of snacks cost an insane amount of money. The one bag seems to be the answer to the question, though.

We change into our swim trunks, get the cooler filled with ice and drinks, and head down to the dock where our pontoon is tied up. It doesn’t take us long to split tasks and push off. We have it down to a science and I love it.

Once we’re closer to the middle of the lake, we cut the engine and cuddle up together on the soft bench under the canopy with the tablet and I pull up the aesthetic boards site. My first search is ‘ unusual wedding themes ’ because we’ve already decided the most common ones are boring as fuck.

The first board we see is a black wedding cake with skulls and dark flowers. The next one shifts to an all-white setting. Which might be nice, except it looks like a hodgepodge of things. There are white Christmas ornaments hanging with pearls and it looks… a little tacky.

The next one I’m assuming is supposed to be space. There’s a cardboard cutout of a moon under an arch with Christmas lights hanging from it.

The next is an underwater one that makes us pause.

“Are they actually under the ocean?” I ask.

I tap the image to pull it up. There are dozens of white fish hanging from the ceiling, which is covered in white bubbles. I can’t tell what any of it is made from? Styrofoam? Plastic? But what has us curious is that the room looks round and the walls look like the thick glass panels to an aquarium. I’d be convinced of this except I don’t see anything besides the deep blue color.

“Huh,” Etna answers. “It’s cool, but I’m not sure I want that.”

“Or that we could pull it off at our venue.”

The next board is just two champagne flutes, but the stems are dragons curling together to make a heart, one dragon on each flute.

Moving on…

A wedding cake that’s covered in pearls and brooches. It reminds me of Roma. Like when you search Romani people , you see the stereotypical gemstones and bright colors.

The next cake is covered in wildflowers.

A book theme where everything is stacked on top of books. There’s something peaceful and simple about it, though I’m not sure it makes sense for either of us. We don’t spend a lot of time reading. Then again, before I met Etna, I used to read. Now Etna makes up my entire world.

Wow, that was tacky. Also, maybe a little sweet. I’ll have to remember it for later so I can say it to Etna.

“Look at this one. Steampunk. That’s really cool,” Etna says. “Not for us, but still super original. I love what you can do with a few gears.”

“Wait, look at this one.” It’s an all-white cake that’s shaped into a castle tower. There are two dragons on it, one climbing up the side to meet the one that’s leaning down from the top. “That’s sick as fuck.”

“It is. If one of us had a dragon tattoo, we could say that we’ve always had a long-time obsession with dragons and pull that off.”

I laugh. “Next.”

Mirrors.

Twine.

Candles.

In one search, there was a man in a dark blue suit, but the end of his suit jacket fell to the ground and flared out around him like the train of a dress. I’ve never considered myself feminine in any way nor interested in anything feminine for myself, but I have to say, I couldn’t stop staring at that picture.

It should have looked feminine, but damn, that guy? He wasn’t feminine, which made the entire look far more masculine.

“I don’t think I could pull that off with the same effect,” I say.

Etna tilts his head as if he wants to look at it sideways. “I don’t know. I think you could.”

The next thing that catches my eye is a white cake, but over it are black gothic windows that remind me of an old haunted house. It’s fucking awesome.

There are DND dice tied to a garter, a completely black tiered cake that looks elegant, even with the spider decorations. There’s a short video of a gothic wedding in a cemetery. Or a place that looks like a cemetery, but everything is black—the benches, the arches, the tombstones, the statues. Hell, even the twigs. Okay, it must be fake.

There’s an image of a bride and groom in a fighting pose like you might find on a movie poster. The woman is holding a huge bow, getting ready to shoot. The man is crouched in front of her with a bo staff.

There’s a love never dies theme with a skeleton cake topper, the bride skeleton is straddling the groom skeleton and they’re about to get frisky.

The one that maybe disturbed me a little is the image of the entire wedding party holding rifles. No, not kidding.

“Okay…” I groan and drop my head back. “I’m feeling hopeless here.”

Etna sighs and clicks the tablet off. “I know.” He wraps his arm around me and pulls me close. I smile when his lips press to my forehead. “Maybe we’re overthinking this. Let’s skip a theme and just choose some colors we like and see what we can do with that.”

I relax against him. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s do that. I’m so tired of looking at all these and not a single one jumps out.”

“We can go back to hockey.”

“To be honest, I’m not really feeling that either. I think a few subtle nods to hockey would be cool because it’s such a huge part of our lives.”

“And it’s how we met.”

I grin. “Yeah. But I don’t know. I’m not super stoked about a hockey theme either.”

“Should I ask what colors you’re feeling now, or should we save that for another conversation?”

I groan, and not in the sexy way. “Let’s save that for tomorrow’s struggle. I need a break from today’s. At this point, I don’t even know what my favorite color is. They’re all blending together and I’m not a huge fan of any of them.”

“I know what’ll make you feel better,” Etna says.

Before I can ask, Etna pulls his arm from around me and drops to his knees. Immediately, I look around, but we’ve been so focused on the tablet and wading through wedding boards, I barely noticed that the sun was setting. It’s almost dark.

I don’t have breath to object when he tugs my swim trunks down, nudging my hips to make me lift them so he can. Once, I’d have said that I get hard pretty easily. I’m not sure if that was the entire truth or not. What I can say is a single look from Etna that I know promises an orgasm, makes my dick inflate so quickly, I almost feel lightheaded.

More than that, I’m not sure I’ve been this hard for anyone. Ever. Like, my dick reaches new levels of hard as fuck with Etna. Especially when he looks up at me with a sly, satisfied smile.

He spreads my legs wide, hauling my ass to the edge of the bench. I barely have enough time to take a breath when his mouth covers my cock. My head drops back and I groan.

He’d been wrong. My dick fits perfectly in his mouth. He might strain a little, but there’s seriously nothing sexier than seeing his lips spread over my dick as he looks up at me with watery eyes.

His mouth is hot. So hot. The way he slurps makes me think he’s drooling for me. My hips jerk up at the thought and I hit the back of his throat, making him cough around my cock.

Unable to stop myself, I grab a fistful of his hair and push his face down. I slide past his throat, deeper and deeper into the tight, confined space, until his nose is pressed into my pelvis. He swallows around me reflexively, and I moan far too loudly.

I let him up when he pushes against my hold. His mouth leaves my dick with a wet slurp, and he coughs. His loud breaths are like an aphrodisiac. I give him a second before guiding his face down to my dick again.

Etna chokes on me like a champ. He never complains. Never tells me he doesn’t like my cock down his throat until he’s gagging. He swallows me whole and sucks on me like it’s his job. I’m already anticipating the sound of his scratchy voice when I’m done. Once I’ve lost my release down his throat like it’s his meal.

There’s little that turns me on more than the sound of his raspy voice after he’s deep throated me for a while. And I definitely last a while. Though it feels too fucking good and an orgasm is always right there ready to explode, I somehow manage to stave it off until I’m a shaking mess.

It needs to last. I need to burn the memory of my fiancé sucking on my dick onto my eyelids until it’s the only thing I see.

We play this back-and-forth game where I keep Etna’s mouth balls deep on me until he needs a breath. It gets longer and longer each time. Even when I only give him a few seconds to suck in air before pulling him back down, Etna goes without complaint. In fact, I dare say he might like it.

Maybe not as much as I do because the way he sucks on me, swallows around me, has my eyes rolling. Once more, I’m going to come. Yep, there it is. I pull him off me for a last inhale and then hold him down on my dick with both hands as I come down his throat.

He coughs and gags as he does, his throat constantly constricting around me to swallow my load, which only drives me on. On and on and on.

When I’m finally empty, I pull my man off me so he can breathe. I certainly don’t want to kill him.

Etna drops his face in my crotch as he gasps for breath. I leave him there for a few minutes until I slide off the bench to kneel beside him. My intent is to suck him off, too. Or at least jerk him off. But when I stick my hand down his pants, I find he’s already filled them.

Grinning, I grip his hair again and pull his face up so I can look into his eyes. His cheeks are hot, a sight I rarely see. Yeah, no stopping my ridiculously wide smile. It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask him if he likes choking on me, but instead, I gently stroke his softening dick and pull him against me.

Obviously, he likes it.

We fall backwards and lie haphazardly on top of each other. There we stay under the stars, with the gentle rocking of the water beneath us.