Page 28 of Phantom Faceoff (Daddies of the League #5)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Malachi

For the first time in years, I sleep easy. Wrapped around my best friend and boyfriend. Acting as a shield from the lies my mind feeds itself.

I’ve kept all the shit with Mack locked up so tight by the time it spilled over it was like snapping open an over-pressurized soda can.

Exhaustion heavy in my bones, I don’t wake up until nearly noon, and even then I have no motivation to get out of bed because curled into my side is the golden retriever who somehow won me over before I could even realize I’d started to fall.

I stare at his sleeping face for far too long. I stare until his eyes squint open and confusion passes over his face before his attention lands on me and recognition has his body melting against mine.

“Morning, Daddy,” he says, and it almost sounds as innocent as when it comes from Julian.

“Afternoon, Wildfire.”

He reaches around me for his phone on the desk and groans at the clock.

“I can’t tell you the last time I slept past nine.”

“Whatever will you do without going for a run at the ass crack of dawn?”

Zander props up on his arm beside me, swirling his fingers over the ink on my chest.

Adoration swells up beneath every pass of his fingertips.

God, it feels incredible whenever he touches me. What is wrong with my body that it thinks this could ever be bad?

“I’m sorry.” I card a hand through his messy bedhead, and he lifts those solemn eyes to stare into mine.

The hand on my chest slides up to cup the side of my neck as he leans in.

I tilt my face up to meet his, waiting for him to close the distance.

His nose bumps mine. Breath slides along my face. Then, for the briefest moment, he lets our lips meet in a kiss.

It’s tentative. Fragile.

Let me in , it says, and I want to. I really fucking want to.

We break apart, and I look into those deeply caring hazel eyes.

“I love you,” I say, needing this swell of emotion to exist outside of the confines of my chest.

He doesn’t say anything, and I wonder if this is a mistake.

You found me, I want to say, but I won’t give up more than one confession without reciprocation. If my heart is going to take damage, the least I can do is keep enough for myself to heal and rebuild.

“Say something.” It comes out as a whispered plea, and I hate being this battered. Having so much of me exposed.

“I’m trying …” He says it soft and slow, his thumb drawing circles on my cheek. “I’ve never felt like this before.”

“It’s scary.”

“Can I just kiss you? Can that be enough for now?”

I expect the non-confession to hurt, but it doesn’t. It’s like a weight falls off my chest.

I don’t need him to make any declarations or to have his feelings pinned down the way mine came at me like a speeding train.

So I lean into him again, sighing into his mouth as it crashes on top of mine, as his fingers sink into my hair.

He rolls on top of me, the softness of the kiss beginning to flame.

His body blankets mine, thighs squeezing my hips, and growing erection jutting into my stomach.

Our hands wander to every inch of skin, and when we run out, we slip our fingers beneath each other’s boxers and rid one another of those as well.

We’re both hard and leaking but don’t focus on cocks. He kneads my balls between his thick fingers. I slip between his cheeks to stroke his hole.

Eventually, the arousal becomes too hard to ignore.

Zander tugs my hair to force us apart and squeezes his thighs around me. We’re both catching our breath, and I can see the desire in his eyes that matches mine.

“Need you, Wildfire.”

His eyes flash with concern. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t,” I say, though his pinched brow says he’s skeptical. “I don’t want it rough. I want it slow. Sensual. I want you, Zander Hale, inside me. Remind me that I’m yours.”

The last thing I expect is to see tears drip from Zander’s lashes, for him to clasp my face in his hands and kiss me like it’s our first all over again. It’s so tender my own eyes grow wet.

“I can show you how I feel,” he says, lips still resting on mine. “I can do that for you.”

And then his hands are on my body, hiking my hips and rutting his hard, pulsing cock against the cleft of my ass.

He fumbles for my lube on the dresser, refusing to leave my mouth, and he makes a mess of us both as he coats his fingers with it.

One by one they push inside me, stretching me wide until it feels like I might split in half. I can remember the feel of his cock out in the woods. The way he sunk inside and treated me like something he owned, not a body he was experiencing for the first time.

His fingers slip free, and his tongue retreats from my mouth, pulling back just enough to stare down at me.

To make sure I’m okay.

There’s a hint of panic seeded in the heat that roars to life beneath my skin at his scorching gaze. It sprouts in the breath of silence—of appreciation—but as soon as his hands move on me again, it’s decimated among the flames.

They grip my thighs and spread them apart. They push on my chest, dig into the spacing of my ribs.

The head of his dick touches the rim of my hole, and it feels so good, so anticipatory, that I jolt with a realization.

“Shit. Zander. Condoms.”

He freezes and blinks to clear the haze of lust, blushing like mad when the words hit.

“Do you have some?”

I should have bought some when Zander and I started hooking up, but I never did.

“Do you?”

Zander winces and smiles apologetically. “I wasn’t really thinking about getting laid when I came over.”

Fair.

We could trade off blowjobs or handjobs, but it’s obvious by the way neither of us moves, by the way our hands stay rooted on each other, that we’re both desperate for a deeper connection.

“Have you ever been …?” He wets his lips with the tip of his tongue.

“Once. When Jules was ready to start … seeing people. We went together to get checked out. Negative on all fronts.” It’s my turn for my cheeks to heat. “You know I haven’t touched anyone other than you.”

“We should have talked about this before?—”

“I put your dick in my mouth or you put yours in my ass?”

We both break out into grins, and he leans over me to rest his forehead on mine. “That’s my fault. I’m the one who should have known better.”

“Why? Because you like to have sex? You’re human. We all mess up. Can you tell me you’ve checked the STI status of every single person you’ve ever hooked up with—excluding me?”

Zander frowns and presses it against my lips. “That number is higher than I care to admit.”

“It’s fine,” I say with a laugh.

It feels good. To be happy.

“Put your dick in me, Jackass.”

He obliges, and I’m positive that I stop breathing. The tip of his dick pops in, and my asshole burns despite the lube, but it feels so fucking good that I can’t help but bear my weight down, taking him deeper and stretching myself wider.

When he bottoms out, I gasp so hard my vision fills with black spots.

Ragged breaths gasp from my lungs, cheeks ablaze with arousal, and Zander smiles down at me in triumph.

“You feel so goddamn incredible,” he says with a long, slow roll of his hips.

I’d echo the sentiment, but each thrust, no matter how small, is sending shockwaves through my bloodstream.

Face to face, all I want is to hide in the crooks of his body. Let him take me but not see me, even if I’ve already exposed him to every frayed wire.

His cock drags along my walls—slow and precise. When my eyes close, his hands push into my hair and urge them back open.

“I want you, Malachi Blanchard,” he says, each word matching his groin meeting mine. “Every broken piece. Every part you think isn’t worth saving. I want it.”

He drags a sensual touch down my body, gripping onto my thighs and pushing them up, forcing them open so he can fuck me harder.

Not faster.

“Say it.”

Our gazes collide, and the ecstasy etched into every line of his face as he buries himself inside me breaks down the last barrier I have.

Tears spring to my eyes and spill over, cheeks becoming an endless waterfall of overflowing emotion.

“I love you.” It’s a gasp because I’m drowning.

“I love you.” A please because I need this more than air.

“I love you.” Complete surrender.

He folds on top of me, mouth inches from mine, keeping the same excruciating pace that makes my body feel like it might combust.

“I’ve got you,” he says. “Let go.”

The moment his lips make contact with mine, his fist closes over my dick, and all it takes is one pump for me to pop like a champagne bottle.

He milks every drop from me, switching between squeezing my balls and stroking my dick until there’s nothing left.

No more walls between us.

Just two bodies.

Two souls.

Two hearts.

When Zander comes inside me, filling me with warmth, I hold him as long as our bodies will allow. Until his softening cock slips out, and his cum trickles out behind it.

He holds me close then, kissing along my neck, whispering sweet nothings in my ear that silences all of the noise in my head.

Everything but him.

Everything but us.

“I’ve never told anyone this,” I say as we lay in the aftermath, wound up in each other’s arms. “But some nights, when Mack would feel insecure or threatened, he’d sneak into my bed.

It would start off with me comforting him, but would quickly transform into Mack insisting he needed a different kind of reassurance. ”

Zander doesn’t say anything, but I feel his breathing tremble. He rubs a hand along my arm—soothing, comforting.

“He’d be rough. Would hold me down. Keep me quiet. He demanded I tell him how much I loved him. Over and over while he … abused me.”

Saying it out loud makes me feel just as disgusting as when it would happen, but being in Zander’s arms, I can feel it washing away.

“It was so bad that it gave me night terrors. Even now, almost four years since the last time he touched me, I still feel it some nights. I’ll be laying in bed, starting to doze off, and then suddenly I can’t move.

I hear him breathing in my ear, feel his weight on top of me …

and all I can do is stay there and cry until the episode passes. ”

“Oh my fucking god , I want to kill him.”

Despite the gravity of the confession, I smile. “Because of that, I have really bad insomnia. I always have a fan going, music playing, anything to distract me and busy my brain so maybe the attack won’t happen.”

Even Julian doesn’t know the cause of my sleep disturbances, doesn’t know why I lie awake some nights until the sun rises, and even then only let my eyes rest for a few moments at a time.

“I’ve never noticed,” Zander says, the wound in his voice crater sized and hollow.

“They haven’t happened with you.”

I was afraid the first night we spent together would end with him running for the hills, but when sleep took over and morning came all with no signs of Mack’s ghost, I knew there was no protecting my heart from finding solace with Zander Hale.

“What do I do if they do?”

It fills me with warmth how much he cares, how intense his words sound. His arm around me is almost too tight, but that somehow settles me more.

“If you’re holding me, don’t stop. But don’t move either. If you’re not … stay close but don’t touch me. Wait for it to pass.”

“I don’t like that.”

“Me neither, but I think your Coach would really start to dislike me if you came to practice all banged up because I punched you.”

“I’d take it,” he says without a hint of humor or sarcasm. “If it gets you away from the memory, I’ll be a goddamn punching bag.”

Fuck, what am I going to do with this man?

“I love you.” Every time I say it, I feel lighter.

Those words used to hold something dangerous, used to hold my heart hostage with the threat that they might shatter it again.

Zander touches his fingers to my cheek, tilting my head so his eyes capture mine.

“I love you, Daddy.”

I feel raw, like an open wound in need or irrigation, and Zander’s words come at me like a flood.

His lips brush mine, a hand presses on the back of my head.

“I want to explore this,” he says. “I want to understand why this feels so …”

“Right?” I supply, voice crackling.

He smiles, fingers twisting and playing in my hair. It’s relaxing—comforting.

“You take care of me,” he says while his mouth lingers over mine, “and I’ll take care of you.”

It’s a strange notion, being taken care of. I’ve spent my whole life looking after others, but here Zander is—who undeniably needs more care than anyone I’ve ever known—wanting to do that for me.

“We’ll figure out where we fit. Together.” My arms around his torso tighten.

He beams down at me, every bit the cocky, sunshine boy that he is.

“Yes, please, Daddy.”

We might not know how this will work out for us or how far we want this to go, but it’s a journey we feel we can take on together.

With a little help from Julian, of course.

A Daddy and his boys.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.