Page 52

FIFTY-TWO

Clay

When I return to the bedroom, naked and clean, I do feel calmer. Jethro was right. He can’t brag about it, though, because he’s stretched out in bed, asleep.

I take a trip around the room to turn off various lights and bolt the door. Then I lift the covers and slide into bed.

This is a new experience for me. Jethro and I have shared a bed before, but only after sex. We never did sleepovers just for the sake of it, but I’m just assuming he’s cool with it.

I’m thirty-nine, and I’ve never had this with anyone. I crave it. I want someone to come home to at the end of a long day.

And I want that someone to be Jethro.

Pressing my luck, I roll towards him to wrap an arm around him.

It doesn’t go that well, because he wakes up with a jerk. “ Shit .”

“Sorry. Should I go?”

“No fucking way,” he says, reaching for me. “You just bumped my bad knee is all.”

“Your knee? What’s wrong with your knee?”

He nudges me the other direction—onto my hip—and curves his body alongside mine as the big spoon. “Clay, I’m thirty-seven. Everything hurts after a game. That’s just Wednesday in my body.”

“Oh.” I relax onto the pillow. His arm feels good around my waist. I close my eyes.

“Clay?” he whispers after a minute. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah?”

“How did you handle retirement as a player. Like…the first week?”

My heart kicks into a higher gear, because Jethro said the word retirement . I can’t let on how much that excites me. “The first week sucks,” I tell him honestly. “That’s the ‘what the fuck have I done’ moment.”

“You had a bad injury, so it must have been terrible,” he hedges.

“Awww.” I reach back and pat his hip. “Somebody followed my career but never said so.”

“Shut up. It was on ESPN.”

I smile in the dark. “So, yeah. I didn’t have a lot of choice about retiring. I was twenty-nine at the end of that season, with a bad fracture from a playoff game. I had surgery. Turned thirty in a cast.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah, nobody wants a thirty-year-old with months of rehab. Skaters aren’t valuable at that age. So I had to grit my teeth and announce my retirement. But then job offers started trickling in. Some TV stuff. Scout work. And then a coaching job. Assistant coach at a Big 10 school. It would probably be the same for you.”

He’s quiet for a second. “I don’t know. You’ve got a college degree and charm for days. I’m not as employable as you.”

“You’re right. Who’d want a multi-championship winner with a fifteen-year pro career in a niche position when they could have a dozen retired forwards who never saw any playing time?”

He just grunts.

“You don’t need to solve this ahead of time,” I say quietly. “But Jetty—there’s so much out there, and you have so much to give. This only seems scary because it’s a big unknown.”

No comment again, but he puts his palm in the center of my chest and rubs slowly.

I like it. I like everything about this. So I tuck my body a little more tightly against his. “Hmm. I wonder if I can fall asleep like this? Or if it’s too distracting to have your dick so close to my ass.”

His hand freezes on my chest. “Clay.”

“Yeah?”

“Would you ever let me fuck you?”

“Sure.”

“Really? Have you done that before?”

“Yes and no.” I choose my words carefully. “I’ve topped guys, but I never let anyone top me. But you have to remember that the only sex I have is on vacation, with strangers, and it just never seemed like a good idea.” Too much trust involved.

His hand slides off my chest and ends up on my ass. “But you’d let me?”

“Oh yeah.”

He groans. “Like soon?”

“Not tonight. Your knee is bothering you, for starters.”

His head thunks into the spot between my shoulder blades. “Okay. Well. Something to look forward to.”

“How about this? Show me a clean sheet for any game in this series, and I’ll leave the stadium immediately to buy some lube.”

He laughs against my back. “I’ve got lube. And now I’ve got a woody, too.”

“Better stop some pucks, then.”

“Clay.”

“Hmm?”

“Roll over.”

I do, but I watch out for his knee. Now we’re nose to nose, and I’m staring into his serious green eyes.

“Gonna hold you to that promise. Now kiss me goodnight.”

I lean in, and the kiss is a hundred percent Jethro—it doesn’t fuck around. It’s bossy and fast.

In other words, it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.

“Now go to sleep,” he says, rolling onto his back again. “I gotta rest up so I can get a clean sheet in game three.”

I snort. Then I fall asleep about ninety seconds later.