“Lure him with your dick?”
“Yep. Got the idea from you, actually, because of your McKinnon crush. You really got him to fall in line by giving him your cock.”
I’d argue, but it’s a waste of breath. The truth is, I haven’t given him my cock, I’m just fucking gone for him. But, fuck, now I’m thinking about how much I want to give Ace my cock, my body vibrates with desperate need.
Because, yeah, Ace has become a need as much as a want. He’s the bright spot of chaotic sunshine I didn’t know I could have, but now that I do, I have to keep his sunshine all for myself. Let him bleed into all my darkness, breathe life into places that are nearly dead. I don’t just want to fuck him, own him, claim him, I want our souls to mesh together.
“Ryan Savage’s dad’s fucking loaded,” he continues. “He can be the team’s new cash cow.”
“You’re going to sleep with a student, the thing you don’t want me doing.”
“Not my student, Luke. Not yet.”
“If your idiotic plan works, he will be.”
“I won’t be sleeping with him when he gets here. It’s perfect. Once I’ve lured him here, I drop him. It’ll be easy enough to find a way to keep him once he’s here. For the record, I honestly could care less about you sleeping with McKinnon, that’s not my issue. But the odds are bad—eventually, you’ll be caught. There’s no chance of that with Savage. He’s not here enough.”
He’s completely lost his mind. Ryan, being a student at another school, is still going to be a scandal if it’s discovered.
“You’re going to use him, then?”
He shrugs because he can’t answer that without admitting it to himself. At least he feels guilty about it. Tate isn’t a villain. Something like this is wildly outside of his character.
But at the end of the day, I don’t care what my brother does to funnel money to his team. Hell, he’ll be getting half of Uncle’sfortune once I have it, and he can use it for the hockey team if he’ll just pick a damn life partner. It’s something I haven’t mentioned because I don’t want the reason he marries to be for the money.
The anger burning in the background of my soul flares as it dawns on me.
Unless he plans on marrying this alleged “new” hockey god, it means he’s not serious about his promise to me and has no current plans to set the series of events that would lead to a marriage into motion. I don’t expect it to happen overnight, not if it’s going to be someone he’ll love and adore; it’ll take time.
Which means he needed to start yesterday.
“Hell, maybe this is the way to do it. Lure the richest hockey boys to my team. I fucking hate doing these fundraisers as much as the team does.”
No partner who shares Tatum’s relationship values will want him flirting with hockey captains for sport. I open and close my mouth, searching for words, but they don’t come. Is this what I’ve done everything for? The sacrifices I’ve made for Tate, the sleep debt I’ll never repay, the broken bones, bruised pride, stripping of my autonomy … for what? So, he can play sugar baby games with hockey captains?
I was … so cold. I …
I was nineteen. Uncle Jasper made me strip down to nothing and stand barefoot at the edge of the pool he’d filled with ice.
“Why must we do this?” he said.
“Because—once again—I’ve put my brother’s desires before good sense.” Those were his words, not mine.
Uncle Jasper moved beside me, letting a heavy hand grip my shoulder, squeezing, as if he were something akin to a father teaching his son a much-needed life lesson. It was hardto say if he actually believed that—sometimes I think he did—or if it was just mockery.
“You can’t make decisions with your heart, Lucas. It will ruin you.”
Uncle Jasper took pride in the monster within me. He didn’t want me to have a heart.
He gestured to the water. “Get in.”
Was this gonna be it? The end of me? It was another mindfuck trial. Another way to prove he held my life in his hands. Playing a game of chess and having each wrong move earn a lash was one thing—I had some control, so long as I was smart about how I moved the pieces. But getting in this pool, with him in charge of how long I stay in? I’d have better luck fighting a wolf.
At ten minutes on ice, muscle function begins to fail. There’s severe pain and shivering so intense you feel like your organs will vibrate out of your skin. A human body can last six to ten minutes with effort and conditioning.
But once you reach the tenth to eleventh minute, core body temperature drops. Dangerously. By thirty minutes, unconsciousness becomes likely.
I didn’t trust Uncle Jasper not to push the envelope—in fact, I knew he would. He wanted me to be more than human and I’d pissed him off. Tate wanted to play hockey in college. I said he could. It was the bargain I had with Uncle Jasper—I made decisions for Tate—but he’d never promised not to make me pay for decisions he didn’t like.
