Present Day – Off-Season After Heartbreak Hockey
Dirk, Age 24
I’m not an idiot. I know when a man’s looking at me. Like,looking-looking. Like I’m a fucking snack.
At least try to be fucking discreet, Trav.
But—sigh—I’m one to talk. I look. Oh boy, do I look. By this point, it’s either an obsession or karma from another life. It’s a compulsion I can’t stop.
So why are you still there? Why haven’t you quit yet, Dirk?
To everyone’s face, I tell them I return every summer because I’m obligated by loyalty and the money’s good. Trav depends on me. I know this restaurant in and out and can fill any role.
But that’s only part of the truth. The other reason, the more pressing one, the one that threatens to destroy me with each passing day, is that I crave him. Anything him. A touch, a word, a look. Fuck, just his laugh. I could make a damn soundtrack outta that rough laugh of his, tinged with enough of the devil, it makes me smile every time.
Only on the inside, though. I’ve gotten better a limiting smiling on the outside. Just because he knows doesn’t mean I’m going around flaunting my illicit attraction. What I did before was fucking stupid. God, what if someone other than Sophia had caught on? I could have gotten us both in serious trouble.
You’re twenty-four now, Trav is forty-four, a deadly little voice whispers. Yeah, I know, because I watch our ages like that stupid Doomsday Clock. At what age is our age gap more palatable? Will it ever be palatable?
But I’m at least smart enough not to ask those questions, even when I’m lying awake, in the dark, willing my boner to go away because Trav stared at me for a little too long when he was passing off food to me. Although, spoiler alert, it never goes away until I make it go away, which I do, repeatedly.
If only Dash knew that I get off on imagining his dad doing the filthiest fucking things to me.
Anyway…
By some miracle, nothing major has happened, but if it did, it would be the end. Because if I haven’t been able to stop this … this longing, this possession, this single-minded hunger, knowing what it was like for him to do anything to me—even just a kiss—would render me ruined.
It’s Tuesday. I came in early to help the prep cooks, even though I’m not technically kitchen staff. My presence at this ungodly hour is a heavy mix of how much I love this restaurant and how pathetically desperate I am to be near Trav any chance I get.
At least the flirting isn’t one-sided, but with how much we actually do toe the damn line, we’re lucky to have Casey and Sutter to take the heat off us, or someone would have caught us by now.
Dressed in my black cotton kitchen jacket, I head into the walk-in fridge to grab a box of steaks, imagining Trav’s eyes on me when I walked into his office with coffee earlier.
Fuck. I’ve never seen him look at me like that, and he’s looked at me in a lot of ways. Definitely gonna rub one out to that shit later. Or maybe do what I’ve done every now and then and find an older hookup. Trav might have morals, but most of the men on Benduovr don’t. It’s never been hard to find an older man willing to fuck a guy my age and pretend I have a kink for balaclavas. With their faces covered, it’s easier for me to pretend they’re Trav.
Only easier, though. I know all of Trav’s movements too well to trick my mind into thinking it’s actually him. The way he stands. The way he tilts his head and turns his eyes down when he’s about to say something important. And fuck, the way he smells, his unique Travis scent of leather, whisky, and sweat.
But it’s enough to create a Travis-like atmosphere for my brain, so I can experience something close to him fucking me.
It’s rare that I do that, though. Only when I’m utterly desperate for him.
I don’t want some faceless man. I want Trav to walk into this fridge and bend me over one of the stainless-steel shelves. I picture it often. He’d walk in, looking for some creamer to fill the server fridges with, and here I’d be riffling through the steak boxes.
There are no cameras in here, a fact he’d remember as he struggled with the restraint of keeping his hands off me, and it’d break him.
And, okay, technically—in real life—we’d need condoms and shit, but it’s a fantasy, so I’m gonna ignore all that since it’s only happening in my head. He’d reach around, yank my pants down, and shove inside my ass. I’d have ass bruises before I even knew what was happening. Markings. Something to say I was his.
But I’d always know it was him. Him making me feel good. His whisky-smoke scent surrounding me while his callused hands scraped over the sensitive flesh of my cock …
I leave the fridge with a box of sirloins and the hard-on from hell.
Thank fuck Dash is there when I step into the kitchen. He keeps me from going over the edge. Not even because I think he’d disapprove, he wouldn’t. He’d be weirded out by the idea of me with his dad for half a second, but then he’d be happy for us.
Trav’s the one who would be bothered. I get the impression Trav’s soothed himself by adopting some kind of “look but don’t touch” mantra, just like I’ve finally given in to my primal desires, masturbating under the cover of darkness, imagining Trav all over me after the longest fucking time of tossing and turning and losing sleep.
Our attraction is such a fucking curse.
Dash has his hat on—actually, nope that’s Stacey’s hat—backward, and he’s wearing what I call the Stacey hoodie, hands in kanga pocket, huge smile on his face.
