Winter Ball Read online

  “If you’re so sorry,” he whispered, “stop touching it! I’m embarrassed enou—”

  Richie caught Skip’s hand and brought it to his crotch.

  Before Skip even knew what he was touching, his hand closed around a hard cock pushing against Richie’s underwear just like Skip’s was.

  Skip’s eyes flew open, and he and Richie regarded each other tensely in the dim light. For a heartbeat Skip thought the moment was over—Richie pulled back just a notch, and his hand relaxed on Skip’s prick.

  And something in Skip must have really wanted the moment to go on, because his hand tightened. Richie closed his eyes and parted his full lips….

  Skip wanted to taste him more than he’d ever wanted to taste anything in his life.

  That first brush of lips was so soft it almost didn’t happen, but it did, and Richie didn’t jerk away or protest or complain, so the second one went a little harder.

  Richie’s lips were a little rough, but Skip teased the seam of them with his tongue, and when he opened his mouth, the inside felt softer, like a girl’s, but with this incredible heat.

  Skip was cold—he’d given up his sweatshirt, and he wanted that heat.

  He pushed forward, swept his tongue in, felt Richie’s response. A shudder racked him, taking no prisoners, and he clenched his hand around Richie’s cock, almost like he was holding on for dear life.

  Richie moaned and fumbled at Skip’s soccer shorts. Skip sucked in a breath, and Richie’s clever little hand slid inside and then beneath the Under Armour, which he flipped down with a tight elastic thwack. Skip’s cock sat exposed and quivering in the sensitizing chill.

  And then Richie slid his hot, rough hand over the cap and squeezed the shaft.

  Skip whimpered into his mouth, helpless.

  Richie pulled his head back. “Grab mine,” he commanded.

  Skip angled his body so he could use both hands to strip Richie’s shorts and Under Armour down under his ass. He held Richie firm with one hand on his hip and then snuck a peek to make sure he was giving Richie’s fireplug dick a firm and hearty handshake.

  Richie moaned and his cock pulsed in Skip’s hand.

  Skip closed his eyes again—he had to, because the shudder that rocked him at the feeling of warm flesh in his palm, that was too big to endure with eyes wide open.

  A breath of air caught Skip’s leaking cockhead, and the frisson of yearning that shook his body alarmed him on some level. I need. I need I need I need….

  He didn’t think he was the kind of guy to need. Amber had called him cold—he was pretty sure most of his girlfriends could agree with that. But Richie’s mouth was hot and open, and his cock seared the skin of Skip’s palm.

  Richie’s hand started to jerk almost spasmodically, but Skip felt the rhythm he was trying for. He whispered, “Sh… sh” against Richie’s cheek and took that small, bony, rough hand in his own and taught him to stroke, a little slower, a little smoother…. Oh! Oh yeah!

  “Skipper,” Richie begged, and Skip moved his hand back to where it belonged.

  Hard and a little slower, smoother. Richie’s every moan, every whimper, drove Skipper up another notch into the unexpected inferno of passion that had opened up in Richie’s Honda Accord.

  The music changed from Milky Chance to Mumford & Sons, and as the guitars and banjo and keyboard raced to a pinnacle, a sharp, pounding drive in Skipper’s stomach told him he was going to do the same.

  Richie gasped, and a spurt of hot precome scalded Skipper’s fingers. Skipper wanted… wanted… oh Jesus… he wanted so much from this moment, from Richie, from….

  He moved his hand off Richie’s hip to his jaw and positioned him for a kiss, a wild, passionate plundering. Richie kept stroking his cock, every callus a delicious bout of friction, every hard-handed squeeze exactly what Skipper needed.

  Uh… uh… oh God, Richie’s calluses caught on Skip’s ridge, and it felt so… so good… so….

  His entire body tingled, even his elbows and his scalp, and then his taint and his ass and his nipples and… tingling, tightening, cranked until breaking, and… oh… oh… oh….

  Richie came for real, his body arching and bucking until he broke the kiss and his come, sticky and creamy and practically boiling with the heat from that furious little body, ran down the backs of Skipper’s fingers, made his grip messy and smooth, and that did it. He arched his ass off the car seat, closed his eyes, and let the tingling take over his entire body, let it ride him, saw stars, and came.

  He kept his eyes closed while his breathing adjusted. When he opened them, Richie was right there, his face inches away, his mouth swollen with Skipper’s kisses, cheeks reddened from Skipper’s stubble, eyes wide and shiny and shaken.

  Skipper probably looked the same.

  They stared at each other for a weighted moment. Skipper let go of Richie’s cock at the same time Richie let go of his.

  “Here,” Richie muttered, reaching into one of the fast-food bags. He pulled out a handful of napkins and gave some to Skip. Skip looked at them dumbly. Richie, using gentle movements, took his own napkins and wiped off Skipper’s cock.

  “Oh,” Skipper said, feeling dense.

  “Here, Skip, lift up your hips.”

  Skip did, and Richie pulled his shorts up.

  “Thanks. Do you want me to—” He gestured vaguely with the napkins, and then realized Richie’s come was still running from his hand.

  He stopped, mesmerized, and then, almost like he couldn’t help it, he moved his hand to his mouth and sucked on the webbing between his thumb and forefinger.

  It was salty and bitter, just like Skip’s own come (boys tasted, just because), but something about how raw it was, tasting Richie like this, rocked Skip, cracked him open to the core, and he shuddered, almost pulling his knees up to his chest, because his groin ached fiercely, and he almost thought he could come again from the taste of Richie’s fluids on his hand.

  He opened his eyes and Richie was close in the confines of the car. He took Skip’s hand and searched for the places Skip hadn’t gotten, then started licking, very slowly, very deliberately, until Skip’s fingers were clean.

  Skip whimpered again. Oh hell. He wanted. He most definitely wanted again. But shouldn’t they say something? Do something? Oh God, he and Richie had just kissed and given each other hand jobs and…. Skip’s whole body screamed at him.

  We must do this again. We must do this again.

  “Richie,” he gasped, breathy because Richie’s tongue was still wiggling on the back of his knuckles. “Wh—” What do you want to do? What did we just do? Why haven’t we done this before? What are we going to do now? What does this all mean?

  “Bowling,” Richie said, like he couldn’t catch his breath either.

  “Bowling?” Skip’s chest hurt with the unspoken questions.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Richie said, nodding like Skip was slow and not catching on.

  “Wh—”

  Richie’s thumb was covered in ejaculate, and he shoved it into Skip’s mouth. Skip closed his lips around it, flattened his tongue, and sucked hard. His own come filled his senses, and oh, how bad did he want Richie’s again?

  “Tomorrow,” Richie repeated, like he was insisting. “We’ll get dinner. I’ll come to your place and watch movies afterward. Tomorrow.”

  He was nodding, so Skip nodded too.

  He pulled away from Richie’s thumb, scraping the underside lightly with his teeth.

  “Tomorrow,” he said breathily. He couldn’t seem to get a good lungful. His whole body refused to cooperate.

  He needed to get out of there.

  He leaned forward and pecked Richie chastely on the lips, then grabbed his sweater, which had fallen to the floor, and bolted out of the car. He paused with the door open, feeling bereft, feeling relieved.

  “Tomorrow?” he asked, suddenly needing to hear it again.

  “I promise,” Richie said, searching Skipper’s eyes intently.r />
  “Good.” Skipper nodded.

  Richie seemed to see what he’d been looking for, because he smiled, and Skipper shut the door, tugged on his sweatshirt, and hopped into his own car as Richie turned the ignition.

  First Kickoff

  “YOU GOT a girl comin’ tonight?” Clay Carpenter looked at him funny, and Skipper uneasily pulled out the collar of his green polo shirt.

  “No,” he said shortly, tossing his squishy brain-shaped stress ball in the air and keeping an eye open for his phone line. He and the other IT guys all had a rhythm down—you exercised, threw shit in the air, fiddled, fidgeted, and fucked off, right until your phone line rang, and then you did all of that and answered boring questions about how Grok make computer go.

  “You shaved. You’re blond—I don’t see stubble until a week after you shave, and you have a jaw out of a DC comic book. There’s no reason for you to shave. What’s the fuckin’ deal?”

  Skipper turned to eyeball Carpenter, who was, as usual, out of standard dress code in a baseball jersey and sweats. Carpenter was a big guy—order the extra-special chair big—but he was also dry, funny, and he had a fondness for adorable kitten videos. Skip had once watched him spend a quarter of his paycheck on Doctors Without Borders when an earthquake hit Nepal, because he’d seen something in the disaster footage that had broken his heart. (Skip had never asked what, but he’d pitched in $100 himself, just to make Carpenter feel better.) Skip brought him soy lattes and bran muffins in an effort to help him slim down, but when Carpenter let out a bellow and a screech against his never-ending diet, Skip would go out and fetch his cheeseburger too. He was a friend, not a judge, and whatever Carpenter’s deep-seated emotional issues with food, he was a genuinely good man.

  But Skipper wasn’t ready to talk about the night before, even to Carpenter.

  “No girl,” he muttered. “Just Richie.” On the field, he was Scoggins. In person, as a person, he was Richie.

  To Carpenter, who was a friend, he was Richie.

  Odd how Skip had never thought of that before.

  Carpenter smiled and paused, then pushed the Talk button on his phone. “Yes, ma’am. Did you turn it off? And then on. Yes, ma’am, reboot it. No, ma’am, I don’t know why it works, maybe it needs a nap. Thank you so much for calling tech support!” Then he looked up at his screen. “Ooh! I gotta chatterer here. Why aren’t you getting any calls?”

  Skipper shrugged. Inside he was thinking that he usually walked his clients through consolidating their data, reinitializing their routers, and making sure they had compatible browsers. By the time Skipper was done with a caller, nothing on their computer would go wrong again, ever, so he didn’t get a lot of repeat calls like Carpenter.

  “I got no idea. Go, chatter.”

  “Yeah, sure, but I’m glad your soccer buddy is coming—you guys talk geek. I need more geek talkers at the bowling thing. God, sports, why?”

  Skipper didn’t have an answer—he wasn’t on the social committee—but he actually thought bowling wasn’t a bad idea. Of course, he didn’t have a bad back and swollen feet either—Carpenter probably wasn’t particularly comfortable bowling.

  “I dunno, but feel free to talk Halo and Titanfall to your heart’s content.” Oop! There went his phone. “Tesko Tech Business Services, this is Skipper Keith, can I help you?”

  He paused for a moment while a courteous, educated voice washed over him. Then he tried not to let his eyes bug out.

  “No, sir, I’m not having one over on you. I didn’t even know there was a dog called a skipper-kee. How do you spell that?”

  Seriously? He did something totally alien then and picked up a pen, making careful note of the letters as the person on the other end of the line spelled them out.

  S-c-h-i-p-p-e-r-k-e.

  “Skipper Kee. Huh. Who knew. Well, in my case, my soccer team calls me Skipper, but my first name is Christopher and my last name is, well, Keith. So not ‘key.’ So, you know. Not a schipperke.”

  He had to ask the caller to repeat himself twice for the next part of the conversation.

  And when he replied, Carpenter couldn’t stop laughing.

  “NO!” CARPENTER howled as the bowling balls crashed into pins all around them. “Richie, I shit you not! You should have heard him.”

  Skipper groaned, and Carpenter held his fist to his ear, thumb and little finger extended, before he did a passable imitation of Skipper.

  “No, sir. I can assure you that no part of this Skipper Keith is black and fuzzy and aggressive either. Yes, that probably is a shame. Did you have any computer needs you wanted me to take care of?”

  Richie looked up at Skipper and howled with laughter, clapping and stomping like Carpenter was a regular comedian.

  Well, it did make a pretty good story, and frankly, Skipper had been so worried about seeing Richie again that he was grateful that Carpenter had been so eager to share. He’d paced in the lobby of the bowling alley, not caring that he looked like a nervous boyfriend, and as soon as Richie broke through from the chilly outside to the overheated inside, Skipper relaxed for the first time that day.

  As Richie had drawn near and filled out the paperwork, Skipper got a whiff of cigarette smoke, and he bumped Richie’s shoulder with his elbow and scowled. Richie had shrugged, staring at his receipt like it held the secrets of the universe.

  “You know,” he mumbled. “Rob and Paul smoke, my folks smoke, I take my break with them—I was nerv—”

  And then Carpenter interrupted, which had been a blessing. Skipper hadn’t wanted to have the “nervous” discussion with Richie when for the first time that day, Skipper wasn’t nervous, and a curse because, well…

  The story ended quite uncomfortably.

  “So that’s the best part?” Richie hooted, taking a swig of his beer.

  “Nope!” Carpenter crowed. “The best part was this: ‘I’m sorry sir, but you’re not allowed to access porn from your work computer. No, sir. No, any porn, sir, not just gay porn.’” Carpenter grinned at Skipper, his broad, bearded face maniacal with glee. “No, sir, I think it would be a very bad idea if I came to your office and helped take down your firewall just for kicks.”

  “No!” Richie sputtered, and Skipper shook his head at Carpenter, threatening dire consequences.

  “No, seriously?” Richie was so excited he set his beer down and stood up, hopping on his toes while they waited for the fourth person in their game to finish botching his spare. “He totally hit on you? I mean, you guys all work in one building—that’s insane! What? Did he think you’d get there and start stripping like a Chippendales dancer?”

  Skipper’s whole body twitched in horror. “In front of a stranger?” he squeaked, and then he saw Richie’s eyes on him, wide and mesmerized.

  “I’m up!” Carpenter groaned, pushing himself to his feet with a sigh. He got his ball from the carousel as Wayans slunk back, dejected by the three-pin spare he’d missed.

  Richie just kept looking at Skipper, lips slightly parted, hunger so transparent on his face that it was all Skipper could do not to just kiss him, taste him, tobacco and all, to answer that need.

  “You’re thinking about it,” Skipper murmured under the sound of the balls and pins and the echoes of the alley.

  “All night, I thought about it,” Richie replied. Carpenter’s whoop yanked them out of their own little world, and they stood up with Wayans to applaud Carpenter’s strike—something he’d never done before.

  Their team placed somewhere in the middle, but everybody knew the best part was pizza and beer afterward, so nobody complained about the score. Tesko Tech was a big enough company that the IT department didn’t have to share team-building time with any of the actual execs, so everybody at the pizza parlor knew each other—and Richie, because plus-ones were welcome and Skip asked him to these things a lot.

  So it wasn’t a date.

  It was guys out with friends, cracking jokes and sharing work stories. Carpenter had a good one
about the four-year-old who called because her mother had gone into the garage to do laundry and she thought that mommy had gone into the computer screen.

  “How’d she know the number?” Richie asked, entranced.

  “Apparently Mom had it taped to the computer screen—she’s sort of a frequent flyer.”

  “Oh Lord,” Wayans muttered. He passed a hand the color of teak wood over his shaved head. “I’ve got this one woman—I swear, she sounds just like my mother. I almost asked her if she grew up in New Orleans too. But it’s like she’s read a manual—a manual I tell you—of all the dumb things to do with a computer. She actually called me up once and asked me how to disconnect a wireless mouse. It was insane.”

  General laughter then—and of course one more person had a story.

  But still, that didn’t stop Skipper from yearning for that first person to leave. Just one person, that was all it took. C’mon, someone have a kid, or a wife, or a—

  “I gotta go,” Carpenter said, standing up resolutely and holding his hands out to ward off the evil pizza. “I’ve got a WOW event in fifteen minutes—Skip, you want to log on with me?”

  Skip looked up, flattered, but shook his head. “Naw, Clay. I promised Richie a few games of Titanfall when we get back. Ready, Rich?”

  Richie stood up, his movements so casual Skipper had to think that he, too, was quivering like a taut piano string.

  Well, good. Every inch of Skipper’s skin—every millimeter—was tingling and tight. His groin ached like a bruise or an abscessed tooth, and it was all he could do not to adjust himself as he swung his leg over the bench, grabbed his jacket, and headed for the door.

  Walking out of the Round Table and into the chilly October night felt like a fifty-yard walk of shame in his underwear, and Skipper still had a woody when he got to his car. He stuck his face up to the sky for a moment when they got there, and he thought he smelled wood smoke in the air.