Page 43 of Edging Coach
He proved my hypothesis right when he slapped his hand against the wall. “I need you.” He nearly growled the words. “I fucking need you. You didn’t answer my texts?—”
“Jack.”
“And I can’t get you out of my head. You said I’d figure it out. You said I had a praise kink.” He stepped toward me. Then stepped back. Like he finally understood if we touched in this semi-private place, we’d combust. Someone would do something stupid—hand job, blowjob, spanking—and we’d getcaught. Even if we didn’t get caught, we’d have to live with the consequence of knowing what we’d done. My conscience wouldn’t be able to handle that.
I needed to get called up. To make Mom proud.
He needed to keep his job. One day he might land a coaching job in the big leagues where he belonged. He deserved that chance. Being discovered fucking his player would guarantee he’d never get that opportunity.
I wasn’t scared. His anger was clearly self-directed. He wasn’t going to touch me. Not only because he’d be breaking the agreement we had, but he knew he didn’t have my consent. He understood—in a way some people didn’t—that one didn’t touch without permission.
Ever.
So he wouldn’t reach out. Even as he clearly wanted to. Even as I desperately wished he would. Right now, though, he needed me to help him work through this…whateverthiswas. My gut instinct was to order him to his knees, but anyone could come in here at any time. We shouldn’t even be together like this.
Yet I didn’t command him to walk away. To leave me alone.
I met his gaze. “Talk to me, Jack. What is it that you finally figured out?”
CHAPTER 13
JACK
“Talk to me, Jack. What is it that you finally figured out?”
Devon’s softspoken question seemed to echo through the stairwell. Or maybe it was just ricocheting around inside my skull.
I leaned against the wall, which was as cold as the cinderblock walls in the practice rink back home. “I… everything you told me, I guess? The submission. The praise kink. It’s…” I rubbed my eyes with my thumb and forefinger, then dropped my hand to my side and met his gaze. “How did I get this far without ever knowing…”
“It happens more often than you think.”
“You’ve got it figured out.” It wasn’t lost on me that here I was, this forty-something man who should have his shit together, flailing and confused and begging the twenty-five-year-old to talk me down. Good thing we couldn’t be together, because I didn’t imagine I was painting a very attractive picture of myself in that moment.
Devon slid his hands into his pockets and shrugged. “I found some stuff about kink, got curious, and went down onlinerabbit holes. I got my hands on the information before you did.” Another shrug. “Doesn’t mean I wasn’t confused as fuck when I first found it.”
“Were you?”
He laughed. “Of course I was. You don’t think it’s unsettling for a nineteen-year-old to go looking at articles about whips and chains and find shit about himself?”
I tried to imagine. Hell, the few articles I’d looked at last night and this morning had left me—fully adult me in my damned forties—reeling. It had been as if the writer had come right out and said,“Hey, Jack Showalter, I’m talking about you specifically, you hilariously naïve freak.”I couldn’t imagine how that would’ve hit when I was nineteen.
Except that I would’ve figured out what I needed sooner.
Maybe figured out how to be a better partner sooner.
Maybe my marriage wouldn’t have?—
Nope, not going down that road. Not now.
“You found all that when you were nineteen?” I asked.
Devon nodded. “I mean, not all of it. Some of it. Enough to figure things out about myself. The rest I’ve learned as I go.”
“Were you this much of a mess when you first stumbled across it?”
He quirked his lips. “I was… confused, but also interested, you know?” He paused, then softly added, “And there wasn’t the added layer of wanting to be with someone I couldn’t have.”
Our eyes locked. I couldn’t decide if his tone was just sympathy for my dumb ass getting hooked on him, or if there was a note of his own longing. If, for all he was better equipped than I was to understand the kink side of things, he was twisting in the wind over this as much as I was.
