Page 21 of Offensive Edge
“You didn’t take your shot, asshole,” Rowan said, tapping his stick on Theo’s shin pads.
“You were leaving with a hatty if it killed me,” Theo called after him as they did their flyby, bumping fists with the guys on the bench. The rest of the game was just waiting out the clock.
The boys were congratulatory to Rowan, of course, but now that wins were coming nice and steady, it didn’t make as much sense to spend their time celebrating every one like they had won the Stanley Cup. The locker room was filled with good energy, but toning it down was necessary if they were going to make it to the end of the season.
Theo stomped his skates over to his stall and started taking his pads off. He tossed his jersey in the laundry basket in the middle of the room, and Rowan caught his eye, calling him over to the media scrum around him.
“Tell them what you told me,” he said.
“Huh?”
“About the hatty.”
“Oh. I told him he was leaving with a hatty if it killed me.”
“Looks like you were working pretty hard out there to get him that goal, even when you had good chances yourself. Is that just the depth of your friendship, or on-ice courtesy?”
The depth of their friendship. Somehow, Theo didn’t laugh. Rowan threw an arm around his shoulders though, and it was the first off-ice casual contact like this they’d had since Rowan got there. It was weirdly nice. Theo didn’t shrug him off.
“He’d do the same for me,” Theo said, and he knew that was true. It might have been professional courtesy, but it was the truth nonetheless.
While the mood of the locker room was slightly calmer than it had been last year when they won a game, Theo was still buzzing with it. He didn’t get a hat trick, but it almost felt like it. He and Rowan both had ridiculous four-point nights.
“Hey, Laney,” Vic said, tossing his car keys toward Theo. Theo caught them. “I’m going to Uber to Julia. Take Foley back home and don’t murder him in the car. Think you can handle that?”
“I can handle it,” Theo said. Vic told Rowan what the deal was on his way out, and Rowan waited for Theo to get his suit back on after his cooldown.
There was always energy sparking between him and Rowan, but while it usually carried the undercurrent of anger, or at least frustration, this was something different.
Even when Rowan was pissing him off, Theo still felt some kind of magnetic force between the two of them. It’s how he had ended up in Rowan’s bed to begin with. When they would have nights like this as kids, putting up points like they ran the place, their evenings ended up in frenetic make-outs. They’d park Rowan’s Jeep in the woods and go at it for a couple of hours until their lips hurt from kissing and they had dry humped themselves raw.
Okay, so maybe Theo didn’t miss the dry humping. He missed whatever it was they had, though, because on nights like that, Theo knew with every cell in his body that Rowan understood him to the core.
They parked in the garage and made it inside, and Theo couldn’t shake the energy buzzing through his body. He felt struck by lightning, and it got stronger the closer he was to Rowan. Rowan was looking at him with those big fucking brown eyes, and before Theo could think through what he was doing, he had shoved Rowan against the hallway wall. Rowan’s suit was boring, but it was cut to show off his ass and thighs, and Theo was about at his limit with it.
Rowan was limp against the wall, not fighting back at all, and when Theo pressed his body closer, he could feel Rowan getting hard against his thigh. Theo pressed his own growing erection against Rowan, and felt him buck against him.
Rowan gasped, rolling his hips to ride Theo’s thigh a bit, and Theo’s head spun. He couldn’t remember a time when he was this horny, when he’d wanted someone this much. The hallway was dark, and Theo felt like they were just shadows. He had Rowan’s damp, hot breath on his neck. Theo had lost his grasp on any semblance of control he had, but at least he knew he couldn’t kiss Rowan.
He let Rowan keep working against him, and he pressed his forehead against the wall he had Rowan backed up against. Rowan got his hands on the fabric of Theo’s hips to pull them tighter, and Theo’s hand slid up under Rowan’s tie, resting right at the base of his throat, keeping him in place. Rowan was panting, his eyes closed, holding on to Theo like he would be ripped into the void otherwise.
“Fuck, oh my God,” Rowan said, his hips stuttering as he came in his pants. Theo wasn’t far behind.
As he came back into his body, he realized what they had done. He was still holding Rowan against the wall with his hand at the base of his throat. Rowan was looking up at him, his full, wet lips parted. Theo wanted. Theo knew what would happen if he ever let Rowan back into his heart.
“Fuck,” he said, taking a step back. He had come dripping out of the leg of his boxers. He’d have to get these pants dry cleaned. Rowan was stock-still, frozen in place, before Theo bolted, tossing Vic’s keys on the kitchen counter before sprinting upstairs.
He didn’t expect Rowan to come after him, and he didn’t.
CHAPTER14
ROWAN
Rowan and Theodidn’t have to have a meeting to decide that they would simply never bring that night up. There was no text thread begging for it to be left in the past. The two of them both treated their extremely embarrassing hallway dry humping like it had never happened. There was the hubbub of Christmas and New Year’s to deal with, and then they were in the second half of the year, rapidly approaching the All-Star Game.
Rowan would go to represent the Serpents. Theo had gone the year before, when Rowan was injured and had to miss the game, so they had never had All-Star overlap. It was good that their team didn’t have multiple representatives.
Rowan was headed to All-Star in LA the next day, and Theo would be hopping a plane to visit his mom. They would have an entire week apart. The break would be good. And he would get to see Felix.
