Risking the Shot (Stick Side #4) - Amy Aislin Page 0,11
life; nothing else mattered.
As if on cue, there was another patter of little feet—this time on the kitchen’s tile floor—before a laughing Andy bounced into the dining room. “Daddy, Imma watch TV.”
“Do you want breakfast?”
“Not hungry yet,” Andy said, retreating across the hall to the family room.
As Dakota reached for the icing sugar on the end of the table, Calder sat on the other side, rubbing a palm over his bearded jaw. “Let’s talk.”
Dakota knew exactly what Calder wanted to talk about. The same thing he’d tried to bring up in the car last night before Dakota dropped him off at his apartment, but Andy kept interrupting with inane chatter about the party.
Cautiously, he said, “About?”
“Oh, I don’t know. How about how it looked like you and Taylor Cunningham were about to do the nasty in the coatroom when Andy and I found you last night?”
Had they been in private, they probably would have done the nasty. More than once. As it was, Dakota had been seconds away from breaching those few inches between their lips when Andy and Calder had appeared. Good thing too—kissing one of the better-known players in public wasn’t a good idea.
He’d wanted to ask about that last night, about Tay’s sexuality and who knew he was into men. But if the lack of privacy in a coatroom wasn’t a good place to kiss someone, it also wasn’t a good place for that particular conversation. Anyone could’ve walked in on them or been lingering in one of the adjoining rooms.
So, yeah. Good thing.
Too bad taking the edge off with his own hand late last night—twice—hadn’t done any good. He still wanted Tay like he wanted a higher paycheck—badly. Underneath him, on top of him, from behind, bent over the arm of the couch, sweat-slicked skin moving against sweat-slicked skin, teeth nipping, hands grasping, pants and groans and moans.
Hot and filthy sex. The kind that went on all night, left them sore but energized, ready to take on the damn world, ready for anything.
Blowing out a shaky breath, he sat to hide his semi from Calder, running two fingers under the collar of his T-shirt and pulling it away from his heated skin.
“Nothing to say?”
Dakota measured out the powdered sugar into a bowl and added premeasured butter. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“How about ‘Yes, Calder, you’re right, as always. I do want to jump his bones into kingdom come.’”
“It was nothing.”
“That was not nothing. The tension was so thick you might as well’ve been naked already.”
Dakota turned on the electric mixer. “I can’t hear you,” he yelled over the whirring, gesturing to one ear with his free hand.
The smirk on Calder’s face said he wasn’t fooled, the smug asshole.
Thing was, it really was nothing. They hadn’t kissed; they’d barely touched. Therefore, it was nothing.
Unbidden, an image of Tay sampling his scotch popped into his head, the way he’d placed his lips over the outline of Dakota’s on the glass, a pseudo-kiss. It had been hot as sin, and even now, Dakota’s heart raced.
It wasn’t as hot, however, as Tay’s blatant interest. There was no mistaking that Tay was attracted to him too. He’d made that abundantly clear in the way he smiled at Dakota, the banter and the flirting, that confident tilt of the lips that said I want you and I’m not gonna hide it. The way he fucking drank Dakota’s scotch, Jesus. There was nothing shy or bumbling about him. Dakota had always been attracted to confidence.
Shit. He was in a lot of trouble.
Turning off the mixer, he tested the icing’s consistency, then added the vanilla and the milk.
“Would it be so bad to let someone in?”
He turned the mixer back on. “Sorry, what?”
Calder rolled his eyes.
When Dakota next turned the machine off, Calder said, “Tell me about him.”
Dakota reached for the mixer again; Calder placed a hand over his. “We both know it’s done.”
Sighing, he separated the icing into three separate bowls to add flavor and food coloring. He left the fourth bowl aside to make cream cheese icing later, once his stick of cream cheese was sufficiently softened.
“Are you going to see him again?” Calder asked, breaking into a container of jujubes Dakota had pulled out but didn’t intend to use.
“I’m seeing him in a few hours,” Dakota deflected. “So are you. For family skate.”
“Don’t be dense,” Calder said around a jujube. “Are you worried ’cause of his age? He’s what? Early twenties?”