The Captain Who Ended My Brother's Career Is on My Table novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Nine A.M.

Vera works Hugo over in front of the whole team, then locks the door, makes him kneel with his hands behind his back, and comes twice on his mouth before she bites her first claim into his shoulder.

At nine on Monday morning I put my hands on the Northmen's captain in front of twenty-six men.

The training room was loud with tape guns and trash talk until I walked in.

Then it was quiet.

Aili Koski, the equipment manager, had warned me in the hall.

She was five feet tall and sixty-six years old, with a grey braid and reading glasses on a chain.

"They'll go quiet, then they'll go stupid," she'd said. "Don't blink."

I didn't blink.

"Bergeron," I said. "Table. Shirt off."

A rookie whistled low, and I looked at him until he stopped.

Hugo walked over.

He pulled the grey henley over his head and lay back on the table.

His shoulder was swollen and purple from the collarbone down.

I dug my thumb into the muscle above his shoulder blade, hard enough to make a grown man cry.

He didn't make a sound.

I dug in harder.

"Anything?"

"No."

"Liar."

"Oui." His jaw flexed. "A little."

Twenty-six men watched their captain take it without moving.

At the end I wiped my hands and said, "Same time tomorrow."

"Merci, Doc."

"I'm not a doctor. Call me Vera or call me nothing."

His green eyes held mine.

"Vera," he said.

It went through me.

Aili watched all of it over her glasses, said nothing, and handed me a bag of cookies.

The players left by five.

By seven-thirty the building was empty except for the hum of the Zamboni.

I locked the training room door and stood with my back against it.

For nine years I'd planned what I would say if I ever got the man alone.

I couldn't remember one word of it.

The door rattled once, softly, and I opened it.

Hugo stood in the hall in his street clothes with his hands open at his sides.

"I came to say it," he said. "Not to be forgiven. Just to say it to your face."

"Come in."

He came in, and I locked the door again.

"Say it, then."

"I'm sorry."

"Again."

"I'm sorry, Vera. For your brother. For your family. For the hospital."

"Again."

His voice cracked on the third one, and I hated that it landed in me.

"It's not enough," I said.

"I know."

"Then what are you doing here?"

"Whatever you tell me."

The words hung in the room.

I pushed my glasses up my nose and looked at him.

He was six foot one and broad enough to fill a doorway, with his arms down.

Heat went through me, low and furious.

"Take off your shirt."

He pulled it over his head.

"Lock your hands behind your back."

He did.

"Kneel."

He went down on the rubber mat where I'd found him that first night, slowly, favoring the shoulder, and looked up at me.

"I'm going to sit on that table," I said. "You're going to put your mouth on me, and you won't touch me with your hands unless I say."

His breath left him in a rush.

"Yes."

"Say it again."

"Yes, Vera."

I hopped onto the treatment table and unbuttoned my jeans.

I got them off one leg, kicked them to the floor with my underwear, and spread my knees.

The vinyl was cold under my thighs, and I didn't care.

"Come here."

He came across the mat on his knees and put his bearded face between my thighs.

The first touch of his tongue was a long, flat lick up the whole length of me.

I made a sound I'd never made at work.

"Oh, fuck."

He did it again.

His beard scraped the insides of my thighs, rough and perfect.

His mouth was hot and wet and so careful.

I grabbed his head with both hands.

"Slower. Make me wait for it."

He slowed.

He traced me with the tip of his tongue, around and around but never on the place I needed.

My hips tried to chase him.

"Hugo."

"Mm."

"You know where I want it."

"Tell me."

"My clit. Put your tongue on my clit, right now."

He growled against me and did what I said.

He found the spot and stayed there, circling, flicking, closing his lips around it and sucking until my back arched off the table.

"Yes. Right there. Don't you dare stop."

He didn't.

His hands stayed locked behind him, the muscles in his arms straining, his shoulders shaking from the effort of obeying me.

That was what undid me.

It was the sight of this big, stern, famous man kneeling on a rubber mat.

His hands were tied behind him by nothing but my word.

"You like it?" I said, breathless. "You like doing what I tell you?"

He pulled back an inch to say it, rough and wet-mouthed.

"Oui. God. Yes."

"Then keep going."

I came hard, with my heels in his back and my fingers in his scalp, calling out something that wasn't his name.

He licked me through it, slower, gentler, until I shuddered and tried to push him away.

I didn't push very hard.

"Again," I said.

"Vera."

"I said again."

His eyes lifted to mine, black and dazed, and he went back down.

Now I moved against him.

I rocked my hips and rode his mouth, and he held my thighs apart with his shoulders and let me use him.

His nose pressed into the top of me, and his tongue drove inside, deep, and out again to circle.

"That's it. Just like that. Oh, fuck, you're good at this."

I heard myself say it, filthy and loud, and I didn't care who was in the building.

He moaned into me, a long vibrating note I felt in my teeth.

The second one came up through my thighs and my stomach and my throat.

I grabbed the table edge and came again, shaking, with his name finally in my mouth.

"Hugo. Hugo."

He stayed with me until I went limp.

Then he knelt there breathing, his beard shining, hard as iron through his jeans, his hands still locked behind his back.

I slid down off the table to the mat, in front of him, on my knees.

We were eye to eye.

I laid my palm flat over the hard line of him through his jeans.

He jerked.

"Vera."

"Did I say you could talk?"

"No."

I opened his belt and his zipper, slowly, and wrapped my hand around his cock.

He was thick and so hot it startled me, and already slick at the tip.

One long stroke, root to head, and his whole body shook.

His forehead dropped against mine.

"Please," he said. "I'm going to."

"No, you're not."

I stroked him again, slow, and watched him fight for it.

I stroked him a third time and felt him swell in my fist.

Then I let go.

He made a ruined sound, and his hands stayed locked behind his back, the knuckles white.

"Not tonight," I said. "You don't get that tonight."

"Yes."

"Say thank you."

"Thank you." He was panting. "Thank you, Vera."

I looked at his bare shoulder, the good one, the right.

I grabbed him by the beard, hauled him close, and bit him.

Hard.

Right where the collar of a jersey would cover it.

He gasped and groaned in the same breath.

I held on with my teeth for a long second.

Then I let go and ran my tongue over the print I'd left, a perfect red crescent.

"That's mine," I said, still shaking. "You wear that tomorrow."

He stared at me, dazed.

"Yes."

I pulled on my jeans with my knees not working right.

I'd thought if I made him kneel, the knot I'd carried for nine years would loosen.

It had only pulled tighter, because I wanted him to do it again.

"You can get up," I said.

He got up.

"Go home, Hugo."

He took his shirt off the table, and at the door he turned.

"Thank you," he said, very quietly, and left.

My phone buzzed on the counter.

SAL.

"Hey," I said, with my hands still shaking.

"Hedberg called me," my brother said. "He says you're working on Bergeron."

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