I Lost a Bet to My Hockey Rival, Now I Wear His Number novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Room 1412

Nash goes to throw the key card back and ends up against the hotel door in the rival's jersey.

Nash told himself he was only going to throw the card back in the man's face.

He told himself that in the elevator, and again in the corridor of the fourteenth floor.

The jersey was still on under his open coat, because Bernie had said not to take it off until the sponsor photos ran.

Room 1412 was at the end, by the ice machine.

He knocked twice, hard.

The door opened before the second knock finished.

Gaspard stood there in a black T-shirt and gray sweatpants, barefoot, with his phone in one hand and no expression on his face at all.

"You came," he said.

"I came to give you this." Nash held up the card between two fingers. "Cute. Real cute. You gave me a key to your room in front of forty cameras."

"I gave you a key in the sleeve. The cameras were looking at your face."

"What if I'd shown Bernie?"

"Then Bernie would have a very interesting afternoon." Gaspard stepped back and held the door wide. "You are in the hallway, Brannagh. Either come in or go home."

Nash should have gone home.

He walked in past him instead, close enough that his shoulder grazed Gaspard's chest, and the door clicked shut behind them.

The room was neat in a way that made his skin itch, bed made, boots lined up, one bag zipped on the chair.

"Let me guess," Nash said. "You read a book about how to win people over."

"I read the sports pages. You are loud, you are proud, and you cannot leave a challenge alone." Gaspard leaned his back against the door. "You are standing in my room."

"To give you your card back."

"Then give it back."

Nash held it out.

Gaspard didn't take it.

He just looked at Nash's hand.

Then at Nash's chest, at the white jersey with LACHAPELLE across the back, which he could not see from here but plainly knew was there.

"Turn around," Gaspard said.

"No."

"Turn around, Nash."

It was the first time he had said Nash's first name, and the sound of it went straight down Nash's spine.

Nash turned around anyway.

He did it slow, with his chin up, to show it was his idea.

He heard the soft step behind him, and then Gaspard's breath on the back of his neck.

"Hm," Gaspard said.

"Hm?"

"It looks good on you."

"It looks like a bedsheet."

"It looks like mine."

Nash had a clever answer ready for that, he really did.

It died in his throat when Gaspard's hand closed around the back of his neck and walked him two steps into the door.

His forehead hit the wood.

His palms came up flat on either side of it.

"Say again," Gaspard said, right at his ear. "How you plan to wear it better than me."

"I have a face people like."

"You have a mouth people like." Gaspard's other hand slid under the hem of the jersey and settled, hot and flat, on Nash's stomach. "I have heard it for two years, on the ice, in the handshake line, on television. I would like to know what else it does."

"Find out."

"Fine."

He bit the side of Nash's neck, above the collar, hard enough to make Nash's knees go.

Nash swore and shoved back against him, and found out that Gaspard was already hard, a long heavy line pressed against the seat of his jeans.

"Jesus," he said.

"Mm."

"You've been like this since the podium."

"Since the third period." Gaspard rolled his hips once, slow and deliberate. "I was looking at your number the whole time. I was thinking I would very much like to see it on a different man."

"On me?"

"On you."

Nash laughed, short and wrecked, and turned around in the cage of his arms to look him in the face.

Up close the grey eyes were not cold at all.

They were the opposite.

"You're a freak," Nash said.

"And you are in my room."

Nash grabbed his T-shirt and hauled him in, and the kiss was not sweet.

It was teeth and heat and two men who each wanted to be the one who kissed harder.

Gaspard took the back of his head in both hands and tipped it where he wanted it.

Nash let him for a count of three and then bit his lower lip and pulled.

Gaspard made a low rough sound and pushed him against the door so hard that the frame rattled.

"Point to me," he said against Nash's mouth.

"We're not keeping score."

"We are always keeping score."

"Fine. Then that was a penalty."

"You bit me."

"You started it."

"I did," Gaspard said, and kissed him again.

It went on until Nash's lips were stinging and his coat was on the floor.

Gaspard's hands went to his belt, quick and sure, and Nash caught one wrist.

"Jersey stays," Nash said.

Gaspard stopped.

"Pardon?"

"The jersey stays on. You wanted to see your number on me. Look at it."

For a second Gaspard just stared, breathing hard, with his T-shirt rucked up on one side and his mouth wet.

Then something in his face went dark and warm.

"You are going to be a problem," he said.

"Thank you."

"It was not a compliment."

Nash undid his own jeans while he was saying it.

He pushed them down his hips, and his cock jumped out thick and flushed, tenting the hem of the white jersey.

Gaspard looked at it, then at him, then dropped to a crouch just far enough to drag the jeans to Nash's thighs.

"Hands on the door," he said.

"Bossy."

"Hands."

Nash put them on the door.

Gaspard stood and pressed up against his back and reached around, and his big dry hand wrapped around Nash's cock and squeezed once, hard.

Nash's head fell back against his shoulder.

"Fuck."

"Yes."

"Do that again."

"Ask."

"Make me."

He felt the smile against his jaw, finally, the first one he had ever seen on that face.

"I will," Gaspard said, and did.

He had a long rough stroke that ended in a twist at the head.

He used it with no wasted motion, over and over.

His other hand dragged up under the jersey and found Nash's nipple and pinched.

Nash cursed and thrust into his fist.

Behind him Gaspard's cock was grinding in a slow line against his ass through the sweatpants, and Nash pushed back to meet it.

"You like that," Gaspard said.

"I like it fine."

"You are shaking."

"I'm cold."

"You are on fire." The hand tightened. "Say it."

"Say what?"

"What you want."

"I want you to stop being so smug and fuck me through this door."

Gaspard laughed under his breath, low and delighted.

"Tonight, I will not," he said. "Tonight you will come in my hand, in my name, and then you will go home and think about it."

"That's a dumb plan."

"It is an excellent plan. Faster."

He went faster.

The sound of it filled the room, the slick wet slide of his palm and Nash's breathing and the hard tick of the door frame against the wall.

Nash felt it coming up the backs of his legs, tight and bright.

"Gaspard," he said, without meaning to, and then, "shit, I'm close."

"Say it again."

"Gaspard."

"Again."

"Gaspard, fuck, I'm going to."

"Do it. Wear it."

Nash came with a shout, all over Gaspard's hand and the inside of the white jersey.

It was hot and wet against the number on his own belly.

Gaspard held him up through it, stroking him gently now, as if he could feel every spasm and wanted all of them.

When Nash could breathe again he said, "That's cheating."

"What is?"

"Using my name like that."

"You used mine."

"I was caught off guard."

"I know." The hand left him. Gaspard wiped it on the hem of the jersey, deliberately, and Nash looked down and made a noise of pure outrage. "Now it is dirty. Now it is mine."

"You dick!"

"Point to me."

Nash turned around, caught his face, and kissed him hard, then reached down and shoved a hand into the front of the sweatpants.

Gaspard was rock-hard and leaking already, and Nash had his fingers around him in one motion.

"Wait," Gaspard said, and he sounded, for the first time, like a man in trouble.

"No."

"Brannagh."

"It's Nash. You said it first."

Nash stroked him fast and dirty, the way he'd wanted to for two years without ever once saying so, thumb dragging through the wet at the head.

Gaspard's forehead dropped to his shoulder.

He swore in French, a stream of it, ragged and low.

His hips jerked into Nash's hand.

"You are going to," he said, and stopped, and tried again. "You are going to make me."

"Yeah. I am."

It took forty seconds.

Gaspard came hard and silent, with his teeth in the shoulder of the jersey.

He spilled hot over Nash's wrist and the front of the white fabric, over the name and the number both.

When it was over he leaned there with his eyes closed and his chest heaving.

"One-all," Nash said.

Gaspard opened his eyes.

"No."

"No?"

"I came second. I am counting you as the first." His mouth twitched. "One to me."

"That's the worst accounting I've ever heard."

"I am the captain. I keep the books."

Nash stood there with his jeans around his thighs and his heart slamming.

He looked at the stupid hard handsome face that he'd hated for three years.

He was in so much trouble.

At five in the morning the alarm on Gaspard's phone went off, soft and polite.

Nash woke with his face in a pillow that smelled like cedar.

He had no memory of getting into the bed.

Gaspard was already dressed, standing at the door with his bag on his shoulder.

The gray light in the window made his scar look like a line drawn with chalk.

"My bus leaves in forty minutes," he said.

"You were going to leave without waking me."

"I was going to leave a note." He nodded at the pad on the table, where he had written that breakfast was on the room and not to be a hero.

"Brannagh," he added.

"Nash. You said it last night."

"In here. Behind this door." Gaspard's voice was as even as a ruler. "Out there it is Brannagh and Lachapelle. I do not want my name in your mouth where anyone can hear it."

"That's rich. You just spent a night in mine."

"The rule is the rule." He opened the door. "First names only in private. Do you agree?"

"What do I get if I don't?"

Gaspard looked back over his shoulder, and for a moment the dry captain's face went somewhere else.

Nash caught it, the quick hot flash of something almost shy.

"The jersey," he said. "Wear it. All day. Every inch of day."

Then the door shut, and Nash lay there in the empty room with the number 29 on his chest, and he could not stop grinning.

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