Isolation Play (Dev and Lee) (33 page)

“
Did he tell you the wallet story?”

Lee laughs. “Right before he signed it.”

I glance down at the black scrawls all over his cast. “Who else signed?”

“
Everyone.” Lee holds it up and grins. “Once Charm and Vonni started it. I didn’t have to ask anyone but Gerrard. Even Fisher signed it.” His ears flick down. “He seems resigned to his season being over. Probably his career.”

I hadn’t really thought much about that during the afternoon. “If I had two rings and his career, I’d be okay retiring too.”

“
I don’t think he’s okay with it. I think he’s resigned to it. He still wants to play.” He looks sideways at me. “I think you’ll want to play for a while, too.”

“
Maybe.”

He settles back in his seat, paw rubbing his cast. “Good story about the bear, Acheson.”

“
Huh?”

“
The one Werner tackled. You know, when someone gets into your head like that, it’s tough to get him out.”

I think about the guys I’ve lined up against. “Couple running backs tried to get into my head. That boar. The stallion on the Chimaeras.”

“
You’re good about not letting them get to you.” He stretches. “Too bad the second game was such a blowout.”

“
You didn’t come out to play basketball.”

“
Fisher asked me to stay with him, then Angela grabbed us for a tour. I’d rather have shot hoops with the guys, but I didn’t want Fisher to be lonely.” He lifts his right arm and mimes making a shot. “I didn’t hurt my shooting paw.”

“
That must be what Gerrard was saying.” I curse myself as soon as I say that.

Sure enough, Lee’s ears go up, and his tone goes down. “Saying to whom?”

“
I saw him say something to Angela right as we were leaving. But you know, it was nothing—”

Too late. His ears flatten. “Like, keep the gay fox occupied so he doesn’t try to come shoot hoops with us real guys?”

“
Or, how about the two injured guys keep each other company? Some of those guys are big. You might’ve gotten hurt.”

“
I wouldn’t have. I should’ve known when Angela specifically asked me to come on the tour.”

“
You asked her to show you the house!”

“
Like one of the girls. Is that what you told Gerrard I am?”

“
What I said to Gerrard has nothing to do with it!”

He folds his arms. “So you have talked to him. About...us.”

“
No! Not him.” Again, I curse my mouth for sprinting a step ahead of my brain.

“
But other people?”

Damn it. “Not really. I mean, some of the guys told me they figured I was the, y’know, the...”

“
The male in our relationship?” He huffs again. “It’s none of their business what we do in bed, or who does what to whom.”

“
Then why are you so worked up about it?” He just points his long muzzle at the windshield and doesn’t answer. “Look,” I say finally. “It wasn’t like that. None of the guys said anything to me about you being a girl. I promise.”

It takes a second for his ears to come up. I feel him relax. I can’t say what’s different, just that the car doesn’t feel tense any more. “Did they ask about my paw?” he says. “Did you tell them I broke it on your huge cock?”

I want to respond to the joke, but I’m too distracted by the thought that the guys thought I might’ve done that to him, intentionally or not. “You going to come to practice tomorrow?”

“
I need to go talk to that reporter.”

That snaps me out of my funk a little. “What about?”

“
He called during the tour. He just wants to get together.”

I tighten my paws on the wheel. “You guys are friends now or what?”

“
You don’t think I can handle him?”

“
Of course you can handle him, but...”

“
He won’t be trouble.” He brushes his whiskers. “He just wants to talk to your ex-girlfriend and maybe hit on her some more.”

“
And then what?”

His eyes widen, and his ears come up. “I’ll tell him something about your past. Give him another exclusive quote or two. He writes a story, gets his rent check, generates some sympathy. Everybody wins. Maybe he tells Corcoran some stuff about how great you are.”

“
How do you know he really knows Corcoran? What if he’s playing you?”

I’m looking at the road, but out of the corner of my eye, I see his patient expression. “I looked up his articles. He did an in-depth on the Firebirds a few years ago. Front-office access, quotes from everyone, Corcoran on down.”

“
That doesn’t—”

“
Six articles since then on the Firebirds, three featuring quotes from Corcoran. Two of them breaking news.” He sounds not too smug, but I grumble anyway. “I don’t know why his wife left him. Looked like he was on a pretty good track ’til the newspaper folded.”

Stopped at a red light two blocks from my place, I turn to him. “So that’s why you’re pretending you’re a girl.”

“
That’s how he met me.” His tone and scent both get sharper.

“
You just can’t leave things alone.” I shake my head.

He gets me right away, sharp blue eyes meeting mine. He lifts his broken paw, holds it up like evidence. “I wasn’t dressed like a girl.”

“
It’s the same thing.”

“
It’s completely different. I don’t really give a damn if the reporter likes me or not.”

His ears are flat. I grip the wheel more tightly. “The last time someone with a blog didn’t like me, I ended up coming out on national TV.”

“
I didn’t say I don’t care if he likes
you
.”

Now his eyes are dancing, though his lips are still straight and serious. Goddamn him. The light’s green, so I pull out, but not before the asshole behind me honks. “Just be careful.”

He leans back. “I’m always careful.”

“
No, you’re not.”

“
Okay, you’re right.” He puts a paw on my thigh. “But I’ll handle the press better than Ogleby.”

“
Lion Jesus, a blind bull with Tourette’s would do better than Ogleby. Don’t sell yourself short.”

“
Yeah.” He draws claws along my pants, lightly. “Maybe after the season, you might want to look around for a new agent.”

I take a moment to think about that, rounding a corner and pulling up to the garage of my building. “I dunno. Ogleby took a chance on me when I was a rookie. I can’t just dump him when things get good.”

“
You absolutely can. You’re gonna keep playing like a star, and you’ll need someone who can represent you fairly. Ogleby’s not that bad, but he’s not the best you could have. Who represents Gerrard?”

“
I...I don’t know.”

He shrugs as I pull to a stop. “Ask him.” He looks out at the empty garage. “You want me to get out and come up in ten minutes?”

I hadn’t thought about it at all, but now I do. I know I probably should have him come up separately. “Um...I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure other people in the building have seen you, right? Maybe you moved in, or something. We won’t make out in the elevator.”

“
It’s your call.”

We park. He gets out when I do, and waits. I think about it, then grasp his paw and pull him into the elevator with me.

He gives me a smile, a little bit startled. I squeeze his paw and then let it go. Nobody else gets in as we start moving up. My mind drifts back to the conversation about Ogleby. “It just feels disloyal,” I say.

He knows exactly what I mean. “Look,” he says, “are you still dating the first girl who slept with you? She gave you a chance, right? Wasn’t it disloyal to dump her?”

“
That’s different.”

“
Course it is,” he says. “But do you think that if you hadn’t gotten a chance to play, hadn’t become a hot property, that Ogleby wouldn’t dump you in a second?”

I stare at the bank of numbers, watching them move up from 4 to 5, 5 to 6. “Doesn’t mean I have to be like him.”

“
Well,” he says, and then stops. “Okay. Point.” He stands on tiptoe to kiss me on the cheek, as the door opens onto the sixth floor landing.

But inside, when he puts his arms around me and I feel the weight of the cast against my back, all the worries about how the cast might be seen come back. Like with Fisher. I shouldn’t have let him get hurt. I hold him against me, the light frame of him, like a captive bird. I murmur into his ear, “I’m sorry.”

“
Not your fault,” he says. “I won’t fault you for being loyal to Ogleby. I’ll fault him for not deserving it.”

“
No, I mean...for...”

His cast shifts against my lower back. He tenses. “Oh.”

“
I never said.”

“
You didn’t have to.”

He feels good against me, warm and wiry. My paws are rubbing his shoulders in that “I hope this shirt comes off soon” kind of way, but I’m not really thinking about sex. I mean, I’m hard, sure, but I always am whenever he’s this close. But I’m not moving toward the bedroom or anything. I’m happy just to hold him for now. “I’m the one who pushed you to come home with me.”

“
Because it was important to you. I wanted to.”

It’d be easy to be annoyed with him again: if it was so important to him, why didn’t he try harder to make it work? If I were to ask him, I know what he’d say: that that’s how he is, and he doesn’t know why he does it sometimes. For better or worse, that’s the fox I’m in love with. I can’t change that any more than I could choose new parents.

“
I guess we can try again. In a few months.”

He rests his muzzle against my chest. “I didn’t think I’d be invited for Thanskgiving.”

“
I’m not sure I am.”

“
You can go back as long as I’m not with you.”

I think about that. I’m sure he’s right. Hell, I split up my life before I came out, didn’t I? Went home for holidays, took other vacations with Lee. Would it be that difficult to keep doing it?

As if reading my mind, he goes on. “There’s lots of cases where parents and kids get along just ignoring the whole ‘gay’ thing.”

“
I don’t know if we’re smart enough to do that.”

He snorts against my chest. “Maybe you’re too smart.”

“
I think that’s the first time anyone’s said that about my family.” I mouth his ear.

“
I don’t believe that.”

His tail swishes slowly behind him, his head resting against my chest. We stand like that for a little longer, and then I say, “I kind of want a coffee. You want to go out?”

“
Nah. You go ahead. Bring me back a vanilla latte or something.” He pushes his muzzle up along my neck and breathes, “I’ll stay here.”

“
Okay.” I brush his ear with my nose and stroke a paw down his back, pulling his hips against mine. “Coffee Bean okay? Something warm and sweet?”

“
Better than Starbucks,” he says. His lithe form rubs up against me, his tail curling around to brush my legs. He places my paws on his waist and holds them on his slender hips, a glint in his eye. “Remember. Skim.”

I kiss his nose, and squeeze, pushing my fingers beneath the waist of his pants to his fur. His arms hold me, one paw stroking the base of my tail. We stay pressed together like that, fingers on hips, warmth against warmth, until he murmurs against my throat, “So are you going to get something warm and sweet?”

I push my paws down his pants and whisper into one of his big black ears, “Fuck, yes.”

My tiger falls asleep quickly, sprawled out naked behind me, his body’s curves shaped by the sheet and shadowed by the moonlight. Lying on my back, his arm comfortingly heavy on my chest, I watch him breathe and wonder why it’s so hard for me to fall asleep. It’s not just the warm memory of an hour before, though my rear and sheath still feel warm from his hardness inside me, his paw on my shaft, and our climax.

Not that that’s not a nice memory, and worth staying awake over, even if I had to lie on my elbows so as not to put too much stress on my broken paw. It was good to reconnect in a way we hadn’t since the visit to his folks. I trace a finger over his wrist, and he stirs.

I shouldn’t be so hung up on his teammates knowing, or thinking they know, what we do in bed. I shouldn’t be, but I am. Gerrard coddling me—okay, maybe it was just because of my broken thumb. But it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like he was treating me like one of the wives.

Which shouldn’t bother me, right? Really, it’s just a question of like, dislike, and convenience. I like to get fucked. Dev likes to fuck. If it were the other way around, what would it matter? Doesn’t mean I need to be shielded from basketball games. Or anything else, for that matter.

I let out a sigh, and as I do, Dev’s arm tightens around me. He is bigger, and stronger. No matter how it makes me look, or what it makes other people assume about me, I love that about him. But there’s so much more I love him for than just his build and his muscles that I’m not sure why I’m focusing on this stupid little thing.

It’s just me, I know that. It’s nothing to do with Dev, not really. When I’m with him, it doesn’t bother me. I want to lie here with him forever and not care about anyone else, about his team or his family or my family or my job. Who gives a damn what other people think our relationship is like, or should be like? We know what it is, and what it needs to be.