by Kate Meader
Hell if those Chase women didn’t want to stir the pot big time. First, three of them jointly inherited the team when, five months ago, old man Chase got summoned to the big rink in the sky. Then they went on a massive purge and replace. Old guard out, new blood in. Cade’s agent had wanted him to push for a trade out, but Cade had high hopes that the new management would turn things around, and his faith had been rewarded. Since the addition of Callaghan and DuPre, they’d been creeping up in the league standings, and with the recent acquisition of brick house Russian Vadim Petrov, the team had a real shot at making the play-offs for the first time in living memory.
“Dante, would you like to say a few words?” Harper asked.
“Sure, Harper, thanks.”
Cade would have understood if he was a little nervous: a new job, a new city, and a new team of men who were rightly suspicious of an unproven GM sliding in halfway through the season in February. To be honest, Cade thought Harper and her sisters had done a fine job with what they were given. Moretti’s appointment was going to take some time getting used to—time they didn’t have as they drove toward the play-offs. But Cade would say one thing for their new chief: the guy knew how to hold a room.
His steel-eyed gaze took inventory of the players, and during the extracharged beats before he spoke, Cade took inventory of the man right back. Jet-black hair that was a little long on top but sculpted with some kind of styling shit. Crystalline blue eyes, a jawline that could cut a hole in the ice, and lips that would feel amazing on Cade’s body.
Fuckity fuck. Do not go there, Burnett.
You could have heard a fart through Jorgenson’s goaltender padding. Finally, Moretti spoke. “My father was an Italian immigrant who loved football, or soccer as we say here. He didn’t understand hockey. Didn’t appreciate why I wanted to play. Said it was too fast, had no grace, couldn’t compare to the beautiful game. We’ve all been there. Someone we know or love doesn’t get it.”
Moretti had played hockey for a few years over a decade ago before he tore up his knee. A defenseman like Cade, known as the Beast. Cade had been a big fan of Moretti’s when he was a kid, even had a poster of him on his bedroom wall—and yeah, you bet that poster had both overseen and fueled plenty of erotic fantasies under his comforter. He appreciated how Dante had slipped in that reference to his player days. I might like cock, but I’m just like you. I have been where you are now. It was a canny move.
Dante did another sweep of the room, and for one heart-stopping moment, he focused all that thrilling energy on Cade. Blood surged through Cade’s veins, the stirrings of a semi in his sweats. It felt like Moretti was speaking directly to him. About him. Cade’s father, a college football coach, initially hadn’t understood why Cade would choose ice over the gridiron.
You’re Texan, son. Here we worship big tits, a vengeful God, and the almighty pigskin.
Dante lifted that heady gaze from Cade and sent it out in a general arc over the team. “But we get it. Everyone here understands that this isn’t just life and death. It’s more important than that. The past few years have been lean in Chicago. Harper, Isobel, and Violet have made great inroads in a short time, and smashed to smithereens a lot of preconceptions about hockey management and ownership.” He caught Harper’s eye and she acknowledged his praise with one of those raised eyebrows she was famous for. “The history making doesn’t have to stop with the owners.”
No shit. Three women and a gay guy walk into an NHL franchise . . .
Moretti went on. “I’ll be meeting with each of you to talk about your place here in the Rebels’ org, because you all have a part to play. For now, know this: there’s no reason why we can’t go all the way. Our plucky underdog nature plays to our advantage because no one’s going to see us coming. The talent, spirit, and fight is here. We just have to put it all together.”
He smiled at Harper, and that smile, though not directed at Cade, made his spine melt and his dick go schwing! “Rousing enough?”
“Most definitely.” She addressed the troops. “Thanks for giving Dante the welcome he deserves.”
All right, that was the cue to clap in the new guy. So they did, and Dante gave them a wry smile, likely recognizing that he had his work cut out for him.
Cade willed his erection to subside, definitely recognizing he had his work cut out for him as well: the hard-as-hell work of not revealing his attraction to their new GM.
Two weeks after D-Day (where D stands for Dante) . . .
Cade turned the treadmill up a notch and tried to focus on anything but the one other person in the Rebels’ gym this evening.
His hot, built, too-sexy-for-words boss.
Thirty minutes ago, Dante had stepped into the gym, frowned on seeing Cade, and for three terrifying seconds, looked ready to back out. Since the handsome Italian’s arrival a couple of weeks ago, they’d talked just once—that one-on-one meeting Moretti had promised everyone—and it had been all business.
Now Dante was the only other person in the gym a little after 8 p.m. and he looked less than pleased to see Cade. A quick nod of acknowledgment and he’d gone about his routine: fifteen minutes on the rowing machine, fifteen on the bike, all with earbuds in. Now he was programming the elliptical.
His ass was amazing.
Cade was usually ultraconscious when it came to checking out the asses—or other equipment—of his teammates. Only yesterday, he’d walked in on Leon Shay, one of the left-wingers, in the middle of his usual bullshit about women-owned teams, now made all the more insulting to Shay personally by the fact that “we have a fag for a GM.” Yeah, someone nominate Shay for Poet Laureate. Homophobia was a hundred times more real in a locker room, meaning Cade spent every waking moment censoring his thoughts, speech, and actions. His Rebel brothers didn’t know his sexual preferences and he kept them and the world clueless with a steady stream of female arm candy. Tiring as fuck.
Thank Christ for Violet Vasquez.
The youngest Chase sister, a late addition to the family owing to her father’s having elected to keep her existence a secret—and who the hell does that in the twenty-first century?—figured him out one night a few months ago during Ford Callaghan’s birthday party. They’d both been checking out the bartender, but soon realized each other was more interesting. She’d certainly stood out in an Irish dive bar, this smart-mouth, inked-up Puerto Rican gal wearing a tutu and combat boots. For reasons Cade wasn’t overly inclined to question, she’d offered to be his cover for the foreseeable future—and if he’d been so inclined he would have banged her on the spot in gratitude.
Back to the guy he’d bang on the spot if he wasn’t ever so slightly worried about getting his brilliant disguise as a famous, eligible, heterosexual athlete blown.
Black shorts hugged Dante’s ass with all the love that shorts had in their power to give. Tree-trunk thighs tapered to strong calves. Hairy, too, owing to the man’s Italian genes, Cade supposed. He loved a guy with a mat of hair on his chest, and he’d bet Dante had a pelt. He could already feel it on his cheek, how soft and springy it would be as he worked his way down those taut blocks leading to his goody trail.
Screw this.
He ended the treadmill program and headed over to the elliptical. Dante was still playing around with the panel.
“Hey,” Cade said.
Nothing.
Right, he was listening to music at a pretty high volume, with some chick bellowing her lungs out. Sounded like opera (shudder), which, like those designer suits, didn’t fit the image Dante used to present back in his playing days. The Beast had been a brawler, a total goon. If he wasn’t starting a fight on the ice, he was finishing one.
Cade touched Dante’s back.
The man turned, his brow drawn in bafflement at why one of the players would dare to speak to him, or maybe why he should lower himself to speak to a player. A good five seconds passed as the silence shifted from strained to awkward.
Finally, he pulled out one earbud and s
aid: “Burnett.”
That voice did wicked things to Cade. “Hey. So, I’m heading out soon and”—I’d love to buy you a drink, maybe talk you into a hand job—“I wondered if you’d spot me on the weights. Just ten or so reps.”
More staring, followed by more tense moments of Cade wishing the ground would open up beneath his feet and drag him to hell along with all the sports equipment.
Dante finally made what must have been a crazy difficult decision. “Well, I’d hate to have your asphyxiation on my conscience.”
A joke? A joke! Cade laughed, but because it was two seconds too late, he came off as a dimwit. The look Dante gave him concurred. Walking away, Cade wished he’d never opened his mouth, but it was too late now, so he loaded up the weights on the bar and laid himself out on the bench.
“Ready when you are,” Dante said, his voice soothing from above in a way that was not so soothing to Cade’s balls.
Was he out of his mind? A stiffie was most definitely in his future, and then Dante would be left in no doubt that Cade was an idiot. A slow-witted, chubby-popping, drooling-over-his-boss idiot. If it came to that, Cade would let the weights slip and crush his larynx. Exit strategy for the win.
He did ten reps, with Dante watching him intently. That focus was a major turn-on. Is that how he’d look while he lay over him, his body buried to the hilt inside Cade? Would those ice-blue eyes change color when Cade dug his fingertips into his ass, urging him to go harder, deeper, all the -ers?
He really needed to stop thinking about sex with his boss.
Thankfully, the burn of the weights kept the more obvious expressions of Cade’s lust to a minimum. One tiny lip bite prompted a stir in Cade’s shorts, but he willed it away and drilled his mind to the task at hand. After three more weight changes, he called it.
“Thanks, man. Appreciate it.”
“Sure. So . . .” As Cade sat up on the bench, Dante handed off a towel, and their fingers brushed. Static zinged through Cade’s body, and after a quick swipe of his brow, he lowered the towel to his lap. Better safe than sorry.
Dante scrunched his amazing, beautiful, kissable mouth, looking like he had a question on the tip of his tongue. Cade scrolled through his own preferences.
Want to get a drink? Want to shower together? Want to let me lick and kiss every inch of that hard-for-me body?
“So, this is the usual time you work out?”
Squaring his shoulders to mask his disappointment, Cade muttered, “Pretty much. I’m a night owl.”
Without another word, Dante nodded and walked away.
Cade never saw him in the gym at night again.
THREE
Dio mio, Cade Burnett is about to kiss me in the middle of a gay club.
Dante knew this had to stop. He also knew it was in his power to stop it. Cade had downed at least two drinks that Dante had seen. The guy was tipsy, possibly drunk on his reveal to a coworker that he was gay. Dante was merely a convenient placeholder for this gush of emotion that must be chasing fire through his veins.
“Don’t,” Dante said, drawing back at the same time as he uttered the order. This was a million shades of wrong, and while 50 percent of those might be delicious, Dante was responsible for this man. For all the men on his team. And the first (unwritten) rule of management was “don’t bang a player.”
Cade’s tongue darted over his own lips, as if savoring Dante’s taste—a taste he hadn’t even had yet. It was slightly obscene and sexy as hell.
“Don’t what? Kiss you until we’re both begging for it?”
Well, when you put it like that . . .
No. Dante drew back, flattening his tie against his chest to give his hands something to do. His mind was reeling, his blood barreling like jet fuel through his body, as if he’d taken a hit of some dangerously addictive drug.
“Do I need to remind you of who we are, where we are, and what the hell we’re doing?”
Cade smiled. Oh shit, polpetto, do not smile at me like that. “Nope, no reminders necessary. But you happen to be the sexiest guy I’ve ever met and I’d like something to happen here.”
Just like that, not a coy bone in his body. How could this man be so up-front about his needs yet still be flying under the radar? This was worse than Dante had thought. Cade Burnett was a PR nightmare waiting to crash and needed to be protected from his worst impulses, one of which was his inability to think before he shot off his too-sexy mouth.
“Not a chance.” Dante moved back as far as he could on the love seat, which would need to be on another continent to avoid this slice of Texan temptation. There was a reason he’d stopped working out in the player gym at night, and it wasn’t because his social life was hopping.
He needed air.
“I’m your boss and—” Biting off the words, he looked around for an escape. He would not be leaving one of his players here alone. “With me. Now.”
“How did you get here?”
Dante threw this out over his shoulder in a staccato burst of verbal gunfire. For a man who seemed awfully concerned about Cade’s reputation, he sure didn’t mind acting like a pissed-off lover as he led the way out to the busy, icy street.
“Taxi.”
Dante turned, his expression furious. Not the man’s preferred choice of transportation, then. “I’ll drive you.”
“Sure that’s a good idea?” Yes, it is! “Not worried we’ll be spotted together and everyone will assume I’m gay by association?” Might save me the trouble of coming out!
“I’m worried I can’t trust you to go straight home.”
Cade pretended to think about it while he shoved his hands into his pockets, trying to stave off both his shakes and the early March chill coming in off the lake. He couldn’t believe he’d actually made a play for Dante “Hot Shit” Moretti. Go him!
“You might be on to something. I’m pretty heated up and I don’t usually like to leave a club without making arrangements to work off some steam.”
Dante stopped at his midnight-blue Bentley. Smooth, sleek, and sexy, just like the man.
“I’m taking you to your front door. And you will act like a fucking monk until we make arrangements for your situation.” He opened the passenger door, like he was Cade’s personal chauffeur. Even that got him juiced.
“My situation?”
“Burnett, if you’re going to come out, could we do it with some planning?” He sounded more resigned than pissed now, like Cade’s come-on was an inconvenience to Dante Moretti’s perfectly controlled world.
Cade leaned over the door and got in close enough to see dark, sexy stubble, the firm lips he’d dreamed of kissing, those clear blue eyes formerly clouded with lust—and building to it again.
“I’ve arranged my life in Chicago in such a way that I’m discreet about who I hook up with. When I see someone I want, I let them know. Right this minute, you’re it.”
Dante looked like it was the last thing he wanted to be. “I’m flattered—”
“Not trying to flatter you. Trying to tell you that I’ve had a hard-on for you since you arrived. I’m not interested in a relationship. I’m not interested in anything beyond tonight. I saw how you looked at me in there—I see how you’re looking at me right now—so I know you’re not immune to my charms.”
“Don’t read so much into it. Like most men, it doesn’t take much more than a gentle breeze to get me stoked.”
“Admitting you’re stoked, then?”
Epic eye roll. “I’m far too old for you, Burnett. You’re what, twenty-four?”
“Twenty-three.” Twelve years’ difference, which was another check in the hotness column. Why weren’t they fucking already? “Like I said, this isn’t for keeps, Dante.”
“Get in the car.”
“Is that a yes?”
He ignored the question and walked around to the driver’s side. Cade got in and watched as Dante settled those long suit-covered legs into the seat.
“You live on Madison in R
iverbrook, right?” Dante started up the car, the purr of the engine almost sexual. But then, just breathing Dante’s air was a turn-on.
“Or we could go to yours.”
Without comment, he pulled out into traffic, heading for the Michigan Avenue exit to Lake Shore Drive. Riverbrook, location of the Rebels’ arena and where most of the team and staff lived, was about thirty miles north of downtown.
“We’re going to forget what happened tonight,” Dante said once he’d merged with traffic off the ramp, “but we need to work on a PR plan for when this comes out, because you haven’t exactly been careful, have you?”
“Work out all the plans you want. I’m not going public.” Cade was annoyed now. Horny and annoyed. Watching Dante’s strong hands on the wheel as he maneuvered the car deftly through traffic wasn’t helping. All easy power, those dark-skinned hands would feel amazing on Cade’s body. Positioning him, controlling him, manhandling him, all for their mutual pleasure.
Had Cade made a mistake in coming on so strong? But he hadn’t misunderstood the flare of desire in Dante’s eyes when they got within kissing distance back at the club.
Yeah, this was happening.
For the next thirty minutes, Cade tried to engage Dante in conversation, but got little or nothing in reply. The guy must have decided the silent treatment would keep him out of trouble. Not a problem. By the time they got down to brass tacks, Cade would need only a reciprocal hard-on and a willing set of Italian lips.
They pulled up outside Cade’s condo building in Riverbrook, about a five-minute walk to Rebels HQ. Dante kept the engine running—a form of threat, perhaps?
“In you go, Burnett,” Dante said softly. “Be a good boy for the rest of the night.”
This guy was definitely mixing his signals, because if he thought Cade wasn’t going to fuck him after that little tease, he wasn’t nearly as smart as he looked. Cade turned to look at Dante. The streetlight glinted off his hair, giving it a blue-black shine, casting his face half in shadow.
“We’ve got a game in New York in a couple of days, then a weekend off.”
